A Recipe for Disaster: A deliciously feel-good romance. Belinda Missen
ploughed headfirst into the new day, which included coffee with an anxious Zoe as afternoon made its way to evening.
We’d met on the first day of high school, both of us standing around nervously. We were pulled together by the sheer horror of having our mothers there to make an embarrassing fuss over us. To make a quick getaway, Zoe had pretended we knew each other from “the streets”, as she termed it. While my mum wasn’t excited by that prospect, Zoe’s had smiled, nodded, and let us go on our way.
We’d been thick as thieves ever since. It had been on Zoe’s suggestion that Oliver and I looked for a property in Inverleigh. She moved here first, and found it a nice thirty-minute drive from her parents. Close enough if she needed help, and far enough for a bit of privacy.
She hoisted herself up onto a rickety cane stool by my bench and switched on the kettle. My kitchen looked like it had seen better days. Cupboards were open where coffee cups and bowls had been reclaimed, a mixing bowl still needed a run through the dishwasher, knives and spatulas were crusted over, and I had another cake to start. Let’s not even talk about the dusty pink tiles and paint job that would have been better placed in the 1970s.
‘So?’ she asked.
I smiled conspiratorially. ‘So?’
‘What happened? Are we wearing radiation suits, or are the hills alive with the sound of changed locks and cleansing ceremonies?’ She picked at a bowl of chocolates I’d been working my way through in post-breakup bliss.
When I arrived home last night, I piled Seamus’s belongings onto the couch for him to collect. Stained coffee cups, over-watched movies, and a decrepit VHS player that had found its way into my already cramped lounge room. I fished dirty underwear from the laundry floor, and wet clothes from where they’d been left in the washing machine yesterday morning. And then I enjoyed a glass of wine in the shower, and didn’t feel an ounce of regret over it.
I bent over into the dishwasher and rearranged the stack. ‘The hills are alive with the sound of singledom. A rather unwell Seamus presented at eight o’clock this morning. He came, he saw, he collected his junk, and left.’
‘Tail between legs?’ Zoe took the two coffee cups offered and started our hackneyed routine.
‘Up between his legs and curled around his middle,’ I said. ‘There’s not a lot to add, really – you’ve seen the photos and heard the stories.’
‘Definitely.’
‘He was sorry, he loves me, he promises he’ll do better, he knows he hasn’t been the best, but I was like … no, bye.’
‘Good.’ She shoved a fun-sized Mars bar in her mouth. ‘How do you feel?’
‘I feel really positive, which might seem silly, I know. I thought I’d be heartbroken, but I’m okay. I mean, when he came over, he wanted to talk and go out for lunch, and he was all: can we please work this out because I really love you.’
Zoe rolled her eyes. ‘I call bullshit.’
‘You know that look he gets, all frown lines? It’s almost like he’s scandalised, and oh so hard done by.’
‘I do,’ Zoe said. ‘It was the same look he gave us when we caught him out at that bar in Geelong.’
After turning me down for a date, citing a long day on the job at the butcher’s, Zoe had instead taken up my offer to head down the highway to Geelong for dinner. We ate, we drank, we laughed and, on our way back to the car, we spotted Seamus through the grubby windows of a pub. A group of friends circled him as they backslapped, laid money on the horses, and sloshed glasses of beer around their heads in celebration.
‘Call his phone,’ Zoe had urged.
It was a politer option than standing by the windows and screaming, so I dialled his number and waited. When he realised it was his phone ringing, he fished it from his pocket, took one look at the screen, and screwed his face up. Said phone was placed back in his pocket in a drop quick enough to suggest it was a hot potato.
‘Well, then.’ I’d tapped out a succinct and impolite text message, and waited for him to find me standing on the footpath.
That was only eight weeks ago.
Zoe gave me a look of pity.
‘Don’t look at me like that.’ I shook my head. ‘I spoke to Edith this morning. She tells me it’s okay, that it wasn’t my fault, that she should have told me about Oliver.’
‘You do know you slid from the purest man on earth, Oliver, to the biggest piece of shit. Seamus was a clod.’ When I said nothing, she continued, floodgates open, victory flag waving. ‘He used you, spoke to you like you were garbage, and you persisted because for some stupid reason you thought he was beautiful.’
I grimaced. ‘He kind of was.’
‘Yeah, he really wasn’t,’ she insisted. ‘He had tattooed knuckles, Lucy. Yuck. He was a bad boy, and they don’t suit you. At all. Some people, yes, but you’re icing sugar. He’s just … a lemon.’
If I could count on Zoe for anything, at least it was honesty. Worst, or best, of all, she was hardly ever wrong.
She sloshed some milk in each mug. ‘But, hey, the internet loves you. And your cake.’
‘On that point …’
She smiled. ‘Yes …’
‘This whole episode has made me think about things,’ I said. Even though my epiphany was guided by alcohol and an aching sense of nostalgia discovered in the shower, I still felt buoyant, on the right track.
‘This’ll be good.’
‘Okay.’ I took a sip of coffee. ‘Firstly, I think I should get back into baking.’
‘Yes!’ Zoe shouted, fingers reaching to the sky. ‘She’s seen the light.’
I smiled. ‘I just really enjoyed it. I loved the process, the result, and the reactions. I haven’t felt like that for a long time.’
‘Wait, is this something to do with Oliver being back? We haven’t talked about that yet.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so. Oliver will be what he will be. We’ll sort that out, hopefully with minimal tears and angst. But I need to look after me, now. I need to do what I’m good at.’
‘I’m so happy.’ She shook my hand around like she was a granny at a family reunion. ‘For you, I mean. Not that I’d knock back some free cake, you know.’
‘It’s completely different to cooking at that bloody school, you know. Packet mix this and deep fried that.’
‘We all know your talents are wasted there,’ Zoe said, straightening in her seat. ‘Are you going to stay there? Please don’t, some of those mums are awful, awful women.’
I shrugged, setting the mixing bowl into the Kitchen Aid and pulling frozen cakes from the freezer. ‘Who knows? I’m hoping to score the promotion, but we’ll see.’
‘Why the freezer?’ Zoe asked. ‘Is it fresh?’
‘Yes, it’s fresh,’ I said. ‘Keeps the cake moist.’
‘Oh, nice. It’s no secret Richard thinks you are the sunrise, so I would say you’ve got it in the bag.’
‘Richard?’ I asked. ‘The principal?’
‘Adores you.’ Zoe over-exaggerated, eyes wide and head thrown back for good measure. ‘I’m talking, take you behind the bike sheds for a spiritual rendezvous type of adore.’
‘He does not.’
‘I have it on good authority he does.’ Zoe yanked the door of the pantry open. ‘Also, I’ve seen him perving. Have you got any biscuits?’
‘Eye level, back left.’