The Woman Who Wanted More

by Vicky Zimmerman

  ‘No, then I won a scholarship to West Ham Secondary, where I had new problems. I was desperate to be a femme fatale but all the boys loved Dolly Atkin. I felt alone again, but then something good happened: our English teacher, Mr Moffat. In our first class he read a Cowper poem, Oh that those lips had language . . . I already loved reading, but Mr Moffat sparked my love of writing. Eight decades later, I still have boundless gratitude to him for a lifetime enriched by words.’

  ‘Surely having such an inspiring teacher made you want to become one?’

  ‘Goodness no – that was all Papa’s decision. In my day being a teacher meant being a badly dressed spinster. I wept and argued but he threatened me with all manner of humiliations, so I ended up spending two miserable years at Saffron Walden Training College. I remember on the day of the practicals, our examiner, Miss Clelland, was observing me teach an art class at the village school. I’d finished setting up the still-life models but just as we were about to begin, the hunt went by, hounds baying, hooves clopping. I’d never seen a hunt before and rushed to the window; those scarlet jackets, the prancing, glossy horses, they fascinated me. I shouted for the girls to come and watch! Once the hunt had passed I told them to ignore the still life and paint what they’d seen, the colour, the movement, and to have fun. Afterwards Miss Clelland dragged me to her study, her face grim. “You broke every rule in the book,” she said. “Why do you want to teach?” When I told her I didn’t, she looked pained. “It’s rare I discover a true teacher, someone who can bring light in, and when I do, she can’t wait to leave. It’s an unjust world.” And she wasn’t wrong about that.’

  ‘I bet your pupils loved you though.’

  ‘They were fond of me, and I of them, but I was consumed by a desire to escape the dreariness of it all. And my parents, who’d retired to Bournemouth, worried. The fact that I was unmarried spoiled their peace of mind.’

  ‘My mother’s the same.’

  ‘She shouldn’t be. I learned to truly value my independence.’

  ‘So, hang on, is this when you met Samuel?’

  ‘We’ll come to Samuel another time.’ Cecily breaks into an epic yawn. ‘Go now. All this talking’s worn me out. Good luck with the picnic. Don’t under-season the pâté.’

  Kate wonders if Cecily keeps interrupting her own story as a way of enticing Kate back for another serving.

  Chapter Thirty

  RITA IS OUT WITH Patrick on Monday night and Kate sits down with a glass of wine, her paperwork for Devron and a large bowl of spaghetti carbonara. She twirls her fork through the pasta, the crispy chunks of bacon clinging to the luscious strands, and takes a large mouthful. Ah, it’s totally delicious, salty and creamy, with that perfect bite.

  She looks at her CV and frowns. When Annalex first joined the department she’d circulated her CV – three pages of A4 that positioned herself as the lovechild of Sheryl Sandberg and Steve Jobs. In her mission statement Annalex described herself as ‘a proactive team player, equally at home innovating and driving step change’. (There isn’t a phrase in the English language Kate hates more than step change, though proactive comes a close second.)

  Still, while Kate may not have as jazzy a CV, nineteen and three quarter years of selling food – from the shop floor upwards – means she knows her stuff: cut her and she bleeds Fletchers.

  Kate turns her attention to her essay. She’s written about the award-winning campaign she worked on last year which doubled sales of Fletchers’ Italian range. She’s given the piece many more hours than is required, re-crafted it a dozen times. But rereading it now for the umpteenth time, it’s just . . . it’s polished, it’s professional, it’s very Fletchers, but it isn’t very Kate.

  She looks down into her now-empty pasta bowl, thinking back to her recent trip to Borough Market – how inspired she’d felt. She takes her copy of Thought for Food from her bag, pondering the weight of it in her hands. She gently flicks through it and smiles – on every page the passion for its subject shines through. Her thoughts turn to Cecily, teaching that art class all those decades ago, breaking the rules, following her gut, being true to what thrilled her.

  Kate takes a sip of wine. She opens a new blank document on her computer and feels a weird tingling in her body. It’s adrenaline – fear that she could write something dreadful and muck up her chances – mixed with hope that she could actually write something better, something true to herself, something that sings.

  She closes her eyes and in her mind walks through Borough Market, starting at the amazing fruit and veg stall with its bounty of squashes and mushrooms; the wonderful smoky, chargrilled smell from the chorizo sandwich seller – a pile of fresh, warm, flour-dusted bread rolls stacked ready to be filled; then on to the custard doughnut man, with rows of golden sugary doughnuts – luscious vanilla and chocolate cream erupting from the top, just waiting to have someone’s teeth sink into them.

  She starts typing about her love of food, the role it plays in life and in the lives of Fletchers’ customers. She writes about sharing, pleasure, generosity and appetite, and the words flow. Before she knows it, it’s well past midnight and she’s written 1,400 words, which can easily be trimmed in the morning. When she’s doing what she loves, it doesn’t feel like work – it feels like coming home.

  When she rereads her piece first thing on Tuesday she feels a small swell of pride – the writing is better than good, it’s great. She presses send.

  Devron’s not due to make any decisions until the following week, but something tells Kate he’s read her piece when he rolls in to work. Perhaps she’s reading too much into the tea leaves, but when he comes over to her desk in the afternoon he smiles a reluctant smile of defeat and nods at her.

  Kate feels a small sense of victory, something she hasn’t felt in quite some time.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Picnic for Friends, English Summer Rain Notwithstanding

  Aim: I can think of none but pure masochism, entailing, as it does exposure to wasp attack, hazards of the climate and the discomforts of sitting on inhospitable ground. However, the fact remains that everybody else seems to love a picnic.

  AS IT TURNS OUT, Cecily’s menu is pretty close to what Kate would create if she was devising ‘Picnic for a Fussy Carb-phobic Actor’: pâté, ham rolls stuffed with creamy mushrooms, peppers filled with scrambled egg.

  Kate’s shopping for the ingredients after work on Friday when she notices the pâté recipe contains alcohol, so she texts Martin:

  Are you strict AA or is cognac in pâté OK?

  He replies instantly:

  If you can get me drunk on pâté, you have permission to take full advantage of me. Can’t wait to see you xxx

  Kate figures the food will take four hours’ prep – she can do it all tomorrow. They’re not due to meet till 3 p.m., and she’s treating herself first thing to a haircut and a new dress from Zara. Since The Wobble, she’s forgotten there’s a point to looking good for anyone except Nick. Time for her to get back in the game.

  *

  Kate stands in Rita’s kitchen, hands on hips, head throbbing slightly as she runs her finger down her order of prep. She can’t remember the last time she prepared a multi-part menu alone. Looking at Cecily’s recipes, her mind had gone fuzzy when she’d thought about how to juggle the timings – should she make the pâté first, as it needed to set? Or the ham rolls – they were fiddly and might eat up too much time. She used to be good at this before Nick, preparing delicious feasts for her friends at every opportunity. She’d once cooked an eight-course Spanish extravaganza to celebrate Bailey’s divorce papers, in memory of an amazing meal the girls had enjoyed on a weekend in Barcelona for Bailey’s thirtieth. But Kate’s lost her culinary independence, becoming reliant on being half of a partnership in the kitchen.

  Creamy mushroom and mustard filling for the ham rolls – she’ll do that first. She peels the lid off the cream and spatters herself with dairy. Why is she even going to all this trou
ble for a date she’s not sure about? She stirs a spoon of wholegrain mustard into the cream and adds a pinch of salt. She should stop making a big deal about this – Cecily wouldn’t encourage her to do anything foolish, and even Bailey had agreed it was smart to keep her options open.

  On to the pâté: she takes the chicken livers from the plastic tray and shudders, the slippery organs heavy in her fingers. Nick always handles food Kate’s too squeamish to deal with. For his birthday last year she’d bought him a butchery course. She’d happily upskilled Nick, yet never considered doing the course herself – far too expensive. Nick wouldn’t blink twice at investing in himself. Was that a male/female thing, or just a Nick/Kate thing?

  Right – time for the red peppers. Kate had to go to the specialist greengrocer in Camden to find these pimentos, but she’s so glad she made the effort. She’d forgotten how wonderful that shop is eleven varieties of pepper, pale green, almost luminous orange, deep scarlet – fat, skinny, short, wonky. Browsing their fruit and veg gives her the same excitement she feels in a bookshop – imagining the infinite possibilities. Whatever the outcome of this picnic, she’s glad Cecily bullied her into it.

  As she’s chopping the onions she feels a dull ache swell in her chest. Nick would really love this food. But then her sadness is hijacked again by anger, at the fact that he was so careless with something that wasn’t his to break – he was careless with them.

  Kate’s mood swings are all over the place, as are these ham rolls. Sod it. She’s going to make a delicious picnic. She’s going to go out for a fun afternoon with this sexy actor. She’s going to remind herself that she’s an attractive, capable woman who can roll a piece of ham round a rather squidgy filling into an almost acceptable-looking cylinder.

  Two hours later Kate surveys the final spread, packed in a wicker basket on Rita’s kitchen counter: she’s done well.

  In the bathroom mirror she sees the wear and tear of the last few months. She looks slimmer but tired. She practises a smile. Her teeth are mildly stained from all the cigarettes and black coffee. She must do a Rita and focus on the positives. She traces a thin line of navy liner over her eyelids – that always makes her eyes look greener. She curls her naturally long eyelashes with immense diligence rather than her usual two-second squeeze. She puts on lashings of mascara, two small blots of pink blusher. She takes a deep breath and straightens the shoulders of her new dress. She feels a small dart of excitement crackle through her. Life is not scary, life’s a great big abundant universe full of possibilities.

  *

  To be honest, this wasn’t one of the possibilities she’d considered.

  Kate checks her watch again: 3.28 p.m. She’s sure they said 3 p.m. but perhaps they said 3.30 p.m.? She rereads the last text from Martin, sent yesterday at 11 p.m. – no, definitely 3 p.m. It’s most strange.

  She tries calling him again but his phone rings out. That’s the second call she’s made – any more and she’ll look like a bunny boiler. She sneaks her hand into the hamper and surreptitiously grabs a stuffed pepper and wolfs it down; she’s starving.

  Her phone pings, that must be him. No – it’s Nick:

  Fancy a curry tonight? It’s way more fun eating with you x.

  This is all Nick’s bloody fault. If he hadn’t had The Wobble, she wouldn’t be standing here with an increasingly heavy hamper, waiting for a c-list actor who was slightly too handsy on the first date.

  She texts Bailey and Cara:

  How long do I wait before I assume I’ve been stood up?

  Cara replies:

  7 minutes, max.

  Bailey:

  40 minutes.

  She’ll give it a little longer. There’s so much food that will go to waste. In the meantime, she googles Martin. She’s googled him before, to check which other TV shows he’s been in – but she didn’t bother deep-googling, and now she gets to page three of the search she kicks herself for the incompleteness of her stalking. Martin Saponara, age 43, date of birth 14 May. May. Not December, not a Sagittarius at all. It’s possible Wikipedia is wrong, but it’s unlikely Heat magazine is too – here’s a pap shot of Martin coming out of the Groucho on his birthday, in May, with a gang of slightly more famous friends.

  He’s lied about his star sign and birthday, no doubt just to get in her pants. What else has he lied about? Kate places the hamper on the pavement and folds her arms in indignation. What sort of reasonably successful forty-three-year-old man can’t have a woman round to his flat – unless his flatmate is, in fact, a girlfriend, or even his ‘ex’ wife? He probably only suggested this picnic so he could have a fumble in the grass because they can’t go to Kate’s place or his!

  And now she thinks about it, it was pretty creepy of him to suggest swinging by for a visit after he’d been out with his brother last Saturday night. Was that why he’d stood her up – he’d thought she was a sure thing, and she sure wasn’t?

  Ah, panic over, finally, there he is, waving at her from the bus stop in the distance. She’s got all carried away in her imagination about how he’s such a love rat, when really all he did was tell one small fib about his birthday, to charm her – is that so bad? She waves back, but as the man approaches she realises with a sinking feeling that he’s the same height and build as Martin but is waving at the girl standing behind her – the one who hasn’t been stood up.

  Kate feels her face burn with shame. She sends Martin a text:

  Are you en route? I have a hamper of protein with your name on.

  The text says ‘delivered’, so he’s not submerged under water, but there’s still no response by 4.10 p.m.

  She has never been stood up before. She has wasted her time, effort and far too much money on this food and now here she is standing in the street with her basket like Dorothy in the Wizard of Cocking Oz. She handled those disgusting slimy livers for this man and this is what she gets in return? She should have learned by now that no man is to be trusted. But, actually, Nick would never, ever have done something this rude and flaky. Really, the devil you know is so much better than the one who chats you up in a coffee shop – that’s true or else it wouldn’t be a cliché.

  She feels angry, depressed, irritable; but buried underneath all that she feels hurt, then embarrassed for even caring. It doesn’t matter that someone has let her down. So what? Who does she even think she is that some cool, handsome actor would be interested in her?

  She takes out her phone again and types a text for all the wrong reasons:

  I’ll be there at 7 p.m., need to un-hamper myself. Don’t forget the poppadoms.

  What’s so wrong with trying to make herself feel better?

  *

  She treats herself to a taxi and gives the driver Lauderdale’s address. She finds Bernadette in the kitchen overseeing a store-cupboard inventory.

  ‘You’re not normally in on a Saturday,’ says Bernadette, checking her watch. ‘Are you here for Mrs Paisner’s ninety-fourth? They’re all in the garden having a sing-song. They’ll be finishing in five.’

  ‘I didn’t know about her party. I’m just bringing some home-made food, it’s untouched.’

  Bernadette pokes around in the hamper. ‘We can put it out with dinner – the ladies will like those ham rolls, and the pâté, if they’re not full of cake from tea. I’m not sure about those peppers, though, probably too spicy.’

  ‘They’re very mild.’

  ‘I can’t risk any upset tummies, housekeeping would never forgive me.’

  ‘Can I go and see Mrs Finn? I’d like to show her the food, she inspired me to make it – well, ordered me to. Is she in the garden?’

  Bernadette’s smile turns to a frown. ‘Mrs Finn is not in the garden, Mrs Finn is never in the garden. Mrs Finn is having a rest. She had a bad night’s sleep and decided to take it out on one of my girls.’

  ‘Oh no, is she OK?’

  ‘Mrs Finn didn’t hit her, but she was “unimpressed” with her vichyssoise and made some obnoxious comments
. Jeanie was a little shaken.’

  ‘Sorry, I meant is Mrs Finn OK?’

  ‘Mrs Finn? She thrives on conflict. She’s asleep, that’s all.’

  ‘I’ll just take her some food for when she wakes up. If she didn’t eat her soup she might be hungry.’

  Bernadette shakes her head. ‘She’s fast asleep. Besides, I don’t believe in rewarding bad behaviour. She can take her pick at dinner. I’ll tell her you stopped by.’

  Chapter Thirty-two

  KATE’S HEART IS RACING as she stands outside Nick’s flat and reaches for the doorbell. She must try to act nonchalant, but she’s mildly traumatised just standing here, memories of a hundred hello kisses on this doorstep ricocheting in her chest. She’s said no to all of Nick’s invitations since the coffee shop, even though she’s wanted to say yes. It’s only because Martin’s stood her up that she’s here now. Still, perhaps all those fridge magnets are true, and everything happens for a reason.

  Nick opens the door looking nervous and hopeful, then looks at her and breaks into a huge smile. She breezes past him into the living area and he follows behind her like a puppy.

  ‘Lured me here under false pretences – you said curry,’ says Kate, though she’s delighted at what’s on the kitchen counter. Seven bowls of ingredients – all perfectly prepared: sour cream, chopped jalapeños, home-made salsa, grated cheese, sliced avocado, chorizo and scrambled eggs. He must have raced out as soon as she texted back to buy all this, she thinks tenderly.

  ‘I know it’s not breakfast, but I thought you might like one anyway.’ He smiles sheepishly. ‘There’s no point making breakfast burritos if you’re not around to share them.’

  Her heart responds with a solid surge of hope, which she tries to ignore. She turns to flick through the papers on the kitchen counter where he keeps his crossword drafts. ‘I see your crossword pile is in order.’

  ‘I got a clue wrong the other day,’ he says, pulling a distraught face.