“Some.” He goes quiet for a little while, then admits, “Mum worries a lot. About money ’n’ that.”
“Can’t be easy with a large family,” Susan sympathizes.
“Yeah. She wishes we could afford to move. She don’t like some of the kids ’round us. One of ’em’s got his eye on my younger brother. Not a good lot.” He frowns at the bubbling sugar.
Susan watches and wonders if Chris knows all this. But then she thinks, Of course he does. This was the whole idea: taking on a kid who needs help. Giving a boost to those who’ll most benefit from it, just as Elliot had.
“Maybe your brother can work for Chris too, when he’s a little older,” she suggests.
“Naw, not ’im. He’ll be a mechanic, or summat. He’s brilliant with cars and the like.”
“Ah.” Susan wonders if she can persuade her father to have a word with the man who owns the garage that takes care of his car. Then again, she’d probably have better luck with Russell. Surely he must know someone, and he’d probably be delighted to be able to say he helped a kid out.
“Rab, I want you to know that you’re doing really well with me, and I’m glad to have your help.” Susan smiles and pats him on the arm before sliding the first tray of macarons into the oven. “You can take some of the macarons home with you tonight, as a treat for your mum and siblings, if you like,” she offers. “Only fair, since you helped make them.”
Rab looks up at her with an expression so nakedly grateful she wonders if he’s unaccustomed to even basic generosity. “Thanks,” he says. “Thanks, that’s really nice. They’ll like that. They loved the tarts, you know.” He smiles and Susan feels an incredibly strong urge to hug him. She doesn’t because that’d probably be weird and teenage boys don’t usually like to be hugged, do they? Even her eldest nephew doesn’t seem to like it. Or, at least, he pretends not to. She grins back at Rab instead, but then the pastry kitchen begins to fill with the acrid smell of burning sugar.
“Oh, Rab, the sugar!” she cries, rushing over and yanking the pot off the burner. The entire bottom is now crusted with black gunk.
Rab backs away a few paces, wide-eyed. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” he gabbles. “I should’ve paid attention! I ruined it!”
“It’s all right, Rab,” she soothes. “It happens. You know how many batches of sugar I’ve burned? It happens in an instant.” She snaps her fingers. “You don’t think I’m just going to stop teaching you because of this, do you?”
The look on his face suggests that’s exactly what he was thinking.
“Do me a favor, please, and take this to the dishwasher,” she says, handing him the pot. “And when you come back we’ll give it another go, okay?” He nods and takes the pot. When he returns, Susan steps back and lets him measure out sugar and water and start the burner back up again.
“Just make sure to keep a sharp eye on it once it passes two hundred and fifty degrees, because the temperature can spike really suddenly, and that’s when you have to act,” she advises.
He nods, staring intently into the depths of the copper pot.
“Nice,” she says, as the sugar begins to slowly dissolve into a clear liquid. “On your way again!” She laughs and pats him on the back, noticing the tension in his shoulders ease just a touch.
* * *
By six thirty, the pastry kitchen feels very far away, and Susan is longing for it. At least there she feels competent. But instead, here she is, in front of the bathroom mirror, cursing and scrubbing away what feels like her twentieth attempt at putting on some credible eyeliner. Her poor eyelid is turning pink and irritated with all the effort.
“Argh!” she grunts, wondering if she should just give up, crawl into bed, and skip the opening of the play. But she can’t do that: Kay would be terribly disappointed. And Philip too. And she wants to see it; she just hates the dressing-up ritual. Even as a child, she’d hated having Julia practice hair and makeup on her.
Speaking of Julia …
“Problem?” She’d evidently overheard her younger sister’s exertions and is now leaning gracefully against the doorframe, arms crossed, smiling just enough to express amusement, but not enough to risk causing wrinkles.
“It’s … this … thing,” Susan answers, waving the eyeliner. “I can’t get it to go on evenly. It’s possessed!”
Julia shakes her head and holds out a hand. “Give it here and sit down.”
Susan obediently plops down on the closed lid of the toilet, feeling ten years old again.
Julia bends down in front of her, cocks her head this way and that, narrows her eyes, and nods. “Close your eyes.”
Susan does and feels smooth, sure strokes and something wet spread along her lash line.
“You wouldn’t struggle with this if you wore it more, you know,” Julia tells her, moving on to the second eye. “Practice makes perfect, and all that. Open.”
“I don’t feel like I have time for it,” Susan says, flicking her eyes open. “And who cares what I look like when I’m in a kitchen, anyway?”
“Don’t think of it as how you look to other people, then. Think of it as bringing out your best self. I wear makeup because it makes me feel pretty.”
“You feel pretty because you look pretty to other people. So it’s not really just for you, is it? You’re dressing yourself up for everyone else.”
“Just like you’re doing now.” Julia reaches for some blush and goes to work. “Or is it just one person you want to look pretty for?”
Susan colors and ducks her head.
“Don’t do that—I’ll smear. Well?”
“Yeah, I guess I want to look pretty for someone else.”
Julia pauses with the blush and meets Susan’s eyes. “And who might that be?”
“I—Philip, of course,” Susan stammers. “Who else?”
“Did you know that Chris is coming tonight?”
“What? No. Why? How?”
“I think Lauren invited him.”
“He’s coming on a Friday night? That’s one of the busiest restaurant nights of the week!”
Julia shrugs. “Take that up with him. But you’re over him, huh? It’s all Philip all the time now?”
“Yes, I’m over him,” Susan answers with more conviction than she feels. “And he’s definitely over me.”
Julia smirks. “And Aunt Kay says I’m the bad liar.” She begins poking around in Susan’s makeup bag, pulling out lipsticks and testing them on the back of her hand.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I saw how the two of you were at that Festival. It was cute. But if I were you, I wouldn’t give him another chance. He blew it, up and leaving like that when you were still so wrecked over Mum.”
“Is that what you think happened?”
Julia pauses in her lipstick testing and looks up.
“Isn’t it?”
Susan shakes her head. “I dumped him. Badly.”
“Oh.” She tucks the rejected lipsticks away. “The way Dad and Aunt Kay raged about him, I thought it was the other way around. And I thought he was a real prick for doing that, too.”
“That’s sweet,” Susan says, surprisingly touched by Julia’s sisterly feelings. “But what were Dad and Kay so upset about?”
Julia shrugs. “Ask them.” She holds two red lipsticks up to the light and studies them.
Into the silence, Susan asks, “Do you ever think about Mum, Jules?”
A long pause, then: “I try not to.” Julia shoves a lipstick back in the bag.
“Not at all? Not even the nice memories?” Susan can’t believe that someone would—or would want to—eradicate their mother’s memory like that.
Julia swallows. “We all have our ways of coping, okay, Suze? So spare me your judgment. You bake like you’re trying to feed half the city, Meg buries herself in diseases, and I just try to move on and look forward.”
“I’m sorry,” Susan says quietly.
Julia blinks a few times, then t
urns to her sister, proffering the final choice of lipstick.
Susan reaches out and takes it. “Thank you.” She stands and faces the mirror, tracing the lipstick over her lips. Julia steps back and watches.
“Is it getting serious, this thing with you and Philip? I mean, it looks it.”
“Too new to tell,” Susan answers, blotting and reapplying.
“Have you slept with him?”
“No.”
“Will you?”
Susan’s startled by the question and takes her time answering. “I don’t know.”
“You should,” Julia tells her briskly, leaning toward the mirror and fussing a bit with her hair. “It’ll do you good, I think, to get out there, be a little crazy. Who knows? You might like it.” She straightens up and smiles another tiny smile. Susan smiles back, more widely.
“You’re not half bad, you know that?” she says. “And your eyeliner game is spot on,” she adds, looking at herself in the mirror. The face that looks back is, as Julia said, possibly the best-looking version of herself. Intense eyes, a subtle flush, and full, sensual, scarlet lips. She smiles again, thinking that Philip will probably like it and trying not to wonder if Chris will too.
“Don’t make me blush,” Julia says with a shrug. “We’ve got to work on your wardrobe, though, Suze. I mean, what you have on isn’t too bad, although you really should invest in Spanx or something, but just about everything else …” She sighs. “Come on. We’ll talk about it later.”
* * *
The play is a triumph, an absolute triumph if Bernard is to be believed. He certainly claps the loudest at the curtain call, and shouts, “Bravo! Bravo!” when Kay and Philip step forward, away from the rest of the cast, and take a bow together.
“It’s so marvelous having someone so talented in the family, isn’t it?” Bernard says as they drift toward the exits. “We really are so fortunate the way such people seem to find their way to us.” He smiles at Susan, which startles her a little. Is this the first time her father’s been proud of her? It seems like it.
As they make their way to the chic bar where the opening night celebration is being held, Bernard chatters on about Kay and Philip and what a shame it was that Philip’s last girlfriend seemed to have let herself go. “Used to be such a lovely, slender girl and then …”
Susan peels off from her family and makes for the bar as soon as they arrive.
“Champagne cocktail, please,” she says to the bartender, who hands one over. A few sips and she’s starting to feel like the bubbles are going right to her head, a delightful effervescence that brings on a smile and more relaxed stance. Another sip, and then she turns and sees Rufus standing beside her, dressed in a purple satin smoking jacket and yellow silk tie, grinning and looking her up and down, almost as if he knows what she looks like naked.
Her good mood evaporates.
“Didn’t know you were on the guest list,” she mumbles.
“It’s my job to be on guest lists, Susan. Martini, please!” he calls to the bartender. “Stir, don’t shake—bruises the gin.”
Susan doesn’t bother to hide her eyeroll this time. Not that Rufus seems to mind. He sidles right up to her as if they’re friends, and props his chin up in both hands.
“You’ve been a busy little bee,” he says, nudging her. “If I’d had an inkling of what a little wildcat you were, I’d have gone a very different direction with my interview.”
“What? And missed out on having one over on both me and Chris Baker?”
“Oh, don’t be like that—it was for your own good! You’d never have done that competition on your own, and he wouldn’t have either, and it’s done you good. You got loads of publicity. Don’t lie—I saw the features.”
He has her there. The win at the Foodies Festival has shone a greater spotlight on Elliot’s. Two magazines have been in touch about doing features, and a travel blog asked Gloria for summer recipes. A national publication that Susan has been hounding has finally started to seem a little bit interested in covering them as well. And the journalists and critics invited to the reopening have responded very enthusiastically indeed. (Of course, that was before Dan introduced their conflict, so who knows what will happen now?) Still, she isn’t going to give Rufus Arion the upper hand if she can help it.
“You don’t know anything about me,” she responds. “Maybe if you’d been honest, I’d have surprised you. But I can hardly expect above-board behavior from someone who takes his naming cues from the Nazis.”
She expects him to be embarrassed by that, but instead he grins and says, “Stays with you, though, doesn’t it, that name? You remember it. And that’s the whole point, isn’t it? We all just want to be memorable in a sea of other things clamoring for everyone’s attention.” He accepts his martini from the bartender. “If anyone should know that, you should. Don’t think I don’t know what this whole business with Philip Simms is. Cheers, my dear.” He clinks her cocktail with the base of his glass and takes a sip.
Susan blinks at him. “What are you talking about?”
He cocks an eyebrow. “Wow, is it really genuine, then? I figured you were after publicity. I mean, the way you were acting in that park …” He chuckles. “Naughty girl! You do surprise me.”
“Do I?”
“A little.” He looks down at his drink and bites his lip, and his usual expression—half smug, half bemused—disappears suddenly. “Listen, since you say this is some genuine thing, and because you did me a favor with that Foodies Festival event, I’m going to do you one and give you a wee warning. Philip Simms is not quite what he seems.”
“Of course not,” she scoffs. “He’s an imposter or a jewel thief, or he’s got a secret family stashed somewhere—is that what you’re going to say?”
“No, nothing like that. He’s just not a particularly good person. He puts it on, I’m sure, but he’s not. Just … be careful.”
“And how would you know? Are you two close friends?”
He snorts. “No, certainly not. But I’d like for you and I to be friends. Shall we? If you say yes, I’ll give you some good news.”
“Will you, indeed?”
“I will. And you know what? I’ll give it to you no strings attached, just so you know I’m capable of being decent. Seems your former chef’s stunt with the opening has ruffled some feathers. He’s been trying to gather backers to open somewhere permanently, but now no one will give him the time of day. Unless he makes an absolute splash at that opening, he’s done. And I think we both know who you can thank for that.” He glances toward the door, and Susan notices that Chris has come in.
She swallows hard around a lump that’s suddenly climbed up her throat. She saw him in the theater, walking in with Lauren, who hung off his arm and chattered away. (Bernard muttered something about having a word with Russell about Chris and his daughter, which disgusted Susan.) But Susan convinced herself Chris wouldn’t come to the after-party. Surely he would want to go back to the restaurant, at least to check in and see how service is going?
But no, he’s here, and something about her face has given her away, because Rufus’s slithering smile makes a reappearance. “I think I’ll be off now. Ta, luv!” He kisses her on the cheek, so quickly she doesn’t even have time to react, and is gone.
Chris strides toward the bar, looking after Rufus’s vanishing figure, and says, “Sorry to interrupt.”
“Not at all, you’re my savior,” says Susan, scrubbing at her cheek with a bar napkin and taking a huge swig of her cocktail, finishing it off. “Better.” She gestures to the glass when the bartender glances her way. “I’m surprised to see you taking a Friday night away from the restaurant.”
“I have a sous chef I can rely on,” he responds. “Also, CCTV in every corner of the kitchen, so I can watch their every move.” He brandishes his phone. “Technology is a wonderful thing.”
She giggles. “You’re joking, right?”
“Maybe.” He holds up the phone so she ca
n’t see the screen. “Ah no, not those microgreens, the purple ones. The purple ones!” he bellows dramatically, running a hand through his hair in mock frustration.
Susan laughs as she takes delivery of her cocktail, and he asks for a pint of lager.
“Seriously, though,” he continues, accepting his beer with a nod of thanks to the bartender, “spending three hours watching a bloke sleep with his own mum and then gouge his eyes out is so much better than microgreens.”
Susan giggles again and feels him watching her as he takes a sip of his drink.
“Champagne always made you giggly,” he recalls, smiling.
“And beer always made you argumentative. Remember that time you and one of the line cooks at Regent Street got three pints in after a Saturday service and started debating what fruit would win in a fight if fruit were, in fact, able to fight?”
Chris laughs. “Oh, yeah. I went for pineapple because, obviously, pineapple would win—it’s practically got armor on. What did he go for? Kiwi or something?”
“I don’t remember, but you were both wrong. Obviously, coconut would win. Talk about something with armor. You want to drive yourself insane? Try getting any flesh out of one of those things.”
“I have, and you’re right. There was an episode of the show where we made the contestants fetch coconuts, and then they had to come up with some kind of a dish with them, but the only tools to hand were rocks and things. One guy concussed himself knocking them down from the trees; two needed stitches after their rock knives slipped; and one was so enraged after he finally got into the thing and found there’s only a teensy bit of liquid in there that he nearly had a nervous breakdown. And then I tried the challenge and realized it was basically impossible and had words with the producer whose idea it was, and we had to scrap it and come up with something else. I bought everyone a really nice dinner that night.”
“That was sweet of you,” Susan says, unable to stop herself from cackling at the mental image of Chris going crazy on some beach over a coconut. “And I’ll bet you put some of that amazing Scots slang to work with that producer too.”
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