Free Toast by Nigel Slater Page B

so that, when I offered them round, the message – You’re Cute, Kiss Me, Big Boy, etc. – got to the one intended. Invariably, my carefully constructed plan would misfire. There was always someone who would screw it up by taking two.

Radishes
    Josh is showing me how to grow radishes in a corner of the garden that my father says is mine. Last year I planted cosmos, pink, white and deep-red daisies that danced on fine stems, and Indian Prince marigolds that had simple, single flowers and floppy leaves. Josh has raked away thetangle of their dried stems and seed heads, dumped them on the compost heap and raked the soil flat. He opens up the packet of seeds and passes them over to me. I empty them out into my hands and sprinkle them in long lines, but the seeds are so small they are dropping in tiny heaps.
    â€˜There’s too many seeds and they’re a bit too close together but we can thin them out when they come up,’ says Josh.
    Two weeks later some of the seeds have germinated, I am lying on my stomach on the grass looking at the baby leaves that have come up, a mixture of gaps and tufty bunches. I hear Josh’s bike in the drive and then the garage doors rattling open. I sit there gazing at the leaves for a minute or two then walk over to the garage. Josh is getting changed. His denim jacket is on the seat of his Triumph, and he is just undoing his belt. Josh’s white-T shirt is out of shape and so short it barely comes down to his belly button. It looks like he’s had it for years. Mum would have thrown mine out before it got like that. He pulls his jeans off and lays them over the bike. He is standing there in nothing but his T-shirt. Josh never seems to wear any underwear. He walks round to the back of his bike and takes a pair of thin, faded shorts out of the shiny black box on the back and pulls them on, then, without putting on any shoes, he picks me up in his arms and we jog out to the garden.
    â€˜Come and see my radishes, they’re huge,’ I say, exaggerating slightly.
    Josh pulls a set of leaves gently between his thumb and fingers. At the end of the thin stem is a tiny pink radish, just big enough to be recognisable. ‘Eat it, go on,’ he urges. The little root is crunchy, hot, mustardy, exciting, like my mouth is on fire. I don’t know whether I like it or not. Josh laughs and starts picking out many more of the seedlings. He clasps them in his hand and takes them back to his bike, where he puts them in a little plastic bag and lays them gently in the black box on the back of his bike. ‘They’re for my salad,’ he says. Holding them gently, protectively, as you might a baby bird.
    This week we have picked about twenty radishes, long, thin ones with white tips and fuchsia-pink skins, the insides as crisp and white as baby’s teeth. I am still not sure if I like them or not but Dad seems to. He sort of wells up when I give them to him. ‘Go on, eat them then,’ I plead.
    â€˜Later.’
    When we found the radishes in the fridge a week later, shrivelled, bendy, their leaves yellow, I am not sure who was more upset, Josh or me. Dad hadn’t really been in the house much, and I forgot to tell Mum they were there. After that I didn’t really pick any more. I told Josh he could have them all but he didn’t seem to want them either.
    Having people to do both the garden and the housework was unusual round our way. Most of our neighbours either mowed their back lawns and dug their vegetable patches, though some had wild gardens, rough lawn with overgrownbrambles and purple loosestrife at the far end. Front gardens, on the other hand, were always tidy and smart. An orderly mix of heather, conifers and privet hedges. The Marks & Spencer’s grey suit of gardens. In summer, white alyssum was kept in pert balls and gentian-blue lobelia trailed gently along the edge of immaculate lawns no bigger than a duvet. Purple aubrietia was