little cottage on the Killarney Road this afternoon.’
‘Not old Gearóid’s place?’ inquired Mary-Kate. ‘Are they selling it or what?’
‘Or what, I think,’ Lara said. ‘Apparently the house will belong to Gearóid’s nephew from Britain once they’ve got probate. God love him,’ Lara added with a shudder. ‘Gearóid left it in a terrible state. Then, I’ve got a viewing at the Richardsons’ farmhouse. It’s a pity they’re leaving the village, they’re nice people.’
‘I should go too,’ Delphine said, getting to her feet. ‘I’ve a facial peel, two manicures and a bikini waxing this afternoon. Bye Mary-Kate.’ She kissed her aunt goodbye fondly.
‘I am going to finish my coffee in peace,’ Mary-Kate smiled up at them, her grey eyes warm. ‘Age must have its compensations. Take care, girls.’
The two younger women walked outside.
‘It’s a lovely day, isn’t it?’ said Lara as they stood for a moment enjoying the pale October sun. ‘When the sun shines, Redlion is magical. I think the Richardsons are mad for leaving. I don’t know why anyone would ever want to sell up and leave.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Delphine said, gazing fondly up the winding main street where pastel-coloured houses appeared to doze lazily in the sunlight. ‘It’s got a healing, comforting sense to it or does that sound crazy?’
‘Not at all,’ Lara said ruefully. ‘I was on ten cups of coffee, one Prozac and at least half a bottle of wine a day when I lived in Dublin. Since I came home, I’ve discovered the calm side of myself.’
‘Lara Stanley calm!’ teased Delphine. ‘That’ll be the day.’
Lara grinned. ‘Calmer, then,’ she said. ‘But it is down to this place. It is special. You know, when I left my job in Dublin, all my colleagues thought I was mad burying myself back in the country. “Dullsville” they called it. And I told them there’s nothing dull about Redlion.’
‘We could do with a bit of dull,’ Delphine pointed out. ‘Too much happens round here. There’s going to be another one of those political think tanks in the hotel next week and the place will be swarming with media and politicians desperate to get their faces in the paper. And Mrs Rock Star up the road was in having her nails done yesterday and she told me they’re having a huge party for the album launch in November.’
‘All go as usual,’ Lara said. ‘So much for the quiet life in the country. Still, I don’t want to tell the people in the city what it’s really like here or else they’d all up sticks and move down.’
Delphine laughed. ‘And we want to keep Redlion a secret, don’t we?’
Hope Parker let the shopping bags sit in a heap at her feet as she stood in front of the cookery books section. Her eyes flicked past Perfect Cakes, The Definitive Chinese Cookbook, Catering for Parties and Easy Meals. A recipe book full of easy meals was not what she was looking for. They were all she ever cooked in the first place. No, she wanted a comprehensive and simple cooking book, something big, fat and informative and full of explanations of what a bain marie really was and precisely what you did with yeast and did you have to have an airing cupboard handy when you cooked with it? That was all she wanted: a book that would finally explain how to cook something that didn’t involve chicken pieces and a can of ready-to-go tomato sauce.
Her gaze moved past a massive advanced French cooking manual and she leaned closer to the shelves, trying to ignore the bookshop’s lunchtime rush. Then she spotted it, a fat tome with bright gold writing on the spine: Cooking for Cowards: Become the Queen of Your Kitchen.
Queen of her kitchen? Yes, that was exactly what Hope wanted. No more ready-made lasagne and frozen solid stuffed chicken dinners in tinfoil. But lots of home-cooked meals that would have Matt beaming from ear to ear, no longer able to tease that he never put on weight because she couldn’t cook.
Hope pulled it free from the other books and stared at the cover, hoping there was no mention of the word ‘advanced’. There wasn’t. Instead, there was a picture of an ordinary looking woman standing smiling behind a veritable feast of glistening, delicious food.
Hope flicked inside and found an introduction that was funny, easy to understand, and made no mention of buying complicated utensils before you started. She couldn’t afford to buy lots of new pots and pans and strange things for chopping up herbs.
‘Cooking really is easy,’ cooed the introduction. ‘If you’re one of those people who’ve never had the chance to learn, then let me show you how, the easy way.’
There was no implication that you had to be a twenty-something newly-married to be buying this book, no implication that thirty-seven-year-old women should be ashamed of themselves to be purchasing a cookery bible that included a section on ‘how to buy meat’.
Hope never bought meat from the butchers’. She never knew what to ask for or even what you’d do with rack of lamb if you got it. She bought her meat ready packed from the supermarket where nobody could look down on you for not knowing what a gigot was.
‘There’s no need to be scared of buying meat,’ continued the introduction, as if the writer had read Hope’s mind. ‘It’s easy once you know how.’
Sold. Hope collected her shopping, paid for the book and hurried up to Jolly’s department store, already lost in the fantasy of being a superb cook. Imagine the dinner parties they could have: Matt wouldn’t have to entertain important advertising clients on his expense account in Bath’s elegant restaurants any more. Instead, he could bring them home, and she, dressed in something elegant but sexy, would waft out of the kitchen with the scent of crème brulée clinging to her while jaded businessmen gobbled up melt-in-the-mouth things in delicately flavoured gravy, asking her why she’d decided to work in a building society instead of starting up her own restaurant?
And Toby and Millie would love it. Well, when they were older, they would. They’d think that home-made chutney and made-from-scratch mayonnaise were the norm and would smugly tell their schoolmates that their mother was the ‘best cook in the world, so there!’ Hope remembered this type of culinary boasting from her own schooldays. But she and her sister, Sam, had always stayed out of the ‘whose mother is the best cook’ arguments, knowing that whatever could be said about their aunt Ruth, that she was an excellent cook wasn’t one of them. Hope wondered, as she often did, if her mother had been any good at cooking? Aunt Ruth had never talked about things like that. Maybe Mum had been a wonderful cook. It might even be genetic: all Hope had to do was move beyond instant chicken sauces to discover that she was the next Escoffier.
In Jolly’s, she got sidetracked in the women’s department. She couldn’t resist stopping a moment to finger the pretty floral skirt, running her fingers wistfully over the soft cotton with the delicate sprigged pattern of roses. In the middle of all the new season’s dark wintry clothes, the rail of prettily patterned skirts had stood out like a wildflower meadow in a landscape of muddy ploughed fields.
Feeling the plastic grocery bags threatening to cut off the circulation to her left hand, Hope unhooked them from her wrist before indulging in a proper examination of the garment. The background colour was the pale blue of delicate Wedgwood with tiny lilac flowers mingling with tiny raspberry pink
