PINK THEME! – Lottie Hughes

March 24, 2026

Sky not yet blue, barely dawn, and Erin was typing: Pink Theme Menu: honey-glazed halloumi, beetroot risotto, strawberry mousse 

After this, she dropped an email to her manager: 

Hi Sarah, 
I’m so sorry, but I’m pretty sick today. I knew I was incubating something. 
Won’t be able to make it in. 
See you soon,
Erin 

Instead of working and drinking coke at her desk, tooth cavity deepening, Erin wanted to cook for her boyfriend Dylan. He didn’t mind what they ate. He was good at giving meals the benefit of the doubt. And usually, it was microwave meals. Food repeated over and over and over. But today, Erin wanted to conjure a steamy pink warmth. 

She left the house early for the shop, before the commuter’s procession. Before the brogues hit cement. Nice to not be one of the pack, she thought as she walked upstream away from the station. Erin was aware she’d recently been imagining a lot of perfect scenarios. She used to imagine these a lot when she was younger. Obsessions she got into, like climbing down wells. They would start peripheral and then swell, like damp. The last one was carpentry. Endgame was running a high earning furniture shop. But she had to go A&E due to cutting her thumb while carving into a plank. No artery pricked but a stream of blood on the carpet. Followed by the pungent smell of iron and Dylan washing out her favourite jumper. Before that, contemporary dance. But too expensive to get any good. Humiliating to watch yourself jaunt before a mirror in front of strangers. To pay to witness your physical crookedness. 

In terms of her pursuit of a scenario, today was no different. Images of ripened fruit and vegetables harvested from an orchard cut through her like light across a high altitude peak. For the meal prep, she imagined washing the fruit with spring water, her hair tumbling down her back. Her hair glossy, paraffin free and deep red, akin to the oxidised tones of stale ketchup. She found herself imagining her children. This was surprising as she didn’t want children. Yet, their voices swirled around her imaginary farm house kitchen, as she flattened strawberry mousses into a breathless symmetry of flat pink. Of course, Rome wasn’t built in a day, she thought. Start with the shop. 

Sat on the bus, a tremor passed across Erin’s face. Tongue jutted from mouth, eyes squeezed shut. Moved the way a yelp moves an animal. But Erin ignored it. This was, she thought, a necessary part of medication withdrawal. The doctor had recently informed her in a review: coming off these, would be like pulling a cast from a splintered limb. I’d advise you continue taking them. But, Erin found anti-depressants made no difference, only made a hardness in her. So she decided to stop. Does it really count as advice if the doctor can only offer me one thing, if they’ve provided the same advice fifty times already? she asked Dylan. Raising her fingers in quotation marks around the words medical advice. Dylan smiled, eyes fixed on a game of solitaire, I’m not getting involved. Off the bus, Erin texted Dylan outside Morrisons: 

Don’t worry about dinner tonight!
I’ve got it covered!!

The supermarket was quiet. Fridge air like mountain draft on her cheeks. Erin waded down the aisles, trainers skidding on the pretend terracotta floor. Going down the pink list, until finally getting to olive oil. She chose a tall yellow cylinder like a king’s scepter. ANTI OXIDANT in blue across the top. An influencer recently said in her trademar sultry voice: Sometimes I forget I have free will and can make whatever I want. Erin understood then, clutching the olive oil, what she meant. Free will is magnified in the supermarket, distilled between choices of roughly the same thing. 

–

Erin smacked the beetroot down with the knife handle. Another THUD and the beetroot split, like bone opening. She put the crimson chunks in boiling water and sat at the kitchen table. A withdrawal jolt went through her. She thought back to the doctor’s words: Splintered Limb. She found this analogy stupid; the mind as limb. It’s not a limb is it though? That’s what she should have told the doctor. She should have stuck up for herself: With a broken limb you can tell a nice sensical story of how you tripped on a chicken bone or down a stair but I can’t tell you the origin of my feeling or thought. 

Erin texted her friend, Beetroot dense as fuckkk. The sound of boiling water filled the room. She relaxed now the beetroot was softening. Lodged in the chair, Erin watched a woman kneading fresh dough on YouTube, rolling it in her hands like a lung being pummelled. The lady had a ribbon tied in her hair and a fitted white t-shirt with an American flag across the chest. Rustic, seemingly innocent stitches made up the stars on the flag. 

A vacant green countryside stretched beyond the woman’s window. Erin stared at the landscape in her phone. She wondered where it was in the world. Imagined herself inside its expanse, inside the variations of green. Geometries of shade moved along the hills. Erin imagined brushing her hand through the corn. In the hills, maybe her heart would be wind swept, opened up to the horizon. Wide and giving. She would make everything from scratch, she would have unbounded energy to work like that countryside woman. As snakes moved in the grass, she would be unafraid. In a kitchen in London, Erin’s hands shook. 

Erin slammed her phone down, pushing thoughts of natural-remedy prairie women out of her mind. Straightened her spine. The light glowered through the window in tones of green. Leaves quivered outside, a bird sang in high pitch. Erin stood and poured the rice into the pan. Flecks of pink water landed on her unsplintered limbs. She stirred the pot and the liquid spat back. 

She added Oxo vegetable stock. But, she felt this was cheating because it wasn’t homemade. The prairie woman wouldn’t think of using an Oxo cube. Days ago Dylan had thrown out a chicken carcass after he’d made them a juicy roast dinner. Erin went to the bin. Thrust her hand inside, pulled out a wet McCoys cheese & onion packet, a tangle of slimy hair, a dented beer carton, a torn up NHS letter, an oven pizza box, and an old bra. Under the week’s rubbish, lying placidly like a crown jewel was a small rib cage. Licks of pink falling off it. The burly smell of old meat rose from the bin into her nostrils. She picked up the carcass by the spine and placed it slowly into the risotto pot. Authentic bone flavour, she thought. 

For a charm of powerful trouble, like a hell-broth boil and bubble. Erin laughed to herself.  

She roughly chopped the strawberries, pulled out a large silver pan and toppled them inside. Then poured a 250g bag of caster sugar on top. How wanted she would be by her children if she had them with Dylan. How beautiful and true her life would become, right down to the core, while she made everything from scratch. She started to whisk the cream into stiff peaks. Gradually the substance resisted her beating, getting thicker and thicker. After this, she took a tea towel and polished the edges of each ramekin. She added more water to the rice and stirred. Then she placed the halloumi inside a frying pan squirting the whole pallid block with honey. 

Erin sensed the outline of an unknown feeling stalking her. Shaping her insides with a sense she should be doing something better or something vital had been forgotten. What that was, she did not know. If she could just climb onto the feeling, as one might climb onto drift wood gliding over a current. As one might be saved. 

Dylan would be home in a few hours. She would take the time to ask about his day. Unpick it, the way a hand holds fresh linen between its fingers. Crisply, with intention. The cause and effect between words, ingredients and pink warmth, would be fully developed. They would be enveloped in warmth. Erin pulled her phone out to take a picture of the bubbling risotto and the phone slipped from her hand. PLOP. The screen flashed with the flat primary colours of red, blue and yellow. Then, it dipped below the surface, pulled under by the purple sludge. 

Erin gasped and plunged her hand into the pan. Hot crunched into her fingers. Conscious of the time, she turned to look at the clock above the fridge. 16:45. Her stomach churned as she heard the key go through the front door. Dylan was home early. She left the phone in the bubbling mixture. Erin could smell the risotto was burning. Dylan’s voice called through. 

Hello, Hello?

She wanted this dinner to be perfect. The mousses weren’t ready, the rice was burnt and mixed with phone and bone. The halloumi was clearly rubbery. Which is so often a risk when you cook with halloumi. You need to serve it right away. Dylan walked through the hallway into the kitchen. His angular face was calm. His shiny brown eyes searched for her, moving like air quivering in heat. Erin smiled, tears in her eyes. She had wanted to unpick his day with him. He moved forwards to kiss her, then stood back. Her left hand was raw and red. Slashes of purple on her fingers like tangled ribbons. Cooking pans rattled behind her and the kitchen sides were covered in a deep deep pink. He thought he saw a carcass.

What’s wrong? 

I called in sick and I wanted to make you a pink-theme. A pink themed dinner.