‘Listen, Alix, I’m not telling you your job and I really don’t want to offend your cheffing sensibilities, but that steak you’ve got for Gran, I warn you it must be very,verywell-done; you must cook it toextinction. She’ll perform, like, a forensic post-mortem on it, and if there’s so much as aspeckof anything resembling blood, she’ll foam at the mouth.’
I laughed. Actually, I’m not precious about the food I prepare. As a private chef, you can’t afford to be. People have some weird ideas about food but that’s entirely their own affair. So long as they pay me I’ll cook it.
‘Okay.’
‘She’ll say she wants itcremated.’
I laughed again. But Emma sighed. ‘And I promise you, she will keep on saying that.’
‘Message understood.’
Putting the finishing touches to the prawn cocktails, for the twentieth time I smoothed down over my hips and bottom the ‘little black dress’ Emma had forced on me and wished it wasn’t quite so tight. It was in fact a column dress or bodycon in wool, so it was also rather hot. However, my principal worry was that Caroline would immediately think I was imitating her.
‘Will your grandmother object to my serving seafood to everyone else for starters?’ I asked.
‘Not if you whack a gigantic bowl, and I mean gigantic, of that mulligatawny in front of her. That’ll keep her well happy. Listen,’ she then repeated, ‘do you want to go call your family or something? Dad told me you’ve got a little boy. Do you want to go and phone him to wish him merry Christmas? I can keep things going in here if you do.’ Emma glanced at Alphonse, who was now in a deep slumber in the corner on a pile of old rugs she had unearthed from somewhere and fashioned into a bed, one of his lamb-like ears trailing like a little woolly scarf over the edge. ‘And see to him,’ she said.
The thoughtfulness touched me, the reminder of Carl bringing a lump to my throat. Clearing it, I thanked her and explained I had video called my parents and my son first thing that morning, reflecting how neither had been what you might call satisfying. In Cyprus, none of my family had seemed to know what to say, my brother,sister-in-law, father and mother in turn disappearing and reappearing, repetitively wishing me merry Christmas to the accompaniment of the twins screaming in the background, quite often getting a blank screen. And everyone, when they were actually there, had opted for heartiness; normal conversation had seemed strangled by the strictures of Christmas bonhomie. As for Carl in Italy, he’d been so overexcited I’d feared it would end in tears so had kept things as light as possible, promising to call him again later in the day when hopefully he would have calmed down a little.
‘Well, I hope they’re all good,’ Emma said politely.
Her friend Josh came into the kitchen before I could reply. He’d arrived twenty minutes earlier whereupon Emma had promptly detailed him to look after Henri.
‘Got any beer, Em?’ he said. ‘I’ve a bloody awful hangover.’
‘You shouldn’t drink so much,’ she said, reprovingly but nonetheless clicking the cap off a bottle of Stella Artois from the fridge and handing it to him.
‘You try being a Jew at Christmas,’ he muttered and took a long pull.
I threw him a sympathetic little glance. He seemed a nice kid, not especially Jewish-looking unless you counted his very dark hair, which, in any event, had been bleached to extinction and was only black at the roots. Bull-necked and of average height and build, he was much shorter than Emma, towards whom he was behaving with a kind of tolerant familiarity, as was evident when Emma then complained she had told him to wear something smart. Glancing down at his jeans and thick, checked shirt over awhite tee as if seeing them for the first time, he shrugged his shoulders.
‘Who gives a shit?’ he said.
Before Emma could lay into him, however, which I could see she was about to do, the back door opened and in came Nicole, muffled up to her eyebrows in a huge black shawl and her too-large pink puffer coat.
‘So that’s where your coat went to,’ Josh exclaimed. He turned to me. ‘Wonderful woman, Emma Mandeville,’ he said to me. ‘She’d give you the coat off her back. In fact, that’s obviously what she actually did, this last spring. She gave her coat to this little lady here.’
He gestured at Nicole who, swaying slightly on her feet, looked, unsurprisingly, completely bewildered.
‘She was cold,’ Emma snapped, tossing her head a little.
‘I’m sure she was, but you then nickedmycoat for the rest of the term, leaving me to freeze to death.’
‘I gave it back!’ Emma cried defensively.
‘In June.’
‘Look, can we just leave this for a moment?’ I interjected as Nicole stumbled out of the room. She had looked distinctly rocky, her normally glowing face a dullish grey and her eyes puffy, as if she’d been crying. ‘I don’t think she’s very well.’
Twenty minutes later, I rushed into the salon with a plate of appetizers to find everybody had arrived in my absence. Luc was back with Susan, who was engaged in tearing open presents with all the careless ferocity of an over-hyped three-year-old; Caroline looking snooty in themost peculiar outfit – well, at least it wasn’t a bodycon dress; and Jules Croisset, who embraced me with operatic warmth.
‘Alix! How lovely to see you. I gather you’re joining us for lunch.’
‘Indeed,’ echoed Susan through the sound of ripping Sellotape, adding graciously, ‘you are most welcome, Alice.’ Forget the name problem, either the presents or the presence of her granddaughter standing by like a warder seemed to have put Susan Mandeville in an uncharacteristically mellow mood.
Luc drew me to one side. ‘Is Nicole all right?’ he asked quietly. ‘Emma said she’s come home from the mosque looking rotten.’
‘Fine. She’s gone to bed with some paracetamol and a hot-water bottle. I’ll keep an eye on her. She has… cramps,’ I murmured delicately.
