Something in Common (14 page)

Of course she realised it. The woman was intelligent – she knew that she wasn’t feeding her child properly. She was well aware of the deficiencies in her daughter’s diet, and still she wasn’t prepared to do anything about it. On the contrary, she seemed almost proud that she was raising her child on convenience food which had little or no nourishment in it: how irresponsible. And boasting that she didn’t own an apron, for goodness’ sake.

How could she say preparing a simple meal was complicated? What on earth was complicated about cutting a head of broccoli into florets and adding them to boiling water for a few minutes? Who couldn’t top and tail a handful of green beans, or slice an onion and fry it up with a few chopped mushrooms and a sprinkle of black pepper?

It sounded like she had just one child – hardly a big family to feed. Presumably there was a husband too, if he hadn’t left her in favour of a woman who could feed him properly. Had she never roasted a chicken? Could she not even grill a chop or poach a bit of salmon for her family?

Sarah had a
good mind to send her a few easy recipes. Minimal ingredients and instructions, since she seemed to be allergic to them. Ones with vegetables in them, definitely. She thought suddenly of the vegetable croquettes she made regularly in the nursing home, an experiment one time to use up leftover vegetables. They’d gone down so well she produced them now at least once a week.

Surely Helen O’Dowd could manage those. Really, a child could put them together, and even Martina hadn’t found fault with them. And they looked a bit like fish fingers, so they’d seem familiar to the poor malnourished little girl.

‘You’re daft,’ Neil said, when Sarah told him what she was planning. ‘Why would you want anything more to do with her? Didn’t she rubbish your book without even seeing it? Have you forgotten that?’

‘Of course I haven’t forgotten, but that’s all in the past. The point is, she needs help now, and I can give it to her.’

He shook his head. ‘The point is, she can tell you to mind your own business – and anyway, I bet she can cook fine. She’s just making this up to be controversial: they all do that.’

Sarah took a cookbook from the shelf and opened it. ‘You could be right, but maybe you’re not. We have no way of knowing, so I’m going to take the chance and send her a couple of simple recipes. She might be delighted.’

‘Delighted that you’re criticising the way she’s raising her child?’

‘That’s not what I’m doing at all. She’s already admitted that her daughter isn’t being fed properly, and I’m just trying to help her to fix that. How could she take that as criticism?’

He shook his head. ‘Have it your own way – but don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

He pulled off his work T-shirt and dropped it into the washing-machine. She’d take it out and transfer it to the laundry basket as soon as he went upstairs for a shower. A year of marriage had taught her, among other things, to pick her arguments carefully, and this one didn’t make the cut.

At least she’d
trained him to leave his boots outside: no more grass and earth scattered all over the kitchen floor every time he came home. She watched as he sat on a chair to pull off his socks before bundling them into the washing-machine on top of the T-shirt – like he’d done countless times, no doubt, before she’d come along. Pile clothes into the machine as they come off you, repeat till it’s full, then switch it on. No wonder all his underwear had been the same shade of mottled grey before she’d replaced it.

‘So,’ he said, coming up behind her, bare-chested and barefoot, wrapping his arms around her waist, ‘what’s on Helen O’Dowd’s dinner menu then?’

He smelt strongly of sweat, hardly surprising after a day of gardening in the late-August sunshine. She didn’t mind male sweat: on the contrary, she quite liked the rough headiness of it.

She turned pages, trying to stay focused with his body pressed against hers. ‘I’m thinking about vegetable croquettes, and maybe a chicken pie – they’re both dead easy. And I’ll tell her I have plenty more if she wants them.’

‘Just don’t get your hopes up,’ he said, his mouth against her ear, his breath hot. ‘Don’t expect her to shower you with gratitude.’

Sarah smiled down at a picture of a casserole in a green dish sitting on a gingham tablecloth. ‘No, I don’t think that’ll happen.’ She was beginning to respond to his nearness, his smell, his body against hers. She was starting to feel the pleasant heat of arousal.

‘Have we time,’ he said, his lips against the side of her neck now, his hands pressing her pelvis into his, ‘to make a baby before dinner?’

Make a baby: her heart flooded at the thought. Maybe we already have, she wanted to say. Maybe things have already started. But she remained silent, afraid to say it out loud, afraid to give him hope in case she was wrong. She’d wait. She’d hug it to herself until she was sure.

She turned in his embrace and pressed her open mouth to his. She was so glad she’d stayed a virgin until marriage, shying away from other boyfriends’ straying hands, hating the idea of sex as a casual act between people who hardly knew, let alone loved, one another.

She hadn’t been
Neil’s first lover, which had secretly dismayed her, but he’d been hers. Her first and her last, however corny that might sound these days, when sex before marriage had become the norm, and fidelity seemed to be a thing of the past.

‘Have your shower – I’ll be right up,’ she murmured, drawing out of his embrace. Alone in the kitchen she found Easy Chicken Pie and marked the page before closing the cookbook. She turned the oven down to gas three and lowered the heat under the saucepan of potatoes. She untied her apron strings and refreshed her lipstick at the little mirror she’d hung on the back of the door.

She left the
kitchen and followed her husband upstairs. A baby already begun, maybe. A big happy family, waiting for them in the years ahead.

‘W
hat are they?’ Alice looked suspiciously at her plate.

‘They’re Golden Surprises. I made them.’

Alice poked at one with her fork. ‘You always make dinner.’

‘No, I mean I didn’t buy them in the shop, I bought stuff and made them, all by myself.’

‘What stuff?’

‘Oh, just a few different things. Try them.’

Alice sniffed dubiously.

‘You know Godmother in
Wanderly Wagon?
’ Helen asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘She makes them for Rory and O’Brien.’

‘How d’you know?’

‘I read it in a magazine.’ Helen put two croquettes onto her own plate. ‘Go on, try them – they’re yummy.’

They
were
yummy. She’d eaten one while she was setting the table, and she’d had to stop herself having another. They were crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, and they were the first thing she’d ever cooked from scratch, and they tasted far better than she’d been expecting.

Alice still made
no move to eat. She watched Helen dunking a croquette into a dish of ketchup. ‘How did you know how to make them?’

‘A woman called Mrs Flannery told me,’ Helen said. ‘She’s a real cook. That’s her job.’

‘I don’t know her.’

‘No, you don’t.’

Sarah Flannery’s name on the envelope had taken a few minutes to register. When it had, Helen’s heart had sunk. What did the silly creature want now? Had Helen said something nasty about another book? Had she been awfully mean to some poor theatre actor? Didn’t the woman have anything better to do than write sanctimonious letters?

The envelope had been addressed, like the others, to the newspaper, care of Breen, and had been readdressed as usual by Catherine. Helen pulled out the notelet – yes, looked familiar, watercolour blobs of flowers in a prissy vase – and a separate sheet of paper slipped from it and fluttered to the floor. A novena prayer, maybe, to save Helen’s immortal soul.

It wasn’t a novena prayer: it was a recipe for some kind of a chicken dish. Helen turned it over and saw Vegetable Croquettes on the reverse. Sarah Flannery was sending her recipes?

She opened the card.

She’d destroyed her manuscript.

She accepted Helen’s apology completely.

She’d sent Helen two recipes because Helen had written about not being able to cook.

She’d included a recipe for Vegetable Croquettes because they looked a little like fish fingers, which Helen had mentioned in the article.

She’d signed her letter ‘Sarah’, as if Helen was a friend.

Was she
for real? Six months ago Helen had rubbished her manuscript, which she might well have spent years working on. She’d torn it up, she’d destroyed her embryo book because of Helen – and now she was sending recipes. She was a professional cook, and presumably scandalised by Alice’s diet of sausages and fish fingers, but there wasn’t a word of criticism directed at the mother who was responsible for it.

Helen reread the letter slowly. She turned to the recipes and scanned the croquette one.

No ingredients list, just instructions a child could follow. Sarah Flannery was making it all very easy for the woman who couldn’t abide recipes. And she wasn’t assuming that Helen had any kind of kitchen equipment, even something as basic as a potato masher.

Helen hadn’t been sure whether to be amused or offended. Don’t have the pan too crowded – did Sarah Flannery think she was dealing with a complete idiot? Cooked for a living: employed, no doubt, in the kitchen of some backwater hotel. Thought she knew it all, delighted with the opportunity to lord it over the nasty woman who’d made her tear up her little book.

No, it wasn’t that. Sarah Flannery was simply being nice. She was a good person with no ulterior motive.

Helen turned the page over and read the chicken pie recipe. Chicken, carrots, onions, celery, potatoes, stock, a few herbs. Nothing unfamiliar, nothing that couldn’t be easily got.

No harm in giving one of them a go. Might be a laugh, might even produce something halfway decent. Might manage not to burn the house down in the process.

She’d try the croquettes. She remembered liking the mashed carrots and parsnips her mother used to serve with roast beef. And she did have a potato masher – inherited, like all the kitchen tools, from Cormac’s grandmother.

She’d added the ingredients to her shopping list, and half an hour ago she’d made her first batch of eleven fat vegetable croquettes, only two of which had fallen apart in the pan.

She pretended she wasn’t watching as Alice took a cautious bite. She said nothing as her daughter chewed and swallowed. She waited until Alice was halfway through the croquette.

‘You like it?’

Alice nodded, her
mouth full. Helen had just served her daughter a home-cooked meal – well, not entirely home-cooked: the chips that accompanied the croquettes had come from the takeaway on the corner. But it was a start. And it was thanks to Sarah Flannery.

She wasn’t a friend, far from it, but she’d done Helen a kindness, with nothing at all to gain in return. She’d simply seen an opportunity to help and taken it.

Helen couldn’t remember the last time someone had done something nice for her, just for the hell of it. Since Cormac’s death, she’d distanced herself from the people who’d known them both, not that any of them had tried too hard to keep in contact. Her school friends, such as they were, had long since drifted, and she’d forged no solid friendships during her time behind the counter at Burke’s. She had plenty of acquaintances, but no real friends to speak of.