Secrets from the Past

Jessica picked up her cup, didn’t say anything for a while.

I poured myself more coffee, and glanced out of the window. The sky was beginning to darken over the East River. It looked as if it would be a beautiful night … a cold clear sky which undoubtedly would be filled with stars.

At last Jessica broke the silence. She said, ‘What did you do for the rest of that Saturday, Serena?’ She stared at me intently.

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know, probably went on taking pictures of Cara doing her stuff with the orchids.’

‘I can fill you in,’ Jess offered. ‘I was with you and Mom that morning, on the terrace. Dad rang from Kosovo. I spoke to him, passed the phone to Mom, and she gave it to you, after she’d finished speaking with him. I was working on my notes, for a catalogue I was preparing, when all of a sudden holy hell broke loose. Mom was becoming rather agitated for her. You burst into tears and fled.’ Jessica paused. ‘Don’t you have any recollection of this?’

‘No, I don’t. What happened then?’

‘You didn’t come back for lunch. Later it began to rain hard and there was a thunderstorm. Mom was getting anxious about you, because Cara said she’d seen you on the drive when she was returning from the greenhouses.’

‘I don’t think I left the grounds,’ I muttered.

‘Mom decided to go and look for you. She found you in your room, and spent the afternoon with you.’

‘I see. When was everything all right between us?’ I asked quietly.

‘That same evening. Mom took the three of us out to dinner, and all was tranquil. It was as if nothing had happened.’

‘I see. I must admit, it really bothers me that I can’t remember any of this.’ I got up, went to sit next to Jessica on the sofa. ‘You must be right. I guess I did block it out.’

‘I think so, Pidge.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘Well, Mom did eventually relent, didn’t she? She let you go off with Dad and Harry to cover a war. You were twenty-one by then.’

‘We went to Afghanistan. And one day, some years later, again in Kabul, I missed a plane and didn’t get back to Nice in time to see Dad before he died.’ Unexpectedly, tears came into my eyes. I blinked them away, took control of my emotions. Naturally Jessica noticed. She had never missed a trick in her life.

She put her arms around me, consoled me, stroked my hair. But after a few minutes she jumped up, pulled me to my feet, and said briskly, ‘I bet there’s a fresh chicken in the fridge for the weekend, following Stone family tradition.’

I laughed. ‘Of course, there is.’

‘Then let’s go and make poulet grand-père, the way Lulu taught us. If you’ve got all the ingredients.’

‘I do. Except some of them will have to come out of cans.’

Lulu, the housekeeper at Jardin des Fleurs, had taught Jessica to cook, and when I was old enough I was allowed to go into the kitchen with her, also to be taught the art of French cooking.

Cara never joined us. She was busy in the gardens, which she loved. In fact she was addicted to flowers, plants and nature. Eventually she became a brilliant horticulturist, and when she was older she specialized in growing orchids.

For the last ten years she had supplied her fantastic, exotic orchids to hotels, restaurants and private clients on the Côte d’Azur, and was renowned.

And so when I was growing up it was just Jessica and I who stood next to Lulu in the big old-fashioned kitchen. Over the years, the jovial Frenchwoman taught us the basics of French cooking and helped us to hone our skills.

And we learned to prepare many of her specialities, poulet grand-père being one of them. It was a simple dish composed of a chicken roasted in a pan in the oven, reclining on a bed of sliced potatoes and chopped carrots, along with mushrooms and tomatoes.

Picking up the tray I followed Jessica out of my office. Once we were in the kitchen, I opened cupboard doors and looked inside. ‘Canned tomatoes and mushrooms,’ I announced. ‘And I know Mrs Watledge bought potatoes and chicken broth the other day.’

‘Then we’ll be fine.’ Jessica glanced at her watch. ‘It’s already five, so let’s have a glass of wine, shall we?’

‘Why not? There’s a bottle of Sancerre in the fridge.’ As I spoke I went to get it, and also took out the chicken, carrying both over to the island in the middle of the kitchen.

Jessica opened the wine, and I prepared the chicken, smearing butter all over it and placing half a lemon in the cavity. At one moment I said, ‘We’ve been so busy talking about the past, you never told me about your trip to Boston. Do you have a new client?’

‘Yes, I do,’ she replied, and filled two glasses with white wine, handed one to me. ‘He’s a lawyer, you wouldn’t know him. His widowed mother just died and left him her fabulous villa in Cap d’Ail, plus a collection of valuable furniture and art. She’d been married to a Frenchman for years. Anyway, my new client is the sole heir, and he just signed with me. Stone’s will be holding the auction later this year. It’s going to be very special, because of the Art Deco furniture and postimpressionist paintings.’

‘Congratulations!’ I said.

We clinked glasses.

Jessica leaned forward and kissed my cheek. ‘You’re the best sister in the world.’

SEVEN (#ulink_6495473b-4aef-5318-a5de-8b305d420fd7)

At last I was in a yellow cab and on my way to meet Harry Redford for dinner. I’d had a difficult day, trying to do my rewrite, and I had given up at the end of the afternoon. Frustrated, I’d put the chapter away until tomorrow; I needed time to think about it some more.

I was glad to leave the apartment. It had been so sad and empty without the joyful, buoyant presence of my sister. Jessica had left that morning, very early, to catch the eight thirty British Airways flight to London. She had some meetings there before returning to Nice to prepare for her upcoming auctions.

Fortunately, First was not clogged with traffic, which was a big relief, and the cab moved at a good pace up the avenue. I was running late, and the restaurant was way uptown in East Harlem. Harry and I were having dinner at Rao’s, which stood on the corner of East 114th Street and Pleasant Avenue.

It had always been my father’s and Harry’s favourite restaurant in Manhattan. They had started going there in the 1970s, had had the same table every Monday night since then, a table which they ‘owned’.

When they were away covering wars, or out of town on other assignments, their families and friends got the chance to use the table, and were thrilled to do so. Over the years, Rao’s had acquired a special kind of mystique and glamour, some of this due to the celebrities who often went there, and it was virtually impossible to get a reservation because of the regulars.

Tommy and Harry had become good friends of Vincent Rao and his wife Anna Pellegrino Rao over the years, and they were shocked and saddened when Vincent and Anna both died in 1994.

Since then Rao’s, owned by the same family for over a hundred years, had been run by Frankie Pellegrino, Anna’s nephew, and his cousin, Ron Staci, who owned it together. It was exactly the same as it had always been: warm, welcoming and fun. Dark wood-panelled walls, permanent Christmas decorations around the bar, pristine white linen cloths and a jukebox playing softly in the background combined to create a cosy atmosphere.

It was Frankie who greeted me affectionately as I pushed open the door twenty minutes later to be enveloped in a warm blast of fragrant air, the mingled smells of traditional Italian cooking. It was exactly seven thirty, and I wasn’t late after all.

Frankie had known me since I was ten, and he gave me a big bear hug. ‘Welcome, Serena, we’ve missed you.’

After I’d hugged him in return, I said, ‘I know what you mean, but it’s only been two weeks.’

‘It seems longer,’ he shot back with a grin, leading me past the open door of the bustling kitchen, situated near the front door. We chatted as we walked through the room to the booth that was ours every Monday night.

Harry was already standing, beaming, as I hurried towards him. ‘You’re a sight for sore eyes!’ he exclaimed, kissing me on the cheek, holding me close for a moment. He was always exactly the same.

We sat down opposite each other in the booth. ‘Sorry about not joining you for the last couple of weeks,’ I apologized. ‘But I really had to isolate myself, to move ahead on the book.’

‘I know that, Serena, and you don’t have to explain or feel badly about it. I’ve always told you, it’s not possible to be a committed writer and a social butterfly. One or the other occupation usually has to go.’

He glanced at the package I’d placed on the seat next to my bag. ‘Is that for me? Are those the first chapters you promised to give me? That you want me to read?’

I noticed his eyes were bright with anticipation. He was the one person who had encouraged me to write a biography about my father, and actually believed I could do it. He was my biggest booster and always had been. But then I was like the daughter he had never had.

I said, ‘I’ve brought you the first seven chapters that I think are okay. Those are enough to give you a taste, aren’t they?’

‘More than enough. I can’t wait to get into them.’