by Jenny Colgan
“I didn’t know you had lots of shops,” said Lizzie.
“You didn’t ask,” said Georges, buttering himself another slice of toast. “You say, Ah, Georges, I have dropped the mustard on the floor again. Ah, Georges, where is the taramasalata? Ah, Georges, once more I have cut open my finger and we must throw away the good meat.”
Penny laughed again. Lizzie wanted to throw butter at her.
“That’s amazing,” Penny said, “to come to this country with nothing and build up a whole chain. You’re quite the tycoon!”
Georges noticeably puffed up. “Well, I don’t know,” he said. “You know, I work hard.”
“Well, I think it’s amazing,” said Penny. “I think you’re so clever.”
Lizzie was staring at her in disbelief. She couldn’t mean it. Penny couldn’t be serious, trying to pretend she liked someone like Georges. And Lizzie couldn’t believe Georges had money. She’d thought he was just the fat sandwich-maker guy, who made her laugh and made her embarrassed and cheered her up and told her off. She realized as she thought this that she had begun to think of him in a proprietorial manner that wasn’t exactly appropriate. It’s just, Georges was her . . . friend.
“You must take me around some of your places some time,” said Penny. “Mind you, if I can eat that well everywhere, you may have to roll me around!”
“I’m sure you would never get fat,” said Georges. “Fat is only for old idiots like me.”
As Penny laughed her high tinkling laugh, Lizzie realized her teeth were gritted.
Two days later Penny “popped in” to the café. Lizzie was furious. After everything she’d done for Penny . . . the help, the care. And now Penny was muscling in on the only part of her life she really enjoyed, that was hers. She spent her life looking out for her mum, her gran, her bloody headstrong bloody sister. Georges and the café were hers. Well, not hers, not like that but . . . how dare she? What a pig-selfish way to get over a broken heart.
“Hello,” Penny said to Georges. “I thought you were never here!”
Georges shrugged. “I like to visit all my shops.”
“Quite right. Very shrewd. I said to Sloan, we must see if you’re interested in catering for any of our launches . . . we’ve got a very big exhibition coming up—”
“Oh yes?” said Georges. “We might be interested. Canapés, goat’s cheese, that kind of thing is good, yes?”
Lizzie watched how enthusiastic he was getting over the new idea.
“We could take some small sunblush tomatoes and stuff them with rice and . . .”
“And pesto,” said Lizzie. “That would be good.”
“That would be very good,” said Georges. “And take some pecorino cheese and—”
“Hang on,” said Penny. “I did say it. But Sloan said, no, if you handed out food nobody ever ate it, and it interfered with good drinking time and the drunker people got, the more paintings they bought.”
“Oh,” said Georges.
“It would have been good,” said Lizzie loyally.
“I know,” said Georges.
“Anyway,” said Penny briskly. “What’s good on the menu today? It all looks so delicious.”
“El Bullitt,” said Georges proudly. “Portuguese stew. To our secret recipe.”
“As long as it’s dairy free,” said Penny. She’d been saying this for years, ever since she’d read in a magazine it was a good way to avoid eating fatty foods. Georges looked genuinely upset.
“But no cheese? No fresh milk? No hot lattes or Greek yogurt?”
“Uh, I seem to be OK with yogurt,” said Penny.
“Oh, well, if you can eat yogurt you can eat Parmesan.”
“Just a juice, please,” said Penny. “So. Georges. What do you do to relax?”
Georges stopped chopping up aubergines for a moment.
“What do you mean, relax? I do not understand this English word. Aha, that is me making a very funny joke.”
“Well, you came out partying,” said Penny. “So you can’t be all square.”
“I am all round,” said Georges. His English, Lizzie had noticed, seemed to deteriorate a little when he got nervous. “I must stop with the very funny jokes, I will cut myself like with a knife.”
“Me and the girls,” said Penny—nothing ventured, nothing gained, she was thinking, “were going to try out a new restaurant tonight. Would you like to join us?”
That was fast, thought Lizzie.
Georges looked at Lizzie.
“You are going to try out new restaurant?”
“I’m not invited,” said Lizzie, trying to busy herself with something.
“Of course you’re invited,” said Penny, sounding irritated. “Do I have to send you a golden ticket to get you to do anything? No wonder you never go out. It’s a celebration to, you know, start off the rest of my life and all that. Plus, Brooke’s got us into an opening, so the food will be free.”
“Well, I promised to go see Gran.”
“Join us later then. Sheesh.” Penny looked conspiratorially at Georges. “And next time I’ll remember to send the footman with the engraved scroll.”
“No, almost any invitation would do for me,” said Lizzie.
“It’s tough, living with a martyr,” sighed Penny.
“I’m not a martyr!” said Lizzie, brushing out her grandmother’s hair. The journey up had been worse than ever and she’d had to sit next to a group of giggling scrawny teenage girls. Lizzie remembered when the only thing you had to worry about with teenage girls was that they would take the piss out of your clothes. Now, according to the papers, they were also into happy slapping and general physical violence, so she had trained her eyes out of the window and kept them there.
“You are a little bit of a martyr, little twin,” said her grandmother. She’d seemed a lot more lucid today. Lizzie wondered, deep down, if she mightn’t be getting better. Could that happen? She’d have asked one of the staff, but there was rarely anyone to be seen, and anyway, she was slightly frightened of them.
“You do complain a lot. Especially now you’re not looking so, well . . . bountiful. And you should go out more. You don’t need to come and see me every night . . . I know I’m just a boring old lady. You’re young and should be going out and having fun.”
So even her old gran, half crazy and confined to a bed in Barnet, thought she was a loser, pondered Lizzie gloomily, in what she realized was a martyr-ish manner.
“Do you know, I’d like to see my son,” said her gran, out of nowhere. “I think he’ll come to see me. Don’t you?”
Well, seeing as he had disappeared without a trace almost twenty-five years ago, no, thought Lizzie. Maybe she was overestimating Gran’s improvement.
“Yes, I would like to see him,” her gran continued dreamily. “Anyway, why aren’t you getting ready for dinner? They’re going out to dinner? You must go. You like the man, you have to chase him.”
Lizzie stared at her hands.
“There is a man I like,” she admitted quietly.
“Oh yes?” said her gran.
“But I think Penny maybe likes him too . . .”
Her gran leaned over and patted Lizzie’s hand. “I liked a man once. But I didn’t chase him. Then he died in the war. So, the moral is obvious.”
“Chase a man or he’ll die in a war?”
“Exactly.”
“Like, the sex war?” said Lizzie.
“Oh, any war,” said her gran. “And you can tell me all about it the next time you come. But not too soon, all right?”
Chapter Ten
The new restaurant was everything Lizzie had expected it to be, and worse. She had always dreamed, when she was working in the stamp firm, of what it would be like to come to a place with real napkins and mood lighting. She remembered for their seventh birthday their mother had brought them up to Leicester Square and taken them to Garfunkel’s and they’d been allowed to eat as much ice cream as they wanted; Lizzie had eaten so muc
h she’d been sick in a Technicolor fashion all the way down the toilets (something which hadn’t seemed to surprise the staff).
At the time she’d thought this was the pinnacle of fine dining and had continued to do so for a long time. But no, she saw every day now, pin-thin women on the streets of Chelsea slipping into restaurants where a bowl of spaghetti cost twenty pounds. Genuine ladies-who-lunched then slipped back into cars after two glasses of mineral water and a leaf. What would it be like, she wondered, to go out for lunch, right in the middle of the week, to just wander in and sit and chat to your friends for two hours? What would they even talk about? Handbags probably. She couldn’t really talk to Grainne about much these days.
Still, she was looking not bad in a simple black wrap dress she’d bought from Hennes, now she’d finally been paid. It was cheap, but it didn’t look it. Well, it didn’t look that cheap. And it suited her, which was a first, and, she thought, twisting around and examining herself from a few different angles, she looked definitely “curvy” rather than “plump.”
The restaurant, just off the Fulham Road, was called Daffodil, for no earthly reason Lizzie could work out, but its food was, according to the invite Penny had left for her on the kitchen work surface, a new fusion between raw foods and Mongolian cuisine. There was a sample menu, but from the looks of it, it mainly involved uncooked carrots and porridge. The aim of the restaurant was stated to be “leaving mind and spirit in a harmonious spirit of freshness” rather than, she noticed, feeding you and making you satisfied and happy.
Across the front was a strip of smoked glass, and the lighting inside beautifully gleaming, making it extraordinarily soft and flattering. Only the heads and feet of punters were visible through normal glass, so it looked like lots of disembodied golden mannequins laughing and screeching. At the doorway, several wafer-thin girls were hanging about smoking furiously and giving each other dirty looks through smoky dark eyes. Into the monkey pen, thought Lizzie, handing over her card to a ridiculously well-dressed bouncer person and squeezing her way inside.
“Lallie,” said Brooke, waving happily. Lizzie went over crossly. She didn’t want a nutty posh-o nickname like everybody else, thank you. After her little stint in the gallery, she’d resolved to stop letting people treat her like a pushover. Well, like so much of one.
“It’s Lizzie, actually,” she said, as stiffly as she dared. “I live upstairs. We’ve met. My hands smell of garlic, I never get any post and my sister’s a tart.”
Brooke paused for a minute, then broke into a smile.
“Here, try this, Lizzie,” she said, handing her a glass. “It’s a thistle cocktail. Disgusting, but effective.”
Lizzie accepted the proffered drink and took a hearty gulp. She couldn’t believe that had worked.
“Jesus. That’s repulsive.”
“I know,” said Brooke. “But apparently it gets you drunk while performing a full body detox!”
“Great,” said Lizzie. Rob and Sven passed by, looking sharky as usual. They appeared to be wearing zoot suits.
“Sven,” said Brooke fulsomely. “You remember Lizzie, don’t you?”
Sven tried to look as if he did. Obviously, thought Lizzie, this dress wasn’t quite doing the job. Or, if you looked at it another way, it was.
“Have you tried the canapés?” he said, making a face. “It’s, like, black pudding served with a radish, and spinach and cream and shit.”
“Excellent,” said Brooke, patting her tiny hips. “Inedible canapés. This place is going to do fantastically.”
Penny swung around. Keeping to her new simple regime, she was wearing a white top with subtle diamanté sewn into it, so it glinted in the light.
“Hey, Lalls! How’s Gran?”
“She’s fine, Pens,” said Lizzie. “You’d know if you went to see her.”
“Yes,” said Penny. “Imagine, me going to see someone who wanted nothing to do with us, whose son abandoned us, and who has never given us an iota of support or encouragement throughout our entire lives. My bad!” She scooped up another cocktail from a passing waiter and took a large swig. “Oh God, I thought these things might get better, not worse.”
“So, Penny,” said Minty, flouncing up and kissing Sven on the lips, “where’s the new man then?”
Penny shot a quick glance at Lizzie. She wished she hadn’t mentioned Georges to the girls. But it was like they said—she had to get back on the horse, decide what she wanted, and go for it. Just because Lizzie was making this big deal of not approving of her behavior so soon after Will. Well, Will was different. Penny had thought he was special, then he’d turned out to be a gold-digging fink, and she wasn’t going to let herself go through that again. She was not going to be one of those women, like her mother or her classmates, who just assumed all men would let you down, who sang “I Will Survive” on the karaoke down the social after too many rum and Cokes.
Penny was going for security—real security—and Lizzie could stop getting her knickers in a twist; you’d think she fancied the hairy short-arse.
“Don’t be stupid,” she muttered. “There’s no new man.”
Lizzie stared at her. She couldn’t mean . . . she couldn’t be serious. I mean, a mild flirtation maybe, but surely not enough to tell her friends about him. But Penny was definitely looking pink, as Georges, dressed in a smart black polo neck that did nothing to hide his girth but went extremely well with his black hair and blue eyes, pushed his way through the revolving doors.
Fuck, thought Lizzie. Fuck, fuck, fuck. And she even chucked back another cocktail.
“Hello, Lizzie,” said Georges, looking, as always, delighted to see her.
“Yeah, hello, whatever,” said Lizzie, feeling sulky and awkward.
Georges looked confused. “You look nice tonight. Though I miss the frog tights.”
“Ooh, what are the frog tights, Lizzie?” said Brooke, bursting into the conversation.
“Nothing,” said Lizzie, feeling even more sulky and annoyed at herself. She bucked herself up. This wasn’t what her grandmother had meant. It wasn’t Georges’s fault. “You look nice, too.” She smiled at Georges.
“You think?” he grimaced. “You know, I must go on diet. I went to Borough market today and ate so much cheese I think I am blowing up like giant balloon. Ooh.”
He grabbed two canapés off a passing plate and stuck them in his mouth, then his eyebrows made a comic twitch of disappointment.
“Now, this is not food. You must come with me to Borough market, Lizzie. You would love it there. Everything is so fresh, and good. And they let you taste it. Too much, maybe. They know me there, so they say, ‘Georges, cheese!’ They know I am a soft touch.”
“If you had me there I wouldn’t let you.”
“You wouldn’t? You would be worse, I think. You would say, ‘More cheese!’”
“I would not! I would be discerning!”
“You would say, ‘Ah, orange cheese. Yellow cheese. Green cheese. Yes please!’”
“OK, that’s enough, Dr. Seuss,” said Lizzie.
“Perhaps I need to appoint a cheese consultant for my business. I wonder, would anyone here be interested?” He squinted around the room, as if confused, while Lizzie giggled.
“GEORGES!” yelled Penny, although she was only about a meter away.
“Penny,” said Georges. “Hello.”
Penny pushed her chest out a little and smiled a dazzling smile.
“You know, Rob and I here were just talking about cars.”
Rob nodded. Lizzie didn’t think they had been talking about cars at all, but a man couldn’t deny talking about cars. Brooke nodded at Penny approvingly.
“Lizzie and I were talking about cheese,” said Georges gravely.
“Yeah, whatever,” said Penny. “So, anyway, Georges, what are you driving these days?”
Georges looked perturbed. “Uh. I don’t drive.”
Lizzie felt a small stab of triumph. For sure, they were barking up th
e wrong tree with this one. She could see what Penny was trying to do, but Georges wasn’t rich. He didn’t behave like someone rich.
“Oh,” said Penny, trying to keep the disappointed tone out of her voice. She could already tell Brooke and Minty weren’t exactly impressed with his looks.
Georges looked at the floor. “I have a service. I am too lazy to drive, yes?”
A service? That meant, what, a chauffeur? Lizzie’s face fell. The other girls perked up.
“Oh, yah,” said Minty immediately. “Much easier.”
“Definitely,” said Penny. She moved closer to him and, as if on cue, the other girls took a step back.
“So, tell me more,” she said, leaning into him a little. She looked beautiful, Lizzie thought wistfully, as her perfume reached her. Georges couldn’t help it. He looked dazzled, as Penny gazed at him—they were about the same height—with wonder in her eyes.
“Well,” said Georges. “I thought about buying a car, then I thought, Why not let someone else do the hard work, eh? And I don’t care much about cars. I think they are silly boys’ toys. Not important.”
Penny nodded. “I think that’s really true,” she said, a tad breathlessly. “There’s a lot more important things to think about.”
“Yes!” said Georges.
“Like cheese,” said Lizzie. But nobody heard.
Of course, it was her fault, thought Lizzie, licking her wounds in the corner. Even the cocktails had started to taste better. If she’d told Penny or asked her to back down she would have. They did not have a history of having the same taste in men. But protecting her sister by letting her take anything she wanted—that wasn’t right, was it?
Penny was steeling herself. She’d done this before. It was the only way for her. She wasn’t calm and grounded like Lizzie, or full of confidence like Brooke. She had looks, cheek, and about three more birthdays to do what she could with them, or she’d be spending the rest of her life in the All-American New York Diner, and no mistake.
And she was getting somewhere. Georges certainly seemed surprised, and a bit fascinated. I mean, surely she could get used to his . . . build. She looked around the room. It was full of gorgeous skinny tall women with little fat men. That was the way it worked. Nobody got everything. If she did manage to pull one of the four good-looking rich straight men in London they’d be too busy forming an orderly queue of other women to spend any time with her. Plus, she knew her limits. She couldn’t ski, couldn’t ride a horse, her accent probably wasn’t fooling anyone. So. Time to get on. Be pragmatic.