“Hello,” said Flora, smiling at Christabel at least.
Pam blinked, and her voice took on an instant pitying demeanor. “Oh, Flora. Where’s little Douglas?”
“He’s at home with my dad,” said Flora. “Ten minutes down the road. I’m just going home.”
Pam smiled sympathetically. “It’s so hard to be apart, isn’t it? Such a shame you can’t have him with you. What a shame you don’t get any maternity leave.”
“I’m on maternity leave now actually. Just popped in.”
There came the sound of loud swearing in French from the kitchen, and Fintan immediately headed off in the opposite direction, shouting, “Flora, can you see what that is?”
“You know,” said Pam, “I never put Christabel down. Never! It’s called attachment parenting? It’s how our ancestors would have done it in the old days.”
Before catching scrofula and dying at thirty-two, Flora almost said, but managed not to.
“We’re always together, she and I. Mummy and baby! How it’s meant to be.”
Christabel screwed her face up crossly.
“Of course it’s different with girls.”
“Is it?” said Flora, genuinely curious, then annoyed with herself that she’d fallen for it. She knew she should always keep her distance. The problem was Pam was the only person she knew with a baby, and she would have loved to have asked her lots of things—like was it normal to want to get away from your baby sometimes, and was it all right to be a bit resentful of being knackered all the time? But Pam was obviously having an absolute ball.
“Oh yes. Girls and their mums. It’s a special thing.”
Flora thought about her own mum, who had died far too young, and smiled ruefully.
Pam was now talking to the baby.
“Poor little Douglas doesn’t get to spend time with his mummy, does he?” said Pam in a baby-waybe voice, bouncing Christabel’s fingers up and down. “Poor ickle baby Douglas.”
“Is there something you want, Pam?” said Flora, realizing too late she’d betrayed her frustration, which in Pam’s world she’d totally chalk up as a win.
“Oh. Yes! Dinner for the Outward Bound sponsors. But, Flora, these are . . . these are important people. Sponsors and people coming from the mainland. You know, the Seaside Kitchen is all very adorable and so on, but these people . . . they’ll be expecting something quite good?”
Flora tried to breathe in through her nose and out through her mouth. The most annoying thing about this was that they needed a soft launch, a chance for the kitchen to run through its paces before they opened properly at Christmas.
“Well, we have a new chef, so we’ll have a menu for you to take a look at.”
“Oh, good,” said Pam, clapping Christabel’s little fingers together. “Not that you’re not, you know, wonderful, at what you do. But a real chef . . .”
There was a bang from the back of the kitchen. Gaspard marched into the main hallway. Despite the fact that there were brand-new whites ordered in for him with his name on them, he was wearing a pair of filthy old checked trousers with a packet of cigarettes clearly hanging out the back of them.
“Your fridge—no good. Your oven—no good. Your cupboards—no good. You need to change—poof!—everything.”
Pam blinked. “Yes, I’m sure that’s true.”
Gaspard stopped. “’Ello, tiny baby,” he muttered in a soft voice much different from anything Flora had heard so far. “Ah, she is very sage.”
“She isn’t,” said Pam crossly. “She’s pink, thank you very much.”
Christabel, however, was cooing loudly in Gaspard’s face. She had her father’s pale coloring and round cheeks.
Pam was waving her hand in front of her face. “I’m sorry, I don’t like smokers near the baby?”
Gaspard gave her a long look, then glanced at his hands as if he had a lit cigarette there he hadn’t known about (it was, to be fair, always possible). As he backed away, Christabel started to bawl.
“So,” said Pam fussily. “Send over the menus, please, we’ll be thirty.”
Gaspard blinked. “’Ow can I send over menus?”
“Just. Tell. Us. What. You’re. Making,” said Pam, speaking very loudly and clearly as she liked to do when speaking to foreigners. “We’d like one full turkey and all the trimmings, one vegetarian option, and one gluten-free.”
Gaspard stared at her, then looked at Flora as if to clearly say, What in the hell do you expect me to do with this woman? Flora felt caught between a hard place and, well, the Rock, she supposed.
“We’ll get you something as soon as possible,” she said to Pam, who looked skeptical as she turned around.
“Of course, obviously we’ll be expecting a big discount,” she said, “seeing as it’s for charity and you’re just basically having a test run. You should probably do it for free,” she added pointedly.
“I think for everything to be great for your charity you should buy good produce,” said Flora smoothly. Pam’s family was one of the richest on the island. “Which costs money, I’m afraid.”
“Produce, which all mysteriously comes from your farm,” said Pam.
Flora put her best smile on again and hustled her out the door.
“I am not doing turkey,” Gaspard was already threatening, within earshot.
“It’s Christmas!” said Flora. “Please! We’ll never hear the end of it. Please do turkey at Christmas.”
“Turkey is ’orrible! Is huge dry chicken! Huge dry unhappy chicken!!”
“I’m sure they’re not—”
“Do not eat unhappy animals!! Is unhappy! That is why”—he paused for emphasis—“so many fights at Christmas.”
Flora looked at him. “What are you talking about?”
“People, they are so sad, they fight at Christmas, boo-hoo. Everyone sad. Is all EastEnders.”
“That’s a fictional television show.”
“Christmas Christmas Christmas, fight fight fight.”
“You’re saying people fight at Christmas because turkeys are unhappy?”
“Exactly, yes.”
There was a pause.
“So what would you . . . ?”
“L’oie. Goose. You have goose at Christmas. Delicious goose.”
“And geese are happy?”
“You know geese?”
“I do,” said Flora, who was terrified of geese; she’d been taken to a wildlife park on the mainland as a child and one had nearly broken her arm.
“Geese, they are fierce! They are strong! They hate everyone. Cacar!!”
“That’s not the sound a goose makes! They honk!”
“A goose, he has an ’appy life. I ’ate you, he say. Cacar! Everybody move. Happy goose.”
“Not foie gras.”
“Oui, foie gras! ’Appy, ’appy goose, something to eat, yes, please.”
“No,” said Flora. “No foie gras, it’s cruel.”
“Okay,” said Gaspard, not in the least bit perturbed. “Free-range goose.”