‘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 junior gardener when I’d been born, still learning how to do his job. The little flat was always full of green things – tomato plants on the windowsills, orchids in the bathroom among the bottles of shower gel and shampoo …
The attic has a sloping ceiling and a skylight that is right above my bed so, on a clear night, I can see the stars. Sometimes I draw their positions on the glass with a white pen – Ursa Major, Orion, the Pleiades – and watch as they shift through the night.
The floorboards are covered with a colourful rug to keep my toes warm on cold mornings. We don’t have central heating, and the house is draughty, but in mid-July it’s always warm. It’s been scorching today, so I go up on my tiptoes and open the skylight to let some cool air in. My clothes hang on two freestanding rails. Dad is saving to get me a proper wardrobe, but I quite like having my clothes on display.
On one wall there’s a Breakfast at Tiffany’s poster with Audrey Hepburn posing in her black dress. Next to her is the model Lulu. There’s also a large photo of Agatha Christie hanging over my bed, which Liam gave me for my birthday. On the other is a map of London … Everything I need to look at.
My room isn’t messy. At least, I don’t think it is, even if Dad disagrees. It’s simply that I have a lot of things, and not much room to fit them in. So the room is cluttered with vinyl records, with books, with a porcelain bust of Queen Victoria that I found in a skip. Every so often, Dad makes me clear it up.
And so, I try to tidy now. But with so little space it just looks like the room has been stirred with a giant spoon.
I take the heavy copy of Le Guide Culinaire and place it on my bookshelf, which takes up one wall of the room. I sigh – what a waste of time. What a waste of a day.
I run my hand along the spines of the green and gold-embossed editions – the mysteries of Poirot, Miss Marple, and Tommy and Tuppence – the complete works of Agatha Christie, who my mum named me after. She’d got me to read them because I liked solving puzzles, but said I should think about real puzzles, not just word searches and numbers. When I’d asked what she meant, she had said –
‘Everybody is a puzzle, Agatha. Everyone in the street has their own story, their own reasons for being the way they are, their own secrets. Those are the really important