An Ideal Wife (10 page)

He shook his head. “Not really,” he said. “I miss her every day. I don’t want to meet anyone else.”

“Ah,” I said, biting my lip and wondering where Helen had got to. She was way better at this kind of stuff than I was.

“And the worst thing is that it was all my fault.”

“What was your fault?” Helen asked, appearing at my side. I looked at her in relief.

“This is …” I started to say, then realized that I didn’t know who this man was.

“Andrew,” the man said.

“This is Helen,” I said. “And I’m Jessica.”

“We were just talking about … about …” I looked at Andrew awkwardly. Was it good taste to say we were talking about his divorce? About the fact that his wife had left him, plunging him into a pit of despair? “About marriage,” I finally said.

“Divorce, actually,” Andrew said. “That’s why I’m here. Got to learn to stand on my own two feet.”

“That’s the spirit,” Helen said encouragingly. “We’re here because Jess wants to become a Stepford Wife.”

“No, I don’t,” I said crossly. “Learning to cook doesn’t make me a man-pleasing clone.”

“My wife’s cooking was amazing,” Andrew said balefully. “Whenever we went out to a restaurant, I always said to her that her cooking was better.”

“And she still left you?” Helen asked, apparently serious, but I could see the twinkle in her eye.

Andrew didn’t notice it. He nodded gravely. “And it was all my fault,” he said again.

“Oh, don’t say that. Takes two to tango,” Helen said briskly.

“Okay, people,” Mary called out suddenly. “We’re going to start in just a minute, so please make your way to your workstations, where you’ll find some ingredients in glass bowls laid out for you. We’re going to start by cooking a nice simple lasagna, followed by a yummy chocolate pudding.”

I looked at Andrew uncertainly. “So what happened?” I asked him, as Helen ran off to bag a workstation right at the back of the room.

He laughed, a low, bitter little laugh that sent shivers down my spine. “I cheated. One stupid drunken night. Same story as every guy here, I imagine.”

“And she left you right away?” My heart was thudding in my chest.

He nodded. “Said it was too much of a betrayal. That I wasn’t the person she thought I was. And the thing was, the night I did it … all I was thinking about was her. Wishing I was at home. Stupid, right?”

I suddenly remembered being in the bar with Hugh, feeling so angry with Max, feeling betrayed and hurt but still wanting him so badly.

“Pretty stupid,” I agreed, my voice catching slightly. “Pretty bloody insane, actually.”

“So,” Mary said, as I nipped over to the workstation Helen had saved for me, on which were two carefully laid-out steaks and various bowls. “Making lasagna is really quite straightforward. But first we need to get our prep done. Which means mincing our beef and making our pasta. Has anyone here made pasta before?”

One of the gap-year students and one of the middle-aged divorcés put up their hands.

“Wonderful.” Mary beamed. “The rest of you, just follow my instructions and you’ll find that it’s the easiest thing in the world.”

It wasn’t the easiest thing in the world. It wasn’t
at all
the easiest thing in the world. I did my best to concentrate, but Mary kept shouting out instructions and I didn’t even hear her because I was still trying to complete my first task—making a pasta dough and turning it into sheets of lasagna.

“Helen,” I said tentatively. “How do I—”

“Look!” she said triumphantly, not hearing me because she was too preoccupied with her pasta maker, out of which perfect, square lasagna sheets were emerging. “Look, I made that!”

“Great,” I muttered unenthusiastically. “Just great.”

“Oh dear,” Helen said, noticing the lumpy and misshapen
sheets that I had produced. “Are you maybe putting too much in at a time?”

“Maybe,” I sighed, as I put my lumpen dough back on the workbench, where it immediately stuck.

“And I think your mixture has got too much water in it. It’s not meant to be that sticky. See?”

Helen put more of her mixture through and smiled happily as another perfect sheet emerged.

“You’re a natural,” a guy at the next workbench said, grinning at her. “Are you sure you aren’t a great cook who’s come here to make the rest of us look bad?”

Helen smiled flirtatiously. “Make you look bad?” she asked. “Impossible. I’m Helen, by the way.”

“Will,” the man said. “Nice to meet you.”

I looked at Helen in frustration. “I didn’t put too much in. I put in the same amount of water as you,” I said, trying to stay calm. “We were given the same exact amounts in our bowls.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Helen said, shaking her head in bemusement. “So why is mine coming out okay and yours is … is …”

“Is crap?” I asked, surprising myself with the anger in my voice.

“Not crap,” she said quickly. “Try it again, okay? And I’ll help you.”

“If you help me, then I’m not learning, am I?” I said hotly. “Just leave me alone. Let me get on with it, okay? Because actually it’s quite distracting having you talking at me all the time.”

“Fine,” Helen said defensively. “I was only trying to help.” I watched as she picked up her perfect squares of lasagna and placed them, as Mary had instructed, under a piece of muslin on the cool stainless-steel counter. “I’ll get on with the beef, shall I?”

I nodded and went back to my pasta-making. It was no big deal, I told myself. So pasta-making wasn’t going to be my
forte—there were other things, right? Maybe my sauce would be spectacular. Maybe my chocolate pudding would be the best ever.

“Right, so your pasta squares should be ready and waiting and your beef should be gently frying with your onions,” Mary called out. “Now, simply add the fresh tomatoes that you’ve squished, along with the herbs, and leave that to simmer on a low temperature. Meanwhile, we’re going to turn our attentions to our chocolate pudding.”

I looked up in alarm. I hadn’t even started to fry my beef. Quickly, I grabbed a frying pan and shoved my minced beef, onion, and a few other things in it before turning the hob on high to make up some lost time. Remembering the tomatoes just in time (not squished—I hadn’t got round to that—so I grabbed a knife and roughly chopped them as they went in), I looked up quickly as Mary was telling us to decant the white powder in the blue bowl into the large clear bowl and to add the eggs. Hurriedly, I did as she suggested. I could do this. I was a grade-A student—always had been at school and university. But there I’d had more time. If I’d slipped behind, there was always the evening to catch up. Not like this. Mary and her instructions were relentless. There was no time to think. No time to …

“So now beat gently and add the milk, which is in the red dish in front of you. Add it gradually so that you create a nice, smooth paste …”

I grabbed the red dish. Okay. Milk. Slowly add milk. Gently, carefully, I poured it into the bowl. Then I started to mix. I sneaked a quick peek at Helen’s—her bowl was definitely full of a nice, smooth paste, as Mary had promised. So there was no reason why mine wouldn’t turn out like that, too. I just had to mix it. Slowly. No, the pouring was slow, not the mixing. The mixing could be any speed. At least, I guessed it could. I looked over at Helen again. She’d stopped mixing; she was checking on her beef again.

Despondently, I turned back to my bowl.

“Everything all right over here?” I looked up to see Mary hovering at my side, a bright smile on her face. “How are we doing?”

I managed to smile back. “Well,” I said uncertainly, “I’m trying to get my paste working….”

She nodded reassuringly and looked in my bowl. Her face fell slightly. “Ah. Now, what have we here?”

“We have the ingredients ready to be mixed,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm.

“So we have flour? Eggs? Milk?”

I nodded.

Mary nodded, too, then proceeded to stir the contents of the bowl, her expression becoming increasingly vexed. “You’re sure you …” she started to say, then her eyes scanned my side of the workstation.

“Your flour is here,” she said, pointing to a purple bowl.

“No,” I said. “The flour is in the blue bowl. Here.”

“Oh,” Mary said, her smile faltering slightly. “That’s the lilac one. This is the blue one.” She held up the purple bowl.

“That’s purple,” I said.

“Oh.” Mary looked taken aback. “You think? I’m not sure … I mean, I don’t think anyone’s confused the two before. Perhaps it is a little on the purple side….”

I swallowed uncomfortably. “So what was in that bowl? The one I used?”

“Parmesan,” Mary said weakly.

I nodded slowly. “So that’ll be why my mixture isn’t really turning into a paste,” I said.

“And this!” Mary grabbed another bowl, her face taking on an increasingly worried expression. “This should be in your pasta!”

“It should?” I hadn’t even noticed that one—a small ceramic bowl with something white and powdery in it.

“Yes, it should.” Mary looked around helplessly. “Perhaps we
should start—no, there’s no time. I’ll get you some more flour, though. For the chocolate pudding.”

“Thanks,” I said. But just as she was walking away, there was a bang and a fizz, and we both turned to see the lid flying off the saucepan on my hob. Meat and tomato spewed out of it, as Mary desperately grabbed a tea towel and turned down the flame.

“Simmer gently,” she managed to say, as she pulled the saucepan away. “Not set fire to.”

I felt my lip begin to quiver. “So that’s ruined, too?”

“Ruined?” She looked down at the saucepan and gingerly stirred the contents before looking back at me unhappily. “Well, I think perhaps this lasagna sauce has … I think perhaps we should focus on the pudding. Don’t you?”

“The pudding I put parmesan in?” I could feel myself choking up, could feel everyone’s eyes on me. I felt hot. I wanted to get out.

There was a snigger from the other side of the room and I glared over, catching the eye of one of the gap-year students, who hurriedly looked down.

“The pudding we can start again with,” Mary was saying. “With flour this time?”

She meant it nicely—I knew she did. She wasn’t laughing at me; she wanted to help. But I wasn’t sure she could help anymore. I could barely remember why I was even here. “Actually, I think I’ll go,” I said, my voice slightly brittle.

“Go? Oh no. No, don’t do that. There’s nothing here that can’t be fixed,” Mary assured me. “We could turn this into a soufflé. We could take this … this mince and … and …” Her brow furrowed as she tried to come up with something.

“And make golf balls?” Helen grinned. “Or cat food?”

“Cat food,” I said quietly. “Well, I guess that wouldn’t be a complete waste. Although I don’t have a cat.”

“I used to have a cat,” Andrew said. “But my ex-wife took her.”

I sighed heavily, and Helen put her am around me. “Oh, come on, Jess. So you aren’t a great cook. So what? No big deal. I mean, who cares, anyway?”

“I do,” I said, the words sticking in my throat. “I thought this would be an easy one; I wanted to surprise him with a really lovely meal, to show him how much I love him.”

Helen shook her head. “I’ll tell you what. If Max finds you naked on the bed with a rose between your teeth when he gets home, that’ll go down way better than a stupid lasagna.”

She caught Mary’s eye and reddened. “No offense, Mary.”

“None taken.” Mary shrugged. “It’s only lasagna.”

“Your friend’s right,” Will said earnestly. “Sex beats cooking every time.”

“We never had sex after the kids were born,” Andrew said dolefully. “I think that’s why I cheated—”

“Okay, enough,” I said, holding up my hands. “Mary, tell me seriously: Is it worth me staying?”

“Of course it is,” Mary said firmly. “We all have to start somewhere. Rome wasn’t built in a day, after all!”

“No, but I bet they didn’t put the bricks in all the wrong places on day one,” I said, allowing myself a little smile.

“I bet they did,” Will said. “And if they didn’t, they were just stupid show-offs. Like your friend here.” He winked at Helen. “I mean, come on, no one likes a goody two-shoes, do they?”

Helen grinned. “Exactly. And, anyway, you should see this as an opportunity, Jess. You’ve never been bottom of the class, so this is a great new experience for you.”

I felt a little smile creep onto my lips. “I’m really bottom of the class?”

Mary looked as if she was trying to suppress a grin of her own. “You’re not top,” she admitted.

“So the only way is up?” I asked tentatively.

“Undoubtedly,” Mary said, matter-of-factly. “That’s the spirit. Shall I get you some more flour?”

I nodded. “And everything else, if that’s okay,” I said. “I think I’d like to start from the beginning, if it’s all right with you.”

I DID IT: I actually cooked lasagna and chocolate pudding for Max. Okay, so I had a bit of help from Mary Armstrong. Sure, she kept an eagle eye on me at all times, and she didn’t let me add any ingredients until she’d checked them first. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was on my way home, clutching an entire home-cooked meal in various plastic boxes (packed by Mary and Helen, neither of whom trusted me with the job), with very clear instructions on how to heat them up (I overheard Helen telling Mary that they couldn’t leave anything to chance with me, and I didn’t even get offended). I could cook. Sort of. And although I could see now that being able to cook was hardly on a par with betrayal, that they hardly canceled each other out, it made me feel a little bit better. At least I’d tried.