Family Curry

I called her mum to get the family curry recipe. She told me the truth.

Her name was Anika. Every Sunday, she'd cook this deep, slow-simmered chicken curry. The kind that makes your whole flat smell like home. "My mum's recipe," she'd say, stirring with a wooden spoon. "Three generations."

I never asked for the recipe. I just ate it. Licked my plate. Told her she was a better cook than any restaurant.

We broke up in July. She moved back to her parents' house in Leicester. I stayed in our flat, eating cereal over the sink.

Last week, I decided to stop being useless. I'd cook. Be a real man. Make her curry. So I texted her mum, whom I'd met twice. "Hi Auntie, could I get Anika's family curry recipe?"

She called me instead. Her voice was warm, a little amused.

"Beta," she said. "That isn't our family recipe."

"Sorry?"

"Anika never cooked. Not once, before you. She couldn't even boil rice." A pause. "She learned that curry for you. Three weeks. She burned five pots. She called me crying. Wanted to impress you."

I sat down on the kitchen floor.

"She didn't want you to know she was learning," her mum said. "She wanted you to think it was just who she was."

I looked at the empty pot on the stove.

Every Sunday, I thought I was eating her past.

I was eating her effort.