Melt Down - Sandra 4

[For back story see lower numbers in archive]

If there was one thing that would take Sandra’s mind off everything it was cooking. Cooking was her fall back, her main stay, her dry land in an ocean of uncertainty – the place where great things could happen regardless of what else was going on around her. When she needed back-up, assurance, or just a ridiculous amount of sugar, cooking gave it to her. On a plate. Usually. Unless she got really desperate before it was ready, in which case she let herself off the accompanying guilt and sat on the kitchen floor licking the bowl and every goddam spoon that had been near the mixture until she felt better.

But this was not going to be one of those days.

This was going to be a day of structure. Of precision. Of measuring and sifting, crumbling, boiling, spreading and setting. A day of millionaire’s shortbread.

Rob would be fine. She was sure of that. She measured 225 grams of pain flour and sifted it into a bowl, priding herself on the infinitesimal amount that didn’t make it in. Rob was a strong guy, not yet in his thirties, well, OK maybe two years into his thirties, but he was fit and active and she couldn’t remember the last time he was ill so that must count for something, right. Even if this was a virus which…

So into that she added the butter, cubed. She could have just wizzed it all up in the food processor but she felt she needed to do something with her hands so she got stuck in. Also these things always tasted way better if you did it yourself rather than with a machine. Not that that was an issue, of course, and maybe it was just because you knew the love and attention you’d put into it and that made it taste better.

It also meant that when the phone rang Sandra found her hands were far too caked in – well, cake – to be able to answer. She remembered she had voice actuation on the phone and then decided it wouldn’t be appropriate right now and anyway she didn’t want to confuse her smart speaker.

Crumbs made, she stirred in the sugar and pressed the resulting mixture firmly into a 23 cm lined cake tin and it all fitted perfectly. It went neatly into the pre-heated oven at 150C and Sandra washed her hands diligently for the eleventh time that day before setting the timer on – on an old time egg timer she found in the back of the ‘kitchen things’ drawer. She could have used her phone of course but she suddenly remembered this option, given to her by her mother, or maybe she just took it from the family home when she left for college.

Rob would be fine. Frankie had said as much. ICU would sort him out. He was certainly not as bad as some they had and the chances they gave him were – she heated the butter, condensed milk and golden syrup in a saucepan stirring the mixture to make it smooth and then increasing the heat to thicken it.

Timing was essential in all things and at seven minutes past ten, just as she thought about the automated tweets and LinkedIn posts now heading out to flag the latest audio ‘Hug In’s she’d put online for her clients, she poured the topping over the cooled shortbread. She then split the dirty equipment between the washing-up bowl and the washing-up machine and made herself this morning’s coffee.

Her phone rang again. Sandra looked at her hands. They were clean and dry. She looked at the phone. It was OK, it was Frankie. It was Rob.

She answered and her tearful sister told her he’d made it out of ICU. He wasn’t out of the woods of course, it was a long path he was now following, but at least the signs were good. Sandra held it together long enough to ask Frankie how the kids were – was she coping OK and what was likely to happen next. The questions were appreciated but for the most part unanswerable.

Finishing her coffee Sandra spent fifteen minutes on a hunt for enough chocolate to complete the cook. The usual supplies were depleted and would not go far enough and searching through the back of every cupboard found nothing else. Resolutely she melted what she had and poured it over the caramel. It did not quite cover the entire space. 

Sandra stared at it for five minutes solid.

She went to her home office, sat down and analysed the results of her last round of social media communications.