‘Not for me, thanks,’ said Pepper, then for some reason lifted her hands and began miming a steering wheel. ‘I’m driving.’
‘What are we having?’ asked Josephine, who had settled herself into an armchair and was flicking through the Big Issue.
‘Spag Bol.’ Samuel glanced at each of them in turn. ‘I hope that’s all right? Please say there are no veggies in the house.’
‘I never refuse meat from a man,’ Josephine said blithely, and Samuel bellowed with laughter just as Pepper said firmly, ‘Josephine!’
‘Shall I help you in the kitchen?’ her mother said, but Pepper interrupted.
‘No, please let me. You stay here and keep this one on a tight leash.’
Samuel was still chuckling as he scooped a strand of spaghetti out from a pan boiling on the stove top.
‘Mind out,’ he said, and lobbed it against the wall where it bounced off and landed with a slithery splat on the floor.
‘Not quite done yet.’
‘I thought that was an urban myth,’ said Pepper. Then, seeing a lump of Parmesan on the worktop. ‘Shall I grate?’
‘That’d actually be, er, great,’ he said cheerfully, pulling open a large drawer which clanked slightly, and passing over a four-sided cheese grater. The kitchen was small but well thought-out, with ample preparation space and a classic Belfast sink. Samuel had a range of fresh herbs living in pots along his windowsill, and a Tottenham Football Club calendar hung on the wall above the light switch.
‘It’s really good of you to have us all over,’ said Pepper, pulling out one of the two stools that were tucked under a narrow breakfast bar and settling herself into it. ‘I would have happily hosted at mine.’
‘I like being the host with the most,’ he told her, turning from where he was stirring fresh basil into the Bolognese sauce. ‘And I wasn’t sure you’d want the extra stress, not after what happened recently.’
She had told Samuel about the fire over the phone earlier.
‘It has been a bit of a nightmare,’ she allowed. ‘The fire never got anywhere near the main house, thank God, but the smell was horrendous. I haven’t checked the pond yet, but I bet Mr and Mrs Ribbit have moved out in protest.’
‘And Mr and Mrs Ribbit are . . . ?
‘My frogs.’
The corners of Samuel’s mouth twitched.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Silly me.’
‘The worst thing is,’ Pepper went on, her eyes not on him but on the lump of Parmesan she was shredding, ‘I had started painting again – for myself, I mean. I hadn’t done anything I liked for years, but I thought that this time––’ She sighed as the familiar regret washed over her. ‘I thought maybe, just maybe, I’d created something worth seeing – worth showing other people.’
She glanced up to find Samuel staring at her, the wooden spoon in his hand immobile.
‘You mean you don’t normally show people your art?’ he asked slowly, and she shook her head.
‘Not for years – not since I quit my degree before it even began.’
‘I just assumed you had a great big stash of work somewhere,’ Samuel admitted. ‘I thought it would be all over your house, but I could tell none of those paintings were yours when I came over that one time.’
‘You could?’ Pepper was surprised. ‘How come?’
Samuel thought for a moment.
‘None of them felt like you,’ he said simply.
‘Well, you were right about that,’ Pepper told him. She had grated far too much cheese now, so she started absentmindedly eating it. ‘Nothing I made had felt like me for a long time; then this summer, after I got back from Lisbon, I was inspired. I started a collection of tiles, and do you know what – they were pretty good.’
‘I’m sure they were,’ he agreed, turning down the heat under the sauce. There were orange droplets all down the front of his apron where a bubbled-over splatter had got him.
‘Well,’ she went on gloomily, ‘nobody will ever see them now. I stupidly locked the whole lot in my studio cupboard, which is now nothing more than a pile of ash.’
‘That is annoying,’ Samuel concurred. ‘But you shouldn’t let it beat you down too much. I mean, you still painted them, right? You still did it. That can only be a good thing. Now you know you can do it – create something you’re proud of that feels like you.’
‘I guess so.’ Pepper tucked her hair behind her ears and chewed at her bottom lip. ‘But what if I can’t? What if that was a fluke – a one-time thing?’
‘Incoming!’ called Samuel, and Pepper had to duck to avoid being hit with wet spaghetti. This time the pasta stuck fast to the wall, and she laughed as Samuel gave a cheer.
‘I get what you’re saying,’ he told her, crossing to the sink. Steam enveloped him a moment later and turned the windows white. ‘I felt the exact same way the first time I assisted on an appendectomy. There was no reason for me to think I had done anything but an excellent job, but I still doubted myself.’
‘How did you overcome it?’ Pepper asked eagerly.
Samuel put the pan of drained spaghetti back on the stove top.
‘Easy,’ he said. ‘I just did it again. And again. And on the tenth or eleventh time, it became easier. I trusted my skills more and my anxieties less. You didn’t really need me to tell you that, though, did you? You already know what you have to do.’
Pepper watched on in silence as he heaped spaghetti onto four plates and plonked large mounds of Bolognese on top. She knew he was right; she did know what to do. She understood why she hadn’t for so long, why she now could, and what she needed to keep her creative momentum going.
She had to believe in herself.
Chapter 42
Pepper didn’t know if Samuel had chosen spaghetti Bolognese on purpose as an icebreaker, but it certainly made the experience of eating an amusing one.
There was no way of consuming it without dribbling sauce over your chin or scooping a heap onto your spoon only to have it slither off back onto the plate. Even Pepper’s mother raised a smile when Samuel sucked in an extra-long strand of pasta with such gusto that the end whipped him across the nose.
Pepper had tucked her napkin into the neck of her shirt without preamble, and Josephine followed suit, although she managed not to get a single drop of sauce on herself.
‘You look as if you’ve taken a stroll through an abattoir,’ she remarked to Samuel when they had finished. He was still wearing his apron, and it was covered with splatters of sauce.
‘Maybe this is why I’m single,’ he told them, topping up Pepper’s water glass then checking that everyone else had wine. ‘Because you can’t take a messy toad like me anywhere.’
‘Toad?’ Pepper chuckled. ‘You’re welcome to move into my pond, if you like? You’re bound to attract a mate that way.’
‘Gee.’ Samuel deadpanned. ‘Thanks.’
‘I would absolutely allow you to court me if I didn’t have to leave,’ Josephine told him. ‘What is that word? The one that describes an older lady with a younger lover?’