The Saturday Supper Club Page 4

  ‘Have a Prosecco,’ I said, putting down my glass, rushing to thrust one into each of their hands, then nervously sweeping a bowl of olives under their noses too quickly for anyone to grab one. ‘And olives, there are olives. Millions of olives. Oh, I should put on some music. It’s like a library in here.’

  When I’d opened the door, Joe’s colleague, Dominique, the journalist from the London Daily – terrifyingly blonde, bold, six-inch heels and waist to match – had made the initial introductions while I ushered everyone in, giving a garbled explanation of how Ethan was an ‘old friend’ and had turned up on the doorstep for the Saturday Supper Club, just by chance.

  ‘Complete coincidence,’ I said to their bewildered faces, flushing boiling red. ‘I haven’t seen him for three years, you know? That’s one thousand and ninety-five days, not that I’ve been counting, but it’s a long time not to hear from—’

  I stopped talking and bit my lip, smiling at my bemused guests apologetically. Ethan coughed ostentatiously from somewhere behind me. I took their things: a jacket, cardigan and bag, and quickly looped them onto the branches of the hatstand in the hallway that was swamped with coats I never wore.

  ‘Come in, it’s a bit of a squeeze in here, it’s hardly a palace, but that’s London for you. Apparently we have the smallest living spaces in the whole of Europe, which makes no sense considering we are the fattest people in the whole of Europe . . .’ I rambled, rubbing my forehead. ‘I suppose it’s all down to the greedy property developers. Let me get you all a drink. Sit down, if you can find a seat.’

  I pointed at my two-seater sofa and matching set of Art Deco armchairs I’d bought from a second-hand furniture shop in Camden. I picked off the cushions – a mismatched, sometimes threadbare collection – from the sofa and threw them into a heap into the corner of the front room.

  ‘This is cosy,’ Ethan said now, squeezing onto the sofa next to Dominique, while the other two contestants took the chairs, their knees virtually knocking together. Paul, the photographer from the London Daily, stood awkwardly next to the bookshelf and pulled out one of my favourite Julia Child cookbooks, flicking through the pages.

  ‘It’s like an experiment to see how many people you can fit into a shoe,’ Ethan said, catching my eye and winking conspiratorially.

  ‘I should check the food,’ I said, moving into the kitchen, slamming shut the door and leaning my back against it, resting my hand on my thudding heart, the muffled sound of voices drifting through the door. All I could think about was Ethan. Ethan, Ethan, Ethan. He was here in my front room. I glanced at the picture of me and Joe pinned on the notice board alongside random postcards, takeaway menus and an electricity bill I needed to pay. I swore Joe waved. Remember me?

  ‘Oh God, oh God,’ I hissed, grabbing a square of dark chocolate from its silver foil and stuffing it into my mouth. ‘This is a nightmare.’

  Besides Ethan, Dominique, the journalist, and Paul, the photographer, there were Maggie and Andrew. Maggie, who I guessed to be in her late twenties, was short and curvy, with curly brown hair that coiled from her head in party streamers. She was very, very pretty with kohled, knowing dark eyes, high cheekbones and cherry lips. She wore a peacock-feather hairband, a sheriff-style gold brooch with ‘Dolly’ written on it, ridiculously high heels, a sequinned pencil skirt and a sheer black blouse with a big bow at the neck. Even though I had on my new dress, I felt drab in comparison and self-conscious of my overly bright hair. She was the type of girl who could wear a sack and still look good. I wasn’t. Despite being small, she had a voice that would fill a hall and I could hear her now, talking animatedly about when she was a teenager and out for dinner in a Chinese restaurant.

  ‘I thought the fingerbowl was a bowl of soup!’ she exclaimed, to appreciative laughter from Ethan.

  Then there was Andrew, probably in his mid-to-late thirties: fair wavy hair swept back as if he’d just stepped off the top deck of a ship, bright blue eyes surveying my flat, debonair in a pale linen suit, a bottle in each hand – and, by the smell of his breath, one in his belly – a serious, far-away expression on his face.

  ‘Champagne’ was his first word to me, said in a clipped English accent, as he handed me both bottles. ‘And not just any old champagne, as this is Champagne Bourgeois-Diaz, from a small artisan winery where every bottle is made by hand. I like to have a glass every day. It’s my favourite drink. I need a glass every day. Or a bottle, preferably, if circumstances allow, which they do, surprisingly often.’

  Taking a deep breath, I dressed my salad, opened the kitchen door and returned to the living room, where Ethan, an unreadable expression on his face, was now inspecting a framed black-and-white photograph Joe had taken of me in my polka-dot swimsuit, sitting on a rock on the beach in Norfolk, holding a starfish in each palm. I wanted to snatch it from him and stuff it down the back of the sofa. Even though he’d seen me naked endless times, a picture of me in my swimsuit suddenly felt too personal. I cleared my throat loudly, just to get his attention. His eyes met mine and he smiled a small smile, loaded with nostalgia. I knew so much about Ethan – his favourite book, the school pictures in his mum’s front room, the drunken night he peed in a suitcase in his sleep, his phobia of bats. I pulled my eyes away from his gaze.

  ‘So!’ I said. ‘What should we do now?’

  ‘Take our clothes off,’ said Andrew before tipping his head back and draining his glass. ‘It’s so bloody hot tonight.’

  ‘Andrew!’ Maggie cackled. ‘I can see tonight is going to be fun with you.’

  Andrew smiled ruefully, a slight blush creeping up his neck. ‘Failing that,’ he said, ‘how about eating? I’m starved and something smells good.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell us about your menu?’ Dominique said. ‘Then I suggest you run the evening as you wish while Paul takes pictures. He needs to photograph the food so will have to hang about, but I won’t stay for long. If any of you take pictures, please don’t put them on Facebook until we’re on sale. I’ll give you each a call tomorrow for your review of Eve’s dinner party. Then, it’ll be Maggie’s turn next Saturday, followed by Andrew the Saturday after and, finally, Ethan.’

  ‘Prepare to be amazed that night,’ Ethan said, with a grin.

  ‘So,’ Dominique continued, flicking her eyes to Ethan, ‘I’ll let you know who the winner is, based on your overall scores, just before we go to print. This evening’s menu, with each of your reviews, will be in the paper every Sunday. The first feature will be three weeks tomorrow, after Ethan’s dinner.’

  While Dominique talked, I felt fear mushroom in my belly. I wanted to be calm and cool about the evening ahead, but I just couldn’t be. I was panicking madly. I didn’t know how to act around Ethan. Despite the voice in my head instructing me otherwise, my eyes kept drifting to him. Half of me was desperate to interrogate him, to find out the truth about why he went; the other half didn’t want to know, wished he would just go again as quickly as he had appeared. One second I felt furious with him, the next, I was delighted to see him again. And each time my eyes fell on him, I found him already looking at me, giving me an indecipherably intense stare, which made my heart feel ready to burst out from behind my ribs. I wondered if he was feeling this too. I gulped my second glass of Prosecco like water, already feeling light-headed. I made myself think about Joe, right now probably feigning interest in my dad’s mandolin, politely tapping his toe along to ‘Greensleeves’.

  ‘Right,’ I said, rubbing my hands together, realizing that everyone, not just Ethan, was looking at me, expecting something. Food. They were expecting food. I suddenly had the unhinged desire to howl with laughter. Be calm, I told myself, be calm.

  ‘So,’ I started and, feeling like I was six years old and standing on stage to sing ‘Little Donkey’ at a Christmas concert, I recounted my menu to their expectant faces.

  ‘. . . and the pudding is what I’m most excited about,’ I finished. ‘Golden melt-in-your-mouth meringue, dipped in Madagascan dark
chocolate, smothered with whipped Jersey cream, wild strawberries and caramelized pistachio nuts and drizzled with hot chocolate sauce.’

  Maggie gasped. I tried not to look at Ethan, though I sensed his satisfied smile. I’d made this pudding for him on numerous occasions in our relationship. We’d sat together, elbow-deep in a shared bowl, beaming at one another.

  ‘I must warn you,’ said Maggie, raising a hand up in the air, ‘I might have a foodgasm.’

  ‘That sounds exciting,’ Ethan said. ‘Maybe we can share forks.’

  Maggie threw her head back and laughed. I exhaled deeply, all at once reminded of one of Ethan’s less desirable traits. He couldn’t help himself. He was such a flirt. Even here, in my flat, when he should be the picture of contrition, he was behaving like Don Juan. I bit the inside of my cheek, a remembered feeling of jealousy nagging me. I glared at Ethan, picked up his wine glass and placed it on the tray, still a third full. The drunker he was, the more flirtatious he became. I would have to put a stop to that.

  ‘I’m pudding mad,’ said Andrew, patting his pillowy stomach. ‘You can probably tell. Only this morning I bought a box of twelve chocolate fudge brownies from the Hummingbird Bakery for my girlfriend, who’s pregnant and very, very hungry. By the time I got home, three were missing. Needless to say, she wasn’t impressed.’

  Ethan laughed loudly, in his actor way, and I remembered that was another of the things he did. He laughed all the time. That was one of the reasons people liked him. Wherever he was, he gave the impression he was having a good time or that everything was hilariously funny. I smiled wanly.

  ‘Pregnant,’ Maggie said. ‘Congratulations! When’s she due?’

  ‘In about three weeks,’ Andrew said, then, turning to face me, he held up his glass. ‘Could I have another, please? What vintage is this? Last year?’

  I hadn’t a clue. I opened and closed my mouth, twizzling the bottle around madly, looking for a date to jump out at me.

  ‘Ah,’ I muttered. ‘Yes, last year . . .’ I poured more Prosecco into his glass. I wanted to ask more questions about the baby, but just as I opened my mouth, Andrew’s mobile phone beeped. He pulled it out of his pocket, sighed enormously, switched it off crossly, then, changing his mind, turned it back on again, muttering under his breath.

  ‘Are you excited?’ Maggie asked, breaking a slightly awkward silence.

  Something, fear perhaps, passed over Andrew’s face. He nodded slowly and stretched his lips back and down over his teeth.

  ‘Actually, I’m pretty bloody nervous,’ he said. ‘Alicia has found the pregnancy quite hard. We both have. It’s all been rather a sharp learning curve and not at all as I imagined pregnancy to be. I imagined brewing camomile tea for Alicia while she padded around in those denim dungarees pregnant ladies wear—’

  Maggie burst out laughing.

  ‘Dungarees?’ she said. ‘It’s not 1974, Andrew. No one wears dungarees any more.’

  ‘I don’t know about that – they’re timeless, aren’t they?’ he said with a grin. Maggie laughed again. ‘But Alicia is not feeling great. She’s pretty miserable, actually.’ Andrew sighed.

  ‘Wow,’ said Ethan. ‘That’s a big sigh.’

  Andrew smiled ruefully. ‘She, I mean we,’ he continued, ‘have wanted to be pregnant forever, but now that it’s actually about to happen, I’m scared. Of course, I don’t say that to her.’

  His shoulders drooped and he looked defeated for a moment. He opened his mouth as if to say something more, but then shook his head.

  ‘What am I boring you with this for?’ he asked. ‘We’ve only just met and I appear to be serving up my life story for dinner. I should really just shut the hell up. Besides, you’re all much too young for babies. You’re probably all still clubbing the nights away.’

  Everyone was silent for a moment. Ethan cleared his throat.

  ‘Now I’m imagining us all brandishing clubs on the dance floor,’ Ethan said, breaking the tension.

  ‘Chocolate bar or weapon?’ I said.

  ‘Weapon,’ said Ethan, smiling at me. ‘Anyway, Andrew, you were saying . . .’

  Andrew held up his glass.

  ‘Nothing. It’s this,’ he said. ‘I blame grapes. Always make me want to talk. You’d think I would have learned my lesson, after sixteen years in the wine business; you’d think I’d know what grapes can do to a man.’

  Andrew, quiet now, looked at his hands.

  ‘What’s that saying? In vino veritas. In wine there is truth,’ said Ethan, frowning. ‘Or something like that, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. In fact it’s not true. I never speak more bullshit than when I’m drunk.’

  I watched Ethan carefully. It was unusual for him to divulge anything remotely self-critical, especially when he knew we’d had rows about that exact same subject, many times.

  ‘I once went for a month without booze,’ said Maggie. ‘I had to start up again because I began questioning why I was friends with people who talked such bollocks most evenings.’

  Ethan laughed. I smiled. Andrew blew air through his nostrils. The atmosphere felt lighter and I breathed a sigh of relief. A smattering of light rain had fallen on the window, the droplets glistening gold in the late evening sun.

  ‘OK, let me get some water for everyone,’ I said, realizing that we were already one bottle of booze down. ‘I’ll put on some different music. Then I’m going to need a few minutes in the kitchen to shave my truffles and spoon up my caviar. Just joking. Right, why don’t you . . . why don’t you . . . guess what each of you does for a living, or something?’

  I shook my head. Where did that come from? I thought I hated the ‘So, what do you do?’ question everyone in London seemed so fond of. What did it matter what anyone did? But it was an ice-breaker, wasn’t it? Everyone looked at me. I looked at them, suddenly feeling like my living room was more like an elevator than a room. Without the panic button.

  ‘Back in a minute,’ I said, sweeping through to the kitchen that was cluttered with plates, pans and ingredients. I forced myself to take a deep breath and think about what still needed to be done. I pulled a few leaves off the mint plant growing in the window sill and threw them into my dish. Dipping a spoon in and tasting, I burned my mouth and swore. The sauce was too peppery and had caught on the bottom of the pan and burnt. I’d incinerated my stew.

  ‘Oh hell,’ I hissed, with a massive sigh. ‘I don’t even know if I can serve this up. Fuck, fuck, fuck.’

  I stood frozen, wondering what to do, while keeping one ear on the conversation in the living room through the open door. Maggie explained that she was a window dresser and Andrew expanded that he was a wine broker of artisan wines, finding wines that you wouldn’t otherwise know about, mostly from small vineyards in France and Italy.

  ‘And what do you do, Ethan?’ Maggie said. ‘You look like you’re on the wrong side of the law.’

  Ethan, of course, laughed. Hopelessly chopping fresh parsley to sprinkle onto my fisherman’s stew – I didn’t know what else to do at this stage other than flush it down the loo – I strained to hear his response.

  ‘ . . . did actually play a drug dealer in The Bill,’ Ethan said. ‘Yes, an actor, I’m resting at the moment, but I’ve done quite a lot of . . .’

  Steam was billowing from the saucepans on the hob, so I put the extractor fan on, which drowned out Ethan’s voice. I knew he’d be recounting his CV at great length. Ethan had trained as an actor at East 15, an acting school in Essex, and had quite decent success working in theatre and low-budget British films for the first few years since graduating. When we first met, through my sister Daisy, he’d been in The Bill – isn’t every actor? – and Silent Witness, but after that he was more often working in his parents’ deli than for a director. Besides the stage, his other passion in life was food, just like me. The deli customers absolutely adored him, especially the middle-aged ladies, whose tan tights were always in a twist over the colour of his eyes or the timbre of hi
s voice. I smiled at the memory of him quoting lines from Goodfellas to his customers. When I went in to see him, I’d virtually had to set fire to my hair to get his attention. Everyone wanted a few slices of Ethan.

  ‘And you, Eve?’ said Andrew, when I stuck my head back into the living room to check I hadn’t dreamt that Ethan was there. ‘What do you do?’

  I stood still and looked at Ethan, who was watching me enquiringly. When he left, I had done all the miserable things heartbroken people do, including having a full head of red, getting that red head stuck in the door and calling the Fire Brigade (I got so drunk on a night out that I lost my keys and stupidly tried to get back in through the cat flap) and eventually handing in my notice at my job as a fundraising officer for a wildlife charity. Suddenly I couldn’t make myself care about white rhinoceroses any more, even if their numbers were dwindling towards extinction. I decided that it was time to do something I really wanted to do. My best friend Isabel, who managed a restaurant chain, and I had spent hours dreaming about opening up our own cafe; so, after I spent a year working with Isabel, learning what I could about the catering business, we decided, now or never, that we had to make that dream come true. With the help of her stockbroker husband, Robert, we had signed a year-long lease of a small property in East Dulwich, planning on opening a cafe.

  ‘I’m trying to open my own cafe,’ I said, waving my hand through the air. ‘But I’m having a few problems, like a rapidly declining bank balance and an absent partner, which is why it would be great if I won this tonight. Guilt trip.’

  Everything was coming together nicely until last month – just twelve weeks before we were supposed to open – when Isabel announced she was going to leave London to live in Dubai with Robert, who had landed a fancy job over there, counting gold bullion or something. Though she had already paid the non-refundable money for the lease and had no intention of making me pay it back, it was left to me to find a new partner and/or a new investor to help with costs. I hadn’t found anyone, and with decoration to complete, furniture and stock to buy and our pot of money running out, I was beginning to wonder if it was ever going to happen or whether I was going to have to admit defeat.