Food Fight (3 page)

“Oh, it’s nothing special,” June smiled. “How are you, anyway after everything that’s happened?”

“Oh, you know, okay under the circumstances,” Susan said, trying not to let her voice give her away. “Can I give you a hand?”

Susan knew that June, who’d never been known to taste the processed food available from her husband’s company, would have spent considerable time rustling up the supper. Frank wolfed his in a matter of minutes, and had seconds. He reached for a toothpick and cupped his hands over his mouth, probing his molars with a frown. Susan and June lingered over their
vichyssoise
, monkfish
à
l’armoricaine
and cheesecake. The children were upstairs with cheese on toast.

June made herself scarce after dinner, ‘filling the dishwasher’, and Frank led Susan to the living room for a glass of claret.

“So you’re sure you’re ready for this?” He stretched out his legs and lit a cigar, his face slightly flushed.

“Actually, I’m looking forward to it. You know, new challenges, things like that.”

“Great, Susie. It’s just what we need right now.” He relit his cigar. “You know better than I that things are going to get difficult from here on.”

She nodded. They both knew that on each side of the Atlantic, the number of exposés and probes into the food giants and the so-called health dangers of HFCS were on the rise. She didn’t mention her daughter and her NGO. Frank leaned back in his armchair and dispatched a pungent cloud of smoke in her direction.

“You know this could be our 9/11,” he said. “Of course we’ve done nothing
wrong
, we give the consumer what they want. But it could be our turn for a walloping. It’s happening to the banks, telecoms have gone through it, newspapers have gone to the dogs. Look at Big Tobacco. Every industry has its turn and it may be ours next.”

“Well in some cases, like the banks, it’s completely justified,” she said. “It surprised me that no-one went to jail over the toxic loans.”

Frank lowered his voice a little. “The reason nobody’s gone to jail is that they didn’t break the law,” he said.

“They were passing a parcel and the music stopped on someone else’s turn.”

“You mean it’s only wrong if you get caught?”

“I mean everyone was doing it. You have to look at the context. There was a bubble and everybody benefitted. Nobody expected it to pop when it did.”

He leaned back again as another cloud of smoke swirled around him. “Anyway, I just wanted to say, we’ve got your back.”

“Do you mean watch my back?” she said.

“No. That’s what we say in America when we mean we’ll watch out for you.” His white teeth glinted in the lamplight.

*

It was one of her last evenings in London. Lily had come to Hackney for a few days to help her clear up and they were tucking into a microwaved lasagne at the kitchen table. The French windows were thrown open onto the warm evening air, but Susan sighed at the view and pushed her plate away.

“Susie, you OK? I’ve got whatever you need in my bag, courtesy of Doctor Handsome-but-Married.”

She shook her head. “I’ve tried to avoid taking anything, even sleeping pills, actually.” She added sharply, “What have you got there, anyway? Uppers or downers?”

“Both. Need to keep things under control. There’s nothing worse than a tremolo when it’s not in the score.”

Lily had given up a promising career as a soloist because of stage fright, which paralysed her at unpredictable moments. Now she eked out a modest living performing with a woodwind ensemble and giving private flute lessons.

“You should be careful,” Susan said, but Lily pretended she hadn’t heard.

“Want to play Name that Tune?” Lily stretched a blue-veined alabaster hand across the table. They had their own version of the old TV show where one guessed the song being drummed silently on the other’s arm. Amazingly, nine times out of ten, they would both recognise the mystery tune together, high-fiving their rhythmic brilliance.

Susan shook her head. “I was just thinking this is the second time I’ve lost someone. You know my father died after their divorce. Not to mention the break-ups, and the bastard who left me two months before Mimi was born. It’s so bloody unfair.”

“Yes, it is. But you know Rod was never really going to leave his wife. He wouldn’t have been a good father for Mimi. Not like Serge.” Lily let her fingers run along the table as though tapping on her flute. “Besides, you were probably too young to get married.”

Susan had become pregnant in her final term at university and suffered morning sickness during exams. She knew with hindsight she’d been lucky not to get pregnant the previous year, when she’d just met Rod and was completely in love.

“I was wrong to try to trap him with a baby. I just thought he’d come round in the end. How wrong I was. Maybe I’m just a bad judge of people.”

“No you’re not. Look at Serge. And talking of inappropriate men, what about my track record?”

“Inappropriate maybe, but they were all dishy.”

“Yours always had the best chat-up lines,” said Lily. “I want
damage
!” she said, imitating Serge’s accent. “Brilliant!”

They smiled at each other. Their differences were probably exactly what had glued them together for more than twenty years. They’d never been in competition, professionally or romantically, since the day they met at Sussex and became flatmates.

Lily tucked her empty plate beneath hers. It had always amazed Susan how she could eat as much as she liked without gaining an ounce.

“Right,” Lily said, looking at her watch. “I’m going to bed. You okay?”

“Sure. I’ve got to finish packing before having a bath.”

“Need any help?”

Susan shook her head.

She went upstairs to the bedroom, where three piles of clothes sat neatly folded on the floor. ‘Yes’, ‘No’ and ‘Maybe’ were ready for the suitcase, charity store or the loft.

She opened the wardrobe.

What could she do with all this stuff? It would have to wait until tomorrow. But she was running out of time. She walked up one more flight of stairs to Mimi’s old room, under the gable, where she now slept in the single bed. It didn’t help—she found herself reaching out for Serge’s warmth automatically in the night, only to find him gone, peering into the darkness in shock.

She stretched out on the bed, making a mental note to pull down the giant poster of Siouxsie and the Banshees above her head. She’d have to get rid of the empty fishbowl on the chest of drawers. There were wonky nails in the door, and something else caught her notice: was that Blu-Tack or discarded chewing gum on the wall?

She curled up and closed her eyes as she began to fret about the move to Washington. When the phone alarm sounded next morning, she sat up with a start. The Victorian lattice window cast a shadow over the bed. She’d forgotten to close the curtains.

She was fully clothed, with the imprint of a dangling earring on her left cheek, a knot in her stomach, and an uneasy feeling that she hadn’t a clue where her passport was.

Ready or not, her new life was about to begin.

CHAPTER FOUR

The glass doors at DeKripps Foods Inc. slid open. The clock said 8.30 a.m. Dressed smartly in a navy blue trouser suit, she felt dwarfed by the soaring marble lobby. “Susan Perkins, DeKripps marketing,” she said to the security guard, and signed in before she picked the first in a bank of lifts to the sixth floor.

Barney, a towering, perma-tanned figure in steely grey, was leaning over the receptionist at her desk. The bearded face of the founder of DeKripps looked down on them from the wall like an avuncular Van Gogh. Two small sofas made a corner, where TV news was on mute with subtitles. A coffee table, dominated by a vase of exotic flowers, displayed the latest trade magazines in a perfect arc. Susan hoped Barney wouldn’t catch sight of her wiping the nervous moisture from her hand before she greeted him.

“Hi, Susie. Welcome to DC.”

He shook her hand with an iron grip and walked her along a beige carpet to his office.

“You know the drill. Ellen will show you around, and we’ll expect you at our video conference with LA in a couple of hours.”

“Great, fine. And thanks, Barney, for arranging this. It’s much appreciated.”

“You’re very welcome. I’m sorry for your loss.” She noticed the dazzling shine on his shoes as he stopped outside his door. His trouser creases were knife sharp.

The receptionist led Susan to her new office. The blinds were down, so she switched on the light which revealed a bare and functional space. The furniture was designer, minimalist: a black ergonomic chair behind a pale desk, on which a computer and a phone were perched, and two black leather chairs for guests. An empty bookcase stood in a corner, with a single ornament: A gold bar of DeKripps chocolate. On her desk she noticed a picture frame with a stock-photo of a couple and two kids, huddled and smiling giddily in black-and-white. She pressed a button to raise the blinds, and was peering at the street below when she became aware of someone in the doorway.

“How are you settling in?”

It was Ellen, whom she’d met and liked during conferences and drinks in London. “Did you sleep okay?”

“I did until Martin rang at four in the morning. Apparently he didn’t realise I’d left the country already.”

“Oh dear. You don’t look jet-lagged, if that’s any consolation.”

“Thanks, Ellen. And the office is fine, by the way.” She noticed a garish painting on the wall beside her door. It was a scene of swaying cornfields, presumably in the Midwest, the DeKripps heartland. It would have to do.

“It’s not a corner, I’m afraid, but you have a window.” A corner office was to a DeKripps executive what castles were to medieval kings.

“Cool. And the view’s much bigger than Covent Garden.” Susan gestured towards the National Mall. She could just see the point of the Washington Monument if she craned her neck.

“I’ve arranged baby-sitting tonight, so let me know when you’re done, and we can have dinner together.”

*

After work the two women strolled from the DeKripps offices to Jaleo for tapas.

“So how are you coping, really?” Ellen asked as they ordered drinks. “I think it’s extremely brave of you to move so far away.”

“I hadn’t thought of it like that. I knew I had to reinvent myself after what happened. In fact it was your letter that spurred me on, in a way.”

“I wanted to say how sorry I was. I didn’t know Serge very well, obviously, but you could tell he was a really special guy. He had that
je
ne
sais
quoi
, you know, but what impressed me in particular was how much he respected you.” Susan put down the menu and swallowed hard.

Did she want to burden Ellen with her troubles? She liked and trusted her, even saw her as a younger, more determined version of herself. But she hesitated. The violence of her grief had surprised her. Sometimes she’d felt waterboarded, submerged to the point of drowning, then spluttering and gasping for air, only to be forced down again.

“It’s tough.” She pretended to scrutinise the menu, glancing sideways at Ellen who was searching for her phone.

“In case the twins are rioting.” She placed her mobile on the table. “How long were you married?”

“Eleven years.”

“Eleven,” Ellen said, shaking her head. “And how’s your daughter?”

“Mimi? Taking it hard, probably harder than she admits to me. But it’s difficult to tell with her. She seems to blame me for what happened, as though sending him out for a newspaper was, I don’t know, selfish. She hasn’t said anything, but it’s there.”

“Poor you,” Ellen said. “I’m so sorry.”

“I feel guilty enough as it is.” Susan sensed she wanted to ask her something.

“Was she a problem child?”

“No, not really,” Susan said, defensively. “Mimi was always going to be a handful for anyone. She was born screaming and hasn’t stopped since. It wasn’t easy bringing up a baby on my own, on a tight budget, rushing round the country before I joined DeKripps.”

She couldn’t help envying Ellen and her supportive husband who could afford all the domestic help they needed. They’d met at Yale, the corporate ladder seeming to stretch directly from their freshman dormitory window.

“Maybe there’s something more to it,” Ellen said, breaking into Susan’s reverie. “It strikes me she’s always been pretty aggressive. Have you considered anger management?”

She said nothing. Mimi had been a full-on teenager turned rebellious adult, that was all. Susan was the one with a psychology degree – she knew her daughter didn’t need therapy, and neither did she for that matter.

The waiter was standing beside them, pen in hand. Susan chose
patatas bravas
, squid in ink and beans with sausage. “Anyway, enough about my worries,” she said. “Tell me about you? How are you coping with the twins?”

Ellen was finding motherhood rather exhausting, as she was breast-feeding both of her baby boys and had a long commute from Chevy Chase.

“I bet your hormones are still berserk.”

“How did you guess?” Ellen said. “I sure had baby brain after the birth. But I figure it’s under control now. Of course it’s not something I’d even mention at work.” Then she asked, “How do you feel about working with Barney?”

“Nervous. I’ve got so used to Frank that a two-toed sloth would seem dynamic. But it was a little dangerous, in its way. Possibly too comfortable. Mimi used to call Frank my partner in crime.”

“I’m starting to like this girl,” Ellen said. She took out her powder case and pursed her bee-sting lips in the mirror, freshening up with a dash of scarlet.

“As you’re probably aware, Barney doesn’t take any prisoners, by the way.” Then she frowned as though she’d said too much, and added: “I’m sure you don’t need to worry.”

Susan’s new home was a DeKripps apartment a short walk from work. It reminded her of her office, with all the charisma of an airport lounge, furnished entirely in beige, reproduction Modiglianis on the wall.

Standing in the gleaming white-tiled shower, she missed her daily soak in the bath in London, and Marmite on toast. At this time of year, the sun would have been streaming through her French windows, a posy of fresh flowers from the garden on her kitchen table. She’d brought family photographs with her but already regretted leaving her favourite glass ornaments packed away in the attic.

Everything about Penn Quarter was grey. Its anonymous blocks of uniform height cast a dark shadow over the streets and towered over characterless bars, expensive restaurants and cut-price basement stores. It turned out to be the dead heart of Washington, its streets deserted after office hours. And that meant after 6 p.m.

In the mornings, she’d amuse herself by opening the bedroom curtains with a theatrical swish of the remote control, then close, then open. The bleakness of Washington was at her feet. People were already dressed and heading to their desks and screens. They were streaming out of the Metro heads down, thumbing their phones, carrying coffee. This was a city that took work seriously.

Everyone seemed to be dragging a suitcase, even if it only contained a laptop. On the few occasions she had a social engagement with a new acquaintance who inevitably turned out to be a lawyer, lobbyist or Congressional aide, they would always suggest a bar or restaurant in trendy Adams Morgan or Eastern Market, rather than downtown where she lived.

Her main hobby was killing time. If she wasn’t trying to find an English accent on PBS to remind her of home, she’d be on the phone to her mother or Lily. Sometimes she’d drag her self-pity to the E Street Cinema, where she could sniffle in the darkness surrounded by the sweet smell of popcorn and images of Judi Dench or Hugh Grant.

She missed her colleagues in London, and yearned for that British kind of teasing that was frowned upon, possibly outlawed, in politically correct DC. At the office, she got used to the little transatlantic miscommunications. Once, she asked a colleague where she’d got her suntan. “Saint Tropez,” came the reply.

“France?” she said, intrigued.

“No, L Street.”

She confessed to Frank on one of their regular calls that she was finding it hard to adjust to the monumental perfection of Washington after the anarchic sprawl of London. He wasn’t surprised. He was originally from Chicago and had never liked DC, which he described as a ‘phoney’ town with equally artificial inhabitants.

“What about friends?” he asked. “Making any?”

She admitted that Ellen was practically the only person she saw outside work. “But I plan to get out more,” she said. “What are you working on?”

He told her a colleague had just dropped a report on his desk about children’s eating habits, how at different times of day they would crave either salted or sweet food.

“That’s an angle,” she said. “Let me think about it. You should get one of your pet doctors on the case too.”

“You know perfectly well that every single one is of the highest integrity and independence.”

As usual, he’d risen to the bait. She could never resist teasing him. She’d long suspected the doctors on the DeKripps payroll, who sat on government food advisory boards and wrote for medical journals, were anything but independent.

Little by little, her anxiety about working for Barney subsided. Before Washington, she’d only met him on a couple of occasions when he had breezed into the London office. She’d always sensed an awkwardness between him and Frank, and it had been fascinating to watch the interaction between them; Frank seemed to shrink physically beside Barney who radiated animal masculinity.

Susan knew she had no reason to be insecure. She’d given Crunchaloosa cereals their slogan: ‘DeKripps, caring for you and your family’. The words had everything DeKripps wanted to say about nurturing through the generations. Needless to say, her accolades provoked a hurtful remark from Mimi: “What on earth do you know about caring for a family?”

She was praised for the Buried Treasure cartoon she’d developed in London. It featured a rabbit, a mole and a badger digging for buried treasure – a chocolate bar containing nuggets of glittering golden honeycomb.

“Kids will love this ad,” said Barney, who decided to give it a TV spot in the US, a rare transatlantic transfer for a corporation that had to be so careful about British commercials and children.

As Frank had predicted, Barney was rarely in the office. Michelle Obama had launched an anti-obesity drive and the food companies were feeling the heat.

Barney was quietly informing Congressional staffers, and sometimes their bosses, about DeKripps’ ‘bold’ decision to – slightly - cut the sugar content in its flavoured milk. He came to rely on Susan to chair video conferences with the American staff and the rest of the DeKripps empire.

“Got to keep them on message, Susie,” he would say, before heading out to a meeting on the Hill. “People need to realise we weren’t waiting to be told what to do. We got there before them, as any responsible company should.”

At the end of her first month in DC, Barney invited her to join a select group in the DeKripps box at baseball.

It would mean missing her first Pilates class, something she’d forced herself to join, but such professional invitations were loaded with obligation.

“I should warn you that I’ve never been to a baseball match before,” she told him. “I hope I won’t let you down.”

“You just did, Susie. It’s not a
match
. It’s a
game
. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. You might even enjoy it.”

She doubted it. All she knew was that it was the end of the season and the Washington Nationals had been on a winning streak despite languishing at the bottom of their division. They followed a sea of red into the stadium in the balmy September heat. Everyone seemed to be wearing bright red with white numbers on their backs.

“See that number 11 shirt? Zimmerman?” said Barney. “That’s Ryan Zimmerman, the third baseman. The face of the franchise.”

Barney had covered his shock of grey hair with a red baseball cap with a curly W on the front, and wore a pair of aviator sunglasses. Susan wondered whether she should have changed out of her suit into something less formal. Just as she was beginning to feel out of place in her heels, they reached the box overlooking home base and found a small number of chairs had been set out.