LITMIR.BIZ

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her eyes.

      “Tape? ‘Film?’ I said. . . . Well, I’m not going to tell them, am I?”

      “I don’t believe this,” says Karen, her face suddenly annoyingly hidden by the rim of her cup.

      3

      It doesn’t stop there:

      Baked Sultanas and Red Cabbage with Yogurt and Honey

      (Serves 2) For this recipe you can use bulk sultana buys. If Red Cabbage is unavailable, ordinary cabbage will do. Plain yogurt is best; but sometimes this is expensive. So, flavored yoghurt is okay, as long as you use some of the less powerful flavors, such as applesauce, peach, guava, custard or caramel.

      1.5oz caster sugar

      2lb Yogurt

      4lb ripe sultanas

      4 tbsp wine (such as red wine)

      1 Red Cabbage

      1¾oz unsalted butter

      freshly ground black pepper

      6 tsp honey

      4oz peanuts

      crème fraîche, on top

      Cooking time: 20–25 minutes

      1. Place the caster sugar and yogurt in a saucepan and stir over the heat until the sugar has dissolved. Remove the pan from the heat.

      2. Preheat a normal oven to 400F. Prick the sultanas all over using a fork and place them on a baking tray.

      3. Swiftly heat the wine in a dish or, if necessary, in a kettle. Poor into a bowl and add the butter, six tablespoons of honey, and black pepper. Bring to the boil, in a microwave, and then add the sultanas and the honey.

      4. Transfer to the oven for 15 minutes, basting the sultanas every 2 minutes with the liquid.

      5. Meanwhile, take the cabbage, place it in a pan, sprinkle with peanuts. Bring to a boil. Then place on tray in the oven for 8 minutes, until golden-brown.

      6. To serve, arrange cabbages on plates and drizzle the sultanas onto it. Serve with a crème fraîche.

      4

      I don’t follow Karen. I don’t understand what she’s saying. This whole Milroy thing has thrown her into this mighty fine fit. Even though she does not know the full truth of what happened, because I figure that’s something she doesn’t need to know, won’t benefit from, and I don’t want to tell her. She’s actually dissed Helena because of it; won’t talk to her about it, stormed out of the Plexus, though it was her that had arranged to meet Helena there and her that had insisted on speaking to Helena alone, after I had revealed to them the full extent of his injuries, and her then who even refused to let Helena come home with us, though Helena stays with us regularly, when it’s too late, or too . . . whatever, to go home to her place at the marina.

      Now Karen’s the most obvious person in Candia by far—even though the place is getting pretty packed now with a whole lot of us from Langford, with other students from Southport, with city workers from NEXT, COLLINS SHOES, EXCALIBAR, RUFUS FOR MEN, APPLEYARD KIDS CLOTHING, WOOLWORTHS, WATERSTONES, GO SPORTZ, THE HEART FOUNDATION, VIRGIN MEGASTORE, THE HALIFAX, RIVER ISLAND CLOTHING, HMV, HABITAT, FOODLAND, RAGWEED, PEPE, PROVOCATEUR’S T-SHIRT, MOTHERCARE, with the guy from DIABLO CLOTHING who gives discounts for holders of concessionary rail cards, with assorted space cadets from Machin College, with people I don’t know but who are probably here in Southport for the forthcoming Arts Festival, maybe even for the Film Festival, though frankly they don’t look like it, they’re too “well, gee whizz,” they’re too “well, shucks, is that a special effect or what?,” they’re too . . . too un-film.

      Still Karen goes on, her voice pretty much ruining anything I’d want to do with the ambient sound.

      “You should have just left him there, Ciaran. It was none of your business.”

      “What”—I zoom in on her face in full blank stare, placing my phone at an oblique angle of, I guess, 30º—“is your problem?”

      She tries to smoke and drink her Indonesian Java au lait at the same time and the ash of her cigarette falls on her new white Diesel top and she dumps the coffee cup on its saucer, spilling the Java, shouting “Shit!” at the top of her voice, wiping off the ash with one of the Candia napkins, which are thick and soft incidentally, while Monika (who works in Pencils, the Student Union stationary shop) tells her:

      “It’s okay. Karen, it’s okay” sounding like someone right out of Singles.

      So there’s a big problem, apparently, with how I dealt with finding Steve Milroy, how I called Emergency, maybe even how I shot the whole thing in a steady doco flow so that not one minute of his rescue was missed, not one reaction left to the viewers’ imagination (who knows, maybe even that). Frankly I can’t get a handle on this being a problem, or why Karen won’t shut up about it. Now she is getting other people involved.

      “You really shouldn’t go near that guy,” says Alice (Social Work, third year).

      “O?” Me shooting in high shot over Alice’s neatly blue-tipped hair.

      “No,” says Cole (Archaeology, from France originally, parents some kind of mountaineers or engineers or something, doing a dissertation about runes, or ruins is it? Whatever).

      “Why’s that?” I say, circling the table as a guy from RUFUS FOR MEN checks out the menu nearby, plumbing for the Kamaboko which, had he asked, I would have recommended anyway.

      “There’s other people who do film,” says Colleen. “What about Dr Hallam?”

      “Poke,” I say.

      “Keith Negus?”

      “Poke. Po-ka!”

      “Hey, Bronwen Rainey is supposed to be brilliant. Didn’t she direct that animated film about the . . . the mice? You know The . . .”

      “The Mighty,” I say. “And, poke. Pokella! Pokofsky! Poke!”

      “Listen,” says Kevin Lewin, who is studying American . . . Studies I think, going out with Grace (seated next to him), who knows Goody, the projectionist at The Roxy, who gets both of them in at all the Roxy’s late nighters for nothing, and who is a limey light in both the USP Sail and USP Climbing clubs.

      “There’s issues here, Ciaran,” he says, “which you don’t seem to get.”

      He sweeps a look around the table and, by their pouting half-interest, I figure the whole of our building actually agrees with him. At which point, it all becomes perfectly, achingly, sickeningly clear to me: Kevin is far too distant shot from the far end of the booth like this.

      I scramble up to my feet and lean on in. He almost jumps out of his seat.

      “Look, you jerk, just leave it alone!” he screeches.

      “O, this is great, Kev!” I say, tilting my phone to catch his left ear reddening, his giant John Candy head swaying back and forth. “Keep going!

      “To Hell with this!” he screams and pushes himself up from the table.

      “I’m out of here, Grace,” he says, pushing along the booth past Alice and Colleen and Monika and Cole and Grace, who tells me she is absolutely not named after Grace Kelly, though I doubt very much that this is true. Kevin leaves the booth, heading home to Langford. Grace follows.

      When they’ve gone and the place seems to be returning to normal I suggest that maybe we can order one of Candia’s excellent all-you-can-eat Llaningachos and share it between us.

      “I got this idea,” I say, “where I shoot these ten friends, who all live together in a terrace by the beach, right, as they start a meal and their whole lives kind of spin out around the food so that for every potato cake there’s a story, you know?, for every baked egg there’s a little anecdote captured on film, for every spoon of orange salad there’s . . .”

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