Beef, I thought. I can do beef.
We talked of small things while waiting for our starters. I told Mrs Traynor that I was still working at the airport but was being considered for a promotion and tried to make it sound like a positive career choice rather than a cry for help. I told her Lily had found a job, and when she heard what Lily was doing, Mrs Traynor didn’t shudder, as I had secretly been afraid she might, but nodded. ‘That sounds eminently sensible. It never hurts to get your hands dirty when you’re starting out.’
‘It’s not got any prospects,’ Lily said firmly. ‘Unless you count being allowed to move onto the till.’
‘Well, neither does having a paper round. But your father did that for two years before he left school. It instils a work ethic.’
‘And people always need tins of frankfurters,’ I observed.
‘Do they really?’ said Mrs Traynor, and looked briefly appalled.
We watched as another table was seated beside us, an elderly woman lowered with much fuss and exclamation into a chair by two male relatives.
‘We got your photograph album,’ I said.
‘Oh, you did! I had wondered. Did … did you like it?’
Lily’s eyes flickered towards her. ‘It was nice, thank you,’ she said.
Mrs Traynor took a sip of her water. ‘I wanted to show you another side of Will. I feel sometimes as if his life has been rather taken over by what happened when he died. I just wanted to show that he was more than a wheelchair. More than the manner of his death.’
There was a brief silence.
‘It was nice, thank you,’ Lily repeated.
Our food arrived, and Lily grew silent again. The waiters hovered officiously, filling water glasses when their levels fell by a centimetre. A breadboard was offered, removed and re-offered five minutes later. The restaurant filled with people like Mrs Traynor: well-dressed, well-spoken, people for whom turbot quenelles was a standard lunch and not a conversational minefield. Mrs Traynor asked after my family, and spoke warmly of my father. ‘He did such a very good job at the castle.’
‘It must be strange, not going back,’ I said, then winced internally, wondering if I’d breached some invisible line.
But Mrs Traynor just gazed at the tablecloth in front of her. ‘It is,’ she agreed, and nodded, her smile a little tighter, then drank some more water.
The conversation carried on like this through our starters (smoked salmon for Lily, salad for Mrs Traynor and me), stalling and moving forward in fits and starts, like someone learning to drive a car. It was with some relief that I saw the waiter approach with our main courses. My smile disappeared as he placed my plate in front of me. It did not look like beef. It looked like soggy brown discs in a thick brown sauce.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said to the waiter. ‘I ordered the beef?’
He let his gaze hang on me for a moment. ‘This is the beef, Madame.’
We both stared at my plate.
‘Joues de boeuf?’ he said. ‘Beef cheeks?’
‘Beef cheeks?’
We both stared at my plate and my stomach did a little flip.
‘Oh, of course,’ I said. ‘I – yes. Beef cheeks. Thank you.’
Beef cheeks. I was too afraid to ask from which end they came. I wasn’t sure which would be worse. I smiled at Mrs Traynor, and set about nibbling my gnocchi.
We ate in near silence. Mrs Traynor and I were both running out of conversational options. Lily spoke little, and when she did say something it was spiky, as if she were testing her grandmother. She toyed with her food, a reluctant teen dragged along to a too-fancy lunch with the grown-ups. I ate mine in small forkfuls, trying not to listen to the little voice that kept squeaking in my ear: You’re eating cheeks! Actual cheeks!
Eventually we ordered coffee. When the waiter had gone, Mrs Traynor removed her napkin and put it on the table. ‘I can’t do this any longer.’
Lily’s head lifted. She looked at me and back at Mrs Traynor.
‘The food is very nice and it’s lovely hearing about your jobs and all, but this really isn’t going to move us forward, is it?’
I wondered if she was going to leave, whether Lily had pushed her too far. I saw the surprise in Lily’s face and realized she was thinking it too. But instead Mrs Traynor pushed away her cup and saucer, and leaned forward over the table. ‘Lily, I didn’t come to impress you with a fancy lunch. I came to say I’m sorry. It’s hard to explain how I was when you turned up that day, but that unfortunate meeting was not your fault, and I want to apologize that your introduction to this side of your family has been so … inadequate.’