Too Many Cooks (28 page)

Otherwise, what am I doing?

While Hugh glad-hands with his constituents, I continue strolling around the fair, on a quest for clotted cream fudge. I find some at a small stand next to the Ferris wheel, and, with the little cash I have left, I buy three flavors: traditional, peanut butter, and chocolate. The traditional, I discover, is not traditional American fudge, which would be milk chocolate, perhaps studded with toasted walnuts. Instead, this version is blond in color, with a milky, burnt-sugar flavor, like a square of caramel, only less sticky and with a soft, velvety texture. It's almost too sweet, but only almost, and part of me wonders how much I could reasonably eat without making myself sick.

Once I've wolfed down the clotted cream fudge and sampled my fair share of cakes and clotted cream ice cream, I wander back to the area beside the bouncy castle, where I last saw Hugh chatting to some locals. Despite his assurance that my presence isn't unwelcome or inappropriate, I've kept my distance, but now that we've been here for an hour and a half, I'm running out of distractions that don't involve eating clotted cream. I'm also pretty sure I'm sunburned because my cheeks sting and the back of my neck is suspiciously itchy.

Hugh waves to me as I approach, continuing his conversation with a woman whose back is to me. Her long, strawberry-blond hair spills down her back, and she wears a gauzy jade sundress that comes to her ankles. I slow my step when I realize I might be interrupting their conversation, but Hugh waves again, nodding for me to join them.

As I get close, the woman spins around, tempering her smile as she gives me a quick once-over.

“Having fun?” Hugh asks, when I finally join them.

“I am,” I say cautiously. “I think I've eaten pretty much everything here.”

“I'm not sure where you put it,” the woman says, scanning me up and down.

I smile politely, trying to figure out who she is, when Hugh speaks up, as if he has read my mind. “Forgive me—Kelly, this is Cleona.”

“Oh, Cleona—of course.” My shoulders relax. “So nice to meet you.”

She slowly shakes my hand. “And who are you?”

Hugh jumps in. “This is Kelly, Natasha's ghostwriter.”

“Oh! Right.” Her smile warms. “Sorry, I hadn't realized Natasha mentioned me.”

I am about to say it was actually Hugh who mentioned her, but before I can speak, Hugh interrupts. “Cleona and Natasha are friendly,” he says.

“Ah.” Perfect.

“We don't talk every day or anything,” Cleona says, as if she's embarrassed to be friendly with Hugh's wife.

“Maybe not, but she likes you better than anyone else in my family—including me.”

They laugh, and I wonder how much Cleona knows about the terms of Hugh and Natasha's marriage.

“Anyway,” Hugh continues, “Natasha is in LA for a friend's movie premiere and some meetings, so Kelly was at a loose end for the weekend—especially since, in her country, it was Independence Day yesterday.”

“Oh, right, of course,” Cleona says. “So you decided to get pissed with your oppressors?”

“That was the idea, anyway,” Hugh says. “I told her about the festival, so she took the train up today to get a slice of English culture.”

Cleona offers a mock frown. “Oh, dear. I hope you haven't been thoroughly traumatized.”

“Not yet. All of the clotted cream is definitely working in your favor.”

Hugh's eyes light up. “Brilliant—you tried the fudge.”

“And the ice cream. On top of a few cakes. And a pie or two.”

Cleona's eyes widen, and she cranes her neck as she peers behind me. “Are you carrying an extra stomach somewhere, or do you have a hole in your leg?” Hugh elbows her in the side. “Well, I mean, honestly. Where does she put it? If I ate that much I'd be mammoth.”

“You would not be mammoth,” Hugh says. “Henry, on the other hand . . .”

“Oh, please. Henry has the Ballantine metabolism. Thin as a rail, no matter what.”

“That's not what Natasha says.”

“About Henry?”

“About me,” Hugh says. “Apparently I'm getting ‘soft.' ”

“Perhaps she is talking about your politics. You let the education secretary walk all over you last week. You didn't pin him down on anything. What happened?”

“I was a bit distracted.”

“By what? His hideous tie?”

He laughs. “Well, yes, there was that. . . .”

“The man is an idiot,” Cleona says. “We'd all be a lot better off if you were running the department. Don't you think, Kelly?”

I smile politely. “Yes,” I say. “I do.”

“See? Even an American thinks you'd be better.”

“Natasha is American,” he says.

“I suppose so. But she's a woman of the world, really. Born in America, living in London, jetting off to Paris and Tokyo, appearing in films around the globe. She sort of belongs to everyone, doesn't she?”

“Or no one,” Hugh says.

Cleona clicks her tongue and then glances at her phone, which trills in her purse with a text message. “Oh, dear. Must go. Apparently Freddie is in tears because they've run out of green balloons. Disaster.”

“Let me know if there's anything I can do to help,” Hugh says.

“Pay for his therapy one day. That'll do.” She leans in and kisses Hugh on the cheek. “Drop in later. We're having a barbecue—just us and another couple with a two-year-old. Your parents were coming, but apparently your father is having problems with his toe.”

“Oh, God. He's told you about that too?”

“In more detail than I care to know. Anyway, come if you can. We'd love to see you.”

“I'll try,” he says. “I have a bit of other business.”

“I understand. The life of a politician and all that.” She extends her arm in my direction. “Lovely meeting you, Kelly. I can tell Natasha is in good hands.”

Her phone rings, and she waves good-bye as she picks up and heads toward the ring toss. When she is out of sight, I fill my lungs with the sweet summer air, thankful I can breathe again.

 

Hugh does not go to the barbecue at Cleona and Henry's. Instead, after a long day at the fair, he takes me back to his house and cooks me dinner, a simple meal of grilled steak, baked potatoes, and red wine.

Over dinner, we talk more about his childhood in Nottingham and my childhood in Ypsilanti, and I tell him about the elephant ears and bingo and my award-winning cupcakes. He tells me about his first crush, a girl in primary school named Samantha Humphrey, who wore her blond hair in braided pigtails that he'd pull to get her attention. We talk about losing our virginity: for him, in a field house by his school's cricket pitch when he was fifteen, with a girl named Lucy Pitts; for me, in Pete Giovanni's twin bed the summer before senior year of high school. We talk about other past relationships—which ones were mistakes; which ones we were too young and foolish to appreciate.

When we've cleaned our plates, I help him clear the table, and as I dump the dirty dishes in the sink, he presses against me from behind, wrapping his arms around my waist. Whatever hesitation I felt before has vanished, and I lean into him, wanting this moment to last forever, for him to keep holding me and never let go. Everything about this feels like a fantasy, but as we peel off each other's clothes and stumble upstairs, a trail of shirts and pants in our wake, I decide I don't care if it's real or not. I just don't want it to end.

As we lie in his bed, the sweat drying on our skin, Hugh rolls over and grabs a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He pulls out a cigarette and sticks it in his mouth, but I yank it out before he can light it.

“I thought you were trying to quit.”

“
Trying
being the operative word.”

“Not very hard, apparently.”

“Oh, come on. Just one. There's nothing like a cigarette after a good shag.”

“You're such a cliché.”

“But an endearing one, no?” He goes for another cigarette.

I grab that one, too, along with the entire pack. “I don't care how endearing you are. Smoking is gross.”

He groans. “You're no fun.”

“I don't know.... You seemed to be having fun a few minutes ago. . . .”

He flicks me in the side.

I dump the smoking paraphernalia on the floor and roll back over to face him. “You never told me you had a nephew.”

He smiles. “Freddie. He's three.”

“And apparently obsessed with green balloons.”

“Ha, yes. He does fixate on things. But he's a laugh. I adore him.”

“Do you see him much?”

“Not as often as I'd like. But enough. He calls me Uncle Hughie.”

“Sorry I kept you from seeing him tonight. You should have gone.”

He runs his thumb along my arm. “I'll see them another time. Tonight I wanted to be with you. And hopefully in the not too distant future they'll all meet you. I know Freddie would love you. Henry, too.”

“I don't know. I'm no Natasha.”

He kisses my shoulder. “Exactly.”

He pulls me close, and I nuzzle into him, and then I close my eyes and pretend that when I wake up tomorrow, I won't have to pack my bag and return to London and go back to being a nobody.

CHAPTER 37

When I get back to my flat the next morning, I grab my laptop and sink into my couch, scanning through my e-mails, which, uncharacteristically, I haven't checked since Friday night. There is one from Meg, begging and pleading with me to talk to her later this afternoon, and, buried in the mass e-mails from the
New York Times
and Serious Eats, another e-mail from my brother from yesterday morning.

I write back immediately.

I am tempted to call him immediately to underscore my opposition to this plan, but I realize it's not quite noon here, which means it is barely 7 a.m. in Ypsilanti. There is no way he's awake. He probably went to bed an hour ago.

Instead, I bide my time by cleaning my apartment, doing laundry, and running through the recipes I will test next week, along with the lessons I will give Natasha so that she is prepared for the
Vogue
interview. When I open my laptop three hours later to see if Stevie has replied, I discover he has not. Meg, however, is apparently up and ready to talk because within thirty seconds of my being online, her name pops up on my screen for a video chat.

“Are you stalking me or something?” I say as I accept her call.

“What choice do I have? We haven't talked in two weeks. You haven't replied to any of my e-mails. I was getting ready to send out a search party.”

It's true that I haven't written or talked to Meg in a while, mostly because I'm not sure what to tell her. The events of the past couple of weeks will, quite possibly, give her a heart attack, and saying everything out loud makes these developments seem even more surreal and ill-advised than they do in my head.

“I've been busy. We're hurtling toward our deadline, and I have to prepare Natasha for a
Vogue
interview, and she's never around.”

“Where is she now?”

“LA. And last weekend, she was off on another quick jaunt to Paris.”

“I assume Foxy Ballantine didn't join her.”

“No. She didn't need him. And anyway, he has work to do.”

“In your pants?”

“Meg!”

“Let's dispense with the pleasantries, shall we, and get down to business: What's going on with you and Foxy B?”

I tread carefully. “We've . . . spent more time together.”

“Time? Where? When?”

I tell her about the dinner in Nottingham and my second visit this weekend.

“So, wait, are you guys like an item now?” she asks.

“An ‘item'? Who says that?”

“I do.”

“Apparently . . .”

She glares at me through the screen. “You still haven't answered my question.”

“I don't know. I guess we are.”

“But he's still married, right?”

“Technically, but apparently he's planning to talk to Natasha this week about separating.”

Meg raises her eyebrows. “He's leaving her for you?”

“No. I mean, he isn't leaving her
for
me. I'm more like the catalyst, I guess.”

Meg goes quiet for a few seconds. She doesn't seem nearly as excited as I expected.

“What?” I say.

“This all just seems really . . . fast.”

“Faster than it seemed before?”

“No, but before it was all crazy and circumstantial. Now that he's actually planning to leave her . . . I don't know. Shit's getting real.”

“True. But he's miserable. Their marriage is a sham. And we're crazy about each other.”

“Of course you are. You just lost your mom and longtime boyfriend, and he's getting laid for probably the first time in years. You're in the sex-crazed honeymoon period.”

“Yeah, but . . . there's more to it than that.”

“Even if there is, you've only been banging each other for a matter of weeks. What happens once they separate? What happens when there's no more sneaking around? Are you going to be part of a media circus? And what are you going to do, professionally speaking? I doubt Natasha will keep you as her ghostwriter if you're screwing her husband. Or ex-husband. Or ex-husband-to-be.”

“They're not in love.”

“So? Movie stars are obsessed with their public images. Do you really think she'll want it to get out that her husband slept with her ghostwriter? After what happened with Matthew Rush?”

“But that was different. She was head over heels for him. Natasha and Hugh—it's all business. She's even seeing some guy on the side—Jacques something-or-other.”

“Your average Joe doesn't know that. If I had to guess, the last thing Natasha wants is for people to think she got dumped again. She'd probably do whatever she could to prevent that from happening—including ruining your career. She knows a lot of people.”

“A lot? Try
everyone
.”

“Exactly. And my guess is she could destroy you if she wanted to.”

My breath shortens. Why hadn't I thought of that before? Natasha could end my career. Easily. All it would take is a few phone calls to the right people, and she could single-handedly flush my reputation down the drain. Even if she is a narcissistic bitch, she is the kind of narcissistic bitch any moderately successful chef would want on his or her side. One offhanded comment in an interview about how “Restaurant X” is her favorite place to grab a bite, and suddenly that chef's restaurant and profile have skyrocketed overnight. She makes them more famous by association. They need her. They don't need me.

“You're right,” I say, my heart racing. “Oh my God, you're right.”

“Of course I'm right.”

I massage my temples, suddenly feeling very, very stressed. “What should I do? Should I tell Hugh not to leave her?”

“I am totally unqualified to answer that question. I'm just trying to get you to think of this outside of the lovesick bubble you're in. I'm not saying you have to choose between love and your career, but . . . well, yeah, you might have to choose between love and your career. Or at least consider the impact your decisions might have on both.”

I weigh the options: giving up the man I can't stop thinking about, or throwing away a career I love. I don't like either. Why can't I have both? Why does it have to be one or the other?

“Maybe I could talk to Natasha myself.”

Meg cackles. “Yeah, because she sounds like such an understanding person.”

“I just . . . I love my job, you know?”

“I do. And you're good at it. I wasn't kidding when I said I'd be interested in a column about your food adventures in England. You write so well, and your recipes always come out perfectly. I guess you have to decide how important all that is to you.”

I stare at the screen, wishing a decision would leap forth and illuminate a path forward, but all I see is Meg's cherubic face and glossy curls. Figuring all of this out will take time, and I don't have much.

Meg takes a sip of water as various scenarios play out in my mind. “Anyway,” she says, “on a different note, I ran into your brother yesterday. He . . . asked if I had any dead mice he could borrow . . . ?”

She raises an eyebrow, and as she does, I realize that if I had to choose a moment when I suddenly didn't recognize my life anymore, this conversation, in all of its soul-crushing absurdity, would probably be it.

 

The more I reflect on my conversation with Meg, the more nauseous I feel. Natasha really does know everyone.
Everyone
. Artists and chefs, politicians and princes, directors and Fortune 500 CEOs. She has drinks with Oliver Stone and dinner with Joël Robuchon and managed to eat at El Bulli twice before it closed. Throughout this affair with Hugh, I have worried about what our dalliance could mean for him and his career, but apparently I haven't spent enough time worrying about what it could mean for mine. Natasha could not only trash my reputation with other chefs; she could also make sure no one hires me again.

That being the case, my goals for this week are as follows:

My ability to achieve those goals becomes increasingly tricky the farther down the list I go, particularly when it comes to controlling my brother and his potentially calamitous schemes. By Tuesday morning, I still haven't heard from him, and I think there's about an 80 percent chance my childhood bed is currently filled with dead vermin.

Churning out four new recipes, however, is something I can do. While I wait for Natasha to return from LA, I perfect the recipe for shrimp tacos with the ingredients I procured from Borough Market. After that, I develop a recipe for a brown rice salad with roasted cauliflower and sweet potatoes. I also muster the fortitude to give the kale burger another try, even though a very large part of me thinks we should throw in the towel and forego including the recipe at all.

When Natasha finally returns Tuesday afternoon, she blows into the kitchen looking tanned and firm, like a mannequin brought to life by an evil sorceress.

“God, I miss LA already,” she says as she sweeps past me on her way to the refrigerator. She doesn't speak to me so much as she speaks to the room, as if she were addressing an audience.

“Good trip?”

She pokes her head out from behind the refrigerator door and stares at me, as if she is noticing me for the first time. “Perfect, actually. The weather was amazing. Unlike this place.”

“The weather was actually really nice while you were gone. Warm and sunny most of the time.”

She closes the fridge door. “Whoop-de-doo. Five days of nice weather. In LA it's nice
every
day.”

Then maybe you should move back there
.

“Your skin looks great,” I say, remembering my earlier plan. “You look like you got some sun.”

She glances down at her arms. “This? Oh, this is fake. A friend recommended a new bronzing guru, so I gave him a try. I never tan. After everything that happened with my mom, the last thing I need is skin cancer.”

“Trust me, I understand. I burn if you wave a flashlight at me. I'm not a tanner.”

“I can see why. You're really pasty.” She studies my face. “Although your cheeks look a little pink. Must have been all that London ‘sun' while I was away.”

I think back to the carnival in Nottingham and the sting in my cheeks as the sun beat down all afternoon.

“Like I said, I burn really easily,” I say.

“You should be careful. You're a perfect candidate for skin cancer.”

I take a deep breath, noting that the first time Natasha has called me “perfect” in any context is one in which I contract a life-threatening disease.

“I wear sunscreen,” I say. “At least most of the time.”

“Most isn't enough. Seriously, you should wear it every day. What is your morning skin regimen?”

“I don't really have a ‘regimen,' per se. I just . . . blot my face dry after my shower and put on some moisturizer with SPF.”

She stares at me blankly. “That's it?”

“That's it.”

“No antioxidant serum? No face oil? No eye cream?”

“Nope.”

“And what SPF?”

“I don't know. Fifteen, I think? Maybe eight?”

She shakes her head. “I can't believe this. Okay, first of all, you should be using at
least
SPF 30. But you should also definitely be using a serum and an eye cream. You're what? Thirty-three?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“See? Your regimen is aging you already. I'll have my facialist recommend some products for you. Talk to Poppy. She'll liaise.”

“Okay, thanks . . .” I appreciate her sudden interest in helping me with . . . well, anything, but now I'm wondering if I really do look five years older and, if so, why no one told me until now.

She takes a sip of purple juice. “Anyway, where do we stand with the recipes?”

“We're in great shape. I've done the shrimp tacos, Paleo bread, rice salad, and another kale burger. There is some leftover Paleo bread in the fridge, along with some of the rice salad, which I made this morning.”

She reopens the refrigerator and pulls out one of the half loaves of Paleo bread wrapped in foil.

“That's the one with sour cherries,” I say.

“Sour cherries? That wasn't on my list of ingredients.”

“I know, but I decided to make a variation. We don't have to include it in the book if you don't want. I just thought it might be a fun addition.”

She unwraps the foil, slices off a thin sliver, and takes a bite. “Fine. It's good. Let's include it.” She wraps up the loaf, returns it to the refrigerator, and pulls out the bowl of rice salad. “What is this?”

“The brown rice salad. With roasted cauliflower and sweet potatoes.” She looks at me dumbly. “Based on one of your last meals in LA before you moved?”