Food Fight Read Free

I can’t stay cooped up in the house while his things are still there. I need something else to think about.”
    “How was the funeral?”
    “Grim, of course. It didn’t stop raining. And it was pretty hard-core. I’d forgotten how religious they are in Brittany.”
    “And how’s Mimosa?”
    “You know what Mimi’s like. She went AWOL before the funeral. She took the phone off the hook for two days. And you should have seen her outfit. She described it as distressed . Why does she need so much attention?”
    “What a girl,” he said. “How old is she now?”
    “Twenty.” Frank couldn’t conceal his surprise.
    “I know. A bit old for that kind of statement. You can imagine how it went down in Dingy. They’re very conventional over there.” Serge’s home village was called Dingé but Susan’s family and friends called it Dingy.
    “I know what you mean.”
    Did he? As far as she knew, all Frank knew of France was their frustrating resistance to all things DeKripps. At the moment he was battling with the company’s tiny Paris office which had given up trying to push a new flavoured yoghurt into French supermarkets.
    “Too much sugar for the French palate,” he’d complained. “Surrender monkeys, of course. Back in the States, we could sue them for insubordination. Raising the white flag before we get a chance to tailor the recipe.”
    Thanks to her contacts in the French dairy industry, not to mention unhelpful comments from Serge about the invasion of ‘American junk food’, she knew there was little hope of changing their minds.
    She’d worked for Frank in DeKripps’ marketing department for years. They’d watched company profits soar the more added sugars went into their products. Her work with focus groups bore it out. In the ‘90s, the added sugars compensated for low fat, providing necessary bulk and taste, and now they were king. DeKripps just rode with the market, as did the rest of the industry. “Who are we to argue with our customers?” Frank would say. “If they didn’t like it, they wouldn’t buy it.”
    He wasn’t known for holding his tongue, but that morning, she was grateful he kept his counsel about the French. Her colleagues offered condolences but Susan could see they didn’t know how to deal with her new status as widow. Was it embarrassment? Most of them seemed to think it best not to mention her loss, which suited her. It was so intensely private, and yet so public at the same time.
    She kept forgetting what she was supposed to be doing at work, and covering up was stressful too. “I’m sorry, I’ve lost the plot,” she finally confessed to Martin. He made an expression of shared suffering she’d seen him use when their secretary’s cat passed away. “Don’t worry. It’s not a problem.”
    “It must be the lack of sleep.”
    She didn’t mention she could barely wake up in the mornings after crying herself to sleep.
    “You coming down the pub for a quick one?” Martin, who concealed his ambition under unthreatening cordiality, would always include her. A month ago, she would have joined her team willingly for a drink on the way home. But now, she looked up from her desk with a regretful smile.
    “That’s really sweet of you. But I can’t tonight,” she would say, gesturing to her computer. Then she’d kick herself for saying no. After all, she had nowhere else to go. She’d stopped accepting invitations altogether, particularly from couples.
    But she wanted desperately to talk about Serge, so she sought solace with Lily. At least she could raise a laugh with her imitations of his mangled English, which Lily called ‘Serge-speak’. And she took it in her stride when Susan burst into unprompted tears.
    *
    One morning, she was sitting at her computer holding her face in her hands, forcing herself to concentrate on a graph, when Frank walked in. He threw the wrapper from a bar of DeKripps chocolate into her waste paper, looking surprised at his own