Party Favours

It always amuses me to think that, once upon a time, someone actually stood at the bottom of Mount Everest, looked up and said, “You know what, I think I should climb to the top of that.”

            My sister says it’s very unlikely that this person was ever one of our ancestors. “Can you imagine Mother climbing?” she asked me once when we were about 12 and stuck at home, utterly bored, during the school holidays.

            “She climbed up to the second floor at Tiffany’s yesterday,” I observed.

            “Well, that’s different,” Michelle said with a cynicism she’s never outgrown. “The diamonds are on the second floor. If there were diamonds on Mount Everest, that Edmund Hilary would never have stood a chance. Why would anyone bother otherwise?”

            This all came back to me last year at Christmas when Saffy announced at breakfast that she would, in the spirit of Christmas, make biscotti.

            Amanda paused applying her mascara and looked up from her compact mirror. “Saf, you don’t cook,” she said eventually.

            Saffy’s bosom immediately puffed up. “I do so! Just the other day, I made Maggi mee!”

            “You boiled the soup dry and almost set the kitchen on fire!”

            “Seriously, are you still going on about that? It was just a little bit of smoke! And besides, I was distracted by Dr Pimple Popper’s ‘Top 10 Lipomas’!”

            Amanda rolled her eyes and went back to painting her eyelashes, clearly done with the conversation.

            “I just think it would make such a nice present to bring to parties,” Saffy went on. “People are so lazy, they’re always bringing a bottle of wine to a party. I mean, what if you don’t drink?”

            Amanda looked up again. “Am I friends with anyone who doesn’t drink?”

            “Well, I don’t dri…” Saffy began. “Wait, what?”

            Amanda dropped her eyes.

            Later that afternoon, I stood in the kitchen leaning against the sink and watched Saffy struggle with the dough. “Can you believe she said that to my face?” she fumed, completely oblivious to the sprays of ground almond and white dustings of icing sugar all over the kitchen counter and floor.

            “Seriously, why are you doing this?” I asked in as supportive a tone as I could muster. “You could buy a whole box for less than ten bucks at Culina.”

            Saffy blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Store bought rubbish! I’m all about being artisanal this Christmas.”
            “Which is what the Culina biscotti are,” I pointed out. “They’re made by real Italians in Italy.”

            “Yes, but imagine how impressed everyone will be when I show up tonight at Carol’s Christmas party with a nice little bag of home-made biscotti!” Saffy said, as she struggled to shape the wet dough on the baking tray. “I’m going to wrap it up with a pretty red ribbon like on Martha Stewart’s Instagram!”
            “You know Martha Stewart doesn’t actually make any of those things herself, right? That’s because she’s very rich. She probably doesn’t even know she has an Instagram account. What’s the matter?” I asked, sensing a level of distress on Saffy’s face.

            “Why is it so mushy?” she said, a definite whine underlining her words. “The recipe says it should be a wet dough that I roll into a log! This isn’t a log!” She leaned over her iPad again and read the recipe, her lips moving silently.

            “And add the crushed hazelnuts…Wait! What crushed hazelnuts? There are crushed hazelnuts? What? Where does it say…oh…my…God….”

            I straightened up. “You forgot the hazelnuts?”

            “I forgot the hazelnuts!” Saffy moaned, her entire body now trembling in simpatico with her vibrating bosom. “Oh God…the whole thing is ruined!”

            That evening at Carol’s, as Saffy grumpily set down her bottle of store-bought wine on the kitchen table, Carol said cheerily, “Oh, thanks for the wine, Saf! Here, try these biscotti that Sharyn made! They’re so good!”

            Sharyn turned pink. “Aiyah, pai-seh! It’s nothing, lah! I long time never make, but then, hor, I think nicer bring home made biscuit.”

            “It’s delicious! And I loved the red ribbon! I could seriously eat a whole plate of these! You must give me the recipe!”

            Sharyn flapped her hand, shaken by all the attention and growing steadily uneasy by the intensity of Saffy’s gaze. “Yah, yah, ok. I give you. Actually, hor, is uh…is Saffy recipe I…I use…Ay, Saffy, why you look like that, har? Ay…”