‘Telemarketing!’
I was grinning as I took up my pen and put the answer in.
‘Agatha …’
Liam’s voice shakes me out of the memory. Here we are, almost a year later. I’m still a social outcast, but I have Liam as a friend. I look at him. ‘Yes?’
‘Promise me something?’
‘What?’ I ask.
‘Try not to get expelled tomorrow?’
I roll my eyes. ‘I promise.’
He grins. ‘Come on, then – you can walk me to the bus stop.’
I’ve just finished liquidising a pile of vegetables when Dad walks into the kitchen, begrimed with mud and smelling of manure. I’d forgotten my tiredness in the excitement of making something new.
‘What on earth are you doing, Aggie?’
‘Making dinner,’ I say.
‘With all the green mush, I thought it might be some kind of science experiment,’ he laughs.
I sigh – Dad can be soooo closed-minded sometimes. He isn’t a bad cook, but he isn’t a very good one, either. I often make dinner for the two of us, but it’s usually one of his favourites – something easy, like sausages and mash or beans on toast. Who can blame me for wanting to try something different for a change? I’d found a dog-eared copy of Escoffier’s Le Guide Culinaire from a bookshop on the Charing Cross Road, and then spent an evening trying to decode his instructions from the original French. Dad looks over at the wreckage, shaking his head, and trudges off to get clean.
Dad – Rufus to everyone but me – has been a Royal Park warden since he left school at sixteen. He’s worked his way up to the position of head warden of Hyde Park, so we live in Groundskeeper’s Cottage. Still, even though Dad’s in charge, he refuses to let others do all the dirty work and is never happier than when he’s got his sleeves rolled up and is getting his hands dirty. He reappears in a fresh shirt, smelling strongly of coal-tar soap, which is an improvement from the manure. He looks over at the food I’m making, stroking his gingery-blond beard.
‘What … is it?’
‘Vegetable mousse, with fillets of trout, decked with prawns and chopped chervil.’
‘Looks quite fancy, love.’
‘Just try it – you’ll never know if you like it otherwise.’
Dad shrugs and sits down.
I’ve been saving up for weeks for the ingredients. Dad gives me pocket money in exchange for a couple of hours shovelling compost at the weekend so it’s been a hard earn. But it’s worth it – everyone should have a chance to try the better things in life, shouldn’t they? Dad reaches for his fork, staring at the plate. He searches for something diplomatic to say, and fails. ‘It’s not very English.’
I smile.
‘Poirot says something like, “the English do not have a cuisine, they only have the food,”’ I recalled.
He groans at the mention of my favourite detective. I go on about Hercule Poirot so much that Agatha Christie’s great detective is a bit of a sore spot for Dad.
‘You and those books, Agatha! Not everything that Poirot says is gospel, you know.’
I ignore this last comment and plonk a plate of the fish and veg medley in front of him. He takes a fork of everything, and I do the same.
‘Bon appetit!’ I smile, and we eat together.
Something is wrong. Something is very wrong.
I look to Dad, and I’m impressed by how long he manages to keep a straight face.
Something awful is happening to my taste buds. I can’t bring myself to swallow for a long moment, and then I force it down, gagging.
‘I may have … mistranslated.’
Dad swallows, eyes watering.
‘Might I have a glass of water, please?’
When the last of the mousse has been scraped into the bin, we go off to buy fish and chips. I decide not to paraphrase Poirot’s thoughts on fish and chips, that ‘when it is cold and dark and there is nothing else to eat, it is passable’. I don’t think Dad would be amused and, besides, I really like fish and chips.
After carrying them back from the shop in their paper parcels, our stomachs rumbling, we eat in happy silence. I savour the crisp batter, the soft flakes of fish, the salty, comforting chips. For once, I have to admit that Poirot might have been wrong about something.
While we eat, Dad asks about my day, but I don’t feel like talking about school and the CCs, or the headmaster, or about how I’d zoned out in chemistry class, so I ask about his instead.
‘So are the mixed borders doing well this year?’
‘Not bad,’ he grunts.
I think of the book I’m reading at the moment.
‘And do you grow digitalis?’
‘If you mean foxgloves, then there are patches of them down by the Serpentine Bridge.’
‘What about aconitum?’ I eat a chip, not looking Dad in the eye.
‘Monkshood? You know a lot of Latin names … Yes, I think there’s some in the meadow, but I wouldn’t cultivate it. It’s good for the bees, though.’
‘Ah … what about belladonna?’
‘Belladonna …’ His face darkens, making a connection. ‘Foxglove, aconitum, belladonna … Agatha, are you only interested in poisonous plants?’
I blush a little. Found out! Poisonous Plants of the British Isles is sitting in my school satchel as we speak.
‘I’m just curious.’ Deep breath.
‘I know that, love, I do. But I worry about you sometimes. I worry about this … morbid fascination. I worry that you’re not living in the real world.’
I sigh – this is not a new discussion. Dad loves to talk about the REAL WORLD, as though it’s a place I’ve never been to. Dad worries that I’m a fantasist – that I’m only interested in books about violence and murder. He’s right, of course.
‘I’ll do the washing-up,’ I say, quickly changing the subject. Then I look over at the sieves, pans and countless bowls that I’ve used in my culinary disaster. Perhaps not.
‘My turn, Agatha,’ says Dad. ‘You get an early night – you look tired.’
‘Thanks.’ I hug him, smelling coal-tar soap and his ironed shirt, then run up the stairs to bed.
When we’d first moved into Groundskeeper’s Cottage, I chose the attic for my bedroom. Mum had said it was the perfect room for me – somewhere high up, where I could be the lookout. Like a crow’s nest on a ship. I was only six then, and Mum had still been alive. Before that, we’d squeezed into a tiny flat in North London, and Dad had ridden his bike down to Hyde Park every day. He’d been a