The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: If No One Speaks by Sam Szanto

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Apple Crumble Baked by a Ghost

(excerpts)

The wind clenches its fingers around the doors and windows and the apple tree shakes. There is a nebulous sense of impending rain. Charlie eats one of her apples, which she has been storing. It is meaty and aromatic, the flesh snowy white. She considers making something with the apples, but she never bakes. That was her mother’s domain. Neil liked cakes, but always shop-bought them. What would she do with whatever she baked, eat it all herself? She could invite someone over to share it, her dad or Vicky, but her dad has high cholesterol and isn’t meant to eat cake and Vicky is always slimming. Still, Charlie flicks through the recipe books that were her mother’s, the pages stuck together and stained, ‘Sylvia Smith’ scrawled on the flyleafs.

Charlie can’t decide what to bake, whether to bake. It feels like an insurmountable problem. She goes to the fridge, takes out a bottle of wine and pours herself a large glass.

Soon, the air is brittle and fragrant with apples and wine and Charlie, who has only eaten toast and soup all day, is feeling hazy.

The doorbell rings, then rings again. Charlie peers out and sees little kids, dressed as ghouls and witches and Harry Potter, holding buckets. She had forgotten about Halloween. She was sure that people weren’t supposed to come trick or treating anymore unless the house had been decorated to show this was welcome. Then she remembered what happened last year: the child next-door put a lit pumpkin in her living room window and, due to it being a terrace, people mistook her house for Charlie and Neil’s; Neil ran to the Co-op and bought bags of chocolates to hand out.

Charlie has nothing to give but apples, and doesn’t want to go to the Co-op. She ignores the doorbell and takes the wine to the living room. By ten o’clock, she has got through a series of Lucifer and one-and-a-half bottles of Sauvignon Blanc.

‘You shouldn’t drink so much on your own, sweetheart.’

Her mum stands in the doorway, wearing the printed dress. Her skin is moon-white.

‘Yes, Mum. I’m going up to sleep it off now.’

‘I never went to bed without doing the washing-up,’ her mum says reprovingly.

‘Ah, it was always Neil’s job,’ Charlie says. ‘Sometimes I forget he’s not here. I’ll do it in the morning, anyway.’

‘Get to bed,’ her mum tells her. ‘I’ll sort it out.’

‘Ghosts can wash-up?’

‘I’m Mum first, ghost second.’

‘What was prison like, Mum?’

‘The worst thing was being away from you and your dad. Now, get your beauty sleep.’

Late the next morning Charlie, head heavy on her neck and mouth furred, draws apart her curtains. It looks as though it is a warm day, the clouds cuddled in the arms of the sky.

She remembers the night before. Surely her mother can’t have done the washing-up. There are ghosts, and there is madness. Her dad would say she needs therapy, after what she has gone through, and she does.

Taking a deep breath, Charlie puts on her dressing gown, wraps it tight around herself, and descends the stairs.

The kitchen smells of sugar and apples. It is spotless, with no sign of the dirty pots that Charlie left beside and in the sink. Everything is in its correct place, including the empty wine bottle in the outside green glass-recycling box.

‘Oh, Mum.’

Tears spring to Charlie’s eyes. She thinks of what her dad – Vicky – anyone – would say: you were drunk; you would have done the washing-up before you went to bed and forgot about it.

Then she notices something else. A serving dish with a clean, white-as-milk tea towel covering it. Charlie takes off the cloth. Beneath lies an apple crumble.

She leans against the counter; she weeps.

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