GRANNY APPLE

She sits on the low stone wall peeling apples, I see the clay pipe in her mouth, the apples cradled in her apron. And I see, through her, the defunct orchard beyond. She squints at me through a wisp of smoke no more solid than herself.

“Pantry,” she mumbles.

A turn of the apple, the glint of a knife and a snake of peel falls to her feet, unbroken.

It isn’t his granny, he says. His granny wouldn’t be lolling about on walls. His granny bred Italian greyhounds and wore cashmere. It’s some old servant-ghost who comes with the house. He’s humouring me. He peers over during dinner,

“you ought to have hobbies, he says, yoga, book club, friends.” “Pantry.” I say. “Where was it?”

He frowns.

I stand in the utility/ boot-room renovation. The toddler crawls past the doorway in fairy-wings, the child follows wrapped in a tablecloth.

Now what, Dead Granny Apple?

A box. On top of the cupboard.

Inside; bent forks, old keys, a brown paper package – a recipe book handwritten in a dashy, loopy, wandering hand. Hidden in the pages I find pressed flowers, newspaper cuttings, Christmas cards with bonneted children and malevolent cats. My own children are circling the kitchen island with one sock between them. I don’t need to turn around to know that she’s behind me. I can smell the pipe.

We start with spotted dick. If the children notice Dead Granny Apple haunting the dishwasher, they don’t say. She’s a calming presence, soon the small ones are content, flourcoated on the flagstones feeding each other globs of butter. Dead Granny Apple tightens the knot on her spectral apron. “I’m no cook.” I admit.

“I’m no ghost.” She smiles.

But still, while the oven’s warm and the bowls are out… I turn the pages of the recipe book, she points with the stem of her pipe, the children stir and babble. The room fills with steam and smell and warmth and the silent shuffling of Granny Apple’s invisible clogs.

Rissoles, squab pie, Sefton fancies, things in aspic, epiphany tart, tennis cake, seed cake, pound cake, apple charlotte, apple cobbler, apple hat.

The apple dishes make her maudlin. She drifts sadly through the blasted orchard when I run to the shop for Bramleys.

The shop doesn’t sell slink veal, nor do they carry angelica. He’s complimentary. The pastry melts. The gravy’s rich.

The consommé is heavenly. He tells me well done, keep it up, domestic goddess! I spit in his kedgeree.

Unloading the festive goose from his car I find a lipstick. Jamboree Red, not my colour.

Granny Apple points with the stem of her pipe to the open recipe book. ‘ Ye Cheery Olde Figgy Pudding.’

I peel the apples. The children measure the brandy. Granny Apple smokes. We stir and stir, wish and wish.

The lipstick has company. Silky knickers, not my size. Granny Apple points with the stem of her pipe to the open recipe book. ‘Household Poisons for the Effective Dispatchment of Rats, Mice & Miscellaneous Vermin.’

When the children are in bed, he sets light to his pudding with flair. I pass him the brandy butter.

We sit on the low wall peeling apples. Behind us, the orchard. Fruit-heavy now. The children run through it.

She puffs her pipe and watches me. A turn of the apple, the glint of a knife and a snake of peel falls to my feet, unbroken.

Author Jess Kidd grew up in London and is the author of three novels, the latest being Things in Jars (Canongate), a delicious supernatural Victorian detective story. Her Simple Pleasure is: “walking my dog, Wilkie Collins, on a bright cold (not too muddy!) winter’s day”.