The Family Gift Read online

  I grab the precious pan, and head back into the car, en route for the photographic studio.

  Today, as I drive past Bricky City – ‘Buy Bricks For Half Price!’ – I realise that even Beyoncé on the radio huskily telling me he should have put a ring on it isn’t cheering me up.

  I should be happy, I reason as I drive in a line of lorries.

  I have beautiful children, a husband, new house, a career . . . But away from my family, my lodestones, I don’t feel happy and this shouldn’t be the case. Should is a tricky word.

  I needed to look at Pinterest later, see some funnies, I decide. Pinterest always makes me happy when I have a moment to look at it.

  I spend far too long looking at pictures of cute animals. Sloths – I know, who’d have thought? – are cute.

  I have, obviously, gone off the inspirational quotes on a personal level but I try to pepper them into my social media for professional reasons.

  I also buy kitchen bits and bobs online, which is fine as I know what I am doing there. I also – fashion police alert – buy clothes online. This is dangerous because I have, as Scarlett and Maura say, no taste, hence I make purchases with the aid of TV show stylists.

  Lorraine looks like one of those beautiful but intellectually challenged girls you see in magazine photo spreads of glamorous parties. She has a platinum pixie cut, with hints of colour – today, she’s sporting pale violet – and, despite her fashion-forward wardrobe, has genuine 32D breasts, not implants, and the huge, unblinking blue eyes of a sweet but slightly bewildered girl. In fact, she has a mind like a steel trap.

  Chefs always need a home economist to work with on their TV shows, books and demos and when I first worked with Lorraine two years ago, I realised how brilliant she was. By her second week of working with me, she had helped me with a tricky photo shoot and with an even trickier food festival, because she is one of a breed of women who simply get things done. She’d even sorted out my inbox, organised the office brilliantly but had come to the conclusion that I should no longer throw work the way of an old friend, Geraldine, who was a stylist with amazing contacts for food purchasing.

  Lorraine told me that Geraldine was purchasing bulk cheap vodka alongside ingredients. Enough vodka to have a decent-sized party in the Kremlin but not good enough quality for the Politburo, I imagine.

  I had suspected this vodka-purchasing but lacked the heart or the evidence to confront Geraldine.

  I am hopeless at confrontation, I should add.

  ‘I know she’s your friend but she’s burning out, screwing things up and will take you and the profits with her,’ said Lorraine. ‘As a friend, you can stage an intervention and let her rehab her ass but as a boss, you have to fire her.’

  As I said, Lorraine looks like a sweet but innocent young thing. Twenty-six year-olds are so much more together today than when I was twenty-six.

  Firing Geraldine was a process that nearly killed me.

  ‘I’ll talk to her,’ I said to Lorraine, when I was still pretending to be a tough business lady.

  Lorraine was only working for me for two weeks and I had to give the impression that I had all aspects of my career under control.

  ‘You didn’t talk to her, did you?’ asked Lorraine, on day five of this challenge, when Geraldine turned up at a newspaper supplement shoot reeking of booze. I was riddled with both guilt and rage, which give you a very acid stomach when combined, I can tell you.

  ‘No,’ I said. I may have wailed. ‘I can’t . . .’

  ‘You’re as soft as butter, aren’t you?’ muttered Lorraine. ‘Haven’t you read Girl Boss?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Tonight, do it tonight. You can’t carry passengers. This is a lean business.’

  ‘But she’s my friend and she needs help,’ I begin.

  ‘Think of your kids,’ said Lorraine.

  Magic words. Nothing works so well as reminding me I have three children to take care of.

  ‘Plus, all this career could be over in a moment as soon as some other chef comes along,’ Lorraine went on, using the second ultimate weapon

  ‘OK, I get it,’ I said.

  Despite my mother having taught us all that decency and hoping for the best for all womankind is the way forward, I have a fear of being dumped in this chef-heavy world. Every time you look sideways, another chef is up on Instagram, being funny/funky/cool and doing new and exciting things with kohlrabi (cabbage-y vegetable, in case you were wondering. I have never been a fan.)

  ‘How did you get to be so tough?’ I asked Lorraine, wishing I was tough.

  ‘First person in my family to go to third-level education,’ Lorraine said, eyeballing me. ‘It did not happen by accident. My mother pushed me. I mean push. You think I am tough, you need to meet her. Right.’ She regrouped. ‘We’ll do it together tomorrow. Team meeting.’

  Geraldine sobbed. I sobbed. She fell to the floor and did her sobbing down there. Lorraine had tissues and a handful of rebab leaflets.

  ‘I’ll write you a lovely reference,’ I blubbed.

  ‘You won’t or you’ll be sued,’ said Lorraine, ever the businesswoman.

  She had proof of all the vodka-enhanced bills and said getting witnesses to Geraldine’s turning up drunk would be no problem.

  ‘What’ll I tell everyone?’ It was Geraldine’s turn to wail.

  Lorraine hauled her off the floor and into a chair, and handed her tea. ‘They already know, love. You’re the last one. Do something about it. Crack cocaine’s the big hitter now – you don’t want to go down that road when the vodka’s not taking you into your happy place as quickly.’

  ‘I’d never touch drugs,’ said Geraldine, shocked.

  ‘Bet you never thought you’d come to work pissed but hey, here you are. Life’s always surprising us,’ said Lorraine cheerfully.

  Lorraine had Geraldine’s mother – grey-faced and red-eyed – waiting in her car outside and between us, we hauled Geraldine into it. She was a sobbing mess now, plus dirty because the lift was broken and we’d had to womanhandle her down the stairs, which was hard as she was, no kidding, already quite plastered.

  ‘I’m so – so sorry,’ I said incoherently to Geraldine’s mother, whom I had known for years. At that point, it was hard to know who was crying most – me or Geraldine. Geraldine’s mother just nodded mutely.

  It killed me. Killed me. Still does when I wake in the middle of the night.

  7

  Today’s the day to be the best you ever!

  Finally, I reach the studio where today’s magic will happen.

  ‘Hello Freya, hello! When do I get to see the house?’ Lorraine, who lives in thick-soled cool trainers, jeans of all lengths and never a sock in sight, even in the snow, bounces over from her car, an upcycled Mini which she hand-painted to look as if Dali had a hand in it. She gets stopped regularly by the police just so they can look at it and point. The upside of this is that people in squad cars regularly wave at her and she has dated a few motorbike cops.

  ‘It’s the leather,’ she says. ‘I see the leather, the bikes . . . I can’t say no.’

  ‘Stop right there,’ I say when she goes all dreamy. ‘I. Do. Not. Want. To. Know.’

  ‘Hello yourself,’ I say now, and hug her, stifling a tear.

  What is wrong with me? Have I transmogrified into Granny without noticing? Will I cry at every even vaguely emotional moment? I sincerely hope not.

  Lorraine has been handling things in Team Freya for the past few days and I’ve missed her. She’s my friend as well as a huge part of my career success, and with Lorraine you never have to ask her not to sugar coat the truth.

  It’s been two years since I – well, really Lorraine – fired Geraldine, and she’s still working in the chef industry. Horribly, she blanks me every time she sees me, which upsets me no end.

&n
bsp; ‘We helped her,’ I said to Lorraine once after one such incident when I had to run into the loo to breathe deeply. Lorraine followed

  Lorraine shrugged. ‘She wants someone to blame, won’t take responsibility and has decided the evil person is you. Her loss.’

  You see: tough. Without Lorraine, I would be doing every charity event from one end of the island to the other but Lorraine merely says no: politely, but no. She has a charity pack she can send and charities we support.

  ‘You run a business, not a drop-everything-to-help-other-people organisation,’ she says as she fires off another ‘would love to help but Freya supports X charity’ email.

  She could write her own version of Girl Boss and no mistake.

  We hug and I snuffle deeply, pretending I have a cold to cover up the fact that I feel tearful. Thinking about Geraldine has that effect on me.

  ‘The house is lovely,’ I say now. ‘But it needs work.’

  ‘I hope you’ve got pictures on your phone,’ Lorraine says, opening my car boot. ‘I want to see it all.’

  We start moving our boxes of kitchen magic out. Photographic studios have assistants but they do not help with this type of thing.

  The food stylist is already there and it is Maxwell, a man who can make a tired-looking strawberry appear so juicy on the page that you might just bite into the magazine to eat it.

  He is that good.

  Maxwell is outside, having a last-minute cigarette, talking to his fiancé on the phone and working a jeans, skinny white T and white runners combo with his muscles – a hideously fashionable outfit, no doubt. He ignores us, our boxes and our struggles.

  ‘You going to help?’ I demand, as I stagger past.

  ‘You might have told me she was going through the change,’ Maxwell says to Lorraine, stubbing out his fag and blowing kisses into the phone simultaneously.

  A copper bottomed saucepan nearly hits the ground.

  ‘Kidding,’ he says, grabbing it just in time. ‘You look fab-u-lous, Lorraine,’ he adds, ‘as ever, and you look lovely, Sweetums. Love the sea-green shirt. Very now. Did Delicious Dan leave that out for you to wear?’

  ‘No, I dress myself,’ I lie. ‘And keep your paws off Dan. He is not interested in what you have in your Levis, Maxwell.’

  Maxwell roars with amusement, admiring his reflection in the lift door. ‘Levis! As if. These exquisite jeans are Hedi Slimane for Dior Homme! Now, I’ve been up and the photographer has been struck with an appalling stomach bug so today we’re stuck with a second tier snapper who looks about fourteen, and doesn’t “do food, normally”. His assistant isn’t fourteen – he’s twelve.’

  Lorraine and I groan.

  ‘Suck it up,’ Maxwell advises. ‘We’re going to be here for hours so let’s smile and hope we get to go home before midnight.’

  ‘I can’t be here for hours, I’ve got children,’ I mutter.

  ‘You might be home in time for university,’ Maxwell laughs.

  Because the RTÉ Guide trusts us, we do not have someone from the magazine overseeing it all. I need to keep us on-theme. It’s what I’m good at: gauging what is needed and delivering it.

  As one review said: ‘Freya Abalone knows what I want before I do,’ a line Dan mischievously quotes to me quite often when we are in bed. He’s even threatened to have a tattoo of it inked on his lower abdomen.

  ‘Yeah, and what’s that going to look like when you need to get your appendix out,’ I joked back. ‘Perv.’

  Three hours later, Lorraine and I having laboured over four winter warming soups, I regretfully turn the gas off the pumpkin risotto and go out to photography central where Lorraine and Maxwell are fighting with the photographer, who thinks we should do some moody shots. He’s turned the lights way down and I almost stumble across a cable.

  Moody is not what we have in mind today.

  I know this because I have sold a lot of cookbooks and people like to be able to see what they are going to cook. They do not appreciate the camera focusing on the burnished steel of an exotic bone-handled soup spoon instead of on the actual soup.

  Lorraine and Maxwell turn as I come in.

  They both know me well enough to know that my approach to the photographer, who has been behaving as if a food shoot is beneath him, will be to gently cajole him into some normal shots before allowing him to have a little play with his bone-handled shenanigans. You catch more flies with honey and this has always been my way.

  But I am weary. So weary that I have actually cut my forefinger, which is bound up with blue kitchen plaster, and I am cross about this because I normally have fabulous knife skills. I have a headache because the photographer’s loud techno/pulse/headache-inducing mood music is set to eleven, and the oven is so temperamental, it is hard to know how long the lamb shanks will take to actually be done or if they’ll be cremated. It could go either way.

  ‘Don’t tell me what to do,’ the photographer is saying to my team. ‘I know what I’m doing.’ His assistant, who is at the computer looking at shots, nods in agreement.

  Something pings inside me in a dangerous way.

  ‘No. You. Don’t,’ I say, hurling the words at him with fury.

  Nobody is more surprised than me.

  Lorraine’s eyes widen, if possible, and Maxwell briefly stops looking fabulous to look astonished.

  ‘This is my shoot, we’re on a tight schedule here and if you want to work for Wallpaper magazine, go do it but today, we are taking pictures of food. Food that people need to actually see, not imagine from a distant, hazy outline. We are already running late. I know what the magazine wants. I know what I want. So cut the crap and take the shot.’

  I sense I might be looking fearsome now. Dan says I can do that on occasion.

  ‘You put your hands on your hips and your eyes – they glow. Don’t know how you do it, Freya, but you can. Very sexy,’ he adds.

  Nobody is thinking I am sexy today. I, Freya Abalone, nice woman of the cooking industry who has been mocked – yes, mocked – for being twee because she’s so nice, has lost her temper.

  ‘B-b . . . but,’ starts the photographer gamely.

  ‘No!’ I hold a hand out. ‘But nothing. Get the shot. The risotto is coming in ten minutes. Got that, everyone? Plus, we need more lighting. This is not cooking in some grittily-lit northern palace in Game of Thrones. And. Turn. That. Music. Off.’

  The assistant jumps first. The music stops. Lights come up.

  The photographer, who is definitely shorter than me and several decades younger, appears to be thinking of arguing.

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ I say and stalk back to the kitchen.

  Nobody comes near me for ten minutes and then Lorraine bounces in. ‘Shots are in the can. You need to come and look. I’ll take over here. Are you OK, boss?’

  ‘What?’ I ask, carefully spooning risotto into a bowl the watercolour blue of a Turner sky.

  ‘You’re not yourself today, Freya, not that he didn’t need telling off but you’re never like that . . .’

  ‘I’m fine!’ I say, so loudly that Maxwell, who is coming in to oversee the risotto, backs out again.

  ‘Fine,’ I hiss at Lorraine.

  ‘OK,’ she says, unperturbed. ‘Just saying . . .’

  8

  When the going gets tough, the tough put on more lipstick

  By the time we’ve finished enough winter warming soup to feed a small army, I never want to sweat another onion ever again. It’s after five before we finish up the shoot and I know I’m going to be hitting all the traffic and going to be late home for Angela, who picks up the older two from school, having previously picked up Teddy from Montessori, and heats or cooks whatever I have already prepared for the children’s early dinner. I phone her on her mobile but she doesn’t answer, and I immediately panic, thinking all sorts of different
things have happened.

  This is my fault – my fault for summoning the Gods of the universe by being irritable and angry and losing my temper. I never lose my temper. What happened to me?

  I drive home quite probably dangerously because I arrive at the house almost without knowing how I got there. That’s got to be unsafe. All I can think of is that I let all this anger come out and it wasn’t the photographer’s fault. He’s just young and silly. There are so many other ways I could have handled it, such as . . .?

  I slump as I think of all the ways that I could have handled it and how I did handle it. And how Maxwell and Lorraine won’t mind, because they love me, but, but there is a photographer out there now who hates me and will tell everyone that Freya Abalone is a bad-tempered bitch. All it takes in this business is for you to be mean, horrible or bitchy, just once and you get a reputation. I have seen it happen. Perfectly nice people who have thrown their toys out of the pram once and thereafter, everyone thinks they’re either a mentaller or too big for their boots, which is a charge worse than murder.

  Oh yes, this only happens to women. Men who throw their toys out of the pram are strong upstanding citizens who don’t take any crap, but women who do it are either hormonal or cold, ambitious bitches.

  I drive in, park the car and don’t even bother getting my saucepans and kitchen equipment out. It’s all I can do to haul myself into the house. And it’s such a relief to have Teddy run and throw herself at me, like a little gymnast bouncing off a trampoline.

  ‘Mummy,’ she roars, landing against me with such force that I feel almost winded.

  I hug her tightly. Smelling the beautiful little-girl smell of her, nuzzling her neck, tickling her, kissing her, feeling her jammy fingers all over me. Oh, she’s bliss. Bliss. I hope Teddy grows up in a world where women can say what they think without being labelled negatively. Because, wow, Teddy says what she likes.

  Liam comes next, showing me a drawing he did at school for geography. It’s a map and I’d be hard pressed to say where it was a map of, but it’s coloured exquisitely in rainbow tones that all merge into one another. Liam loves drawing and colouring in, even if cartography isn’t his strong point. He didn’t get this artistry from me or Dan, neither of whom can draw so much as a smiley face.