Five by Five E-Book

Katy Darby

• Herausgeber: Arachne Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 280

Beschreibung

A showcase for authors Arachne Press has published previously in anthologies, giving a wider perspective on their writing. The collection as a whole has tendency towards fantasy and magical realism, with Cassandra Passarelli's (Liberty Tales) Guatemalan stories taking on a more gritty reality, and Katy Darby's (London Lies, Stations, Shortest Day, Longest Night) engrossing SF and historical stories alongside Joan Taylor Rowan's (London Lies, Lover's Lies, Stations) acid humour and modern desperation and Sarah James' (Longest Day, Shortest Night) elliptical poet's sensibility brought to flash fiction and Helen Morris' (Liberty Tales, Solstice Shorts) ability to get to the heart of a story, and make you laugh out loud or weep inconsolably.

Leseprobe

Editor’s note

Five by Five is the first in what we hope will become a series of anthologies showcasing a handful of writers with a handful of stories (or poems). All the writers included here have been published by us before, often several times, and were invited to submit for this book.

The next in the pipeline is a poetry anthology which will be published in September 2018 Vindication: Poems from Six Women, which features writing from Sarah James (again!), Sarah Lawson, Elinor Brooks, Jill Sharp, Adrienne Silcock and Anne Macaulay.

Contents

Joan Taylor-Rowan

DFL

The Dress

Bitter-sweet, Like Pomegranates

Never Knowingly

The Bet

Katy Darby

Cuckoo

The Tyburn Jig

Quarantine

The Nuisance

The Co-respondent

Sarah James

The Trouble with Honey

Our Skinny Dragon

Not Running

Out of The Box

The Last Red Cherry

Cassandra Passarelli

The Waiting Room

The Black Christ’s Modest Miracle

The Pineapple Seller

Gorin

Green Peaches

Helen Morris

Simon Le Bon Will Save Us

Telling the Bees

Memories

LOL

Troll

About the authors

Joan Taylor-Rowan

DFL

Maya didn’t want to leave Blackheath at all. She loved their little flat on the ‘Blackheath borders’. She loved Blackheath village with its cafés and gift shops, and the church sitting on the heath like something from a Christmas card. She loved that it was called a village even though it was minutes from central London. Their flat wasn’t in the best end of the street, but there were rumours that a Waitrose Local was coming. They already had an artisan bakery and a microbrewery. Just when they had actually managed to buy somewhere in a good area Robbie had this urge to move closer to his dad.

‘Let’s see the pictures then,’ Maya’s mum said. Maya dropped the estate agent’s printout on the plastic tablecloth.

‘I hear St Leonards is up and coming,’ her mum added, in a too-bright voice. ‘The arty younger brother to Hastings’ old seadog.’

Maya rolled her eyes. ‘Where did you read that?’

‘I went online. It looks like the prices are on the rise down there. Gentrification, it’s happening everywhere – even in Catford, although probably not on this estate. The rail link to London helps. Of course you’ll be pricing the locals out.’

‘I don’t know what your mum’s been reading,’ her dad said, loosening his work-boots. ‘I’ve heard it’s still a shithole, drugs, alcohol, the lot. Have you looked at Broadstairs or Margate? I used to go to Margate as a kid, buckets and spades, jellied eels, candy floss. Loved it.’

‘Hmm,’ her mum said. ‘There’s a lot of talk about Margate, that’s where that artist is from, the one who is always sharing her dirty linen in public.’ She grimaced.

‘You mean Tracey Emin.’ Maya sighed, ‘Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy.’

Her mum hurrumphed. ‘Well if you call that drawing.’

‘I know, ‘Maya said, ‘your special needs kids draw better than that.’

‘And don’t charge as much,’ her dad said.

She and Robbie had taken a look at Margate a few months back. Maya had read that it was becoming Shoreditch-on-Sea but with more edge. She’d seen three young pregnant women smoking in the shopping centre. If that was edge, then you could keep it. The creative quarter was an eighth and felt like a gated community. She could imagine the mob massing at the border, brandishing their pitchforks.

Robbie was a graphic designer so he could work anywhere as long as he could access London when he needed to, and he knew that she hated her job. The interns at the fine art auction house had sniffed out that despite her careful clothes and good grooming she wasn’t one of them. She had a degree in Art History and some of them were barely literate but that didn’t matter if your parents were titled. Entitled, that’s what they were.

Her mum had been thrilled when she got the job. ‘How marvellous,’ she’d said, her eyes shining.

‘I’m only a dogsbody,’ Maya had laughed. ‘I’m not writing fancy catalogues or anything – yet.’ But now she was moving to St Leonards any hopes of scrabbling up the hierarchy were out the window. Her mum was trying to put a good spin on it, but Maya knew she was disappointed.

Robbie had loved St Leonards as soon as he got off the train. Maya had not been convinced. Down on the London Road, the charity shops were separated by empty storefronts pasted with leaflets and posters. Outside a newsagent and under the ATM that she’d wanted to use was a man lying asleep full-length on the pavement, his trousers wet around the crotch.

A teenage girl came alongside them.

‘Excuse me,’ she said in a wheedling voice. Maya turned.

‘Could you spare a couple of pounds?’

Maya noticed with horror that she had no front teeth, just two incisors that made her look like a vampire. She recoiled shaking her head.

‘Bloody hell,’ Maya said as they took refuge from the rain in a greasy spoon. ‘It’s worse than Catford.’

‘They’re only people,’ Robbie said.

‘Barely,’ she’d murmured and she’d caught that sideways thing he did with his eyes.

But they’d done it now – sold the Blackheath flat (it’s in Lee, Robbie always insisted on correcting her), and bought in St Leonards, a short drive from Bexhill where his dad was now settled in a home for the demented.

‘Don’t call it that,’ Robbie said. ‘I know you’re trying to be post-modern or ironic or something, but it’s my dad and he’s got dementia.’

She’d looked away, stung. It’s not like he and his dad were super-buddies or anything. They’d only visited a handful of times before Robbie’s mum died.

‘He’s all the family I’ve got now,’ Robbie said. ‘Soon he won’t even know me and that’ll be it.’

She could have said no and dug her heels in but she always felt it was Robbie’s flat even though both their names were on the deeds. He’d put down the deposit and he paid most of the mortgage. Her job barely paid a living wage.

‘No rush to find work,’ Robbie said, when he saw her staring into the employment agency’s window later that afternoon. ‘We’ve made a bit on the flat. You don’t have to jump at anything.’ Chance would be a fine thing, she thought, scanning the window.

‘Maybe you can chill for a while, stop trying to be liked by those rich freaks.’

She’d bristled at that. ‘I do not try and be liked.’ But she did, and the knowledge filled her with a burning self-loathing. Her brains had got her a place at Blackheath High and by year 10 her parents could finally afford to buy her the brands that she craved, but it had come too late. The invisible sign on her head called out to those who were born to see it – second class. She tried to talk to Robbie about it, but he was mystified. ‘People like that are just a bunch of tossers. Why would you want to be around them if they make you feel bad?’ She had no answer that she could put into words.

The house in St Leonards was big. They could have fitted their flat in it twice over. It had an enormous lounge and a spare room that Robbie said could be her studio when she took up painting again. French doors opened onto a garden.

‘You can have parties out there in the summer,’ Robbie said as they moved in their furniture.

She nodded. Saffron and Soo-nee might come but she would never invite anyone from work. She could imagine their patronising wows and goshes and how charmings, the way they’d shake their pretty heads back in the office and say how brave she’d been to make the move. It might as well have been Syria as far as they were concerned.

Their move coincided with a busy time for Robbie, so Maya spent her days unpacking and trying to put their old life into this new place. At the weekend they visited his dad. The nursing home was well maintained, with friendly but preoccupied staff. His dad sat in a sitting room with the TV on. It smelled of plug-in Fresh Air and school dinners. The staff spoke loudly and their peals of artificial laughter grated on Maya.

‘Lovely to see you, son,’ his dad said. ‘When are we going home?

‘This is your home for now dad, remember? We’re only round the corner.’

‘You’ll have to bring that girlfriend of yours next time, the one who looks like Lena Horne.’

‘She’s here dad,’ he pulled Maya forward.

‘Is that you? You look different. Your hair’s gone all short.’

Maya laughed. When she’d started at Barstow and Jolyon, she’d had her hair straightened, but she’d given up on perms and relaxers. She’d cut it short and let it grow naturally. She kept its dark halo in place with a vintage scarf – it had become her look. ‘Very ‘Bohemian’,’ her boss had said, running his finger around his tight white collar.

Robbie had taken out a deck of cards. ‘Fancy a game, dad?’ But his dad’s eyes had begun to close.

They’d taken a walk to St Leonards Park in the afternoon.

‘Well this is just like Blackheath,’ Robbie said. ‘Look at these houses. They’re massive and only one doorbell each.’

Maya turned her nose up as she side-stepped some dog mess on the pavement.

At the top of the park Robbie stopped. ‘Wow. Look at that view.’ A verdigris sea nipped at an aluminium sky. He took her hand. ‘You should paint this, Maya.’

Everyone knew what she should do, except her.

At the beach she turned to sit down. ‘Eww! Gross,’ she said. Numerous beer cans had been squashed into the slats between the benches which reeked of piss.

‘Swanky buildings and then these scruffy, stinky benches; they could at least paint them. And why is there so much dog shit?’ It was the thing her mother had obsessed about when she first came to England. ‘Dog mess all over the place. And they had the nerve to call us dirty.’

‘I think it’s nice that old men like my dad can sit on a bench and have a drink and look out at the sea,’ Robbie said. ‘That’s not a bad way to pass your days. Better than being stuck in a TV lounge watching Homes Under the Hammer at top volume. Just imagine if he didn’t have us.’

Maya leaned over the railings and watched the seagulls picking up mussels and smashing them onto the pebbles below. This is where they were living now. The future stretched out before her, bleak and unpredictable like the sea.

They walked home in silence. Robbie slipped into his study. The sound of Miles Davis oozed through the door and she knew he was back at work. She stood in the empty lounge, and stared at the high white walls. They needed furniture and rugs. They needed to turn it into a home. She sighed and returned to the kitchen to make lunch. In Blackheath her cupboards had been full of jars and bottles. The fridge had been stuffed with delicious things that she’d succumbed to in the seductively lit shops and the farmer’s market.

She plonked a cheddar and Marmite sandwich in front of Robbie.

‘The nearest Waitrose is in Horsham,’ she said. ‘I’ve just looked it up. And there’s no farmer’s market in St Leonards or even Hastings. Where am I supposed to buy decent cheese?’

‘Perhaps you can have it flown in from France, or why not get your own cow,?’ Robbie said as he typed away, shooting off emails.

She stared out of the window. ‘Those chavs from the halfway house are dealing on that wall again.’

Robbie spun round in his chair. ‘What is the matter with you!’

Maya jumped. Robbie never shouted.

‘Were you always such a fucking snob...? Did I just fail to see it? If it’s all so squalid and downmarket for you then go back and live in fucking Blackheath. Go and smarm around that creep Sebastian or Peregrine or whatever your stupid boss was called, if that’s going to make you feel like somebody special, because I am beginning to think I don’t know you at all.’

He slammed the lid on the laptop and stormed out and she heard the bedroom door bang shut.

Maya’s heart was racing. She gripped the back of his chair. His anger seemed to hover like a solid presence in front of her. How dare he judge her like that! It was alright for him, he’d never been mocked because he didn’t have the right kind of bread in his lunchbox or the right sweatpants for P.E. She grabbed her handbag and coat, tears spilling and ran out of the house.

She rummaged in her bag for her car keys. She just wanted to press her foot hard on the accelerator and take off. She didn’t care where as long as it was away from here. Shit. She’d left the car keys upstairs. She glanced back at the front door. She’d just have to walk. She marched down the street her bag swinging, fighting with him in her head.

By the time she reached the main road, the rain was torrential. She stood under the bus shelter waiting for it to pass. After five minutes with no sign of let up, she flagged down the approaching bus. She’d go to the M&S in Hastings. Surely they would have Manchego… and pastrami. She’d buy up the fucking shop if she wanted to.

Maya hated getting the bus. Her eyes flitted around as she paid her fare. It was like that advert for the frozen veg, the ones who didn’t make it to the Birds Eye factory – too old, too ugly too fat, too crooked. The bus was rank with the fug of stale clothes and cheap body spray. She brushed past a young mum at the front, foreign-looking, Filipina, maybe, and found a seat next to an old man and behind a woman with a shampoo and set.

‘It’s not very diverse down there,’ Saffron had said. She was a journalist, one of Maya’s successful friends.

‘It’s got a mosque,’ Maya said.

‘Yes, but it’s very white, isn’t it; full of racists who don’t even know any black people. Those bastards are to blame for Brexit.’

Maya tried to think of any other black people she’d met at Saffron’s famous soirées in her Islington flat, but she couldn’t picture any.

The Filipina mum had a toddler on her knee, chubby and serious, his black hair like an acorn cap. He stared at the doors as they opened and closed. Someone cleared their throat, a guttural wet sound that made Maya want to retch.

At Warrior Square a woman got on with a little girl.

‘Wait for me, Becca,’ her mum called as the child began to search for a seat. Becca was wearing a Barbie puffa and fake Ugg boots. She swung on the pole as her mum picked up her shopping. The Filipino boy’s steady gaze turned to the little girl. She grinned at him and waved. Her mother ushered her into the seat across the aisle.

‘Now sit down there, Bex, and hold on. If you mess about, then no sweets for you.’

Maya stared out of the window at the sea; it had turned pewter grey. She wondered if she and Robbie would ever have kids. He’d thrown it in as bait to change her mind about the move.

‘We wouldn’t be working like dogs all the time, we could think about a family.’

She remembered how hard it had been for her parents to buy their flat, especially when her dad did his back in. Never enough money to make ends meet. Maybe that’s why she had no siblings. They’d put all the effort into her and now she had failed them. She’d gone to the Boonies, the Sticks, the Provinces, the Back of Beyond, the Last Resort – there were so many names for the not-city, all of them derogatory. Robbie would make a good dad. He was so easygoing – usually. She felt herself flush at his remarks, and a wave of indignation rolled through her.

Maya watched as the Filipino toddler, transfixed by Becca, stretched his pudgy brown hand across the aisle. The little girl smiled at him and took it. Maya heard the Filipina mother giggle. Heads on the bus tilted indulgently.

Robbie and Maya had been in the first throes of love when his mum got breast cancer and Robbie felt bad that he hadn’t visited her more often. They’d been really close when he was a teenager, he said. Her death had knocked him sideways. Maya had tried to get him to talk about his mum and his childhood but it made him irritable.

‘I’m not giving you tales of the great unwashed to share with your Islington mates,’ he said.

‘I wouldn’t do that.’

‘That’s what you say, but I’ve heard Saffron and Sunny.’

‘Her name is Soo-nee, it means something in…’ she couldn’t remember. Blond, shiny Soo-nee had told her but she was too busy wondering if anyone’s hair could be that colour naturally, to listen.

‘It’s Islingtonian for trust fund.’ Robbie said.

She rolled her eyes. ‘They’re not like that, I’m not like that.’ Maya sponsored a child in Malawi, or was it Mali.

Robbie’s mum had died young and the funeral had been a bleak affair, bleaker than funerals generally were. Everyone was badly dressed, and the wake had taken place in a local community centre which had pictures by the nursery school on the wall and posters about diseases that you should watch for. The sandwiches on white bread had been sitting for a while and the smell of egg and fish paste filled the room. Who ate fish paste these days?

Saffron’s mum on the other hand, had been buried in a wicker coffin and they’d sung wimmin’s songs from her days at Greenham. There was a vegan buffet.

‘So inspiring,’ Maya had sniffed to Robbie as she blew her nose.

‘Hmmm. She did look like she was going to heaven in a hamper though,’ Robbie said, and Maya despite herself had gulped with laughter. That was the thing about Robbie; he could make her laugh like no one else.

The bus stopped again, and a feral-looking teenager with a mullet cut got on – Eastern European she thought. The Filipina mother untangled her child’s hand from Becca’s to let him through and as soon as he’d passed, the children held hands again across the aisle.

‘Oh, look at that, just look at that,’ the old man next to Maya said. For a moment she thought he might cry.

‘I live opposite a nursery,’ he said. ‘They all play together, black and white, rich and poor – don’t matter, just happily together. They can teach us something.’

Maya murmured in vague agreement.

The lady in front turned her lacquered helmet of curls, her eyes moist.

‘It’s like that film South Pacific where that white woman…’

‘Mitzi Gaynor,’ Maya found herself saying.

‘Yes, that’s her. She won’t marry Rossano Brazzi because she finds out he has two native kids.’

Maya winced at the word.

‘Shocking it was in those days. Live and let live, I say.’ Her voice carried around the bus and several heads turned and nodded their agreement.

‘Too much hatred in the world,’ someone further up the bus said. Two or three people agreed.

‘All you need is love…’ the Eastern European boy suddenly sang.

‘Na Na Na Na Na,’ someone added. Several people laughed, and he laughed back. He was very good-looking, Maya noticed.

The bus stopped and Becca’s mother began gathering her bags. Becca stood up. The little boy clutched her fingers. He began to cry. Maya remembered that moment at the hospital when Robbie had held his mother’s withered hand. He’d known then, she realised, that this would be the last time he’d see her alive. She felt a surge of hot tears. Of course he wanted to be with his dad. The urgency of it swept through her like a tide.

Finally Becca’s mum managed to pull her daughter away. The little boy leaned across his mother and pressed his face to the window watching as she disappeared. All heads were turned in the same direction. His mother cradled him as he wept, stroking his head and whispering soothing words in a foreign tongue. Silence enveloped the bus. The grief, the love, the heartache, the hope, the disappointment, it was the same for everyone, wasn’t it. Everything could change in a moment. All they had was each other, all they had was now and they had to make the best of it. A cloud shifted, the sun flashed and glittered. The sea turned to mercury. Something broke open inside her and she began to sob.

The old man patted her arm.

‘You wouldn’t do that if you knew me,’ Maya wept. ‘I’ve become such a horrible person and I never used to be. Everyone on this bus is nicer than me, and I’ve just had a big row with my boyfriend.’ The tears slid down her cheeks.

‘D.F.L., are you?’ he said. She shrugged with incomprehension.

‘Down From London.’

She nodded, wiping her face with the back of her hand.

‘It’s always a bit of a shock, but you’ll find we’re quite civilised down here. Here, have my hanky.’ Maya shrank back slightly and shook her head. He cackled.

‘It’s ok. I don’t really have a hanky... I use my sleeve.’

She laughed and then started crying again. ‘That’s just the kind of thing my boyfriend would say.’

The Dress

I know I must finish this dress. I abandoned it years ago, left it in the sideboard with the pattern still pinned in place. The tissue has yellowed but the cut fabric has no dusty crease marks. It’s Shantung silk, with a square piece missing from one corner. I bought it on our honeymoon in Hong Kong. I didn’t know what I was buying then, but its shimmer was irresistible. Michael paid for it – far too much – but it’s lasted.

I have always sewn, always loved the feel of fabric, the smell of the starch, the bump, bump of it on the counter as the salesgirl pulls out the yardage.

Corinne phones just as I am working on the tailor tacks. They’ll still be there when I pull the tissue pattern off – a delicate map of construction – like sutures holding a skin together.

‘Hi mum, how’re you doing?’

I say I’m fine of course; it’s what she needs to hear.

‘I’m making a dress,’ I tell her. There is a pause and I feel irritated then desolate. Lately I’ve noticed her eyes flicker over the books I buy, measuring them, afraid that I might end before they do.

‘It’s just some old thing I cut out years ago, I’ll probably never finish it but it’s something to do.’

‘Better than watching Cash in the Attic, she says.

‘Exactly,’ I say laughing. ‘I’ll call it Cloth in the Cupboard.’ She laughs too, a burst of sound, a release. She tells me about the children and I can hear them in the background, squealing and giggling and I want to hug them. She tells me she’ll be around later, she has cooked me something. I place the phone back and notice how thin my hands are getting.

I begin by joining the bodice together, pinning the seams, delighted that I can still estimate 5/8” with such accuracy. The dress has a seven-part bodice with princess seams and a shawl collar which comes together in a twisted knot. That piece, laid out flat, looks unpromising, a backward question mark – to begin a sentence with a doubtful ending perhaps.

I chose the design when I was slender with love. In the pattern books, full of lean models with arctic expressions, this one stood out. The girl in the illustration looked as newly married as I felt, her hands grabbing the skirt’s fullness at either side as if she was preparing to leap. I got as far as the pinning, spreading the fabric out in the sparse living room of our first flat. It looked so perfect that I lay down and wrapped it all around me. In that moment, with the sun on my eyelids, I felt completely happy.

Three months later my waist had begun to vanish, an expansion that both fascinated and alarmed me. I stroked my growing belly wondering who on earth I was making. Corinne arrived, voracious and eager to grow. Eighteen months later, Cathy was born. Over the next seven years the unfinished dress, in its paper bag, disappeared under the holiday snaps, Christmas cards and Cathy’s exuberant paintings – just an archaeological curiosity from another life.

The sewing machine is a treadle but it runs a treat. It was a wedding present from Michael’s mother. It lasted longer than our marriage. It has always occupied the same corner of the room. Unlike Michael it didn’t need more space. The machine sits on its purpose-built table – vintage they’d describe it now, like me I suppose, but I made all their clothes on this, sitting in the living room, laughing at the TV, listening for the sound of their hands clattering on the door-knocker.

I search around in the drawer looking for the bobbin and its case. I turn the hand wheel and the needle rises. I feel a little surge of pleasure as my feet rock back and forth, even though my hip aches and the pain in my stomach makes me giddy with nausea.

By the time I hear Corinne’s key in the lock I have the entire bodice constructed.

It’s astonishing sometimes to watch my daughter move around the room, fixing, plumping and adjusting pillows – to think that I created her – my DNA like a skein of thread, stitching the blue of her eyes and the red of her hair. I see Michael in her too, less evident, but there in her gestures, her robustness. At last she sits down and pushes the tea towards me, her eyes anxious.

‘I’m feeling fine,’ I tell her before she asks. ‘Really. A lot better than last week, anyhow.’

She looks towards the sewing machine, and back at me, quizzically.

‘You haven’t used that in years... Why…?’ Then her chin puckers, that little crease forms between her brows. She picks up a scrap of the fabric that has fallen on the floor. I know she has recognised the shiny threads.

I take a sip of my tea. Its heat burns my throat.

‘I was thinking about the dress I made for your first day at school.’

Corinne nods, ‘Do you mean the one with the apple blossom pattern on it, all green and pinks, like a painting?’

‘Yes, that’s it! I brought the fabric in Macready’s when it was still a department store. I made one for you and one for Cathy. I have a picture somewhere of the two of you under the apple tree, wearing those dresses.’

We rarely talk about Cathy these days and I can see from the dip of her head, that she is wondering what it means, though she tries hard to hide her emotions.

‘Cathy’s was a different shape though,’ she says quietly, twisting the thread of silk between her fingers. ‘It was sleeveless because you ran out of material. So you put lace around the neck of hers, and I cried because I wanted lace on mine.’ She clears her throat, gulps her coffee.

‘Hmm, you’re right. Fancy you remembering that!’ I alter the photo in my mind, adjusting it to match her recollections.

‘Gosh! All those things I made you; the fairy costumes, those shorts you both hated, the party frocks.’ The clothes dance inside my head, lit by the vibrancy of my memories.

‘You never taught me to use the machine,’ Corinne says. She has forgotten that I tried once but she was too impatient. She gave it up for a game of hopscotch with the girls next door. I came back after lunch and found Cathy, aged seven, perched on the chair, her face screwed up in concentration as she joined two bits of fabric together with an erratic line. It was the beginning of a brief but intense love affair. When she cut out the square of my honeymoon silk to make an evening dress for her doll, I banned her from the machine and I made her hand back the material. I can’t bear to think now about how angry I was. It was as if the last hope for my marriage had gone. She stared at me aghast as I cried and cried.

‘Cathy was the one with the creative streak,’ Corinne says suddenly. ‘She took after you in everything.’ She bites her lip realising what she has implied and looks stricken.

‘I didn’t mean… oh Mum, I’m sorry.’ I wave my hand to show it doesn’t matter. My darling Cathy – the wrong fabric perhaps, a faulty design, a built-in obsolescence that I could do nothing about. We didn’t know about genetic disorders then but I feel guilty just the same.

‘So what have you cooked for me?’ I ask her, because even now we can’t talk about the things that matter. I’ve begun saying that I love her, on the phone, and I can tell without seeing her face, that she’s blushing. ‘I know,’ is the best I can get from her, the best she can do. Cathy would have been different and I am ashamed of that thought.

She opens her bag and pulls out a container of brightly coloured stew.

‘Good Lord,’ I say. ‘It reminds me of a Mexican sunset.’

‘Moroccan,’ she says, pleased. ‘It’s a vegetable casserole. It’s full of anti-oxidants.’

I grimace at the word. ‘It sounds like something that will remove rust.’

‘All the articles online say they really work,’ she says.

‘They say a lot of things,’ I mutter.

‘Maybe you should try another course of chemo,’ she says, her eyes catching mine.

‘I know exactly what my body needs,’ I say. Her mouth droops and I wish I could snatch back those words. Everything I say now leaves an imprint. I try to scrutinise each phrase, judging its effect before I lay it out before her. I conjure up a smile.

‘Does it taste good, that’s what I want to know?’

She opens the lid and all my holidays return to me in one gush: turmeric and ginger, tomatoes and cumin. I close my eyes and remember the trip with Michael on the ferry to Kowloon, our clothes sticking to our bodies, the sun a white beach-ball in that impossible sky. I won’t be able to eat it, but I keep smelling it, and listening to her voice. She hugs me goodbye and I can feel the healthy thickness of her flesh, its generosity.

I work on my dress into the night, gathering up the skirt. The last time I used this machine was the day she died. Trying to finish a dress she would never get to wear, pumping on the treadle like a marathon runner, cutting the last thread, putting a coin in the pocket for luck – a pocket made from that stolen piece of Shantung silk.

Michael was sitting in the other room when the phone rang, and when he came in, I already knew what he was going to tell me. I threw the dress away and never made another thing.

I think of Cathy on my chest, a dark pink bud scowling, naked and furious at her entry to this world. At least I will go from it well-dressed, she would have appreciated that. I have stitched both their names into the lining of the bodice.

I’ve spent too long up. My eyes ache and I feel a little sick but I only have the collar and the zip to do. I have decided to leave the hem unfinished. It is how I feel, I admit to myself. I have not reached my biblical quota and although I am an atheist I have always believed fiercely in that.

It has gone midnight when I pull it on, fumbling with impatience. I grab a scarf and wrap it round my waist. I twist until the light catches it. I feel tipsy with a sudden joy, like drinking moonshine. I keep having these moments of clarity, where I suddenly understand something that I’ve been struggling to grasp. I wish Corinne could share the beauty of the fire sometimes, instead of seeing only the destruction it leaves behind. But like a dream, the moment doesn’t last. The light shifts and I see what she sees.

I drop into the armchair and the fabric rustles – its crispness almost painful on my skin. This is the last thing I’ll ever make. For a moment the thought is unbearable. I want to scream and shout. I want Corinne to save me with her soups and good sense.

I clutch the dress for reassurance and let the morphine work its magic. I am in a scene from an old film. I am Cyd Charisse in chiffon, dancing towards a heaven painted in permanent shades of dawn. I feel infinity pulling at me and it would be so easy to give in. I smooth my hands down the folds of silk, and imagine Cathy laughing at me in my party dress.

‘I’ve finished the damn thing at last!’ I say to her.