After You

With all this in mind, I loaded Lily into the car on my day off and announced that we were going to lunch. It would probably go horribly wrong, I told myself, but at least there would be two of us there to shoulder it.

Because Lily was so busy staring at her phone, with her earphones plugged in, it was a good forty minutes before she looked out the car window. She frowned as we approached a signpost. ‘This isn’t the way to your mum and dad’s.’

‘I know.’

‘Then where are we going?’

‘I told you. To lunch.’

When she had stared at me long enough to accept that I wasn’t going to elaborate, she squinted out the window for a while. ‘God, you’re annoying sometimes.’

Half an hour later we pulled up at the Crown and Garter, a red-brick hotel set in two acres of parkland, about twenty minutes south of Oxford. Neutral territory, I had decided, was the way forward. Lily climbed out and shut the door emphatically enough to send me the message that this was actually still quite annoying.

I ignored her, put on a slick of lipstick and walked into the restaurant, letting Lily follow.

Mrs Traynor was already at a table. When Lily saw her, she let out a little groan.

‘Why are we doing this again?’

‘Because things change,’ I said, and propelled her forwards.

‘Lily.’ Mrs Traynor rose to her feet. She had evidently been to a hairdresser, and her hair was once again beautifully cut and blow-dried. She was wearing a little make-up, too, and those two things conspired to make her look like the Mrs Traynor of old: self-possessed, someone who understood that appearances were, if not everything, at least the foundation of something.

‘Hello, Mrs Traynor.’

‘Hi,’ Lily mumbled. She didn’t reach out a hand, but positioned herself at the seat beside mine.

Mrs Traynor registered this, but gave a brief smile, sat down and summoned the waiter. ‘This restaurant was one of your father’s favourites,’ she said, placing her napkin on her lap. ‘On the rare occasions I could persuade him to leave London, this is where we would meet. It’s rather good food. Michelin-starred.’

I looked at the menu – turbot quenelles with a frangipane of mussels and langoustine, smoked duck breast with cavalo nero and Israeli couscous – and hoped very much that as Mrs Traynor had suggested this restaurant she would pay.

‘It looks a bit fussy,’ said Lily, not lifting her head from the menu.

I glanced at Mrs Traynor.

‘That’s exactly what Will said too. But it is very good. I think I’ll have the quail.’

‘I’ll have the sea bass,’ Lily said, and closed the leather-bound menu.

I stared at the list in front of me. There was nothing here I even recognized. What was rutabaga? What was ravioli of bone marrow and samphire? I wondered if I could ask for a sandwich.

‘Are you ready to order?’ The waiter appeared beside me. I waited as the others reeled off their choices. Then I spotted a word I recognized from my time in Paris. ‘Can I have the joues de boeuf confites?’

‘With the potato gnocchi and asparagus? Certainly, Madame.’

Beef, I thought. I can do beef.

We talked of small things while waiting for our starters. I told Mrs Traynor that I was still working at the airport but was being considered for a promotion and tried to make it sound like a positive career choice rather than a cry for help. I told her Lily had found a job, and when she heard what Lily was doing, Mrs Traynor didn’t shudder, as I had secretly been afraid she might, but nodded. ‘That sounds eminently sensible. It never hurts to get your hands dirty when you’re starting out.’

‘It’s not got any prospects,’ Lily said firmly. ‘Unless you count being allowed to move onto the till.’

‘Well, neither does having a paper round. But your father did that for two years before he left school. It instils a work ethic.’

‘And people always need tins of frankfurters,’ I observed.

‘Do they really?’ said Mrs Traynor, and looked briefly appalled.

We watched as another table was seated beside us, an elderly woman lowered with much fuss and exclamation into a chair by two male relatives.

‘We got your photograph album,’ I said.

‘Oh, you did! I had wondered. Did … did you like it?’

Lily’s eyes flickered towards her. ‘It was nice, thank you,’ she said.

Mrs Traynor took a sip of her water. ‘I wanted to show you another side of Will. I feel sometimes as if his life has been rather taken over by what happened when he died. I just wanted to show that he was more than a wheelchair. More than the manner of his death.’

There was a brief silence.

‘It was nice, thank you,’ Lily repeated.

Our food arrived, and Lily grew silent again. The waiters hovered officiously, filling water glasses when their levels fell by a centimetre. A breadboard was offered, removed and re-offered five minutes later. The restaurant filled with people like Mrs Traynor: well-dressed, well-spoken, people for whom turbot quenelles was a standard lunch and not a conversational minefield. Mrs Traynor asked after my family, and spoke warmly of my father. ‘He did such a very good job at the castle.’

‘It must be strange, not going back,’ I said, then winced internally, wondering if I’d breached some invisible line.

But Mrs Traynor just gazed at the tablecloth in front of her. ‘It is,’ she agreed, and nodded, her smile a little tighter, then drank some more water.

The conversation carried on like this through our starters (smoked salmon for Lily, salad for Mrs Traynor and me), stalling and moving forward in fits and starts, like someone learning to drive a car. It was with some relief that I saw the waiter approach with our main courses. My smile disappeared as he placed my plate in front of me. It did not look like beef. It looked like soggy brown discs in a thick brown sauce.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said to the waiter. ‘I ordered the beef?’

He let his gaze hang on me for a moment. ‘This is the beef, Madame.’

We both stared at my plate.

‘Joues de boeuf?’ he said. ‘Beef cheeks?’

‘Beef cheeks?’

We both stared at my plate and my stomach did a little flip.

‘Oh, of course,’ I said. ‘I – yes. Beef cheeks. Thank you.’

Beef cheeks. I was too afraid to ask from which end they came. I wasn’t sure which would be worse. I smiled at Mrs Traynor, and set about nibbling my gnocchi.