Once a month, Thomasina Matthews would go into Nightingale Books on a Tuesday afternoon – her one afternoon off a week – and choose a new cookery book. It was her treat to herself. The shelves of her cottage were already laden, but to her mind there was no limit to the number of cookery books you could have. Reading them was her way of relaxing and switching off from the world, curling up in bed at night and leafing through recipes, learning about the food from another culture or devouring the mouth-watering descriptions written by renowned chefs or food lovers.
Until recently, she had spent these afternoons chatting to Julius Nightingale, who had steered her in the direction of a number of writers she might not have chosen otherwise. He was fascinated by food too, and every now and then she would bring him in something she had made: a slab of game terrine with her gooseberry chutney, or a piece of apricot and frangipane tart. He was always appreciative and gave her objective feedback – she liked the fact that he wasn’t afraid to criticise or make a suggestion. She respected his opinion. Without Julius, she would never have discovered Alice Waters or Claudia Roden – or not as quickly, anyway; no doubt she would have got round to them eventually.
‘It’s not about the pictures,’ Julius had told her, quite sternly. ‘It’s about the words. A great cookery writer can make you see the dish, smell it, taste it, with no need for a photograph.’
But Julius wasn’t here any more. She had read about his death in the Peasebrook Advertiser in the staffroom. She’d hidden behind the paper as the tears coursed down her cheeks. She didn’t want anyone to see her crying. They all thought she was wet enough. For Thomasina was shy. She never joined in the staffroom banter or went on nights out with the others. She was painfully introverted. She wished she wasn’t, but there was nothing she could do about it. She’d tried.
Julius was one of the few people in the world who didn’t make her feel self-conscious. He made her feel as if it was OK just to be herself. And the shop wouldn’t feel the same without him. She hadn’t been in since she’d heard the news, but now, here she was, hovering on the threshold. She could see Emilia, Julius’s daughter, putting the finishing touches to a window display. She plucked up the courage to go in and speak to her. She wanted to tell her just how much Julius had meant.
Thomasina had been three years below Emilia at school, and she still felt the awe of a younger pupil for an older one. Emilia had been popular at school: she’d managed to achieve the elusive status of being clever and conscientious but also quite cool. Thomasina had not been cool. Sometimes she had thought she didn’t exist at all. No one ever took any notice of her. She had few friends and never quite understood why. She certainly wasn’t a horrible person. But when you were shy and overweight and not very clever and terrible at sport, it turned out that no one was especially interested in you, even if you were sweet and kind and caring.
Food was Thomasina’s escape. It was the only subject she had ever been any good at. She had gone on to catering college, and now she taught Food Technology at the school she had once attended. And at the weekends, she had A Deux. She thought it was probably the smallest pop-up restaurant in the country: a table for two set up in her tiny cottage where she cooked celebratory dinners for anyone who cared to book. She had been pleasantly surprised by its success. People loved the intimacy of being cooked for as a couple. And her cooking was sublime. She barely made a profit, for she used only the very best ingredients, but she did it because she loved watching people go out into the night glazed with gluttony, heady with hedonism.
And without A Deux, she would be alone at the weekends. It gave her something to do, a momentum, and after she had done the last of the clearing up on a Sunday morning she still had a whole day to herself to catch up and do her laundry and her marking.
She was used to being on her own, and rather resigned to it, for she felt she had little to offer a potential paramour. She had a round face with very pink cheeks that needed little encouragement to go even pinker and her hair was a cloud of mousy frizz: she had been to a hairdresser once who had looked at it with distaste and said with a sniff, ‘There’s not much I can do with this. I’ll just get rid of the split ends.’ She had come out looking no different, having gone in with dreams of emerging with a shining mane. She did her own split ends from then on.
To her surprise, her students loved her, and her class was one of the most popular, with girls and boys, because she opened their eyes to the joys of cooking and made even the most committed junk food junkie leave her class with something delicious they had cooked themselves. When she spoke about food she was confident and her eyes shone and her enthusiasm was catching. Outside the kitchen, whether at home or school, she was tongue-tied.
Which was why she had to wait until the shop was empty before approaching the counter and giving Emilia her condolences.
‘Thomasina!’ said Emilia, and Thomasina blushed with delight that she had been recognised. ‘Dad talked about you a lot. When he was in hospital he said he would take me to your restaurant when he got better.’