Dinner at Mine Read Free Page A

Maybe it would
solidify if she let it stand.
    Too many dishes, that was the problem. She hadn’t kept her eye on the pilaf and now it was overcooked. The stew had been more difficult than she thought, and who knew cooking beetroot was
so complicated? Eight people was too many really, especially with the vegetarians . . . She should finish the salad now, before they came.
    Wait, though – how was the stew doing? It sounded all right. Rumbling with slow, deep bubbles. When she stirred it, the stew moved reluctantly, the glistening chunks of aubergine moving
across the pot like dark icebergs through an oily sea. Much better.
    But when she tasted it, the tang wasn’t as intense as she’d hoped. Not bad or anything, just . . . Where was the evidence of the hours of chopping, and frying, and stirring? What was
the point if the effort wasn’t, well, not on display exactly, but definitely implied? Rosie scraped out what was left of the pine honey and stirred it in. That should help.
    It was almost twenty-five past seven now, and the table still wasn’t laid. What was Stephen doing? She wanted to call out to him, but she’d have to shout to be heard upstairs and
then he’d ask why she was screaming at him, and they’d probably have to argue about that until the guests arrived, and the table still wouldn’t be laid. Thank God Magdalena had
come that afternoon and the house was tidy.
    As she went back to the bowl of lentils Rosie thought fondly of her new coffee table. Smooth, dust free, and with nothing on it yet but a vase of red tulips. She would go out and look at it in a
minute.
    But first she had to stir the non-yuzu juice into the lentil and beetroot salad. She had bought two limes just in case. Not that she expected Stephen to forget, but . . . just in case. It was a
rare ingredient. She’d never tasted it, but the recipe said it was somewhere between lime and mandarin, so she squeezed a clementine over the lentils as well before stirring the salad
again.
    It didn’t taste too bad, actually, but all the same it was definitely lime and orange. She’d been hoping for an unidentifiable zing, and imagined herself saying casually,
‘That? Oh, it’s just a splash of yuzu juice . . . Don’t you know it?’
    With the gleaming purple chunks of beetroot poking out of the dark-green lentils, it certainly looked good. Lemon juice and maple syrup next. There was a lot of sugar in this meal, wasn’t
there? Oh well, she didn’t have to list her ingredients; they’d never know. Rosie stirred them all together until the salad looked suitably artless.
    Damn. She had forgotten the onion. There was definitely a red onion around somewhere. It wasn’t in the fruit bowl, or in the veg tray. Perhaps in one of the cupboards? There were a few
onion-skin flakes by one of the big pots, but they were old and desiccated. Why were they still there? She would have to have a word with Magdalena. Rosie slammed the door on them and quickly
pulled open all the drawers along the side of the kitchen, closing each one more violently than the last as no onion was revealed.
    Had she remembered to buy it? Yes, it was there on the list and she remembered picking up only one because she was sure there were already a few in the kitchen. But there weren’t. And now
she couldn’t find the one she’d bought.
    Rosie breathed deeply and ran her hands through her hair, forgetting they were still covered in lemon juice. She winced, then retraced her steps from the morning: unpacking the shopping; putting
the ingredients away; trying to stuff the plastic bags in the ever-growing collection bursting out from under the sink; giving up; guiltily putting them in the bin because she didn’t want to
go out to the recycling . . .
    She stared into the rubbish. Beneath a layer of beetroot skins and aubergine stalks she could see the orange glint of a Sainsbury’s bag. She looked at it for a moment. Then with her thumb
and forefinger she reached in