The SECRET TO NOT DROWNING by Colette Snowden

Author:Colette Snowden
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Bluemoose Books Ltd
Published: 2015-05-11T18:33:15+00:00

20

I’m in the kitchen peeling apples to make an apple pie. I can remember watching my grandma doing this, with a knife just like this one. I can remember gathering up all the peelings and sprinkling sugar on them and eating them and persuading myself it was the most delicious thing on earth. My mum says I have my grandma’s gift for pastry but I don’t think I’m quite there yet. Nothing I could ever make could possibly taste as good as my grandma’s apple pie.

It’s Saturday and it’s been a funny kind of week. He’s been nice since the pub quiz on Monday. Super-nice, in fact. On Tuesday, instead of just leaving me flowers on the table He actually gave them to me and He told me he loved me and that it will all be all right. He asked me if I want us to do anything to remember the baby by, like plant a tree or something, and I ended up crying and He just put his arms around me while I sobbed. I thought He’d get cross but He didn’t. And on Wednesday He didn’t even go out. He always – pretty much always – goes out on a Wednesday, but this Wednesday He ordered take-out and He made me sit down while He pretended to be the waiter and put on some completely ridiculous foreign accent. He made me laugh and we laughed together. We looked like some sitcom couple off the telly. We looked like an ordinary couple, just sitting at home, having a laugh. I don’t know why He’s being like this and I don’t know how long it will last. It’s happened before. There have been other times when He’s been lovely for weeks at a time and maybe this time it will be for good.

I’m standing in the kitchen peeling apples and willing Him to have turned over a permanent new leaf. If the peel I’m peeling off this apple comes off cleanly in one, long, curly, green coil then I’ll know that everything will be fine, happily ever after, Mr Nice Guy and Mrs Domestic Goddess in wedded bliss ‘til death us do part. If the peel breaks before I’ve shaved all of it off the apple I’ll take it as a bad omen that the personality transplant is temporary and all will not be well. I peel extra carefully, extra slowly. I peel as though my life depends on it. When I am almost at the end, at the prickly bit, the apple’s bottom, the peel breaks and the long snake lands on the floor, leaving me with just an almost-naked apple in one hand and a knife in the other. I could try another apple. I could tell myself not to be so stupid because believing in the power of the peel is just bonkers. But I know the apple is right. Even more bonkers than that, I think my grandma might even have made the peel break on purpose – I was so close to getting it all off in one, and so slow and careful.

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