Sorry for the long delay here. Remember in 'Preparing for Bed' I mentioned all the writing I needed to do to make money? That took a lot of my time up. But I'm getting back into things!
To the guest review who suggested this: you're a genius. Thank you. I hope I did it justice (I am terrified of these things myself and do not own one!). This chapter is dedicated to you, and to the fish and chip shop I used to live down the street from. I miss it so much.
As always, if you have an idea or something you'd like to see, just send it my way. UK based readers, if this would have been impossible back in June-ish, please just yell at me in the reviews or DMs and I'll update it. I'm doing my research as best as I can but obviously there's only so much one can surmise from laws, BBC articles, and social media.
Moment of truth. It had been an hour, the rice and veg had grown cold by now, so they simply had to be ready.
Hallie peered in the basket. So far so good: the chicken looked sufficiently browned from the outside. She plucked a breast out with a fork, plopped it onto a plate, sliced a knife into the middle and peered inside.
Hallie screamed. "How–what–fucking–" she slammed the basket back into the air fryer, "Stupid useless piece of shit motherfu—"
"Well that's quite the greeting," a Scottish brogue muttered irritably from behind her.
Hallie whipped around, startled. "Jesus Gran, you scared me! What are you doing here?"
"Same as you, it seems," Elsie retorted, indicating the tray in her hands, on which sat a charred lamb roast. She declined to mention that she, too, had muttered a few expletives and slammed the over door shut after saving what was left unburnt of tonight's dinner. She all but tossed the tray onto the counter, on which sat...something. "What is that?" Elsie asked, nodding to the black metal box.
Hallie huffed. "An elaborate prank from my stepsister," she grumbled. At Elsie's quizzical look, she rushed to explain, "I know I keep telling you about how much Paul sucks, but his daughter is actually really cool. And like, Laura feels really bad about the—"
"Not your sister, lass, I don't understand the joke or what this...box, is," Elsie interrupted as gently as she could manage, pinching the bridge of her nose. Truth be told, it felt good to be exasperated about something other than her latest failure in the kitchen, on her last night before the family returned from Brancaster tomorrow.
"Oh. God. Sorry," Hallie said. "This... thing is supposed to cook your food really fast and easily and be healthier for you than normal frying in a pan with oil. And apparently Laura found one on sale and had it shipped to me since I'm staying here for the foreseeable future and she thought it would be nice, but instead I've been frying this chicken for over an hour and it's still raw and I'm so hungry and now I want to die." She topped off her rant with a bright, sardonic smile.
If she weren't sitting with her own ruined supper, Elsie might have asked about the device, which looked finicky and difficult and entirely unnecessary to her uncertain eyes. Right now, though, she simply rolled her eyes. "No need for hysterics, Hallie. Best to figure out what you can do instead."
It was Hallie's turn to roll her eyes. "I know, I know..." She pursed her lips in thought. "So...I could reheat the rice and vegetables and just eat that. Or I could get takeaway from the chippy, then come back and eat and try to bake the chicken for tomorrow."
"It would be faster to eat what you've already cooked," Elsie pointed out with an arched eyebrow.
Hallie quirked an eyebrow back at her. "And cheaper. And safer. But also sadder...and then I'd have chicken without anything else once I get it baked. Which is also sad." As she spoke, Hallie dug through a cabinet and procured two plastic containers.
Elsie sighed, mostly good-naturedly. "So it sounds as though you're going out for dinner, then?"
The lass smirked at her and began to pack up her cold sides to save in the refrigerator. "Just for takeout. It's been ages, I'll just do an extra commission this week and it'll be fine. What are you gonna do about...?" she asked, indicating the lamb.
Elsie sighed again, less good-naturedly. "We'll be having burnt lamb tonight, it appears."
Hallie offered a sympathetic wince. "I'm sorry, Gran." After a moment of thought, she also offered, "Do you think I'd be able to buy you fish and chips? Would that work?"
She shook her head. "I don't know, Hallie. But thank you for offering." Her shoulders slumped, Elsie returned to her roast, trying to trim away the most charred bits. Hallie reached for her mask—cloth, a surprisingly plain burgundy—and secured it over her nose and mouth, catching Elsie's eye briefly before she left. She hadn't seen the woman so..dejected before, and it made the girl sad in a way she hadn't anticipated. "Love you, Gran," Hallie called before turning and heading out of the cottage.
xx
Charles was hovering. He knew it. But after Elsie's mood at dinner last night—disappointed, mostly—he wanted to ensure she had no cause for stress when she arrived home tonight. The stew seemed to be simmering just fine, but nevertheless he hovered, his brow furrowed.
A joyous whoop broke him from his disquietude. He pinched the bridge of his nose before turning to whatever scene was about to greet him, saying, "Hello, Hallie."
"Granda! Check it out!" she cried, reaching to stop the shrill, blaring music (if you could call it that, Charles thought ungenerously). Hallie turned to reveal a plate loaded with crisps, her face beaming with an almost-childlike pride. "I finally got the air fryer working! Pretty cool, huh?"
He smiled tightly at her. "They look wonderful." He was certain he did not want to know what an 'air fryer' was, and equally certain that the girl would inform in anyway in a matter of minutes.
"I still think this thing is ridiculous, but at least I can use it." She loaded a few more thin potato slices into the metal box on their kitchen counter.
"Why did you buy it in the first place, then?" he asked. It was hard for him to imagine any relative of hers, of theirs, being so wasteful with their money. Although Elsie and her bloody toaster... He nearly shivered at the memory of smoke billowing from her sitting room.
She shrugged. "It was a gift, seemed rude not to use it."
"It looks frightful," Charles opined. The box was a shiny, angry black metal, all rounded edges with brightly-lit images on the front.
Hallie rolled her eyes, "You said that about my kettle."
"And I stand by it."
Silence filled the small room as Charles peered into the pot of stew while Hallie hovered around her crisps, which she could not see cooking. They remained that way for a few long minutes.
"Tea?" Charles asked nonchalantly.
"Always," Hallie said with a smirk. She filled up her kettle and switched it on before reaching for the cabinet.
Charles was fiddling with his own kettle and teacup—today was a shakier day, though not intolerably so. Still, adequately pouring his tea and making his way to the small but comfortable kitchen table took greater-than-usual concentration, and thus he almost missed it:
"Is that a teacup?" he asked almost incredulously.
With cup in one hand and saucer in the other, Hallie grinned at him before taking a sip. "It was cheap, and I figured this way you have one less reason to get all huffy with me." Charles almost flushed red with embarrassment, but she spoke so lightly and playfully it staved negativity away.
"Well, I'm proud to see you acting properly at last." He couldn't help but bark out a laugh when she pulled a face at this.
"Never," she replied with a smirk. "But I'm drinking Irish tea and using a saucer. Good enough?"
He nodded and smiled back. "For now," he teased back.
They sipped quietly at their tea, until Hallie asked, "Is everything alright with Gran?"
"Why do you ask?" Charles's brow furrowed, and his teacup and saucer clattered as he placed them on the table with shaking hands.
"I saw her last night while we were both cooking dinner, and she looked..." she paused to search for the right word, gave up, went with: "...really sad. I didn't know what to do. I'm not good at that kind of stuff," she admitted.
Charles sighed. "You just caught her in a difficult moment, lass. Elsie...worries about her cooking skills. She's been a housemaid for so long and never had to, and I was boorish about it when we first married." Shame filled his dark eyes.
Hallie shuffled uncomfortably in her seat, bit her lip. "Have you...have you ever considered cooking dinner instead?" Charles's eyes narrowed a bit. "I mean just that like, she's working and you're retired, right? And like in 2020 women who work still end up having to come home and do all the work around the house, and no offense, but I can't imagine it's better for working women in the 192—"
"Hallie, I already do," he cut off her rambling. And truth be told, it had only marginally helped; He had been quite proud the first night dinner was waiting for her on the table when she arrived home from work, about three weeks after his retirement. He'd all but strutted through the kitchen. "What's this?" Elsie had asked with surprise.
"You've been busy at the house, so I decided to try my hand at one of the recipes Mrs. Patmore gave us." He did not mention the failure of the first batch of roasted carrots, or how tired he felt.
Elsie smiled tightly at him, and Charles couldn't imagine what he had done to upset her. "It looks lovely, Charles."
Throughout dinner she had only picked at her meal; it was a simple, functional meal with none of the complexity of even Mrs. Patmore's simpler dinners in the servants hall, but it tasted well enough. After many minutes of strained silence and watching his wife shuffle food around her still-full plate, he finally asked, "Elsie, what did I do wrong?"
Her eyes met his and he saw her pained expression. "Nothing, dear, you've done nothing wrong. You've been wonderful." Another tight smile, before she said, "I'm sorry, Charles" in a voice so earnest, so serious it broke his heart. She broke eye contact then, looked back down at her plate.
"Whatever for?" he asked.
"I'm sure this isn't what you imagined when we married..." she trailed off, sighed.
Ah. He recognized the embarrassment, the shame, from those first few dinners at their home and his reactions to her attempts in the kitchen.
"No," he replied seriously, "it's not." Her face snapped up to his. "This is far, far better than anything I could have imagined."
"Well, that's great then!" Hallie complimented. "No offense, but I wouldn't have guessed."
Some item or another of Hallie's beeped, and she rose to open the air fryer, fiddle with the crisps inside, and close it again. She carried the plate of finished crisps from earlier back to the table with her. "So it's just something Gran's sensitive about?" she asked. Charles nodded. "I'll keep that in mind for next time," she said carefully, biting into one oft the crisps.
Hallie hummed in delight. "They're good!" She pushed the plate toward Charles. "Do you think you could try one?"
He raised an eyebrow at her, and she raised one back. "Can't hurt, right?" He rolled his eyes but reached out his hand and was surprised to find he could pick one from the top of the plate, and bite into it.
"Not bad," he complimented. Hallie smirked and sipped again at her tea. "That thing still seems entirely unnecessary, though."
"We'll see about that, I guess. But we've found another rule for...whatever is happening. Good to know." And she reached for another crisp.
It's important to me that you all know: the song Hallie is playing at the top of the Charles bit is "Toxic" by Britney Spears. One of her earlier quarantine games/hobbies is (was?) trying to teach herself choreography from Britney Spears videos. It's only going okay. I've had a lot of fun creating this OC (specifically to annoy Charles, hahaha) and thinking through how she spends her days, which you don't get to see a ton of because this is a Downton Abbey fic, not really an original story, so it's mostly about the Carsons.