The Secret Cooking Club (2 page)

A BAD DAY FOR SOMEBODY

B
y the end of the day, everyone at school has lost interest in the blog post, and I'm off the hook for another week. I walk home slowly, too exhausted to be embarrassed any more. When I see Mum, I'll pretend that everything's fine – because if I don't, she'll just blog about my ‘attitude', and how I don't appreciate the difficulties she faces.

Which is just so wrong. I kick hard at a rock in my path. I'm proud of Mum and what she's achieved. In less than three years, she's well on her way to becoming a really successful ‘mummy blogger'. Each week, her followers log in to read
her posts about the trials and tribulations of raising two children as a single mother after her husband ran off with his personal trainer. We rarely ever see Dad nowadays, and Mum refused to take any money off him from the moment he left – not even for me and Kelsie. She got on with her blog in order to support us. Which she's done.

Her proudest moment, at least as far as her followers are concerned, was when Dad came limping back a year or so ago, asking for a share of her blog money. She told him where to go in a vlog that went viral.

Now she writes her weekly post, and in between, she has a lot of guest bloggers posting to her site, and a ‘Rant Page' for anyone to post on if they want to complain about their kids, husbands or partners, friends, work, mother-in-laws – whatever. She's got lots of advertisers, and is even working on a deal with Boots to make a ‘Mum's Survival Kit' that they'll sell in all their stores.

So it's cool that she's an online celebrity, and while we're not rich or anything, she's made enough money for us to move into a three-bedroom house where I get my own room and don't have to share with my sister. But there's one big problem. Her trials and tribulations, rants and things she has to ‘survive' mostly involve me, and sometimes Kelsie. I know she loves us, but sometimes
I think she really must hate being a mum.

I walk slower and slower the closer I get to home. The thought of another evening spent watching
Tracy Beaker
with Kelsie makes me feel like a rag doll with the stuffing knocked out. I wonder what Violet is doing tonight. Probably spending a nice evening with her parents; telling them about her first day at school and the ‘cool' new friends she's made; then settling down to play a board game, or practise piano, or learn Chinese or something—

As I turn down my road, my heart leaps to my throat. An ambulance with flashing lights is parked at the end of the terrace, right in front of our house. Two paramedics are loading a stretcher inside. Mum once told me that ‘it's a bad day for somebody' whenever there's an ambulance, or the police come round.

I start to run, my school bag banging up and down on my back. Is it Mum? Kelsie? As the blue and white lights wink on and off, all the mean thoughts I've ever had about them flash before my eyes. I wish I could unthink them.

The paramedic shuts the ambulance door. I realize that they're actually in front of the house next door. An old woman called Mrs Simpson lives there. I've never met her, and I only know her name because a delivery man who was looking for
her house came to ours by mistake. Her house is kind of spooky – the curtains are always closed and I've never seen a light on. When we moved here a few months ago, Mum talked about inviting her over for tea, but surprise, surprise, it never happened.

I walk up to the paramedic. ‘Is Mrs Simpson OK?'

‘She'll be fine. She had a bit of a fall,' he says. ‘Got a bang on the head. She managed to dial 999, otherwise . . .' He shakes his head. ‘You a relative?'

‘No. I don't really know her.'

He climbs into the passenger seat. ‘OK, well – she's in good hands now; we'll take it from here.'

The ambulance pulls away and the siren begins to wail. I stand alone on the pavement, watching until it disappears round the corner. In the other houses in the road, there's not even a curtain twitching in a downstairs window. No one seems to have noticed anything.

Inside our house, Kelsie's watching TV in the living room. I plunk down my bag and go to the kitchen. The door to Mum's office – the ‘Mum Cave' – is open.

‘Scarlett? Is that you?' she calls out.

‘Yeah,' I say. Anger simmers in my chest. Mum has so many thousands of online ‘friends', but has never paid the slightest bit of attention to the old
lady next door. Not that I have either. And now it might be too late.

‘Guess what?' Mum rushes out of her office like a slightly rumpled whirlwind. She enfolds me in a hug. For a second I almost give in to the comforting feeling and hug her back. But all too soon, the other stuff comes rushing back. I pull away.

‘What?' I say warily.

‘I'm in Boots! They signed the contract today. They're going to stock the survival kit in two hundred stores to start with. Isn't that brilliant?'

‘Um, yeah.'

‘Here, let me show you the prototype.' She goes to the counter and picks up a little box printed with purple and pink camouflage. ‘We've got some hand lotion and sanitizer, a gel face mask, earplugs, lip balm, jellybeans, and a hollow chocolate egg with a
Mum's Survival Tip
inside.'

‘Oh.'

‘They wouldn't let me include the caffeine pills, but we're going to add a coffee sachet. You know, like a tea bag?'

‘Great. Didn't you hear the ambulance?'

‘What ambulance? Anyway, I've still got to choose the jellybean colours. What do you think about pink?'

‘Pink's good.' Or
Scarlett
. . . I don't add.

‘Brilliant. Pink it is. I'll email them now.' She
starts for the door of her office.

‘Mrs Simpson had a fall,' I say. ‘They took her to hospital.'

‘Who?' She barely pauses.

‘The neighbour next door. The old lady.'

‘Oh, is that her name?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Well . . . too bad.' She gives a little shrug. ‘Oh, and Scarlett, would you mind getting Kelsie her tea? I've got to prepare for tonight's online chat. It's on “how to talk to your teenager”.'

‘Sure,' I say through my teeth.

‘Thanks. Oh, and Scarlett . . .'

‘Yeah?'

‘Thanks for being such a big help.'

She closes the door and I stare for a moment at the ‘Mum Cave' sign swinging on its hook. Part of me wants to fling open the door and demand that she ‘talk to her teenager' for real. I'd tell her exactly how I feel, tell her exactly how bad my day has been thanks to her, and tell her exactly where she, her two hundred Boots stores, and her thousands of online followers can go. But to be honest, it's just not worth it. Much better just to tick off my tasks one by one – dinner, homework, watching TV, shower – and just go to bed.

And that's exactly what I do. By the end of the evening, my anger has dulled and I start to feel
numb. I collapse on to my bed more tired from doing nothing than if I'd run a marathon. And then I can't sleep. I think about Mrs Simpson. It's been a bad day for her – much worse than for me. I hope she's OK. I close my eyes and try to think good thoughts for her, but my mind keeps wandering. And then, just as I'm finally starting to drift off, I'm jolted awake again by an ear-splitting screech.

A NOISE IN THE NIGHT

I
sit bolt upright in the circle of light from my lamp. That sound: it was like someone – or something – being tortured. And it came from the other side of the wall that separates our house from Mrs Simpson's. Panic floods through me. She must have come home from hospital and hurt herself again. Maybe this time she won't be able to get to the phone. Maybe this time she'll die and it will be my fault. And the headline of
OLD WOMAN LEFT TO DIE AS GIRL IGNORES CRY FOR HELP
will be in all the newspapers, not just on Mum's blog.

I swing out of bed and tiptoe into the hallway. My sister's room is dark and I can hear her
breathing. There's a crack of light below Mum's door and the sound of typing. For a second I think of knocking. But she'll just tell me it's nothing and send me back to bed.

I sneak downstairs to the kitchen and grab a torch from the drawer by the sink. The door to the garden squeaks when I open it and, holding my breath, step outside. The moon is a perfect crescent and there are one or two stars twinkling among wispy clouds. I stand up on a bucket and peer over the fence. Nothing seems out of the ordinary. The back of Mrs Simpson's house is dark.

I go back into our house, tiptoe through the downstairs and out of the front door. Everything is silent in the road. A thin coat of dew has formed on the windscreens of the cars, the tiny droplets glittering in the moonlight. I go round the hedge that separates our house from Mrs Simpson's. Her door is black and glossy with a brass letter box and knocker. As I lift my hand to knock I hear it again – the bone-chilling wail from inside.

I forget all about knocking and wrench on the door handle. But it's locked. My heart thunders as I flip on the torch. There's an old flowerpot next to the door, and I check underneath it. Nothing. I look under the recycling bin and, finally, under the mat. A gold key glints in the circle of light. I mean – who actually leaves their key under the mat? I fumble
with the key in the lock and push open the door.

The house is dark and silent, and smells of dusty curtains and Imperial Leather soap. I flick the torch around the room, scared that I might see a body lying in a pool of blood. Instead, there's some dark clunky furniture, a saggy three-piece suite, and lots of knick-knacks. The room says ‘old lady'. I shine the torch towards the door at the back of the room that must lead to the kitchen, and all of a sudden I'm the one who yelps.

Eyes. Yellow and unfriendly. I'm so jumpy that it takes me a second to realize that it's not a monster or a ghost, but a cat – pure black, with a white collar around its neck.

‘Oh, you scared me!' I say. And a second later, I realize how stupid I've been. ‘It was you, wasn't it, making all that racket?'

The cat swishes its long, fluffy tail, still looking like some kind of demon in animal form. It takes a few steps towards me, holding its head haughtily in the air. My skin tickles as it rubs against my bare legs and starts to purr.

‘You're lonely, is that it?' I reach down and pick up the cat. It nestles into my arms, staring at me with big eyes that now seem more sad than frightening. ‘And hungry maybe?'

The cat rubs its cheek against mine.

I've never had a cat – or any kind of pet – but I
instinctively snuggle it closer in my arms like some kind of lost, kindred spirit.

‘Those paramedics must have locked you out of the kitchen. Let's see if we can find you some food.'

The cat squirms in my arms and I put it down. It hurries over to a door that in our house leads to the dining room, and starts to meow. I open the door and switch on the light.

What I see makes me gasp.

ROSEMARY'S KITCHEN

T
he kitchen is amazing – that's the only word for it. It's vast – with a high, beamed ceiling and a spotless floor. Every surface sparkles: shiny stainless steel, polished wood, mirror-black granite. Copper pots hang from a rack on the ceiling, and there's an entire wall of cookbooks. In one corner is a giant cooker, next to a double-width fridge, and a glass cupboard filled with just about every kind of kitchen gadget. A wooden table takes up the entire back of the room, and there's a fireplace big enough to stand up in. The whole thing seems like heaven for a cook – and anyone around to eat the food. I breathe in the heady smell of
spices and fresh lemon and realize that I'm smiling. I can't believe all this is here – just on the other side of the wall from the three rooms that make up our poky little kitchen, dining/junk room and the Mum Cave.

The cat meanders over to an empty bowl next to the cooker. It looks at me with its big yellow eyes and begins to meow. Venturing inside, I go over to the fridge. A magnetic sign on the door says ‘Rosemary's Kitchen'. Inside, it's stocked with practically a whole supermarket's worth of fresh food. I take out a carton of organic milk and an open tin of tuna-flavoured cat food. ‘I guess Mrs Simpson's name must be Rosemary,' I say, emptying the milk and cat food into bowls. ‘I didn't know.'

The cat swishes its tail disdainfully, and dives into the food. I continue looking around. I'm immediately drawn to the shelves of cookbooks – one whole shelf is dedicated to a series of books called
Encyclopaedia of Herbs and Spices
. The shelf at eye level has three different cookbooks by Mrs Beeton, plus a few big-name celebrity cookbooks: Delia Smith, Jamie Oliver, Mary Berry – but most of them look almost new. There are some well-used books by authors I don't recognize, like Elizabeth David, Julia Child and Auguste Escoffier. But what interests me most is the top shelf. It has an assortment
of very old-looking books in various colours, shapes and sizes. I grab one that catches my eye:
Recipes passed down from Mother to Daughter
. It's got a drawing of a pretty 1950s mum on the cover, giving her apple-cheeked daughter some biscuits fresh out of the oven. Somehow I'm pretty sure it won't have an entry for ‘frozen fish fingers and chips' which is the only recipe that my mum's ‘passed down' to me.

I put it back on the shelf. Behind me, the cat is purring and eating at the same time. I turn round and something on the kitchen worktop catches my eye. Propped open on a wooden bookstand is a notebook bound in tattered red cloth, the front marbled in red, green and blue. It must be really old. Curious to see what Mrs Simpson was cooking before her accident, I pick it up. The book feels oddly warm in my hands, like a fresh-baked loaf of bread. I open the cover. On the first page is a note; loopy letters handwritten in black ink:

To my Little Cook – may you find the secret ingredient.

I read the words aloud to the cat, wondering who the Little Cook was, and whether she – or he – found the secret ingredient. The cat swishes its tail, quite content with the food in its bowl.

I flip through the notebook. There are loads of recipes written out in pen, with a few notes and crossings-out, but there are also pictures – some done in pencil and crayon, others cut out of magazines and old newspapers and glued to the page – of cakes, pies, bread, meat and other foods. There's also a whole section of recipes based on nursery rhymes with little poems and stories like ‘Hansel and Gretel' written out in fancy lettering. It must have taken so much time to collect and write out the recipes and all the little rhymes and illustrations – years maybe. How lucky the Little Cook must have been to have someone care so much. I don't know anything about cooking, but as I hold the recipe book in my hands, I have a funny feeling that the book is special somehow.

I close the notebook. The cat has finished its tuna and begins lapping up the milk like an after-dinner coffee. Then it carefully licks its whiskers. Swishing its tail, it walks haughtily out of the kitchen. I turn the light off and follow it to the front room. It leaps on to one of the threadbare chairs.

‘You're welcome,' I say, somewhat huffily. ‘And I guess you'll be expecting me to come back tomorrow to feed you again?'

The cat curls up into a ball, snuggling its face into its wispy black tail. Its purrs grow slower, and
soon it's fast asleep.

I move silently to the front door and shut off the torch so that no one will see me. I slip out of Mrs Simpson's house, with the handwritten recipe book still tucked underneath my arm.