Free The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson Page A

and certainly the fish was magnificent, the kind that appears in fairy stories, rearing up out of the sea and granting wishes.
    During the next day it was clear that Ellie had something on her mind. She and Sigrid talked together, and when Annika came they stopped suddenly and looked at her in a considering sort of way.
    That night, just as Annika had got into bed, she heard footsteps coming up to her door and Ellie entered. She usually said goodnight downstairs – Ellie’s legs were tired by the end of the day – so it was clear she had something important to say, and she had.
    ‘We think you can do it.’ Ellie’s voice was solemn. ‘We have made up our minds.’
    ‘Do what?’
    ‘Cook it entirely by yourself. Without any help.’
    ‘Cook what?’ said Annika, bewildered.
    And Ellie said, ‘The Christmas carp.’
    Annika came downstairs the next morning looking pale, with dark smudges under her eyes. Ellie too looked as though she’d had a sleepless night.
    ‘I’m sorry, pet, I shouldn’t have suggested it. You’re too young. There’s ten things to go into the sauce alone, and there’s the stuffing and the basting . . .’
    Annika put up her chin. ‘Yes, I can. I can and I will. Please will you get down The Book for me.’
    So Ellie lifted down her mother’s worn and faded recipe book, which contained all the wisdom of her family, and Annika found the page headed ‘Christmas Carp’.
    The instructions were written in crabbed handwriting in violet ink, not even by Ellie’s mother, but by her grandmother, and they covered nearly three pages.
    Annika began to read. The fish had to be washed four times in running cold water and the fifth time in water and lemon juice. At least four times, the book said. After that it had to be put to soak in a marinade – a kind of bath of white wine, chopped onions, herbs and lemon.
    ‘It says here that Chablis is the best wine to use.’
    Sigrid raised her eyebrows. ‘That’s the most expensive,’ she said.
    ‘But it’s the best,’ said Annika firmly, and Sigrid went down to the cellar without another word.
    By lunchtime the fish was in its marinade, where it would stay for the rest of the day, and Annika had started to assemble the things she needed for the stuffing. She had been given the main kitchen table to work on. Ellie prepared the vegetables and the desserts at the smaller side table, but she was beginning to suffer, seeing Annika heave the enormous fish kettle about. Annika’s hands were red and chafed, she had tied her hair up in an old cloth, and when anybody spoke to her she didn’t hear. Something was sure to go wrong, thought Ellie, and to stop herself from interfering she took herself off to the shops.
    By now the news that Annika was cooking the professors’ Christmas carp entirely by herself had gone round the square. Pauline in particular was very upset and she came in after lunch bringing her scrapbook of people who had done brave and difficult things even though they were too young or too old or too ill.
    ‘There’s one here about a girl of ten who swam across the Danube to rescue her grandfather, even though she had the measles.’
    But Annika did not seem to be cheered up by this. She had reached the grating stage: grating honey cake, grating lemon rind, grating horseradish, grating (but only slightly) her middle finger . . .
    In the afternoon Ellie returned and sent Annika out into the crisp snow to get a newspaper, thinking some fresh air would do her good, but this turned out to be a mistake, because the lady in the paper shop told her that her mother’s stuffing for the carp at Christmas had always contained chopped prunes.
    Annika was unsettled by this, but then she remembered that the paper-shop lady’s family had come from Czechoslovakia, where they probably ate all sorts of things, and she turned back to Ellie’s book.
    There was now only one more day to go, and the professors began to quarrel about the best way to stop the