A Spanish Lover Read Free Page B

effective life for Frances’s free but lonely one. There was no doubt about it, Lizzie reflected with a sigh, sitting down at the kitchen table and pulling towards her one of her endless pads of paper, to make a menu list for Christmas, that Frances was lonely.
    Someone – an egregious customer at the Gallery who was trying very hard to turn herself into Lizzie’s friend – had given her an American cookery book called
Good Food for Bad Times
. It was written by a person called Enid R. Starbird. Lizzie opened it idly, thinking that it might provide a few economical ideas for feeding a household of nine – the six Middletons, Frances, the Shore parents – for four days. Robert had said last night, in the careful voice he kept for breaking disagreeable news, that the Gallery takings so far, in the run-up to Christmas, looked as if, instead of being twenty per cent up as usual, would be ten per cent down. They had both suspected that this might be so and had had, during the course of the year, a number of superficially philosophical conversations about the possibility of an economic recession. Last night, they had had another one.
    â€˜So,’ Lizzie had said. ‘It means a careful Christmas.’
    â€˜â€™Fraid so.’
    Lizzie looked down at the open page of Mrs Starbird’s book. ‘Never forget’, Mrs Starbird said brightly, ‘the cabbage soups of south-west France. A pig’s head, that vital ingredient, is not, as you will find, so very hard to come by.’
    Lizzie shut the book with a slam, to banish the image of a reproachful pig’s head. She seized her pad. ‘Sausages,’ she wrote rapidly. ‘Gold spray-paint, dried chestnuts, things for stockings, cat food, sticking plasters, big jar of mincemeat, second-class stamps, collect dress from cleaner’s, walnuts.’ She stopped, tore off the sheet, and began again on a fresh one.
    â€˜Make up spare beds, check wine, finish wrapping presents, ice cake, make stuffings, check mince pies (enough?), remind Rob about wine, clean silver (Alistair), hoover sitting room (Sam), pick holly and ivy (Harriet and Davy), decorate tree (everyone), make garland for front door (me) and quiches for Gallery staff party (me) and brandy butter (me), and clean the whole house from top to bottom before Mum sees it (me, me, me).’
    â€˜Help,’ Lizzie wrote at the foot of her list. ‘Help, help, help.’
    The kitchen door opened. Davy who at breakfast had been fully and properly dressed and was now wearing only socks, underpants and a plastic policeman’s helmet, sidled in. He looked guilty. He came up to Lizzie and leaned against her knee. Lizzie touched him.
    â€˜You’re frozen!’ Lizzie said. ‘What have you been doing?’
    â€˜Nothing,’ Davy said, trained by Sam.
    â€˜Then where are your clothes?’
    â€˜In the bath.’
    â€˜In the
bath
?’
    â€˜They needed a wash, you know,’ Davy said confidingly.
    â€˜They were clean, clean this morning—’
    Davy said, almost dreamily, ‘They got a bit pastey.’
    â€˜What kind of pastey?’
    â€˜Toothpastey,’ Davy said. ‘Toothpaste writing—’
    Lizzie stood up.
    â€˜Where’s Sam?’
    â€˜Pimlott’s come,’ Davy said. ‘Pimlott and Sam are making a Superman camp—’
    â€˜Pimlott?’
    Pimlott was Sam’s dearest friend, a frail, mauve-pale boy with watchful light eyes and a slippery disposition.
    â€˜Don’t you have a Christian name?’ Liz had asked him on his first visit. He stared at her.
    â€˜â€™Course he doesn’t,’ Sam said. ‘He’s just called Pimmers.’
    â€˜Where are they making the camp?’
    â€˜It’s quite all right,’ Davy said, adjusting the helmet so that only his chin showed beneath it. ‘It’s not in your room, it’s only in the spare room—’
    Lizzie shot