Free The Good Plain Cook by Bethan Roberts Page B

sometimes think.
     Like her father. Too wrapped up in her own thoughts to notice.’
    ‘I liked Dora’s pies,’ said Geenie.
    Ellen ignored this.
    ‘I like food,’ announced Diana. ‘Pies included.’
    ‘I dare say your mother’s taught you that.’
    Diana looked steadily at Ellen. ‘No,’ she said. ‘My mother eats like a bird. She’s a ballet dancer and they can’t eat much
     or they get fat and lose their grace.’
    ‘How miserable for her!’
    Diana scooped another piece of pie.
    ‘George eats a lot, doesn’t he, Ellen?’ Geenie pushed her own plate away and leant towards her mother. ‘He eats like a horse,
     doesn’t he? That means you’ve got a bird and a horse for parents, Diana.’ She giggled.
    ‘Maybe,’ said Diana, clicking her nails together.
    ‘George – your father – is totally indiscriminate when it comes to food. He’ll consume anything that’s edible. Or even inedible.’
     Ellen looked down at the remains of Geenie’s luncheon meat. ‘I think I’m going to have to get someone in to teach Kitty a
     thing or two about cuisine. How to use salt and pepper, that sort of thing.’
    ‘Can we play now?’ asked Geenie.
    Ellen threw up her hands. ‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘Games are so much more interesting than food.’
    The girls scraped back their chairs and Ellen watched the two of them disappear.

· · ·  Nine  · · ·

    L ou looked like an oversized mermaid in the new dress. The shiny green fabric was clamped to her thighs. Her breasts were squashed
     into a loaf shape, and her waist had become a series of rolls. It was Macclesfield silk, crème de menthe green, she said, with three-quarter-length sleeves and a cowl neckline. The hem didn’t quite touch the floor.
    ‘It’s bloody well shrunk.’
    Lou had inherited their grandmother’s ginger curls, which meant green was her colour.
    ‘I’ll murder that laundry woman.’
    It was Saturday night, and Mrs Steinberg, Geenie, Mr Crane and the new girl had gone to his sister’s for dinner, telling Kitty
     she may as well take the evening off. So here she was, in Lou and Bob’s bedroom, kneeling on the Axminster, her fingertips
     beginning to sweat as she held the hem of the dress and looked up at her sister.
    ‘Can you do anything at all?’ asked Lou.
    Kitty pulled the hem taut and examined it.
    ‘You must be able to do something, Kit.’
    She stood and took her sister by the shoulders, turning her round so she could see the back of the dress. ‘Hmm.’ She whipped
     the inch tape from around her neck and drew it across Lou’s back. She wasn’t sure why she did it, but it was what her sister
     would expect. Some sort of measuring and working out in order to reshape the garment to her size. Kitty knew she could do
     nothing to this dress to make it any better. But when she had a tape around her neck and pins in her mouth, her sister seemed
     to move easily in her hands.
    She pinched a piece of fabric at Lou’s waist.
    ‘Ouch! That’s me you’re squeezing!’
    ‘I might be able to let it out here...' She spoke from the corner of her mouth so as not to drop the pins. Turning her sister around again, she ran a hand over the neckline, trying
     to smooth it down over Lou’s chest.
    ‘How are things at the cottage? You haven’t said much about it.’
    ‘I could let it out at the back, maybe...'
    ‘Could you?’
    Kitty stabbed a pin into the shoulder of the dress.
    ‘What’s she like then, the American?’
    ‘She’s – unusual.’
    ‘I knew that much. What does she do all day?’
    ‘She types.’
    ‘Types what?’
    ‘I don’t know. She wants me to call her Mrs Steinberg.’
    Lou raised an eyebrow.
    ‘The girl calls her Ellen.’
    ‘She doesn’t call her Mother?’
    ‘Not as far as I’ve heard.’
    ‘How peculiar.’
    ‘Perhaps it’s an American thing.’
    ‘Don’t be idiotic.’
    ‘They’ve lived all over, Lou, in France and everything.’
    ‘She is her mother, isn’t she?’
    Kitty