Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

Mummy said that we were empresses, sultanas and maharanis in our own home, and that it was our duty to live a life of sybaritic pleasure and indulgence. Every meal should be an epicurean feast for the senses, she said, and one should go hungry rather than sully one’s palate with anything less than exquisite morsels. She told me how she’d eaten chilli-fried tofu in the night markets of Kowloon, and that the best sushi outside of Japan could be found in São Paulo. The most delicious meal of her life, she said, had been chargrilled octopus, which she’d eaten at sunset in an unassuming harbourfront taverna one late summer evening on Naxos. She’d watched a fisherman land it that morning, and then sipped ouzo all afternoon while the kitchen staff battered it again and again against the harbour wall to tenderize its pale, suckered flesh. I must ask her what the food is like where she is now. I suspect that lapsang souchong and langues de chat biscuits are in short supply.

I remember being invited to a classmate’s house after school. Just me. The occasion was ‘tea’. This was confusing in itself; I had, not unreasonably, been expecting afternoon tea, whereas her mother had prepared a sort of early kitchen supper for us. I can still picture it – orange and beige – three luminous fish fingers, a puddle of baked beans and a pale pile of oven chips. I had never seen, let alone tried any of these items, and had to ask what they were. Danielle Mearns told everyone in the class next day and they all laughed and called me Beanz Meanz Weird (shortened to Beanzy, which stuck for a while). No matter; school was a short-lived experience for me. There was an incident with an over-inquisitive teacher who suggested a trip to the school nurse, after which Mummy decided that said teacher was a barely literate, monolingual dullard whose only worthwhile qualification was a certificate in first aid. I was home-schooled after that.

At Danielle’s house, her mother gave us each a Munch Bunch yoghurt for pudding, and I snuck the empty pot into my school bag so that I could study it afterwards. Apparently, it was merchandise pertaining to a children’s television programme about animated pieces of fruit. And they said I was weird! It was a source of disgust to the other children at school that I couldn’t talk about TV programmes. We didn’t have a television; Mummy called it the cathode carcinogen, cancer for the intellect, and so we would read or listen to records, sometimes playing backgammon or mah jong if she was in a good mood.

Taken aback by my lack of familiarity with frozen convenience food, Danielle Mearns’ mother asked me what it was that I usually had for tea on a Wednesday night.

‘There’s no routine,’ I said.

‘But what kind of things do you eat, generally?’ she asked, genuinely puzzled.

I listed some of them. Asparagus velouté with a poached duck egg and hazelnut oil. Bouillabaisse with homemade rouille. Honey-glazed poussin with celeriac fondants. Fresh truffles when in season, shaved over ceps and buttered linguine. She stared at me.

‘That all sounds quite … fancy,’ she said.

‘Oh no, sometimes it’s just something really simple,’ I said, ‘like sourdough toast with manchego cheese and quince paste.’

‘Right,’ she said, exchanging a glance with little Danielle, who was gawping at me, revealing a mouthful of partially masticated beans. Neither spoke, and Mrs Mearns placed a glass bottle of thick red liquid on the table, which Danielle then proceeded to shake violently and slather all over the orange and beige food.

Of course, after I was taken into care, I rapidly became acquainted with a new culinary family; Aunt Bessie, Captain Birdseye and Uncle Ben all featured regularly, and now I can distinguish HP Sauce from Daddies by smell alone, like a sauce sommelier. It was one of the innumerable ways in which my old life and my new life differed. Before and after the fire. One day I was breakfasting on watermelon, feta and pomegranate seeds, the next I was eating toasted Mother’s Pride smeared with margar-ine. That’s the story Mummy told me, at any rate.