Faking It Page 9

  Christian pulls a face, as though he’s got a horrible taste in his mouth, but in a playful way.

  It’s only now that I notice he isn’t wearing a wedding ring. Ooh, so he’s a hot single dad. Interesting.

  ‘Anyway, I’ll let you get home. I’m sure you’re making something amazing for dinner, putting us all to shame,’ he says with a smile.

  I’m so glad Henry isn’t here to bring up the curly fries.

  ‘OK, well, thanks for being so concerned about Henry,’ I reply.

  ‘I’ll see you at the fundraiser meeting next week,’ he says. ‘Unless you cause any car-park pile-ups in the meantime.’

  He flashes me a cheeky smile.

  I laugh.

  ‘Sure, see you next week,’ I reply – no idea what he’s talking about though.

  I retrieve Henry and head for the car with him.

  ‘So, you fell asleep, huh?’ I say, ruffling his hair.

  ‘I didn’t mean to,’ he says. ‘I was just so tired.’

  Uh, boy, same.

  ‘And you didn’t take my Switch off me and I didn’t realise the time,’ he continues.

  Oh, so I’m supposed to take it off him? Right, OK, I can do that tonight.

  ‘Well, we all make mistakes,’ I tell him as I help him into the car.

  ‘I thought you’d be more shouty,’ he tells me.

  This is why I’d make a terrible parent, because, looking at his adorable little face right now, I couldn’t possibly imagine even raising my voice to him.

  ‘Well, we’ll be home soon,’ I tell him. ‘I just need to stop at the supermarket.’

  Yes, I know I went shopping yesterday, but now I know I need to up my game with dinner, so I’m going to find a recipe online and I’m going to cook it for everyone tonight. Rich and Millie might have expressed their displeasure last night, because I basically served them unhealthy kids’ food, but tonight I’m going to knock their socks off… hopefully…

  ‘I’m supposed to be going to Josh’s to play before dinner,’ Henry informs me.

  ‘Oh, OK,’ I reply. ‘Well, I can drop you off there and then I’ll go shopping, go home, start dinner…’

  God, now I want to fall asleep.

  After searching through Emma’s phone in the twenty minutes (I’m lucky I managed that long) I was in bed before I fell asleep last night, I discovered that she’s got a section on locations, which thankfully includes Josh’s house. I double check where it is. It’s not far from here so I memorise where it is, lest Henry pick up on me using the satnav again.

  Josh, it turns out, lives on the next street along from us, on another picturesque street with big detached houses hiding behind large electric gates.

  I help Henry out of the car but then send him on his way.

  ‘Go ahead,’ I tell him, because the last thing I want to do is bump into weird uncle Marco. ‘I’ll have your dad pick you up on the way home.’

  Henry charges off up the pathway. I keep eyes on him, all the way to the door, ducking out of the way the second I see the door opening.

  I get back in the car and start looking through different recipes on my phone. I refine my search a little, to look for healthy recipes, and sure enough I find one for a lighter take on spaghetti and meatballs, so that’s what I’ll make. I’ll pop to Buckley’s to get everything I need and then I’ll go home and get started.

  After the epic fail that was last night’s dinner, I need to pull something out of the bag tonight, and weirdly enough my new hairdo gives me confidence. Not because I think having nice hair will make me better in the kitchen (although hydrating my ends does appear to be the work of magic, so you never know), it’s more that my fringe was an epic fail too, and if that can be flipped into something amazing, then perhaps I can turn my cooking around as well. All I can do is try, and hope I don’t burn down my second property of the year in the process…

  12

  Is cooking stressful or relaxing? Because I’ve heard it both ways.

  On the one hand, I do feel kind of relaxed, and there’s something therapeutic, and completely satisfying, about measuring things and following instructions. It’s like painting by numbers – basic effort for maximum results. You don’t really need to know how to cook to follow a recipe, you just do as you’re told. But on the other hand, I appear to be lacking the knack, the certain something, whatever it is that naturally talented or well-trained chefs have. Just when I think I’m getting somewhere, I’ll read an instruction like ‘chop the garlic’ and I’ll start second-guessing myself. Is there a particular way to do it or do you just chop blindly away at it? It suddenly occurs to me that I don’t actually know what garlic looks like inside.

  ‘Smarty, how do you chop garlic?’ I ask, but I don’t think it can hear me over the TV. One of the best things about the configuration of this room is that I can watch Hollyoaks while I’m cooking, on the big screen, so I can see and hear it perfectly, but the downside is that the Smarty is having trouble hearing me.

  ‘Smarty,’ I say with a raised voice, but this just causes Marty to come running in the room, barking excitedly because now he’s here, he can smell the mince for the meatballs.

  ‘Marty, be quiet,’ I shout over his barking.

  ‘OK. Smarty muting,’ the device replies as the light on the top turns from white to red.

  ‘What? No! Smarty…’

  The dog barks.

  ‘Smarty…’

  He barks again.

  ‘Oh, Marty, come on,’ I blurt angrily.

  ‘Smarty turning on,’ the device announces in that creepy female AI voice that could almost pass for sinister, depending on what she’s saying.

  Oh, God, why do I want to burst into tears? It all seems like such small things but I feel so overwhelmed right now. I lean forward over the worktop. My hands are covered in meat so I rest my head on my forearms.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ I hear a voice ask.

  I look up and see Marco standing there. For a second, I just stare at him, but then…

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ I blurt. ‘What are you doing here? Just fuck off.’

  ‘I brought your son home,’ Marco tells me. ‘Don’t worry, I sent him upstairs, he didn’t hear your F-bombs. And if I wasn’t already sure you’re not who you’re claiming to be, I’m certain now. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Emma swear – especially not at guests. She’d have set me a place at the dinner table by now.’

  I get the feeling from his generally playful personality that Marco doesn’t take too much too seriously.

  ‘I thought Rich was going to pick Henry up?’ I say, ignoring all of that.

  ‘I offered,’ he tells me with a smile. ‘Look, I feel like we got off on the wrong foot earlier. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take so much delight in rumbling you – life is just really boring here.’

  ‘So, you thought, oh, I don’t know, you’d just blackmail the neighbours?’ I ask. ‘Because, I don’t know if you’ve connected these dots, Einstein, but if I’m not who I say I am, then I don’t have her money, do I? So, you’re not going to get much.’

  I wipe my hands on a tea towel, turn around and slide down the side of the island until I’m sitting on the floor. I pull my knees close, hugging them as I bury my head.

  I don’t look up but I feel Marco sit down next to me.

  ‘Your hair looks nice,’ he tells me.

  I don’t say anything.

  ‘And dinner is…’

  ‘Dinner is fucked,’ I tell him. ‘I’m having a meltdown because I’m getting bogged down in how you chop fucking garlic, because I’ve never done it before, and the smart speaker is not as fucking smart as it fucking thinks it is, and the fucking dog…’

  Marty is still barking in the background.

  ‘Give me a minute,’ Marco says, placing a hand on my shoulder for a split second.

  I hear the TV switch off before I hear the back door open. The room finally silent, I dare to look up. Eventually Marco steps
back in front of me.

  ‘Come here, take my hand,’ he instructs.

  I notice that he’s taken off his coat and his scarf.

  Oh, at this stage, what else do I have to lose? I grab his hand and let him pull me to my feet, which he does with a reassuring ease.

  ‘OK, watch me,’ he says.

  He rolls up the sleeves of yet another tired jumper and washes his hands before taking out a knife and standing in front of the chopping board.

  ‘You squash the whole thing with the flat side of the knife,’ he tells me, as he shows me how to do it. ‘You’ll feel it crack. Next you peel the skin away with your hands, and then you chop it, horizontally, then vertically, until it’s small. Done.’

  ‘You make it look so easy,’ I tell him with a sigh.

  Marco just shrugs.

  ‘What are we making?’ he asks.

  ‘We?’ I reply in amusement. ‘I was trying to make spaghetti and meatballs. And I wasn’t doing a very good job of it, and you clearly know what you’re doing, and now it feels like you’re making me my last meal, before you expose me, but I really wish you wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Emma… Emma clone… whatever your name is,’ he starts, placing down the knife, turning my body to face his so he can look me in the eye. ‘I was never going to tell anyone. This was my ill attempt at… making a friend.’

  ‘You want to make friends with me?’ I say with a scoff. ‘Why?’

  ‘For the same reason I knew you weren’t Emma,’ he tells me. ‘I can spot a con artist when I see one, trust me.’

  ‘A con artist,’ I say softly. ‘Some con artist – today is only my second day. You rumbled me on day two!’

  ‘Technically I rumbled you on day one, then,’ he points out, ‘but that’s not the point. Look, let’s start again. You’re doing a great job with those meatballs. Let me make the sauce and you can tell me all about all of it – I’m really interested to hear where you were manufactured.’

  I laugh.

  ‘OK, deal, but you have to promise to keep this between us,’ I tell him, brandishing a dirty spoon at him.

  I’m relieved Marco – who clearly knows what he’s doing – thinks I’m doing a good job with the meatballs because I’m so out of my depth. I read that, if you want to make them less bad for you, you combine lean minced pork with green lentils. I’m not even sure if I’ve eaten lentils before, which seemed like all the more reason to use them, because if I don’t usually use them then my sister probably does.

  I don’t know what it is about Marco – or if I’m just desperate for someone to talk to – but I want to trust him. He is helping me out of a crisis, I suppose, and to be honest, I have nothing to lose. Perhaps a little honesty might convince him not to blow my cover, if he knows it’s for a good reason…

  ‘I promise,’ Marco replies.

  ‘Emma is in prison,’ I blurt immediately.

  ‘No!’

  Marco can’t believe his ears.

  ‘Emma? Perfect housewife Emma?’ he replies. ‘Lisa – who is my sister-in-law, Josh’s mum, if you don’t know that already – is always moaning about how amazing Emma shows everyone up by being so bloody perfect.’

  I imagine those are direct quotes because he says them in a high-pitched voice.

  ‘What did she do?’ he asks.

  ‘She’s been parking her car wherever she feels like it, and ignoring the fines, so the judge made an example out of her – she got six weeks,’ I say.

  ‘Typical rich people,’ Marco says. ‘Bloody hell. I take it you’re not a robot or an alien. Although if you were AI you probably wouldn’t know, and if you were an alien you probably wouldn’t tell me…’

  He narrows his eyes with faux suspicion. Marco seems like a kind of a nerd, and I kind of like him, now I know he isn’t trying to blackmail me.

  ‘I’m Emma’s twin sister, Ella,’ I tell him. ‘Lesser known, less successful, less attractive.’

  ‘I don’t know, you’re not the one that’s in prison, and your new look really suits you – not that you didn’t look good before,’ he insists. ‘Anyway, nice to meet you, Ella.’

  Marco heads to the fridge. He searches around in there until he re-emerges with a bottle of BBQ sauce and the sugar jar from next to the coffee machine.

  ‘I have Italian grandparents on my dad’s side of the family,’ he tells me as he sprinkles sugar into the pan of tomato pasta sauce. ‘My mum, who is as English as fish and chips, would cook Italian food for my dad, me and my brother – Ant. But over time my mum would go off page, trying different things, and if there’s two secret ingredients she swears by in her tomato sauce it’s a little sugar and a squirt of BBQ sauce.’

  The bottle makes a comedic noise as he squeezes a little BBQ sauce into the pan.

  ‘Sounds interesting,’ I say. It certainly smells amazing. ‘So, when you said you know a con artist when you see one… Are you a police officer?’

  ‘Erm…’ Marco laughs to himself for a moment. ‘I’m closer to being a criminal than a law enforcer.’

  ‘Oh, boy, if you’re going to murder me, can you at least let me take credit for this pasta first?’ I ask, totally joking, unless I’m not…

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m more of a cybercriminal,’ he reassures me. ‘I’m a freelancer, working with companies to find vulnerabilities in their systems.’

  I must look puzzled.

  ‘I’m a computer hacker who uses his powers for good,’ he explains. ‘A sort of bug bounty hunter. So, companies will hire me and ask me to try and hack them or, sometimes, businesses will offer rewards to anyone who exposes a vulnerability in their system. I’m working on hacking a… erm… you see that smart device over there?’

  Marco nods towards the Smarty – obviously not saying its name because it will trigger it.

  ‘They’re offering £50k to the first person to hack it,’ he tells me, widening his eyes for dramatic effect. ‘And I really need it too. I got fired recently. It was silly really. Let’s just say a company tried to get out of paying me for some work so I hijacked all of their computers, saying I’d let them back in if they paid me what I was owed… they didn’t, and they called the police, it was a whole thing. Then my girlfriend threw me out, so I was kind of homeless for a minute. Bottom line: I’m living in my brother’s house now, sleeping in the spare room, acting as a sort of manny to the kids to earn my keep. I must sound like such a mess.’

  Wow, Marco and I really aren’t all that different. In fact, he’s probably worse off than I am, because it sounds as if he got his heart broken too. I think he needs a friend as much as I do right now.

  ‘I was sacked recently too, because I accused the boss’s nephew of burning my flat down, and apparently I kept mixing people up and eating their birthday cakes,’ I explain to make him feel better. ‘I’m just pretending to be Emma while she’s away. She really, really didn’t want anyone knowing the truth. Honestly – she sounded so embarrassed she was practically in tears.’

  ‘I really could do with an identical twin. It would get me out of so many scrapes,’ Marco muses as he puts a pan of water on to boil for the spaghetti.

  He grabs a piece of the Mediterranean bread I cut earlier, tears a bit off and dips it into the sauce.

  ‘Mmm, amazing,’ he says. ‘Here, try.’

  He dips another bit of bread into the sauce before offering it to me. I raise my hand, to take it from him, but it’s so saucy I’m worried it will fall to pieces or I’ll spill sauce everywhere, so I lean forward and eat it straight from his hand.

  ‘Oh my God, Mum, that’s so weird,’ I hear Millie say.

  ‘Millie, hi,’ I say, in a kind of high-pitched voice, as if I’ve just been caught in the act.

  ‘Your hair looks dope,’ she tells me, not all that enthusiastically though. ‘And your clothes. Not totally embarrassing for once.’

  Marco smiles and nods approvingly.

  ‘Dope,’ he says, amused. ‘OK, well, I’ll leave you guys to i
t.’

  Millie goes and plonks herself down on the sofa and turns on the TV.

  ‘I’ve really enjoyed talking to you,’ he tells me quietly. ‘How about we hang out again some time? It’s nice, spending time with someone else who doesn’t find this world easy.’

  ‘Yeah, that would be great,’ I tell him. ‘Perhaps you can help me be a bit better at it, less likely to get caught out again.’

  ‘Sure,’ he replies. ‘I’ll text you – don’t worry, I have ways of getting your number.’

  I must look worried.

  ‘I’m joking,’ he insists as he smiles. ‘I have Emma’s number, and she has mine, so if you need me, call me.’

  ‘I will do, thank you,’ I reply with a smile. Suddenly I feel so much better.

  Henry walks in, his eyes glued to the Switch I absolutely need to remember to confiscate before bedtime, with Rich close behind him.

  ‘Cheers for bringing him home, mate,’ Rich tells Marco, patting him on the back in that way men do.

  ‘Yeah, no worries,’ he replies. ‘Well, I’ll see you all later.’

  ‘Yeah, see you around,’ I tell him.

  ‘Great idea changing the hair,’ Rich whispers to me once we’re alone in the kitchen area. ‘No one was ever going to believe Emma had hair like yours.’

  I think this is supposed to be a compliment, for showing initiative or something, but it’s definitely offensive.

  ‘Cheers,’ I reply, semi-sarcastically, but not so much Rich notices.

  I open the packet of fresh spaghetti and place it into the now boiling water.

  ‘If everyone wants to sit at the table,’ I call out. ‘Dinner is ready in less than five.’

  Everyone does as they’re told, assembling at the dining table, waiting for their food. Henry is still playing on his game and Rich and Millie are both lost in their phones.

  I finish up dinner and, honestly, wow, it looks as if a professional chef has made it. Maybe. It’s certainly the most professional dish I’ve ever made.

  I place a bowl in front of each of the three of them before grabbing one for myself and sitting down. I wait, nervously, for someone to try it. Eventually everyone is tucking in, I’m just waiting for the first bit of feedback, so I can relax, before I eat mine and… Hmm. No one is saying anything. Everyone is eating, and no one was shy last night when they thought dinner was crap but now, because they seem to like it, that’s it. Not a word of praise. Not even a thank you. Is this what this is like for Emma, no one appreciating her? I worked hard to make this dinner – I almost had a mental breakdown making this dinner!