Free Recipes for Melissa by Teresa Driscoll Page B

me?’
    ‘Yes. As in Max me. You OK?’
    ‘Yes. I’m fine. Just finishing a new watercolour for the gallery. I’ve been a bit lazy lately and they’ve been nagging. Anyway. It’s come out rather well so I’m rewarding myself with a second glass of extremely good Sancerre.’
    Max glanced at the sofa, then down at his sweaty shorts and walked over to the window. The light was just fading and across the park he could see the first warm glimmers of a sunset over the grouping of three oaks. He suddenly felt very hot, wishing that he was back out there. In the breeze. Beneath the oaks.
    ‘The sky’s good here. How about you?’
    ‘Not so special. Cloud cover.’
    ‘Shame.’
    ‘So you were right about Greece. More trouble, I mean.’
    ‘Yes. Absolute shambles. But someone will blink soon.’
    She paused for a time.
    ‘OK. So are you going to tell me what’s the matter, Max, or am I going to have to guess?’
    ‘I was thinking – wondering actually if I could come and see you tomorrow.’
    ‘Oh right. I see,’ there was a distinct change now in Sophie’s tone. In Max’s head one voice wanted to suck the words back in. Another wishing he had faced up to this long ago.
    This was breaking the rules.
    Max and Sophie saw each other on the first weekend of every month. Her suggestion. Her rules. They had dinner, they went to the theatre and sometimes to an art exhibition and afterwards they had extremely enjoyable sex. But they did not ring each other in between these encounters and Max no longer asked questions about the rhythm of the rest of her life.
    Sophie was intelligent, beautiful and like no other woman he had ever met. She did not do commitment or conventional relationships, eschewing all the usual conventions over how liaisons might normally progress.
    Max had broken off their ‘connection’ as she called it once before when he had experienced the disaster of dating Deborah at the university. Melissa had met Deborah. Quite liked her. But Max did not discuss Sophie with anyone…
    ‘Is this what I’m thinking, Max?’
    ‘I don’t know’
    ‘You don’t know?’
    ‘To be honest – I don’t know what I know any more. That’s why I need to see you.’
    ‘I thought we had talked this through, Max. The last time. I thought we were both OK?’
    ‘Yes, I know. And so did I. But I’m not sure if I really am OK.’
    ‘I see.’ There was a pause. ‘OK, Max. If talking is what you need to do then talking is what we will do. Tomorrow at 7 p.m.? I’ll cook us something nice.’
    ‘Oh don’t cook. Please don’t go to any trouble. I’ll book somewhere. Hartleys?’
    ‘And now I am really worried.’
    ‘I’ll text you. Pick you up around 7 p.m.’
    Max put the phone down and stared at it.
    He had no idea if he was doing the right thing but the truth was Sophie had become a paradox in his life, making him both very happy and terribly sad. The very reason he had not told Melissa about her.
    They had met at the Tate of St Ives gallery in Cornwall – admiring an exhibition to champion local artists’ residencies. It was years after he lost Eleanor - in the phase when friends felt Max should be ‘moving on’. But he did not. Later that same day Max and Sophie bumped into each other again at the nearby Barbara Hepworth museum. They talked very easily and so walked on the beach and shared coffee which turned into lunch. It was not until they were parting reluctantly and several hours of excellent conversation later that Sophie shared that she was an artist herself.
    A very good one as it turned out. Her paintings – mostly watercolours and charcoal sketches – sold well, especially, she confided, since she had hit upon a darker streak. Sophie began to weave shadows into the water and skies of otherwise bold and bright colour ways – an effect which always seemed, to Max at least, to be terribly sad and also rather brilliant.
    For the most part, Sophie reflected the vibrant shades of her work – a