Sisters

by Prue Leith

  She took her time, luxuriating like a cat, enjoying the display. The mating game. She wondered if he’d take the bait. She wanted him to. She didn’t want to have to pretend she was yawning because she was tired.

  Of course he took it. She felt his hand slip into the gap at her midriff and slide round her body to encircle her waist. Then he seemed to stop, hesitating. She heard him put down his glass. He was giving her time to say yes or no.

  Without straightening up, without opening her eyes, Carrie shifted her feet very slightly apart, and turned her body fractionally toward him. She heard Richard’s quick intake of breath, as he moved his knee between her legs and pulled her to him, dropping his head to kiss her neck.

  He smelt divine, a mix of alcohol and aftershave, or maybe shampoo. Whatever. She raised her head and opened her eyes to look, unfocused because of the nearness, into his. She held his gaze as he brought his mouth down on hers. He kissed her and she again closed her eyes, letting her mouth relax, willing and soft.

  It was a deep, sexy kiss, and Carrie could feel it in her legs. When he pulled away, she took her glass, tipped the remaining ice cube into her mouth, and slowly used her tongue to push it into his. His eyes locked hers as he passed it back to her.

  Then Richard tipped a handful of ice cubes from his glass into his hand and ran them down her hot neck, over her bare shoulders, round the exposed rim of stomach, back to her face, into her mouth. Carrie’s breath came faster. It was an amazing turn-on: her supercharged skin, the hot desire and freezing ice. She wanted more. She wanted it everywhere.

  As Carrie thought of that first meeting, she felt a pale reflection of the original desire. That night, at Richard’s flat, they had had controlled, then uncontrolled, sex. And drunk or not, they’d come back to each other twice more in the night, and again in the morning. Sore, hung-over and weary, they had finally risen at noon, with the unspoken knowledge that this was not a one-night stand. They were an item.

  But since then Richard had fallen in love with her. They still had passionate, near violent sex, but the passion, she thought, was born of desperation rather than lust, the roughness born of jealousy not desire. And she didn’t enjoy it as much any more. It was pretty irritating to be telephoned at 6 p.m. to be asked when you’d be home, or to feel your lover’s eyes on you every minute you were together.

  She needed a bit of time away from him. That was the truth. So she’d told him her editor was too mean to pay for them both, and before he could say he’d pay his share, she’d said, “I guess it’s better anyway. I don’t work as well with you around. We eat and drink too much and fuck too much.”

  Richard smiled. “We could try not to.”

  “No, really, I don’t want you to come. My deadlines are hell. I have to file the first piece from Paris, the day after I meet the guy. And the other three within a week.”

  “OK, sweetheart. But no jumping into bed with the boys in white.” He was trying to joke, but Carrie knew he was jealous of her chef friends. He was probably right to be worried. Some of them were pretty tasty. But still, why did he have to say it, in that proprietorial manner? She’d never made him any promises.

  *

  The theme of the series was the take-over of posh Paris kitchens by the British.

  It would be fun to write, because all four chefs (one Irish, two Scottish—one a woman—and one English) were good, and could give the gastronomic Frogs a run for their money. She’d tried hard to find a Welshman, but as far as she could see, there weren’t too many Welsh chefs outside Wales, and none in Paris.

  Her first appointment was for lunch with Kevin O’Hearne. Thanks to the Eurostar being late and taxis at the Gard du Nord being non-existent, she hadn’t time to drop her luggage off at the Hotel Berkeley. Even so she didn’t arrive at Kevin’s restaurant until 1:45 p.m. Le Relais Irlandais, in the unfashionable 18th Arrondissement, was somewhere between a brasserie and a bistro, and there was nowhere to store her Gucci overnight bag, which became a hurdle for every waiter passing her table.

  But the food was good. Kevin O’Hearne was a big simple guy, and he served big, simple plates of Irish food. Carrie had worked for him once, years ago when he’d been Head Chef of a Belfast hotel and she’d been hired to help him do the food for the hotel’s brochure. What she remembered most about his cooking was how awful it looked and how wonderful it tasted. Which is why he’d needed her. She also remembered that they’d gone to bed together and, full of Guinness, he’d fallen asleep during the trailer. What she couldn’t remember was what happened when he woke up. Main feature or a blow-out? It was mildly embarrassing not to know.

  His cooking was quite as good as she remembered. A great steaming lump of mutton (curiously called Hoggit) came with a giant wedge of savoy cabbage and waxy boiled potatoes in a bowl of broth. It looked like peasant fare, but the broth showed the skill of a master. It was crystal clear, completely free of fat, with a deep, aromatic, meaty flavor worthy of Escoffier. The mutton fell from the bone, and the cabbage was emerald green, fresh and tender.

  When she was on the Pratie Apple (a deep fried apple dumpling made with potato pastry and served with treacle and thick Irish cream—heart attack food , but divine) Kevin joined her. He was red-faced from the heat of the kitchen, his ginger hair in damp points round his face, his apron filthy.

  “Hi, me darlin’,” he said, wiping his face with his torchon before kissing her. Carrie knew Kevin’s real accent had only a hint of Ulster in it, but for some reason he liked to play the bog-Irish yokel. He dumped two bottles of Murphy’s on the table and sat down, tripping over her Gucci bag as he did so.

  “Be-jasus, woman, what’s this? Are you after staying for a week or somep’n?”

  Carrie rubbed the fine tan leather where his chef’s clogs had marked it and said, “Clumsy bastard. You haven’t changed, I see.”

  Kevin grinned and dropped the stage Irish. He said, “Hope not. Hope you haven’t either. You look as edible as ever.” His green eyes, shiny and round in his shiny round face, flashed at her, “Any chance of a replay? I seem to remember I screwed up last time. You were a touch hostile at breakfast.”

  Carrie smiled, unfazed. “Forget it, friend. This time it’s your cooking on trial.”

  “OK. Fair enough. But if you change your mind. If you need a squire in Paris, I know some good haunts.”

  It flashed through Carrie’s mind that she might like an evening with him. His rough looks still attracted her. He had lovely eyes, hazel-green, the lashes much darker than his hair.

  She said “OK, Kev, thanks. I might take you up on that.”

  Kevin put his great bear-paw over her hand, and she noticed the half-moon purple burns on the side of his wrist, and the black outlines to his fingernails.

  Chefs generally had battered hands like this. The burns from the oven shelves as they slammed in trays and pans, the stained fingers from chopping mushrooms or onions, stoning cherries or peeling beetroot. Maybe that’s why she found them so attractive.

  Chapter 6

  At 4 p.m. Carrie was back from the third of her Michelin Star restaurant sessions. As she rode the gilded lift to the third floor she thought how good a vodka and Coke in the bath would be. In the last two days she had interviewed three of the chefs, eaten their food, and supervised the photographing of their dishes, their restaurants, and themselves. She was knackered. Only one to go, the Englishman, and he worked here in the hotel.

  Somehow she’d managed to file her copy on Kevin, and had been cheered by an e-mail from the food editor: “Great piece. Kevin sounds as tasty as his hoggit. Pics perfect too.”

  She’d drafted her articles on the two Scottish chefs, though they were not done yet. She wanted to finish them before the meals blurred into one great gastronomic binge.

  She was exhausted. Eating that much was hard work, and because the chefs always wanted her to try half a dozen other dishes she
had not ordered, it took forever. Then, with stomach tight as a drum, and not exactly sober, she had to supervise the shoot. And then go back to the Berkeley and write her copy. At least she didn’t have to take the pics too. For some of the cheapskate outfits she worked for, she was writer, stylist, cook and photographer.

  She pushed open her bedroom door, and her heart sank. Her room was a total tip.

  She walked to the telephone and dialed Housekeeping. She spoke French, smiling into the handset. Could someone possibly come and service Room 21? Yes, she understood that the maid had not wanted to disturb her papers, but she’d sort them now. “You are most kind, Madam. I am very grateful.”

  Carrie ordered a Diet Coke and a large vodka from Room Service, then whirled into action: scooping up menus and papers and stuffing them into the dressing table drawer, flinging dirty chef’s whites and shoes into the cupboard, swinging into the bathroom to turn on the taps full blast. She stood on her trainers to force them off her feet, hauled her clothes off and kicked them after the others into the cupboard. She shrugged into the hotel’s toweling robe, and again lifted the telephone. She dialed Kevin’s mobile.

  When Kevin came on the line, she could hear the roar and clatter of his kitchen in the background. She said, “I thought you had Thursday nights off?”

  “I do. Just leaving. Why. Do you want to party?”

  “I want you to come to the Berkeley and help me eat my way through Robert Hanlon’s food.”

  “Sounds good to me. What time?”

  “Nine? In the bar?”

  “You’re on, lady.”

  Carrie pressed the TV remote until the radio delivered some timeless French torch singer. Juliette Greco, she thought.

  The maid and room service waiter arrived together. She over-tipped them both, then carried her drinks into the bathroom, leaving the maid to do her best with the room.

  Carrie sank into the blissful combination of warm water and music, groaning pleasurably as the ache of exhaustion receded. She tipped the vodka into the Coke, and took a mouthful. God this was good. And the job was nearly done. And she was earning a packet, getting three fees: for writing the article, for the food styling and for supervising the photography. She had negotiated a decent whack because it was a rush job to replace a feature that the egomaniac magazine editor had suddenly taken against, and Carrie could deliver both copy and pictures. She knew the Paris restaurant scene, she spoke good French, and she could work fast.

  This little burst of over-work would pay, she hoped, for a new van. The old Renault hatchback had carried so many copper saucepans, crates of silver and heavyweight props it was down to its axles, and no amount of scrubbing seemed to lift the faint smell of spilled food and olive oil. What Carrie wanted was a decent van, and a separate car. Preferably a sports car with no room to carry any catering gear or props in. A Porsche would be nice.

  As she lay in the Givenchy bubbles, and Piaf took over from Greco, Carrie examined her arms and hands, stretching them out before her in the steam, admiring them with narcissistic attention. Her skin was good, golden and smooth with not the slightest sign of wrinkly armpits or sagging upper arms. She looked as good as she had at 22, ten long years ago. Maybe better, due to all that torture in the gym. And her hands, for all she was a cook, were pretty good. One bad scar from years ago where the boning knife had slipped. Of course, cooking meant she had to keep her nails pretty short. Maybe she’d treat herself to a manicure. Metallic silver perhaps?

  Her mind drifted back to Monday, after lunch, when she’d been helping Kevin make his great lumpy portions of food look camera-worthy. He’d looked with distaste at her surgical gloves and said, “What the hell are you wearing those for? Do you think I’m going to poison you or something?”

  “No. But I don’t want hands like yours.” She’d held his fingers in her gloved ones and said “How do you get these clean, presuming you ever do?”

  “Neat bleach.”

  “Yeah. That’s my point.”

  Carrie took a lot of trouble with the way she looked, even to work. She wore chef’s whites, but not any old whites. She ordered her trousers made-to-measure from the French chef’s supplier, Braggart. They had a tiny black and white hounds-tooth check, smart enough not to be recognizable as chef’s pants at all. They fitted snugly round her bum, and the straight narrow cut emphasized her long legs. And Braggart’s jackets for women were double-stitched and perfectly cut.

  But she didn’t obey all the sartorial rules of the professional kitchen. If she’d worked for a hotel or a catering company jewelry would have been out. She liked the glimpse of a single pearl on a silver wire, visible where she left the top button of her jacket undone. And she generally wore pearl stud earrings, or gold hoops.

  I may be untidy, she thought, but I mostly look OK. And my hair’s always clean. Which Poppy’s isn’t.

  The thought of her sister clouded Carrie’s face. Poppy was mad. She had the dishiest husband in the world and she didn’t mind how she looked. She never dieted, she washed her hair in the shower, letting it dry as it liked, she only wore make-up for the stage or when filming, and was systematically tidy. She tidied up as their parents had taught her, and had failed to teach Carrie: as you went along, automatically, and all the time.

  By five o’clock Carrie was feeling fine, and decided she’d earned that manicure. Maybe a blow-dry too. The hotel salon was still open, and she spent a couple of hours in its perfumed calm. She emerged with her hair two inches shorter, the ends in soft seventies’ flick-ups, and her fingernails painted Cruella De Vil.

  Carrie knew what she was doing when she invited Kevin to dinner. She didn’t pretend, even to herself, that they would not end up in bed. As she walked down the marble stairs to the bar, her thoughts flicked uneasily to Richard. But only for a second. He didn’t own her. She’d never made him any promises. And she wasn’t proposing to fall in love with Kevin, just have a good time. Sex was like food. If you thought it was important, you took trouble to see that you got the best. And you couldn’t live on the same food forever, however good it was. A bit of exotica made home-fare the more welcome, anyway.

  Kevin looked out of place in the plush and paneling of the Victoria Bar. The other customers were all middle-aged and upper-crust. Most were British—the Berkeley prided itself on its Englishness—or the sort of cosmopolitan French who shopped in Bond street rather than the Faubourg rue St. Honore.

  But Carrie thought he looked good, even in imitation Armani worn with black sneakers and a collarless shirt. His strong, square face, burly figure and explosive red curls had a dynamism she liked.

  His eyes were impish as he asked the barman for a Black Velvet. The barman was non-plussed. Carrie translated, “Guinness and champagne, half and half.” The barman’s face registered first disbelief and then distaste.

  “Mais oui. C’est vrais, she said, and then, by way of explanation. Il est Irlandais.” The barman smiled at Carrie, shrugging almost imperceptibly, and reached into the fridge for a can of draft Guinness. She turned to Kevin. “You did that just to get him on the hop, didn’t you? No one drinks Black Velvet any more.”

  “Doubt if they ever drank it in Paris. But this place looks too rarefied to drink Guinness in, so I thought I’d cut it with the posh stuff.”

  Kevin swallowed a mouthful. “Aagh!” he said with exaggerated satisfaction. He wiped the foam from his top lip with the back of his hand and grinned at her. “He’s lucky. Where I come from Black Velvet is Guinness and cheap cider.”

  They had a good dinner, Carrie taking care to stay sober enough to make notes on the food. Kevin had the foie gras. He said it was the true test of a great chef. You had to know what you were buying, then you had to clean it with infinite care, getting rid of every piece of membrane and thread of vein. Cooking it was a nightmare: too much heat for too long and all the fat ran out of it, not enough heat and it stayed raw and s
limy.

  Carrie didn’t like the idea of geese being force-fed to make their livers fat, but Kevin just laughed and said, “They love it. They are French geese. Very greedy.”

  Carrie had poached turbot in a beurre blanc sauce flavored with fresh ginger and green coriander berries, topped with an explosion of finely shredded and deep-fried spring onions. It was a triumph of “fusion” food, the marrying of classic French cuisine with eastern flavors. Such muddling did not often come off, but this was perfect.

  “Try some,” she said. Kevin leaned over to scoop up some of her sauce with a piece of bread.

  They continued to reach for each other’s food, and feed each other mouthfuls of their own with the concentration and appreciation of the professional. It was friendly and casual, and they both knew it was a prelude.

  But then Eduardo walked into the dining room.

  Carrie’s first reaction was of amazement. She’d no idea her brother-in-law was in Paris. But then she thought that since he never stopped traveling it was hardly surprising. He’d be more surprised to see her. She said, “Kevin. Guess what! My brother-in-law has just come in. Shall we ask him to join us?”

  Kevin turned and looked at Eduardo, still talking to the Maître d’Hotel, and said, “That him at the desk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, if you want my vote, it’s no. We’ve finished and we’d have to sit through him eating forever . . .”

  Carrie, pleased and excited, interrupted, “But he’s really great. You’d love him . . .”

  “And I think we have other things to do.” Kevin put out his big hand and touched her cheek. “Look, I put them in bleach for you.”

  Carrie glanced down as Kevin displayed his hands, holding them out over the table.

  They were perfectly clean, not a cut or wrinkle edged in grime. Carrie took one of his hands in hers and turned it over.