“The special curry,” I told her, “is a time-honoured tradition of the O’Donnell household.”
“It’s shit.”
“It’s a shittradition.”
Jaz started bagging. “Starting a new tradition.”
The little piece of me that really wanted Jaz to accept she was part of the family melted slightly. Because this was good, right? If she felt she was able to start traditions? O’Donnell-Blackwood-Johnson traditions.
I pulled out my card to pay, and she looked at me with deep suspicion.
“I can get this,” she told me. “I’ve got money.”
“You’ve got pocket money,” I replied. “That I give you. To spend on, I don’t know”—I tried to think of things teenagers would buy that didn’t sound condescending—“stuff for yourself.”
“Thisisfor myself. I don’t want to eat the curry.”
“I’m not letting you spend your own money on chicken breasts. Especially not when we’re both going to eat them. That’s like…that’s just fundamentally wrong parenting.”
Jaz looked at me like I’d spat in her face. Or—and I didn’tknowbut I was beginning to think this closer to the mark—like I’d insulted her mum.
“I just mean,” I said very quickly and very carefully, “that I’m here and I’ve already got my wallet out. It’s kind of you to offer, but—and it took me a long time to realise this myself, so I don’t blame you for not believing me—it’s okay to let other people do stuff for you.”
Jaz didn’t reply, but she did let me pay. Still, she was silent all the rest of the way to Pucklethroop-on-the-Wold.
When we arrived, Mum opened the door and two of Judy’s dogs bounced out to greet us—okay, to greet Jaz—but Mum was pleased to see me.
“Mon caneton.” She hugged me. “Chérie.” She hugged Jaz. “Why are you holding a packet of chicken?”
“Making dinner,” Jaz replied.
Mum looked crestfallen. Crucially, though, and credit to Jaz for playing this one right, the kind of performative crestfallen that didn’t actually mean she was in any way hurt or upset. “Oh, but the special curry!”
“It’s shit,” Jaz told her. “I’m making soup.”
“Might be nice for a change,” said Judy, who’d crept into the doorway to greet us. “Actually very partial to soup. Reminds me of my old grandfather.”
“Fond of it, was he?” I asked warily.
Judy shook her head. “No, but he once threw a tureen full of minestrone at the vicar. Can’t remember why now, but still every time I look at a pot of broth, I think of him.”
With a look of feigned betrayal, Mum threw her hands in the air. “Fine, fine, reject the special curry, see if I care. Then one day when I am dead you will say to yourself, Luc, you will say to yourself, ‘Do you remember the days when Maman used to make for us thespecial curry?’ And you will reply, ‘I do, Luc, but now she is dead, and we will never have the special curry again.’”
I was rolling my eyes at this, but Jaz, who was basically an eye roll in jeans and an ill-fitting jumper, seemed to take it incredibly seriously. “I don’t have to.” Her voice wobbled slightly. “You can make the curry if you want.”
“Let.” This was Judy. “The girl. Cook.”
“Iamletting the girl cook.” Gently shooing us aside, Mum sailed serenely into the house. “I am just also reminding her and my horrible son that one day I will be dead and then they will appreciate me and I will look up at them from the afterlife and I will say, ‘Serves you both right.’”
“Down,” I corrected her. “Look down at us.”
Mum gave a little laugh. “That is sweet of you, mon caneton, but there is a reason they say the devil has the best songs. Now”—she clapped her hands—“while I am still alive, you should both come in.”
I sighed. “Leave it out. You’ll outlive all of us.”
Jaz murmured something under her breath which I could have sworn wasNo, she won’t, but I let it go. With two of the dogs—Eugenie and Camilla, now I had a better look—trailing after her, Jaz went into the kitchen, where I was ninety percent certain she couldn’t do any more harm than Mum or I would, and I went to settle down in the front room with the rest of the nominal adults.
“Sorry about the curry,” I told Mum, even though we both knew I wasn’t really. “But Jaz knows what she’s doing. She cooks for herself all the time at home.”
