The Restaurant Read online

  Her stomach, empty since lunchtime, an age ago, rumbled in appreciation, in anticipation. To hell with it: what did she care if she was surrounded by lovebirds? Let them gaze into each other’s eyes all they wanted: she needed to be fed.

  She made for the doorway – and almost collided with two women, roughly her own age, who were hurrying out.

  ‘What’s it like?’ she asked.

  ‘Not for us,’ one replied, and her companion tittered, and they kept going. Not for them could mean anything: Heather decided to see for herself, so she stepped inside.

  And inside, she found nobody at all but a woman with glorious tumbling hair, wearing a pretty blue dress and looking on the verge of tears. At the sight of Heather, her face changed. Hello! she said, her voice as falsely cheerful as her smile. Welcome to The Food of Love – it’s our opening night.

  You’re kidding! How come there’s no sign outside? No balloons, no banner?

  You sound like my brother, the woman said. He’s in advertising – but I wasn’t sure if I wanted all that stuff.

  Heather took in the single big table covered with a cloth, and the shiny cutlery and polka-dot placemats, and the tea lights in little glass jars dotted here and there, and all the empty chairs. No indication of anyone having been fed yet. Opening night, and nobody there.

  One table, she remarked. Communal eating.

  Yes. The space is small, so this was the only option that worked. It’s aimed at people who don’t have anyone to eat with, who’d like a bit of company at mealtimes. Or just … if people wanted someone different to talk to.

  Right. And the other two ladies, the ones who just left – this is what scared them off? The one table, I mean.

  The woman’s smile faded. I think it was more the menu, she said, indicating a blackboard affixed to the rear wall. I have just two options. I thought I’d keep it simple, but they wanted more.

  Two options sounded fine to Heather, who ate everything. Written in big chalk letters on the board she read beef tagine with fruity couscous, and chicken pie. Hearts above the ‘i’s: all about the love in here.

  Beef tagine and chicken pie, she said. Yes and yes. I may have to have a helping of each. Seriously.

  The woman laughed. That would be no problem. Which one would you like to start with?

  You got a wine licence?

  Yes, but we keep just one of each, an Italian white and a Spanish red.

  Heather grinned. You sure do like to keep it simple. I’ll have a glass of red to start with then, and the tagine to follow. I’m Heather, by the way.

  Emily. Delighted to meet you.

  They’ve come a long way together since then, Heather and Emily and The Food of Love. Lots of meals, many conversations – and Emily by now is every bit as much a friend as a host. All good.

  Heather finishes her lasagne, resisting the impulse to lift the plate and lick it clean. That cheese sauce is so damn good. Not for the first time, she wishes she could kidnap Mike and chain him to her stove at home.

  ‘Another spoonful?’ Emily enquires when she reappears.

  No mention of the earlier incident. Like it never happened, bless her. Heather shakes her head and hands her the empty plate. ‘Tell Mike he’s going from best to even better, but I need room for dessert.’

  ‘Fair enough. Citrus cheesecake or rhubarb and custard pie?’

  Heather sighs happily. ‘Make it one of each – and pack up the cheesecake to go for Lottie.’

  ‘Will do. And decaf?’

  ‘And decaf. Thanks, honey.’

  The pie is a wonder. Soft chunks of rhubarb, just tart enough for the custard to provide the perfect sweet creamy contrast – and the pastry is its usual glorious beast. Nobody does pastry like Emily.

  It’s early when she leaves, not yet half past eight. The evening is dry, if a little chilly. She’ll take the longer route home, down by the canal, work off some of those calories. It might be quiet at this time, but she never feels vulnerable. She’s a big gal, and strong with it. More than a match for any would-be troublemakers.

  As she approaches the point where she must turn off the road she spots a figure hunkered down on the path, hooded head bowed, paper cup sitting in front. Another paid-up member of the spare-change gang.

  At the sound of Heather’s footsteps the head lifts to reveal a familiar white face, and two unfocused eyes. Strung out, and looking for cash already to finance the next trip to Paradise. Hard to put an age on her, rough living probably adding years. Often begging at this spot.

  Heather drops to a squat, notes the few copper coins in the cup. Wonders how much has already been pocketed. ‘Hi. You hungry?’

  A shake of the head, eyes closing briefly. High as the proverbial.

  ‘You gotta eat.’ Heather lifts the tinfoil package from its small carrier bag. ‘I got cheesecake.’ What Lottie doesn’t know won’t hurt her.

  The other looks at the package but makes no attempt to take it. ‘Spare change,’ she says, in a dead monotone. Her breath is bad. There’s a cold sore in a corner of her mouth, the dark stain of what might be a bruise on one cheek. Her hair is hidden beneath the hood of the jacket that looks like it belongs on a far bigger person.

  ‘Here,’ Heather says, easing the foil open to show the cheesecake. ‘You should eat this, it’s so good. Come on, just take it.’

  The girl takes the package and sets it beside her on the path. Her nails are bitten right down. Heather remains in her crouched position.

  ‘Will you eat it? Will you promise me?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  But there it sits, and chances are it won’t be eaten, or not by her. ‘You got family?’ Heather asks. ‘You got people who care about you?’

  Another shake of the head.

  ‘Nobody? No one at all? No Mom or Dad?’

  At that, the girl grabs the paper cup and pulls herself clumsily to her feet. Heather watches her stumbling off, bumping against the wall every few steps. Off to find a new place to beg, somewhere she won’t be interrogated, or forced to eat cheesecake.

  Heather retrieves the rejected dessert. No point in wasting it. She pinches the tinfoil closed and returns the package to its bag. She resumes her journey, wondering if it’s too soon to have the drugs conversation with Lottie – could a seven-year-old comprehend that danger, or would the ugly truth traumatise her? That pitiable creature can’t be more than twenty-something – there’s every chance that at least one of her parents is still alive. Imagine seeing your daughter in that state.

  Then again, maybe the parents aren’t without blame – who knows what home the creature came from? Some families have a lot to answer for. As she strides along by the canal, looking down into the darkening water, Heather thinks of her own childhood, and the house in San Francisco where she grew up.

  On the face of it, she was the girl with everything. The privileged only child of moneyed Californians, her mother’s family one of the major tech players in Silicon Valley, her father with his string of vineyards in Napa. To anyone looking in, theirs must have seemed the perfect home, but from the inside it was a very different story. It was the story of blazing rows followed by loaded silences, and frequent lavish parties that went on all night, and her father’s abrupt unexplained absences. Business trip, her mother would say, in a voice that didn’t encourage questions.

  It was the story of Heather, who was largely ignored by a couple whose tempestuous relationship left little room for the daughter they handed over to a succession of nannies, none of whom could stand the chaotic atmosphere for long, until it was Josephine’s turn.

  Josephine, whose name even now, all these years later, conjures up a small wash of grief. Josephine, who became more of a mother to Heather than the woman who’d given birth to her. Josephine, who had summed up the home situation within days, maybe hours, of her arrival, who had looked beyond ten-year-old Heather’s sulky defiance and seen right through to the unhappy, neglected kid she’d been employed to look after.


  Tell you what, she said, in the accent that sounded so foreign to Heather’s ears, the first truly Irish person she’d had any real contact with, let’s try to be friends and see what happens. And what happened, once Heather stopped acting like a brat and decided to give it a go, was nothing short of magical.

  Josephine, who didn’t drive, would be waiting for her every day at the school gate, and every day except Friday they’d walk the three blocks home together. On Fridays they’d take the bus – the bus! – in the other direction, all the way across town to where Josephine’s son Terry and his family lived, in a far humbler house than Heather had ever been in.

  The house had just one bathroom, with towels as hard as sandpaper that didn’t match, and a single television for everyone to share, and no carpets anywhere, not even in the bedrooms. Heather would be given the job of looking after their two chattering cheery little girls in the backyard – one swing, a small sandpit, a tilting umbrella, a huddle of plastic chairs and no pool or barbecue – while Josephine and her daughter-in-law Karen, also from Ireland, prepared dinner.

  It was a noisy, crowded affair when they were summoned to the table – there was an older brother, Seamus, who appeared for meals and bolted afterwards – but it was also full of laughter and good-natured teasing, and rather than asking for anything to be passed, people simply reached across the table and grabbed what they wanted. Sometimes tumblers got overturned, and forks were dropped, and food landed occasionally on the floor – but whenever any of this happened, nobody shouted or got impatient.

  And Heather wished, so many times, that she’d been born into such a family.

  After dinner, Josephine and Heather would take the bus back, and on the way Josephine would talk about Ireland. Heather heard about the husband who had died in a hardware store when a washing-machine tumbled from a shelf and fell on him, and the offer that had followed from their son who’d moved with his new wife to America a few years previously.

  They’d just had Seamus, Josephine said. They told me I could be his nanny, probably to make it sound as if I was the one doing them the favour. I said I’d come for a few months, she said, looking through the bus window but seeing, Heather thought, something very different from the streetscape outside. I only intended to stay until I stopped feeling lonely – but look at me, still here, nearly twelve years later. I’m not quite sure how that happened.

  Will you ever go back to Ireland? Heather asked, afraid as soon as the words were out that the answer would be one she didn’t want to hear. Afraid she might lose the only person who truly seemed to care about her.

  Oh yes, Josephine replied, the certainty in her voice causing Heather’s heart to droop. Yes, I’ll go back home. I’ll go back when the kids are old enough to come for a visit. I want to live out my days in Ireland.

  Do you still have a house there?

  No, that’s gone, that’s sold now, but I’ll get a little place. I have money from Ray’s accident, I never spent that. It’ll get me an apartment or something, in one of those developments for the elderly, where there’s a caretaker to keep an eye out and someone to make your meals if you need them to. That’s what I’d like, that kind of arrangement.

  She caught Heather’s expression then. She put an arm around her, and squeezed. Don’t worry, pet – I’ll be here for a long time yet. When I move back you’ll be all grown-up, and you can come and visit me too, whenever you want.

  It sounded wonderful. Heather imagined flying across the ocean, waiting to see the expanse of green below her that Josephine said would tell her she’d reached Ireland. She pictured taking a bus or a train from the airport to the town where Josephine lived, and meeting lots of families just like Josephine’s happy, noisy one.

  But she wouldn’t just visit: she’d stay. She’d find a home of her own, close to her old nanny, and she’d become someone’s nanny too. She’d live out her days in Ireland, just like Josephine. She’d be happy there: she knew it.

  That was the plan, but the plan didn’t happen – or not in the way Heather had envisaged it. The plan fell to pieces one cruel morning when Heather was almost fourteen, and Josephine was in a shopping mall, and a man with a gun shot dead four people who were strangers to him, and one of those was Josephine.

  Her mother it was who broke the news to her, her mother who came to pick her up after school instead of Josephine. Climb in, her mother said. Where’s Josephine? Heather asked, and her mother, instead of replying, pulled the car out of the parking space, and Heather was too afraid to ask more, in case her parents had decided she was too old to need a nanny, and Josephine had been fired.

  She’d go to her, she vowed silently. She’d find her way to Terry and Karen’s house – she’d take the bus when she got a chance. Even if Josephine was no longer her nanny they could still meet up, still spend time together.

  And then they got home, and her mother filled a dish with ice-cream in the kitchen, and said, putting it before Heather, You must be strong. And still Heather thought that the worst thing she was going to hear was that Josephine wasn’t to be her nanny any more, and the ice-cream melted into a puddle as she heard words that couldn’t possibly be true, as she shouted at her mother to stop lying, as she screamed that Josephine was alive, she was alive, that Heather would know if anything had happened to her.

  But she was wrong. She’d never felt a thing as a bullet, or maybe lots of bullets, had torn a path through Josephine’s skin and flesh and bones and muscles, and stopped her heart beating. Working it out later – sneaking the newspapers to her room to learn about the shooting, feeling compelled to know everything, everything, even as every word she read made her feel sick – she figured it had happened during math class. Josephine’s blood had spread over a supermarket floor while Heather, all unaware, was working out the square root of something or other.

  Her father took her to the funeral service, on her tearful insistence. She wept her way through it, unable to speak to Josephine’s family, unable to approach the closed casket.

  There was no talk of a new nanny. Her parents must have figured, after all, that Heather had gone beyond needing one. Just as well, since she’d have been obliged to hate anyone who tried to replace Josephine.

  For months she was inconsolable. Her routine carried on, school and home and school again, but inside she was dumb and deaf and blind with grief. She pulled away from friends; she turned down party invitations and studied just enough to keep teachers off her back. Part of her yearned to visit Josephine’s family across town but she never did, fearful of how sad it would be without the woman who’d brought them together. She was sad enough.

  Her grades, never high, began to plummet. Her parents, at a loss, sent her to a shrink, who told her it was unhealthy to obsess about death at her age. Take up a sport, he said. You need to get out in the fresh air, find something you’re interested in. What about basketball? Might help shift that puppy fat too. She endured three sessions before telling her folks she would slit her wrists if they forced her to keep seeing him.

  I’m OK, she lied, I’m feeling a lot stronger – so the sessions stopped, and in time she learnt to fold away her sadness as she plodded on through the weeks and months that followed.

  And inevitably, she flunked every one of her end-of-year tests, which resulted in her having to repeat grade nine, and her folks coming up with a new scheme.

  There’s this college in England, her mother told her, a week after the damning report card arrived. Well, it’s more a finishing school. It’s for sixteen-to eighteen-year-olds, to prepare them for university. It’s got a great reputation – all the top families in Europe send their kids there, royalty and diplomats and whatever. We’d really like you to go next year. We think it would be good for you to meet a bunch of new people. The right kind of people, you know?

  A finishing school in England, miles from her parents, miles from the friends she’d already abandoned. A year or more of being surrounded by what her mother considered the right kind of p
eople. She couldn’t imagine being any happier there – but wasn’t England close to Ireland? She looked it up, and discovered that the two countries were near neighbours, an hour apart on a plane.

  And slowly and quietly, she made a new plan.

  In August of the following year, at the age of sixteen, she was put on a plane for London, where a representative from the school was scheduled to meet her at Heathrow airport and ferry her to her new surroundings.

  Text us when you land, her father said, and Heather tried not to imagine their reaction when a very different text from what they were expecting dropped into their phones. Make lots of friends, her mother said – already, no doubt, imagining the marriage to the crown prince of somewhere or other, and the royal grandchildren who would follow.

  In the arrivals hall at Heathrow she walked right past the tall blonde woman holding up a board with her name on it, and found her way to the terminal where flights to Ireland were departing. As she was queuing to board the flight she’d booked to Shannon airport a month before with her credit card, she heard her name being called on the tannoy – and when she saw, an hour after that, the carpet of green spread out below her as the plane broke through the clouds on its descent, she wept for Josephine, who had never got to live out her days in Ireland, in a little apartment with a caretaker to keep an eye on her, and someone to cook her dinner.

  I’ve left you a letter, she texted in Shannon, as she waited for her bags to appear on the carousel. It’s under my pillow. Please don’t be mad. Ten minutes later, at twenty past six in the morning California time, her phone rang, and she read Mom on her screen. Here it came.

  You’re in Ireland? How could you? How could you do this to us?