Lemon-Sweet, Lemon-Sour
By Martha Lane
Listen to a reading of this story by Martha Lane:
James was at Charlie’s school. Well, he thought he was. He couldn’t be entirely sure, as he’d never seen inside it before. And he had no memory of getting there.
Kids rushed through the corridors, the polished tiles squeaking under speeding trainers. They crashed into each other, squeals of delight piling up. Charlie’s laughter echoed among them. The hall, dingy and stinking of yesterday’s dinners, was filled with adults inhaling drinks. Their flimsy disposable cups like oxygen masks.
James supposed it was the Spring Fete. He knew it was Saturday. The last thing he remembered clearly was pulling a cake out of the oven.
Three eggs, cracked with one hand, 120ml of oil, 180ml of full-fat yoghurt, flour and sugar. It was meant to be plain and caster, but James had a habit of using whatever was in. He used a spatula to make creamy ribbons in the batter. A pinch of salt and the zest of one whole lemon. A good contrast from the sickly frosting-heavy cupcakes and babyish chocolate crispies Charlie normally brought home from these things.
James turned the oven to 190 because the dial overread by 10 degrees. The fans began to whir. He’d told Molly and expected adulation.
But there had been none. James slumped, the weight of the disappointment crushing. He flinched as kids continued to screech by.
He sighed and smoothed a paper cloth over the dirty decorator’s table that had obviously been hauled out of the caretaker’s cupboard. He wanted to show Molly he cared, even if he wasn’t sure that he did.
She was furious, her eyebrows colliding while her words screeched into the room.
‘You said you would come.’
‘I’ve been working all week. I don’t want to spend my one day off in a school dinner hall.’
‘And I do?’
‘I’ve baked, haven’t I?’
‘Charlie, get your dad a medal.’
Charlie hovered by the door, swiping his foot left and right over the carpet, not looking at either parent.
‘Don’t do that.’
‘Don’t choose football.’
The match.
That’s how he knew it was a Saturday. Lunchtime kick-off. He tried not to think about his empty fold-down seat, or his uneaten pie.
A woman in a puffy scarlet jacket and skinny jeans dropped an enormous Victoria sponge in front of him. Icing sugar seasoned the air. Candyfloss ash drifting down. Made him choke.
He leant forward to help, reaching out to steady it with both hands. It turned black. Rubber. It was a steering wheel. He blinked, hard, and he was holding the colossal cake again.
The woman used her forearm to sweep aside his own meagre offering. Burnt, undecorated and still in the loaf tin. She flashed her straight white teeth as she placed an ivory notecard with a calligraphy flourish on the table.
‘You’re good, aren’t you?’ She cooed, touching his arm, bolts of electricity coursing through him. ‘You’d never see my husband helping at one of these.’
James offered a tight-lipped smile.
‘You’ll want to keep that one towards the front’ – she pointed at her cake – ‘it always sells well.’
Her eyes flicked over his crusty lemon loaf, the un-iced surface rough as tarmac, mangled tin foil failing to hide the scorch. He wanted to tell her it was the one thing he knew how to cook, that he made one every year for Molly’s birthday. That he added yoghurt just like his grandmother taught him. But that something had just gone wrong this time. Of course, he didn’t say any of that, aware of how pathetic it would make him sound. She was gone anyway, long wavy hair swishing, oblivious to him.
Charlie materialised, shoved his coat under the table. Revved up by freer arms, he dashed off after a group of friends.
Outside, a car horn blared. A siren wailed.
The timer beeped itself quiet, slate grey smoke curled into the room.
Molly blocked his entrance to the kitchen. ‘So, you’re coming.’ Her steely voice was not asking a question.
James gave one curt nod, didn’t say a word, just indicated that he needed to get past.
Molly spoke to his back, ‘I have to be there early, help set up. I’ll take Charlie though, wouldn’t want you lumbered with him on top of everything else you’ve got going on.’ The sarcasm was heavy.
She left without a goodbye.
Charlie muttered, ‘guess we’ll see you there.’
James turned to reply but Charlie had already retreated after his mother.
The oven roared in James’s face as he tried to salvage the cake. Normally he would use the juice of the zested fruit to make a thick glaze. It would trickle down the sides of the golden loaf, rows of icing baubles gathering where the drips set. Instead, he hurled the anaemic lemon in the bin. He grabbed the hot tin with a tea towel, pretended the heat wasn’t seeping through and biting his fingers.
James picked up the card the scarlet-clad woman had left behind. Ava’s Fresh Cream and Strawberry Sponge. £4 a slice. He wondered about a world in which he would charge that much for a piece of cake. Even for charity.
‘She’s a character.’ Another woman appeared. Noah’s mum, James was relieved to recognise her, even if he couldn’t remember her name. She worked at the hospital; he did know that. A doctor? She regarded him with kind green eyes. She hadn’t used enough cocoa in her buttercream so rather than a rich dark brown the cupcakes she was laying out on paper plates were the colour of dried mud. He took one, licked the icing and scrunched up his nose. Tasted like petrol. He certainly wouldn’t be getting £4 for one of those.
James tried slicing up the huge Victoria Sponge with a useless plastic knife, his fingers getting sticky with jam. He felt queasy as it spread between his knuckles.
‘Do you need help with that?’ Noah’s mum took the knife and wielded it like a scalpel. A surgeon, James clicked. She was a surgeon.
When she’d finished, she pushed the sponge to the back of the table, to make room for her own bending plates full of pallid cupcakes.
‘Everyone knows she doesn’t bake it.’
‘What?’ James felt a laugh gurgling in his chest.
‘Yeah, she forgot to take the Costco label off the lid one year. Costs her a fortune.’
‘But why?’
‘Guess she likes to make an impression. Not like us.’ She openly cackled at their bakes. ‘I love how she pretends her kid makes it. You know what some parents are like.’
He nodded even though he didn’t.
James fiddled with the radio, every song annoying him. He slammed his hands against the steering wheel. He knew he shouldn’t set off in this mood.
His phone vibrated.
‘Mate, you coming today?’
‘Don’t think I can, pal. I’ve promised Molly I’ll help her out with something at school.’
‘On a Saturday?’
‘I know.’
‘Wouldn’t catch me doing it.’
‘Alright, I don’t need to feel worse.’ His voice was stony.
‘Does she know it’s derby day?’
‘As if she cares.’
‘Well, we’ll keep your seat warm. In case you can play hooky.’
James reached for the ignition.
‘Can I put this down?’ Another parent pulled up to the table, she was wearing a facemask. Medical-grade, bright white and pleated. Above her, the lights were going haywire. Flashing blue. Charlie hadn’t mentioned there was going to be a disco. The woman lowered her mask and smiled the sort of smile you save for a person at their mother’s funeral. James shifted uneasily, suddenly exhausted. Her voice was thin like gauze. She had a tray covered in foggy clingfilm which she was busy unwrapping, her fingers getting tangled. She revealed sad looking muffins dwarfed by the Victoria Sponge, which cast a long shadow.
‘They’re just a box mix,’ she said sheepishly, ‘sorry.’
Cartoon faces on translucent rice paper stared up from the overdone, barely risen cakes. James wondered if she’d been arguing while they’d darkened in the blaze of an oven. The way she was spilling old receipts, chewing gum wrappers and fluff from the deepest corners of her coat pockets onto the table suggested probably not. He imagined she just wondered off and forgot she was even baking. This was not a woman who set timers. She dropped a couple of coppers and a 10p piece into his tin pot.
‘Get you started,’ – that sad smile again.
‘Cheers.’
Charlie ran past then, waved a quick hand in James’s direction. James felt cheated. Unappreciated. His son obviously didn’t care about the sacrifice he’d made.
Charlie raced past again, doing laps of the hall, this time he didn’t even turn his head. Didn’t acknowledge his dad’s existence at all. James scanned the hall for Molly. He wanted to prove that she’d been wrong, that Charlie didn’t care one way or the other. That he, James, was completely surplus to requirements. She was running the tombola. Is that what she’d said? Was it the White Elephant stall? Do they still have White Elephants nowadays?
He spotted her; she was laughing with Noah’s mum. He wanted to point out Charlie’s indifference, but in the crowd his boy had disappeared. The need to score points melted away, like lacquer under a flame. His heart stopped. Breathless, he tried to cry out, but his throat was closed. The room tilted.
He smelled lemons, tasted iron.
‘Where do you want these?’ Another mum.
She wore plum-coloured Chelsea boots. She spoke down to him, didn’t mention that he was on the ground. Didn’t seem to register that this situation was absurd.
‘Anywhere’s fine,’ he addressed her legs.
He tried to haul himself up, but a taut strap across his chest and stomach kept him pinned. A sharp pain began to travel along his side, up his neck like icy wind blowing on wet skin. The woman plonked down cornflake nests and walked away.
‘Hi, Dad.’ Charlie’s cheeks were rosy fairy-tale apples. He was panting from his game.
‘Hey.’ James said from the floor. Dazed by the thrill he felt looking into this happy tired face. The face, or absence of, that had caused him such panic just seconds before.
Charlie squatted and thrust a fifty pence at him.
‘What can I buy with this?’ His voice rang like a bell. Or a defibrillator charging.
The room was still again, James back on his feet.
‘How does the Charlie Special sound?’
Charlie’s eyes, brighter than headlights, widened as his dad loaded a plate with one of everything – a box-mix character bun, a thick slab of secretly-bought-not-baked Victoria sponge with clots of jam oozing out of the side, a crispy cake topped with a speckled egg – the delicate shell cracked, exposing a fine line of bone-white chocolate hidden beneath. One muddy cupcake and finally, a slice of his own lemon cake, sweet and sour. James trimmed the tough, singed exterior to give his son the most tender and delicious piece that he could.
The paper plate looked enormous in Charlie’s outstretched arms. He began to eat, like the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street, crumbs flying out both sides of his flapping mouth. His excited yums, reverberating like a reciprocating saw. James wanted to say slow down, you’ll be sick. But Charlie looked so pleased. So alive. He didn’t think he’d be able to stop him if he tried. James began to laugh. Softly at first, then building to something manic. Something mechanic. Screeching tyres screaming out of his mouth.
The scent of lemon curdled, became heady and medicinal. A fog that burnt his nostrils. The rectangular strip lights of school shifted, became round and flickering. Filled his vision and stung his eyes. He tried to lift his hands to his ears as they thrummed with a cacophony of children screaming and laughing, large white teeth gnashing, metal grinding, urgent adult voices, and endless beeping.
Was that the oven timer?
No.
It was an ambulance wailing.
The table collapsed in on itself, twisting and screeching like metal in a compressor.
A voice, Noah’s mum. Or the scatterbrain with the facemask. ‘We’re losing him.’
The school hall crumbled around him.
There’s no way Charlie would care, would even notice. It certainly wouldn’t scar him if his dad went to the football instead. It would only be a few years until he was tagging along, learning the songs. James thought about arranging for him to be a mascot. Walking out with the team, making heroes out of them, tacking posters of them to his bedroom wall. Like he’d done when he was a boy. He’d buy him a kit, wrap him up in his own red and white scarf. Then they’d come home, still giddy, to something steaming hot Molly pulled from the oven as they shrugged their coats off in the hall. A cooled and perfectly iced lemon cake for pudding.
Tingling at the prospect, James switched the indicator. Right to left. Away from the school.
A car. A red light, scarlet against the sky. A woman with long wavy hair, screaming. Swerving too late.
A screech. A cry. A wreck.
The air was seasoned with ash and citrus, an acrid bitter candyfloss.
Then burning.
Beeping.
Rust.
Charlie’s crumb-coated grin.
And dark.
Martha Lane is a writer by the sea. She writes extensively about grief, loss and all things unrequited. Her novella, Lies Over the Ocean is available on Amazon and she can often be found delivering flash fiction workshops at The Flash Cabin and Retreat West.