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Bonfire night

I had been raiding the memory bank in order to come up with a recipe that captured all of the hissing November glory of Bonfire Night, but I first arrived at a feeling rather than a taste. Whether wrapped in the crisp skin of a twice-baked potato, or hidden amidst the charred sweetness of a sausage, rolling anticipation is the abiding sense of that night for me. Maybe it’s a hangover from those teenage days – crushes seen through a wreath of bonfire smoke, against a backdrop of technicoloured sky, or the electric feel of cold fingers handing over an oozing marshmallow. Either way, the visuals are made flesh as soon as you eat something with a November tinge, from jaw-locking candy apples to mellow roasted pumpkin, and how....

‘Fireworks in the heavens, fireworks in my head, one vodka too many, now I wish I was dead.’

These were the words I wrote on the sixth of November, aged seventeen, nursing an aching head and heart. I had seen my love rat ex-boyfriend across a bonfire the night before and, oh woe, necked a couple of stiff vodkas and wobbled up to him, professing undying affection in the face of his horrible cheating ways. Love rat was a classic; twenty-seven to my seventeen, he’d disappear for nights on end and then eventually return with love bites and a bedraggled bouquet, probably nicked from a grave. He never had any money and was constantly dipping into my babysitting funds, and he only ever wore a black polo neck, probably to hide the love bites.

On that night of sparklers, over the smell of chestnuts, he greeted my tear thick protestations with fluttering eyelashes and a sly smile.

‘Oh sweetheart, I’ve been away. Went to see a man about a dog in Leicester, you know how it is.’

I didn’t know how it was – how could I? I was green as a milk-fed calf, and I thought that if I just looked after him, made him lasagne and kept him warm, he would love me as he had in August, and he might even stop drinking and disappearing. And after all, weren’t the greatest love affairs meant to be a bit tortured in their onset? I was highly romantic and believed we were playing out a drama of old, I Caitlin to his Dylan, or he Burton to my Taylor.

As my friends rolled their eyes around the bonfire, he kissed me behind a bush, and then sloped home to his new girlfriend, a twenty-something Dane with stumpy legs, a BMW and her own flat in Chelsea. I did not have a flat in Chelsea; I lived in Balham with my mum, had a curfew and I couldn’t drive.

‘He doesn’t really love her,’ I told my friend Cassie afterwards, the relief of his kiss still reassuringly near. ‘He loves me. He told me, it was very sincere. I feel awful for him. He feels beholden to the Dane because she doesn’t know anyone in London, and he’s painting her flat. It’s temporary. And anyway, I have better legs.’

‘Love,’ she said. ‘He’s a total prat.’

‘Aren’t they all?’ I asked wearily, as the Catherine wheels sang over my head. I felt that this was one of life’s MOMENTS, one that I would remember always.

My association with the love rat lasted until Christmas, when the stumpy Dane who had stolen him from me called me crying. She read from my script, and I felt oddly sorry for her.

‘He’s gone missing,’ she said.

‘He does that,’ I said. ‘It’s horrible.’

And as I said the things to her that everyone had said to me, it became real.

‘You’re worth more than this. Love is not meant to be about uncertainty. He’s very lucky to have you.’

The truth was liberating.

‘He’s a total arse,’ I told her. ‘I’d get rid of him if I were you.’

It was November a good seven years later when I bumped into him. Red wine stained his teeth, and gathered in the creases of his mouth. He looked like a vampire and stumbled with drink. He told me I was the great love of his life. I laughed. He still wore a polo neck.