she says, picking a chocolate clump out of the top of the swiss roll and eating it. ‘What are you going to cook with swiss roll?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say, and that’s the truth. I just figure that anything I cook with chocolate and fondant icing as its base will probably taste nice, so Dean will eat it, put on weight and be all muscly and manly come the start of the season. He’ll then immediately capture the attention of the England selectors, who will probably make him England captain, and I’ll be on the cover of every magazine and be sent free shoes from every designer in the country. So Paskia Rose can scoff all she likes—there is method in my madness.
‘Why don’t you fetch an apron and help me?’ I suggest. ‘We could cook together—two little women in the kitchen, mother and daughter bonding over the cooker?’
‘Yeah, right,’ she replies. ‘Or I could throw myself under an express train. Man, this is way too weird. Way weird.’
When I was a ten-year-old girl like Pask, I would have loved, adored, just worshipped the idea of cooking with my mum. Just being with Mum was wonderful. I couldn’t get enough of it. Unfortunately, Mum never felt the same. Dad left when I was a few months old and she devoted the rest of her life to finding a replacement. My childhood memories are coloured by the images of men coming and going. Most of them were rich and much older than her. When there was a new man on the scene, she’d dance and sing and sweep me into her arms. I’d love those moments—moments when I’d feel warm and loved. Then she’d be dumped and take it all out on me. How could she ever find a man with a brat like me at home? The sound of her singing was replaced by the sound of her crying. And I knew—throughout my childhood—that I was causing all the pain. It was all my fault.
At the door to the kitchen, Pask, Alba, Marina (the live-in cleaner) and Magda are standing, hands over their mouths, as if they’ve just seen a flock of sheep cooking in the kitchen.
‘And?’ I say. ‘Your problem is?’
‘Oh, Mrs Martin, Mrs Martin. This is a kitchen—a kitchen,’ says Marina, attempting to guide me out of the room with an arm around my shoulders, as if I am a little old lady who has just wandered into a gay bar. ‘You shouldn’t be in here. This place is not for you. Is dangerous. Come, come. Let me help.’
‘No,’ I say bravely, standing up straight and pushing her arm off. ‘This is my kitchen and I will cook in it.’
I walk back to the swiss roll with my head held high, and reach into the cupboard to pull out the lard and the oil. I have no idea what to do with these, but I know they contain the necessary fat to build up Dean. There’s a collective intake of breath from the doorway and the sound of three women and a girl muttering ‘Lard?’
‘I want to be alone,’ I say to my spectators. ‘I need peace and quiet.’
Okay, so it turns out that it’s harder than I thought it would be. The swiss roll covered in lard looked terrible—as though it were preparing for a cross-Channel swim. Maybe I should have made it some teeny-weeny chocolate goggles and thrown it into the sea—it wasn’t good for much else. In the end I decide to roast it in olive oil, so I squash it into a saucepan, pour olive oil over the whole lot and put it into the oven with the heat turned up as far as it will go. I don’t know what temperature is right for pan-roasted swiss roll because there don’t appear to be any recipes for it, but I’m guessing hottest is best—like with curling tongs. You’re wasting your time on the half-heat settings, the curls fall out straightaway.
While my swiss roll is roasting in two bottles of olive oil (is that roasting or deep-fat frying? Must be roasting if it’s in the oven), I decide to make custard to go with it. I have a sachet of powder, so I read down the instructions. Not fattening enough, so instead of using milk I decide to use melted cheese and I shove three blocks of cheese into the microwave.
Next thing to happen is the smell—kind of sickly and pungent, like car tyres, sort of rubbery. In the microwave nothing untoward is happening—just cheese melting everywhere. It strikes me that I probably should have put it on a plate or in a bowl first, but besides that everything is going according to plan. No, the smell is definitely coming from the oven.
I peel open the door and look inside. Shit. The handle of the saucepan has completely melted off and is dripping onto the bottom of the oven. Fuck. I slam the door shut and try to waft away the acrid smells with the skirt of Magda’s apron, which thankfully I put on to protect my skinny jeans. I switch the whole thing off at the mains, indiscriminately pulling out plugs until the lights on the cooker go off.
Right. Breathe. Relax. Take a chill pill, as my mother’s always saying. I take a deep breath and look across the kitchen at the utter devastation I’ve caused. It looks like a war zone—as if the paratroopers have just left. Thank god I’ve got plenty of staff to help me clear up.
‘All right, Mum?’ comes a voice from the doorway.
‘I’m fine, darling,’ I start to say. Then I see melted cheese running out from underneath the door of the microwave. Oh god. Oh no. Why do bad things always happen to me?
Midnight
We had a takeaway for supper in the end. I hate take-aways. I always think that someone will see the pizza man arriving, which would be awful (although after my experiences in M&S today, I think I’ll have to redefine ‘awful’), so I get him to pull up outside the house next door, then I give Magda the money and get her to go out and collect them. ‘Do NOT let anyone see you,’ I instruct.
Comparatively, pizza boxes are just mildly embarrassing. I hate the smell in the house (mind you, one of the happy consequences of the saucepan and the red-hot cooker incident earlier today was that it left a strong smell in the house that has disguised odour d’American Hot, odour de garlic bread and all the nasty side-order odours). I also hate the food itself, because I know that pizza is about 300 calories a mouthful, so I can’t have any of it. Not one slice. Not so much as a sliver of pepperoni has passed my lips tonight.
Now I’m lying in bed feeling deflated and useless. I’m starving, of course, but nothing new there. I also feel like a complete failure. I’ve not been as utterly useless at anything since I took up ballet classes, aged twelve, to please Mum. I hated being in the limelight back then because I disliked the way I looked so much. I was terribly overweight—like a little Buddha with a big round tummy, chubby thighs and a fat face. Everyone took the mickey out of me, especially Mum. I had little round glasses and brown hair that bushed out at the ends. It just never hung properly like other girls’ hair did. It had this awful frizz that lasted until I was around sixteen. I think the main reason I became a hairdresser was because I spent my youth experimenting with different ways to control my unruly hair. These were the days before hair straighteners and hair extensions! Can you imagine? What was the point in living?
The fact that I was so desperately shy and insecure meant that I hated dancing with anyone except my mother. It was lovely to be twirled round the kitchen by her. She smelled of Ma Griffe and was all soft and perfect-looking. Standing in a line at a bar with a dozen other girls, all much skinnier than me, and being made to bend, stretch, bend, stretch for an hour—that was no fun. But, still, I went to the classes to please Mum.
Then there were the performances. My abiding memory was of sitting on the number 11 bus on the way there, whacking my legs with my fist, hoping to break them into pieces so I wouldn’t have to perform. I didn’t manage to injure myself, of course, so I went on stage every time, looking out for Mum. But Mum didn’t even turn up. She never came to watch me in anything.
When
