‘What do I do?’
‘Well,’ said Anita slowly, ‘you carry on. You stay the course. You walk further away from home. You don’t think about your job or your granddad or your future or anything else. You put one foot in front of the other.’
Chapter Twenty-nine
It’s hard to say, really, when happenstance comes along.
Marisa, if asked to be brutally honest, would say that it was flotsam, something floating past when she felt she was in a shipwreck and she had grabbed at it, desperately trying to keep her head above the waves.
Polly, being of a more optimistic disposition, would put it down to serendipity. Regardless, when she lightly knocked on the door of the little yellow house when the twins were at their lessons, she wasn’t at all prepared for Marisa in the kitchen.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘What are you making?’
Marisa had just added a thin stream of milk to the bowl.
‘Just crespelle,’ she said. She had laid out nutmeg for the bechamel and was trying to dry the spinach, not entirely successfully.
‘Spinach is the wettest thing in the world,’ she complained.
‘I know,’ said Polly. ‘They should feed it to camels. Did Reuben not leave you a salad spinner?’
‘I think I’m pretty committed to the kitchen roll.’
Polly smiled. ‘So, what even is it?’
‘Well, I make . . . They’re like little pancakes really. Then you stir the spinach into the sauce . . . My grandfather used to let me do it. The colours blend just so beautifully, it’s like magic. Then you add lots and lots and lots of pecorino. And then some more. And too much pepper also. And probably some prosciutto if you’ve got some kicking about. And you fold it over and pour more sauce on top and stick it in the oven until it’s all bubbling and delicious.
‘Oh my God,’ said Polly. ‘That sounds amazing. You’re making me hungry.’
She thought for a moment.
‘Does it make children eat spinach?’
Marisa shrugged. ‘Italian children already eat spinach.’
‘Yeah yeah yeah,’ said Polly, watching her, a thought growing in her head.
‘I don’t suppose they’d scale up?’ she said, watching Marisa whisk her bechamel neatly.
‘What do you mean?’
Polly frowned. ‘Just a thought I had. Can you show me?’
Marisa shrugged again – she still wasn’t very used to having people around – and heated up the pan to cook the first one.
The spinach swirled into the bechamel sauce was like marbling, the bright green against the creaminess, and hypnotic to watch.
‘Wow,’ said Polly, then she smiled apologetically. ‘I don’t get out much.’
‘Neither do I,’ said Marisa and Polly jumped back in horror. ‘Oh God, sorry, I didn’t mean . . .’
‘It’s all right,’ said Marisa, smiling to show she wasn’t really hurt, although it stung a little bit. But that was hardly Polly’s fault.
The butter sizzled in the pan as she started to turn the crespelle.
‘You seem to be making a lot,’ observed Polly. ‘Are they all for you?’
Marisa flushed bright red. ‘Um, sometimes I feed my neighbour,’ she said.
‘No wonder takings are down,’ grumbled Polly. ‘You get all your provisions sent in from Italy and now you’re taking my clients.’
Deftly Marisa lined up the crespelle, lined them with a thin layer of the lightest most beautiful Emilia-Romagna prosciutto that made Polly’s mouth water just to smell it, filled them with a layer of the bechamel, then flipped them and poured more in the top, popping them into the oven to bake. Next door there was some dramatic banging of something which may or may not have been related to William Tell. Polly glanced at her watch.
‘Um . . .’
‘About fifteen minutes?’ said Marisa. ‘Tea?’
Polly smiled gratefully.
I wonder, she thought, as she left finally, collecting the cheerful children. I wonder if I could get that girl to help me cook for the poshos? She wasn’t usually quite so mercenary, but this was something else. She told the children about it. They looked immediately dubious.
‘So it is green,’ said Avery.
‘So it’s not pizza,’ said Daisy.
‘Well, thanks, my market research council,’ said Polly, taking a hand each and letting them swing and bounce off her all the way down the road, blown by the wind behind them and their loud singing, all the way back to the lighthouse.
Chapter Thirty
Marisa had felt so happy to feed Polly: she had forgotten the satisfaction of it. With Alexei she occasionally felt you could boil a shoe for him and he’d wolf it down at speed, but Polly was a baker, a professional, and she’d really, really liked her food. She couldn’t help but feel proud, even when Polly said she could come work for her any time and Marisa had laughed at the impossibility of it.
But she had meant to move forward in her book; she really did.
The next day, however, the weather was utterly filthy. A great wet raincloud had moved in at speed over the Atlantic, and doors were banging and the fishermen’s masts were rattling and everything was blustery and wet.
Marisa could tell the lesson next door was coming to an end; there was a pattern to it, as he induced the pupil to round up, just one last time, make the final cadence, play the final notes with a flourish, play loudly, or fast, or however they wanted, so he could send them off with a ‘well done!’ or a ‘YOU ARE BRILLIANT!’ which is what everyone got when they managed to make it to the end of a piece.
Well. No time like the present then. She stood out on her balcony again, breathed deeply the way the book said. In through the nose, hold, out through the mouth. In through the nose, hold, out through the mouth.
It had rained solidly all night, leaving puddles up and down the muddy unpaved road.
Now, it came down in a steady stream, choppy on the sea, even as a slightly milder breeze came as a reminder that the although it was late spring and flowers and gangling unfurling leaves that opened everywhere insisted that the whole joy of summer was coming – to her, to everyone – the British weather was not always done with you. Birds sheared across the tides, impossibly beautiful, even the hated gulls.
Okay. She was going to do it. She was going to dive in. Run through the raindrops, just for a second. She could do it. She could. She ran – literally, ran – across the floor towards the front door. She was going to pull it open and then charge down the steps and she was going to be free, to run just like she used to, like there was nothing in her way, like she was free, and happy and everything in her life was as simple as it was when her grandfather would take her down to the beach and she could go for miles along the sand, splashing in and out of the watery puddles there, knowing the only thing waiting for her out in the whole wide world was a cuddle and a gelato . . .
She had, it quickly dawned on her, massively underestimated a wet Cornish day on an island.
Alexei was waving farewell to his young pupil who was disappearing round the bend in the unpaved road, standing on the steps busying himself with a pile of sheet music. This, however, she only noticed after the shock she got when opening her front door with the balcony door also open. A massive gust blew through the wind tunnel they created, something she had never done before. As Alexei turned to politely say hello and, less politely, wonder what they were having for dinner, seeing as there had been nothing the previous evening, the gust took the pile of papers from out of his hand and sent them dancing all the way up and down the wet street: as high as the roofs above them and straight into puddles; some out to sea.