The Restaurant Read online

  These will be yours one day, Mutti had told her, years ago when Astrid was six or seven. I got them from my mother, who got them from hers. They will pass to you, and from you to your daughter, or your son’s wife if you have no girls.

  The necklace was rarely worn; her mother saved it for special occasions like Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and wedding anniversaries and significant birthdays. Astrid let it pour from her fingers into her coat pocket. She was looking after it, that was all. She was keeping it safe for Mutti. She replaced the jewellery box and returned to the hall.

  Now what? Now to get out of the building without being detected – for besides Frau Bauer, how did she know who could be trusted? – and through the streets in her search for the house whose location she only vaguely remembered. They’d passed the hospital, she thought, but she’d been playing a word game with Gerhard as they drove and paying scant attention to their surroundings. Had they gone in the direction of the park after that? She fancied they had, and then around by the library. Yes: she remembered the red and black flags fluttering above the library windows. His house was on a road beyond the busy streets, one that headed for the city outskirts. Maybe.

  No doors opened as she tiptoed down the stairs, no shouts to stop erupted behind her. She emerged onto the street and began a slow run, heart hammering, keeping her gaze averted from the few people she encountered. The full darkness she’d thought she was venturing out in hadn’t yet been achieved, with the spring sky holding on stubbornly to the last of the light, but shadows were deepening, buildings and trees morphing into near-black hulking shapes.

  After half an hour or so she reached the hospital, and after it the park. She slowed to a more sedate pace, out of breath, her resolve weakening, her apprehension increasing the further she went. Even if she defied the odds and found his house, he could still slam the door in her face – or worse, report her to the authorities and hold her until they got there. It was a chance she would have to take: she had no choice but to throw herself on his mercy.

  Astrid, he’d said, the first time they met. My mother’s name, he’d said, his hand clasping hers warmly. She clung to the memory as she sped on, searching streets after she passed the library for the big house with the trees and the gate. Bent on success, refusing in her desperation to countenance anything else.

  It was properly dark now, car headlights seeming to glare more brightly as they swept past her, pedestrians becoming fewer as she left the cityscape behind. Still she trudged on, peering through gates, hoping for something she might recognise from her one brief glimpse of the house where he lived.

  And finally, on the point of giving up, her feet aching, her stomach cramping from the bread she’d bolted, she found it.

  It was the right place, she was reasonably certain. The same aspect she remembered, the trees that flanked it the same – yes, it must be it. It must. The gate was locked: without stopping to think she clambered over it, her dance exercises making her nimble, even swaddled as she was in her winter coat. She thought guard dog as she landed lightly on the gravelled driveway – but no dog came running and snarling, no security lights flashed on to pinpoint her in her trespass. He would surely be angry that she’d in effect broken into his grounds, but she had to hope he’d take her circumstances into account, and forgive her.

  Her shoes crunched across the gravel, each step seeming as loud as the boom of a gigantic drum. Heart in her mouth, she climbed the wide stone steps to the front door. A soft yellow light burned in the hall: she saw it through the glass of the fanlight. Without giving herself time to think, she reached up on tiptoe to lift the knocker and let it drop heavily. Please, please, please, she thought, her petrified brain incapable of more. Bitte, bitte, bitte.

  With a slam of her heart she heard a sound from within: someone was approaching. She shuddered in a breath, let it out. She curled her hands into fists and pressed her lips together. She pushed her feet hard into the ground. The skin on her face felt icy. Bitte, bitte, bitte.

  Who is there?

  A male voice. She couldn’t remember what he sounded like.

  Astrid, she replied, her voice cracking. Astrid, she repeated, more loudly, as loudly as she dared. Astrid Finklebaum.

  Silence followed. Would he simply ignore her, was he already lifting the receiver of his phone to call the police? Should she tell him about Mutti, remind him who she was? As she searched for the right words, a bolt slid across and the door was opened.

  His face was in shadow, lit from behind. He looked shorter than she remembered, and heavier. He wore a dressing-gown. His feet were bare. A large lit cigar sat between the first and second fingers of his right hand.

  Astrid, he said wonderingly, his voice low. Little Astrid Finklebaum. Monika’s child. My God. He lifted his gaze to peer over her head. But how did you get in?

  It was him. The relief brought sudden heat to her eyes; she blinked hard to banish it. I – I climbed over the gate, she whispered. I’m sorry. Every word with a shake in it, her mouth so stiff with fear she could hardly move it.

  You climbed over the gate, he repeated, surprise rather than anger in his voice. He took a step past her to survey the garden. Cigar smoke drifted in his wake, wafted about her, smelling of burnt caramels. His feet must be cold on the stone.

  He turned back to inspect her again, and she saw his features more clearly. Yes, there was the round ball of his nose, the hamster plumpness of his cheeks. But where is Monika? he whispered. Where is your lovely Mutti, hmm?

  Gone, she said, tears accompanying the word, streaming out of her, freeing her tongue as they spilt down her cheeks. The soldiers took them all, she cried. I was at my dance class. Everyone was gone when I got home. I have nobody to help me.

  A look of concern spread now across his face. Shhh, he whispered, darting another look behind him. Not so loud, my child. Dear me, he went on, poor Monika, and poor little Astrid. All alone now. He put his free hand on her shoulder and gestured towards the hallway with the other. We had better go in then, hadn’t we?

  And with her tears still falling, with terror still filling her heart, she stepped across the threshold of her saviour.

  And the other Astrid, who is ninety-two years old and sitting on a kitchen chair at her back door, with the taste of Emily’s soup still in her mouth, bows her head and cries too.

  Emily

  ‘NOW,’ SHE SAYS, RETURNING THE LAST SOUP BOWL TO the press, tossing the damp tea towel into the laundry basket by the washing machine. No dishwasher in the restaurant kitchen: she prefers to do it by hand with lots of hot sudsy water, taking pleasure from the satisfying squeak of clean wet crockery, and the view from the window beyond the big sink as she soaps and scrubs and rinses. May well advanced, summer colour unfolding in the garden, shrubs in full leaf, tiny green apples on her two dwarf trees, birdsong loud and busy and cheery.

  She unties her apron and adds it to the laundry basket. ‘Done and dusted,’ she says. Talking to herself today, since Mike has headed off for round two of his root canal treatment. Poor Mike. She’ll pick up a few bananas for him when she’s out. He’d live on bananas if he could.

  Upstairs she washes her face and frees the last of her hair from its lunchtime ribbon, and dabs on fresh lipstick. ‘You’ll do,’ she tells her mirrored self, although she’d prefer longer legs, and a less nondescript eye colour, and better-behaved hair. Daniel got the good hair in the family, same russet shade as Emily’s but enviably curl-free and silky, the sort of hair beloved of stylists, the sort that falls perfectly into place after it’s washed.

  Daniel. Yes. Time to hunt him down, to find out why her calls to him over the past couple of days have gone unanswered. She puts two sour-cream coffee buns from her tin into a brown paper bag. ‘See you later,’ she tells Barney, and sets out.

  Just fourteen minutes’ brisk walk from her current home to her previous one, but a world of difference between them. The house is situated in a residential part of town, no businesses within a quarter
-mile or so, apart from a single corner shop and a small hair salon. It’s the end house on a quiet cul-de-sac of semi-detached homes, boasting as a result a more generously proportioned garden than its companions. Emily makes her way around to the rear and sees the border of colourful shrubs, the bank of green spears of montbretia and crocosmia – overcrowded: she must thin them out – the vivid patch of nasturtiums, the climbers on the rear wall. In the years since Emily’s departure from the house, the garden her grandfather planted in the months before he died has become considerably more ragged around the edges, but his hardy perennials are hanging on, and his roses bloom and clamber about as faithfully as they always did.

  The rest of it is showing its age too. The rusted basketball hoop Daniel requested one long-ago Christmas; the equally discoloured swing set outside the dining-room window that he and Emily played on. The wooden table with its bench seating, where the four of them used to eat dinner on warm evenings, is rickety and weatherbeaten, and possibly hazardous for anyone foolish enough, or brave enough, to surrender their weight to a bench.

  She raps on the back door and opens it without waiting for a response. ‘Em,’ her brother says. Barefoot and bare-chested, leaning against the sink, his mouth full of whatever is in the bowl he holds. ‘Did I know you were coming?’

  ‘No. You would if you ever answered your phone.’

  ‘Sorry, saw a few missed calls, was going to get back to you. Not up long.’

  It amazes her that he can, and frequently does, stay in bed until well after midday, and still make enough from his freelance copywriting to afford the Jaguar outside the gate – second-hand and somewhat ramshackle, but still – and the succession of girlfriends he seems to have no trouble in attracting.

  ‘You look bonny,’ he says, leaning in to brush her cheek with a kiss. ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘Fine. I just thought I’d drop over. Haven’t seen you in a while.’

  ‘Yeah, a few rush jobs came in. All done now though, back in circulation. I’ll swing by in the next day or two for sure.’ Most of the time he’s a faithful supporter of the restaurant, calls in for lunch or dinner once or twice a week, sometimes alone, sometimes not. She tries to remember who his current girlfriend is, and fails.

  ‘Before I forget,’ he says, placing his empty bowl on the draining board, adding it to the other dishes that sit there, ‘post came for you. I was going to bring it, next time I called.’

  ‘Post for me? To this house?’

  ‘Hang on.’ He turns to riffle through a stack on the table. ‘From Canada,’ he adds, tossing it out like it’s nothing.

  Canada. The word sends a whump through her.

  It can’t be him. Why would he write to her?

  It must be him. She doesn’t know anyone else there.

  ‘You want it?’ Daniel asks, holding a blue envelope between finger and thumb. ‘Or will I bin it? I would have, only I felt I should ask you first.’

  She swallows. ‘When did it come?’ Not that it matters.

  ‘Few days ago.’ When she makes no move to take it, he sets it on the worktop. He puts his hands on her shoulders and squeezes. ‘Em, don’t sweat it. You needn’t even open the bloody thing. Put “return to sender” on it – or better still, just chuck it in the bin. Don’t give that scumbag another thought.’

  Almost four years since she saw him. No word of him in the meantime, no news at all. He may as well have dropped off the edge of the world. She doesn’t know if he’s been home. She doubts that any of her friends would mention it if they saw him – and his mother Sarah, on the rare occasions that she and Emily encounter one another, just says hello and keeps on walking. They used to be close – don’t make a granny of me too soon, she’d say to Emily – but Fergal put paid to that.

  Why is he getting in touch now? What could he possibly have to say to her after four years of silence, other than a belated apology that she doesn’t even want any more?

  She picks up the envelope and turns it over. There is a picture of a waterfall on the stamp. Her name in his handwriting causes a small tremor within her. His address is in the top left corner. She’s heard Vancouver is lovely.

  She should tear it up, rip it into tiny shreds. She shouldn’t give it a second’s attention. Or put a return to sender message on it like Daniel suggested, so he’d be sure she’d seen and ignored it. Yes, that’s what she’ll do.

  She slips it into her bag. ‘I’ll send it back to him.’

  ‘Good for you. You want coffee? I’m making a pot.’

  ‘Better not, thanks. I promised Mike I’d do his dinner prep. He’s at the dentist this afternoon.’

  There’s time enough for coffee with her brother – half an hour wouldn’t make a difference – but suddenly she feels the need to be alone. She hands over the buns she brought, and gets a hug in return. He repeats his promise to see her soon. ‘Don’t let him get to you, Em – he’s not worth it.’

  Easier said than done. She walks home by the canal, trying to keep her thoughts from the envelope in her bag, and the puzzle of its appearance. She pauses by a bridge to watch a pair of swans glide under it, serene and beautiful. Faithful for life, aren’t they, once they make their choice? No last-minute changes, no second thoughts.

  She recalls his final letter to her, or note, more like, on what should have been the happiest day of her life. She’d kept it for months, pushed down in a drawer under her sweaters. Her wounded heart couldn’t part with it, that was the foolish truth. Horrible as it was, it was still the last thing he’d written to her, the last contact they’d had. Eventually, of course, she’d torn it up. She’d brought the pieces out the back to the big blue recycling bin, and scattered them in among the flattened boxes and cartons and junk mail.

  She carries on to the fruit and veg shop, where she buys rhubarb and oranges and lemons, and Mike’s bananas.

  ‘Rhubarb crumble and marmalade,’ Greg behind the counter says.

  ‘Close,’ she tells him. ‘Rhubarb and custard pie, and citrus cheesecake.’

  ‘Yum.’

  Greg visited The Food of Love in the early days, along with his wife Clodagh. Since then they’ve both returned several times, separately and together.

  Back in the restaurant kitchen, Emily assembles the cheesecakes and slides them into the fridge before turning her attention to the second dessert of the evening. She lines three pie dishes with shortcrust pastry. She wipes and chops the rhubarb and tips it onto the pastry. She beats eggs and adds milk and sugar and the seeds from a vanilla pod, and pours the mixture over the fruit. Simplest dessert in the world, and one of her favourites.

  While the pies are in the oven she scrubs and pricks potatoes and assembles them on a baking tray. She chops vegetables for the ratatouille, and poaches chicken breasts in stock for Mike’s chicken and bacon lasagne, one of their most popular dishes.

  Busy, but not busy enough.

  She’ll read the letter before sending it back. She’ll steam open the envelope over a basin of hot water, and close it again so it looks like its contents were untouched.

  No – she won’t read it. There’s nothing he could say now that she wants to hear, nothing that could possibly be of interest to her.

  She won’t return it either – why go to that bother? She’ll bin it as soon as she goes upstairs, and leave him guessing, like he left her guessing.

  She won’t bin it, she’ll burn it. She’ll destroy it completely, leave no trace.

  But …

  She’s curious, of course she is. Why is he getting in touch out of the blue like this? If she doesn’t find out, it’ll prey on her mind. It’ll eat away at her, churn everything up again. Maybe she should just read it quickly to satisfy her curiosity. Nobody need know, least of all him. Then she can destroy it, and never think of him again.

  She takes the pies from the oven just before Mike arrives. He attempts a grin that comes out lopsided. ‘I’ll have to smile on the inside,’ he tells her, ‘until I thaw out.’

/>   ‘All done?’ she asks. ‘Torture over?’

  ‘All over. How’re we doing here?’

  ‘Good – your prep’s all done.’

  ‘You’re a star. Go and put your feet up for a bit.’

  In the apartment she finds Barney awake and demanding food. She refills his bowl and takes a shower, and puts on her white dress splashed with yellow lemons and green leaves. She pushes two clips into her hair and dots foundation on her cheeks while cooking smells begin to float up from the kitchen.

  She checks the time. Twenty to seven. Do it now.

  She takes the envelope from her bag. She lifts it and sniffs. Nothing: a papery smell only. She traces a finger along the path his pen has taken on the front. She holds it up to the light, but can see only the outline of the folded notepaper within. Open it, a voice in her head commands, so she eases her little finger through the gap at the side and slides it quickly across. She pulls out the single sheet through the ragged slit. She sits on the couch and takes a breath.

  Does she want to do this?

  Yes, she does.

  She unfolds the sheet and skims its contents, eyes racing as fast as her heart.

  Dear Emily,

  I’m sure you’ll be surprised to hear from me. I hope you open this letter and read it, although I couldn’t blame you if you didn’t. I know I hurt you badly, and my behaviour was despicable. I’ve beaten myself up about it often enough, believe me. I was a coward, and I took the coward’s way out instead of telling you face to face that I couldn’t go through with the wedding. I was all mixed up; I didn’t know what I wanted. I hated hurting you, but I thought it was better than marrying you when I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do, and hurting you more later on.

  I’m writing now to tell you that I’m moving back to Ireland in a few weeks, at the end of May. My work is transferring me to Dublin so I’ll be based there, but I’ll be calling home first to see Mum, and to collect my things, and I’d really like to see you too. I don’t know if you’d be willing to meet me, and maybe you’d be right to tell me to take a running jump, but if you would be open to a meeting I’d be very happy. I heard from Mum that you’ve left the salon and you run a restaurant now – that’s unexpected, but great. I hope you’re happy, and that you’ve found it in your heart to forgive me. I’ve been a prize idiot, but you’re a far better person than me, so I have hope that you’re not holding my bad behaviour against me.