Page 3 of Christmas Wishes at Pudding Hall
‘Where you off to then?’ asked Mary, scooping stew into her mouth with the wooden spoon that had been taped to the side of the container. Mary had been on the streets since Christa had been at the restaurant and she was as wise as she was erratic, but if you got Mary on a good day she could have given Brené Brown and Oprah a run for their money in life advice.
‘No idea yet – I’ll see what comes up,’ she said.
‘Whatever you do, cook with love. I can taste the sadness in this stew. He’s not worth it, love. Used to tell us to piss off when you weren’t around.’
Christa wasn’t surprised at this titbit of information about Simon. She had heard it before from others on the street. ‘Not enough salt in the stew?’ she asked, avoiding Simon as a topic.
Mary smiled at her, her long grey hair matted to her scalp. ‘Cooking is like love. You should fall into it with complete abandon or not at all.’
‘That’s very poetic, Mary,’ she said.
Mary shrugged. ‘I didn’t write it, I read it somewhere, but you can tell when someone doesn’t like cooking, you can taste it in their food, I reckon. My gran’s golden syrup dumplings were always sweeter than my mum’s. She hated us kids; that feeling flavoured everything she did.’
Christa looked at the homeless woman who was spooning the food into her mouth, and wondered if you ever stopped thinking about the painful times you endured as a child. How those times changed the course of your life and how you could run from them and then the reminder would come disguised in a simple dish, or the scent of something simmering on the stove, in a song or a saying from a stranger. And she knew deep inside her that she had avoided confronting her past because Simon made it easy for her to ignore it by taking control of her life. She had no idea who she was anymore, let alone what she wanted, but she knew she needed to do something that made a difference to the twelve-year-old Christa, and to the Sams and Marys of the world, and if it was with food then that would be what she did, because food had given her a lifeline once upon a time and she suspected it might just do it again if she trusted whatever was to come next.
2
Christa walked back to the flat she’d once shared with Simon and entered the perfectly beautiful and minimal space – carefully curated by him, of course. Christa preferred a more eclectic environment, but Simon had said it suited their aesthetic for the restaurant and would get them more magazine coverage.
And he was correct. Their home and restaurant were covered in every important interiors magazine with them looking smug, leaning against their expensive joinery and sitting on the arm of their Italian sofa.
They looked so perfect and yet they slept on opposite edges of their shared bed and were polite but cold to each other. They were such different people. Christa wondered how they had ever thought to get married.
But people change and she doubted she would even speak to Simon if she met him now at a party. Once she had been impressed by his money and confidence. Now she wanted to see what people cared about and how they helped others.
Christa turned on the kettle and looked out the window. A sparrow was bouncing around the bird feeder in next door’s tree and she thought about the woman called Avian with Simon. What a terrible name to give a child, she thought. There was no doubt Simon was a flirt but now she wondered if he had seen other women during their marriage. The waitresses who smiled a little too long at him, or the patrons who seemed to always want to play with their hair or adjust their breasts in his vicinity.
Avian was the polar opposite of Christa to look at, she thought. While Avian was wearing black leather trousers and a tight turtleneck, Christa must have looked like a giant Christmas ham in her pink puffa jacket. She was surprised Simon hadn’t stuck cloves in her and carved her up.
The pink puffa had seemed cute on the website but when it came Simon had screamed laughing and called her blancmange for the day until she had cried and then he said sorry and told her she looked cute, which she hated. Being told she was cute was so patronising. She shivered at the word as she put a teabag into a mug and poured the water in.
The doorbell rang, and she went and pressed the buzzer.
‘It’s Selene,’ came the throaty French voice.
Selene always seemed to know when Christa needed her, even when Christa didn’t know herself.
Selene had studied at Le Cordon Bleu with Christa and Simon, and while she and Simon went into hospitality, Selene had become a restaurant critic and was now one of the most highly regarded in Europe with her own page in a luxury magazine and a column in a paper, along with her own website.
Christa buzzed her in and poured her a cup of hot water with a slice of lemon. Keeping the calories down wasn’t easy when you were eating out most days.
She knocked and Christa let her in. ‘Salut, did you return the keys?’
Christa rolled her eyes. ‘Yes and I met his new bit of thin rib: Avian.’
Selene laughed. ‘She is a little bird lady. She’s the producer on the show. All the way from the USA.’
‘She seems to have migrated for the winter,’ said Christa. ‘I hope she and Slimon fly to the warmer climes asap.’
Selene sat on the sofa and crossed her legs, her elegant frame belying that she reviewed restaurant food for a living. ‘Slimon. Very funny. I like it. He shall be known as that from here on in. So how did it go? All done?’ she asked.
Christa nodded and sighed. ‘And I have signed the papers, so I’m no longer married. I am also jobless and once I put this place on the market I will be homeless.’
Selene sipped her hot water.
‘What do you want to do next?’
‘Feed the poor? Clothe the naked? I don’t know, something to help people,’ she admitted.
