mid-step. I was rinsed down by disgust and anger, all washed over by something icier: cold shame. Shame that I had even tried with her, shame that I had failed. I turned and grabbed my handbag from the counter, slipped into the dining room, ducked sideways through the conservatory, out of the side gate. I had to have it.
I ran, a mad tiptoed sprint, halfway up the road. Just a couple more final puffs.
Her conjuror’s trick cigarette glowed as I lit it. Lola knew, she had always known. The fags weren’t some anarchic take on Girl Guide charity. She was a Millennial, she had been told her whole life that the nasty things were multi-talented killers. I inhaled deep.
First the cellar, then this. She clearly wished me a slow death.
Almost impressive. Not too shabby; no sugar-candy Mandy, this one. But dislike could do more damage than tooth-rot. No matter, la! I would sure as hell win her over.
One, one coco full basket.
She would change. We would be just fine in the end, Lola and I. Because that was how it was going to be. Love wins.
On the Monday evening, I engineered an excuse to stay over at Littleton Lodge when Stevie was with Demarcus and Thomas was dining with clients. I needed time alone with Lola. I would cook for us.
Food, though, was turning from my gift into our battleground. Most days Stevie ate anything, but Lola? She was a tricky one. That night I offered her spaghetti, with either bolognese or a tuna and tomato sauce, but she ‘wasn’t feeling’ pasta, so I offered grilled chicken and potatoes, but she wasn’t feeling chicken, or potatoes, so I offered a sea bass fillet, not feeling it, sausages, nah, sirloin steak, nah – she wasn’t feeling any meat at all. By this time I was feeling the need for air, so – back in a minute! – I left her in front of the TV and grabbed my bag, which now held a fresh pack of cigarettes, put there by me alone.
I smoked. Then, with my deliberate failure already stale in my mouth, I hit upon a meat-free inspiration: everyone loved my Caribbean vegetable curry. I aimed for Pattie’s West Indian Food Store a few streets away, bought what was needed and wandered back.
There was no sign of Lola downstairs.
I snatched up a knife and cut out the scowling. There would be no asking, nor pleading; no telling, no pandering now, just dinner on a plate. I needed to calm my blood and get this sauce to bubble; it would taste almost as good from Thomas’s overpriced pot. I diced the onion fast – chuk-chuk-chuk – grated the ginger, then fried them together nice and slow. I whistled as I chunked up the vegetables, inhaled a savoury puff which seared my skin as I poured liquid over. A breather.
I padded to the back door. Time for the flavours to mix themselves up, for it all to meld together and break down a touch. I considered another cigarette but remembered Lola’s gift of suffering and pushed the urge aside, for now. I went back to the hob, added coconut milk, stirred and covered.
Soon come.
After at least twenty minutes, I decided to seek her out upstairs.
Lola was in her room. She was sitting up on the bed, Facetiming some friend, and when she looked up I saw it: that naked, honest hatred that she had not been quick enough to hide. So then, Lola.
I stood, rock steady, in her bedroom doorway until she killed the call.
‘I’m making a Caribbean vegetable curry for you …’
‘I’m not really feeling—’
‘What aren’t you feeling now Lola?’ I said. ‘Curry? Vegetables? Or simply the Caribbean?’
A twitch at her mouth. ‘Well. No. I was just going to say I wasn’t feeling that well.’
‘Oh,’ I said. I waited for the sympathy to come, but it did not.
Two seconds passed. Three.
Then from cool flat nothing the magnesium sparked and flared, and Lola reheated a smile:
‘Hey, want to see my new skirt? Try it on if you like!’
It was a black and turquoise patterned mini, and it was pov-chic and it was witty-tacky and it was small as hell; it would never have fitted over my rounded old black backside, even at her age. She threw it down on to the bed, a polyester gauntlet.
I did not rise, I did not move; I paused, made admiring noises.
‘So yeah,’ she said. ‘Not bad for High Desford.’
‘It’s lovely, Lola,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I’d better check on dinner.’
‘I told you.’ That hot metal stare. ‘I’m not that hungry.’
I met her long gaze, eye for eye. A flexing of time, and of wills.
‘OK then.’
I walked out of the room. Lola got up and followed. I stopped by the stairs; she stopped.
‘What?’ I said.
She moved closer.
A loud purr, gravel. A car. Lola edged me forward along the landing, seeming to hear something that made her cry out:
‘Why? Why do you need to be like that?’
‘Like what?’ I said, literally on the back foot.
‘You act like you hate me the whole time!’
She was shouting now, a full-throated yell.
‘What? You can’t be—’
‘It’s true! No. You talk like you like me, but—’
‘Lola!’
‘You—’
‘Lola—’
‘Hi, Darling!’ called Thomas.
And, poor silly girl, in that one weird second she heard not Darling, but darling, and she rushed to the top of the stairs.
‘Hello?’ called Thomas.
But I was still moving forward and she pushed, pushed at me, then more shouting, screaming, a heart-jerking lurch – she was screaming? – and then my arm flew out somehow, anyhow, but she flailed, flew backwards.
Down she fell, a tripping, twisting, puppet’s dancefall right down to the bottom of the stairs.
I looked at Lola lying there, one arm up in a question mark above her small fair head, one arm down, legs bent. A beautiful catastrophe: her broken swastika of a body.
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