Love Tastes Like Strawberries. Rosamund Haden

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СКАЧАТЬ loved that at the magazine. People like to tick things off, Winter told her. It makes them feel positive, like they are accomplishing. Ask your parents before it’s too late: How did they meet? What was their favourite song? What were their hopes and dreams? What was your mother’s secret ingredient for that stew? How much do you really know about your parents’ lives? It’s not too late to find out . . .

      Loss – something snatched away. Disbelief. Outrage. A hole filled with the cold water of sadness.

      Number one holiday destination? Stella knew the answer to that – India. A bohemian dream to her mother. A health nightmare to Stella.

      Stella checks her emails again but there is still no message from Timothy. She stares at her computer screen but she can’t find any words to follow Loss.

      She picks up the invitation to Ivor’s exhibition and balances it against her stationery holder. Françoise stares out at her, her skin black and burnished against the creamy white paper, her expression inscrutable.

      Just before lunch, Winter swishes into the office, all lemon scent, sleek hair, endless legs and a takeaway cappuccino in hand. Stella starts typing – nonsense words. When Winter is safely behind her glass wall Stella stops and starts doodling on her notepad. An insect appears out of the squiggle of lines and shading – a praying mantis. Along the side she writes their names: Timothy, Françoise, Luke, Jude and Ivor. Then she crosses out Ivor. She looks up to see Marge across in the design section mouthing at her. “What are you doing?” Stella shakes her head and then looks back at her pad. She writes University? next to Jude’s name. They might have her contact details. Françoise? Only Timothy knew where she was. But Timothy wasn’t answering his messages. Luke? She stops – a hollow feeling in her core. Regret? Sadness? Jealousy?

      Marge walks past on the way to the toilet. “How much have you written? We’re waiting for it in DTP.” She reads over Stella’s shoulder.

      What will your obituary say about you?

      “Morbid,” she says after reading Stella’s first line.

      “It’s about losing a parent. I thought of obituaries. It’s Timothy – he hasn’t answered my emails, Marge.”

      “Are you still hungover? Don’t tell me you stayed at home all weekend?” Marge never actually listens to anything.

      “Oh, God,” says Stella, looking up to see that Winter is headed straight for her.

      Think about what you would like someone to write in your obituary. Then live your life accordingly.

      As she types a shadow of doubt crosses her mind. She feels like she has heard this exact line before. Her boss, clip file in hand, is standing over her. Stella covers the praying mantis she has drawn with her arm like a guilty child.

      Her boss is – cleansed – toned – moisturised. Her lemony scent is “transporting”. Her hair is “perfect”.

      “Perfect” is Susan Winter’s favourite word. Stella wants the word. She wants to spritz her life with it and wipe away the grime. “Perfect” plumps up duvets and fluffs up perfectly white towels. It whips up delicious meals. It has romantic weekends with no terrible arguments. It has a career, finds a husband before it turns forty and has babies just in time – twins, one boy, one girl. Perfect, perfect, perfect.

      “Is the article finished?”

      “Monday?”

      “At the latest.” The boss hesitates and smiles a tense little warning smile, and says, just loud enough for Stella to hear, “We aren’t going to have authenticity issues again, are we, Stella? You have joined a dating site?”

      Oh shit, thinks Stella. It wasn’t loss it was internet dating. Loss was May, autumnal theme. Dead leaves, etc.

      “Have you had any hits? Have you had a date?”

      “Oh yes, lots,” lies Stella. “In fact, I am engaged.” She hides her hands under the table.

      “Engaged? Well, that is lucky! Congratulations.” Winter gives a dry, unconvinced laugh. “I will look forward to an invite.”

      “It will be a summer wedding,” the lie gets larger, “something intimate, but tasteful. On an island,” Stella adds.

      “Well done,” Winter says, as though Stella, the last one out of the stalls, has won a race. The startling news has made her forget Stella’s deadline – for now.

      This is not the first time Stella has lied to her boss. “You have got a child, Stella? Otherwise I’ll get Yvette to write the childrearing article.”

      “Oh, yes,” Stella had lied. “I have a five-year-old. His name is Crispin.” Afterwards she is amazed at herself. Crispin?

      Stella can’t work during lunch. At two the lift doors open and Marge can’t wait to show Stella what she has in her hands.

      “I’m meant to be working,” hisses Stella, “but I can’t. Something has happened to Timothy. I just know it.”

      “This is important,” says Marge, her eyes ablaze as if she has the answer. She is holding a newspaper. “Do you know what the weird thing is?” Marge has eyes like a goldfish and the most beautiful peachy skin and pouty lips.

      “What is the weird thing, Marge?”

      “I went to that coffee shop you always go to, the one across the road. This was on the table, open at this page.” She thwacks the paper down on Stella’s desk and stabs it with her brown nail-polished finger. “I mean, who reads the obituary page, apart from that weirdo Timothy? Don’t you see what this means?”

      Stella reads. Marge is still talking, but she doesn’t hear her. “I have to go,” she says. She grabs her bag and stuffs the newspaper into it. “I’ll bring it back,” she assures Marge. Before her colleague can stop her she is across the floor and in the lift.

      On the bus to Observatory she tries to phone Timothy.

      The person you are calling is unavailable. Please try again later.

      There is some terrible mistake. She opens the paper and stares at the print.

      Ivor Woodall died at his home in Observatory, Cape Town, on Wednesday, 25 September, aged 42.

      Why hadn’t Timothy called her?

      Stella gets off opposite the hospital, walks down Main Road, turns left, left again, then right into Kingston Road. She stops. Her whole life slows down in that moment, from medically induced buoyancy to what was there before, to layers of feeling, to sadness, to memory.

      She walks slowly down to the gate of No 54 and rings the bell. There is no answer. She hesitates, then slides her hand through the wooden slats of the fence and unbolts the latch. It’s a trick that Ivor taught them when they first joined his class. “Because, darlings, I might be in the bath.”

      When she closes the gate behind her everything goes quiet and the smell of earth and things growing hits her. The front door is wide open, waiting for her to enter. She stands looking about her, unable to move. Like Alice, she has been shot down a rabbit hole.

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