The Longest Day

21st June 2011 Tuesday

The Longest Day

A man is coming to take away all the files - four cabinets full - in my husband’s office. And download all those years of financial information from his computer. Stripping it bare. We transfer all the weird and wonderful creatures into my study, declutter all the surfaces and start cleaning the desks and the tops of the filing cabinets. I feel ashamed of how dusty everything is, even the computer cables are sticky dirty. Afterwards my husband says it feels completely different. I think it means there is space now for something else to come in.

The man never arrives. My husband escapes to the allotment with trays of tomatillos and sweetcorn to plant. I meet his aunty in town for lunch at the Cafe Rouge. She wants to know if she can be a catalyst - help heal the rift between my husband and his brother. I love her big heart but I know you can’t make people like each other because you think they should.

All afternoon a warm wind blows through the kitchen tugging the tea towels off the rails, slamming the doors, shuffling papery onion skins across the floor. I blend chick peas in the whizzer with lots of lemon zest and juice, olive oil and roasted cumin seeds. I stir chopped spinach into the mushroom and tomato ragu which makes it look like muddy sludge. I put two trays of coconut and almond granola to bake in the oven. I pour a long golden stream of honey and a capful of vanilla essence into a tub of Greek yoghurt - to accompany the strawberries which are not really sweet.

All this I pack into a cool bag and take to share with two wonderful women - adding it to the baked potatoes, yams and colourful garden salad already on the table. We linger over cups of tea long into the evening - the sky still light at ten.

Here in this company I can switch off the button in my solar plexus which has been on red alert all day. A gentle respite till it comes on again tomorrow morning - the new warning pulse in my blood - danger ahead.