The Right Place

Chapter 7

THE SUN WAS SETTING over Le Figuier, the clouds had turned pink and stretched across the sky like candy floss, the crickets were croaking in the long grass, and the smell of thyme and bacon floated through the kitchen window, mingling with the scent of cigarette smoke.

Maggie stood at the kitchen counter, wrapping a pear in pastry. Douillons aux poires , or pears in pyjamas, was one of the first pudding recipes that Phil had taught her: sprinkle a handful of raisins over a small square of puff pastry, place a pear on top of it, then wrap the pastry around the pear as if it’s a birthday present and seal the corners with egg wash. It was satisfying work, making each pear snug. Beside her, the coq au vin was bubbling on the hob. She just needed to grate the cheese for the onion soup.

Cooking for other people again felt nice. Better than nice. It felt like she was useful again. Four years earlier, not long into the pandemic, and at yet another doctor’s suggestion, Mungo had tentatively suggested that Maggie close her restaurant: ‘It’s too much on you. Too tiring.’ What he meant was that having a baby was more important, and Maggie didn’t disagree, but couldn’t she do both? Cooking wasn’t stressful to her; quite the opposite. But after the doctor’s advice – and her mother’s encouragement – she’d agreed to give up the lease and close it down. The site sat empty for several months until it became a vape shop.

That was when she’d also given up her surname, the name she’d always used professionally: Maggie Meriwether. A food critic had once written that her ‘Dickensian’ name was fitting for a restaurant in East London, and she’d felt proud because she agreed. Mungo had long wanted her to take on his, but she’d insisted that her maiden name was what people knew her as in the industry, promising that she’d change it when they had children.

But it had changed as soon as they’d started seeing doctors. Medical staff called her Mrs Lemon, the labels on her hormone medication said Maggie Lemon, and she felt Maggie Meriwether slip away as a different woman took her place – a woman who took her temperature every morning and noted it down on an app to chart her cycle; a woman who spent hours scrolling through forums online, seeking out other women’s pain to make hers feel more bearable; a woman who was more afraid of her body for what it couldn’t do than proud of it for what it could.

Since then , she’d only cooked for Mungo and herself, or the odd dinner party for their married couple friends, or more often Mungo’s clients or colleagues. Never for paying punters.

But tonight, she was determined to impress Lord and Lady Bancroft, who were currently outside, working their way through a bottle of Champagne even though they’d arrived back at the chateau that afternoon so drunk that they’d forgotten where they’d left their suitcases.

‘You left them here this morning, remember?’ she’d reassured them from the hotel steps.

‘Audrey?’ Maggie shouted from the kitchen.

Audrey had been sitting outside for the past twenty minutes recovering from laying the table. Maggie had never known another human to make so much fuss about a simple job. It had taken her half an hour to lay two place settings in the dining room and then she’d declared she needed a rest because her ankle hurt.

‘Audrey? Can you tell the Bancrofts that dinner will be ready in ten minutes?’

‘I ’ave just lit a cigarette,’ Audrey shouted back.

Standing in front of the oven, Maggie inhaled and exhaled as if she was in a yoga class. ‘Once you’ve finished would you mind telling them? And is there water on the table?’

No reply.

Maggie continued with dinner: grating curls of Gruyère onto pieces of toasted baguette. Then she spooned several ladles of thick, brown, buttery onion soup into two bowls and carefully arranged the pieces of baguette covered with cheese on top, before sliding them under the grill.

Retrieving the bottle of Burgundy from the fridge, she heard Audrey coming back into the kitchen, weeping.

‘Oh, Audrey, what’s up? Can you find an ice bucket and take this through?’ Maggie nodded at the bottle of wine, then wiped her hands on her apron and reached for the oven gloves.

‘It is just so sad, doing all this and your aunt, she ees not ’ere.’

Maggie glanced at the urn of Phil’s ashes on the shelf. ‘I know, I know. It’s very sad. But can you jus—’

‘And the dining room, eet feels so empty …’

‘I know, I know. But we have guests and we need them to have a good time because it’s their anniversary. And also because we can’t let Phil down. OK?’

Audrey let out another sob at the mention of Phil’s name.

‘Here, take the wine through,’ Maggie added, as Audrey wiped her nose with her fist. ‘The sooner we get through dinner, the sooner you can go home. And can you wash your hands?’

Somehow, they got through dinner. Audrey was among the worst waitresses that Maggie had ever worked with, and that was saying something because at the first ever restaurant she’d worked in, a terrible Italian in Soho, someone sent back a bowl of minestrone because the waitress’s gum had fallen into it.

Audrey cried throughout the service, took cigarette breaks between each course and put down Lord Bancroft’s plate of coq au vin so violently that juice slopped over the side of the plate and splashed his chinos.

‘Go home,’ Maggie told her once she’d cleared the plates.

‘You do not need me?’

Maggie shook her head as she lay a baked pear in each bowl. ‘I can manage. But can you remember to pick up the croissants in the morning?’

Audrey’s face brightened and she nodded, then made for the back door with a hurried goodnight, her ankle suddenly much improved.

Then Maggie’s phone went.

‘Hi, Mum,’ she said, clamping it between her ear and her shoulder while scanning the shelves for cinnamon sticks.

‘Margaret?’

‘Yes, Mum, I’m here.’

‘Oh, good, it works.’

Maggie spotted the jar and reached for it. ‘What works?’

Veronica tutted. ‘The telephone.’

‘’Course it works. I’ve come to France, not the moon.’ Holding a grater over the pears, Maggie dusted them with cinnamon. ‘But I’m in the middle of dinner so can I ri—’

‘Dinner? For guests? I thought it was closed?’ Veronica tutted again. ‘Honestly, this is just like Phil.’

‘What do you mean, just like her? She’s dead , Mum. I don’t think she died on purpose.’

‘Leaving her mess for other people to clear up. You should be resting, Margaret.’

‘It’s not a mess,’ Maggie fibbed, thinking of the Bancrofts’ unexpected arrival, the dilapidated exterior of the hotel, and the debt. Instantly leaping to her aunt’s defence stirred old memories. She’d learnt to do this as a teenager, batting away her mother’s constant criticisms of Phil, caught in the middle between two sisters who’d never got on. Once or twice, Maggie had wondered if her grandmother had embarked on an affair and become pregnant with someone else during her marriage, because the sisters were so different – one so prim and proper, whose idea of a good night out was an evening at the local bridge club; the other so wild and unbothered by rules, who ran away from suburbia to become a famous model, and then a famous chef, whose idea of the perfect night was smoking and drinking until the sun came up. But then she chided herself. She wasn’t much better than her mother. Neither of them had seen or spoken to Phil in the past eight years, as far as she knew.

‘Mum, did Phil ever reach out to you?’ she asked tentatively. ‘In the last few years?’

‘Reach out? Margaret, please don’t use that phrase. It’s bad enough when they say it on the BBC.’

‘Did she ever contact you?’

‘No,’ Veronica said, but too quickly. ‘All right, perhaps once or twice, mostly asking about you.’

‘What about me?’

‘Nothing! Well, almost nothing. Bits and bobs. I believe the last time we spoke, I mentioned that you were seeing doctors but they were always extremely short conversations. You knew my sister, we really had nothing to say to one another.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I didn’t think you’d want to know. I didn’t think you’d want to speak to her, quite frankly. You had enough drama in your life as it was.’

‘So you didn’t know she was ill?’

‘No! Of course I didn’t know. I’m not that unfeeling. Look, Margaret, none of us knew that Philippa was ill but what’s happened has happened and it’s very sad, but that was my sister for you. She didn’t live life like everyone else.’

Maggie detected the faint pulse of a headache at the back of her skull, which she often felt when she’d been on the phone to her mother for too long. Her body had developed its own alarm system. ‘No, she didn’t,’ she murmured.

‘How long do you think you’ll be out there?’ went on Veronica. ‘I don’t like it so soon after your treatment. And poor Mungo! Who’s making his dinner?’

‘He can make it himself, Mum, he’s perfectly capable. And I’ve got Audrey out here.’

‘Audrey’s still there? I can’t imagine she’ll be any help at all.’

She agreed with her mother on this but she wasn’t going to admit it. ‘Mum, I’ve got to take pudding through. It’s only two guests. Can I ring tomorrow?’

‘Yes, yes. I have tennis at ten but I’m free as a bird otherwise.’

‘I’ll give you a ring after tennis. Bye, Mum. Gotta go.’

‘Do look after yourself, please, Margar—’

Maggie dropped the phone and carried the pears through to the dining room.

‘Here you go,’ she said, as she approached their corner table. ‘ Douillons aux poires , or, as I like to call it, pears in pyjamas.’

It was strange serving so few guests when, years earlier, there would have been eight tables to run around. Still, she loved this room. It was panelled in dark wood, which had shone as if it was polished in the evening when the candlesticks on each table were lit. Shelves ran the length of one wall, opposite the French windows that led to the terrace overlooking the pool, covered with cookery books that Phil had collected over the years, during her travels around the world. And at the other end, over the old marble fireplace, hung an antique mirror, which reflected the room back on itself.

Lord Bancroft beamed at his pear as if it was his firstborn child. ‘Magnificent. I must say, tonight’s dinner has been the best we’ve eaten, hasn’t it, Belinda? And we’ve eaten in some tip-top restaurants this trip.’

‘Apart from the brains,’ said Lady Bancroft, reaching for the jug of cream. ‘Don’t forget the brains, Humphrey.’

‘No, mustn’t forget the brains,’ agreed Lord Bancroft, taking the jug from his wife. ‘We tried calves’ brains in a place in Lyon that’s famous for them, but they weren’t for us, were they, Belinda?’

Lady Bancroft shook her head and then moaned as she took a bite.

Lord Bancroft did the same as Maggie poured them the last of the red wine. The pair had drunk a bottle of Burgundy with their onion soup, then moved on to Beaujolais with their coq au vin . Together with the Champagne before dinner, they’d drunk three bottles between them and were in excellent spirits.

‘Good heavens. I didn’t know pears could taste like this,’ cried Lord Bancroft, plunging his spoon back into his bowl.

‘Good,’ said Maggie. ‘I’m never sure about brains. My aunt, she was the one who opened this place, she always said just because something was traditional, it didn’t mean we still had to eat it.’

‘Quite right,’ said Lord Bancroft, through a mouthful of pastry and cream.

‘Your aunt …’ Lady Bancroft said in wonder, spoon frozen in the air.

‘My mum’s sister.’

Lord Bancroft hiccupped. ‘Goodness, I’m awfully sorry. She must have been quite a character.’

Maggie smiled. ‘She was.’

‘So sad,’ Lady Bancroft added. ‘She was always in the papers. I remember the pictures. Didn’t she date Rod Stewart?’

‘Who didn’t?’ joked Lord Bancroft.

‘She dated a few people,’ replied Maggie. ‘I think you mean Mick Jagger, not Rod Stewart. Although, it could have been Rod Stewart too, knowing her.’

‘So you’re taking over?’ asked Lady Bancroft.

‘Oh, no. Sadly not. I live in London. I’m just here to … sort things out.’

‘Will you sell it?’

‘Belinda! Stop interrogating the poor woman.’

‘I’m only asking , Humphrey. I’m only asking,’ Lady Bancroft went on, looking back at Maggie, ‘because we came here nearly twenty years ago and it was so special. The food … the wine … the gardens. We’ve talked about that holiday ever since, haven’t we?’

Lord Bancroft nodded. ‘Of course, if you are thinking of selling it, you might need someone to help with those books.’

Maggie looked behind her at the shelves. ‘The books?’ She’d read many of them as a teenager, carrying piles to her bedroom where she studied the recipes and their strange, foreign ingredients. Or at least, the recipes that she could read. Some were so old the writing was impossible to decipher.

‘Indeed. I hope you don’t mind but I had a squint at them earlier, and I thought I might have spied one or two gems.’

‘Humphrey’s a book dealer,’ Lady Bancroft chipped in.

‘Retired, but I do like to keep my hand in, and I’d be only too happy to ask around if you did need help with any of them. Might be worth a bob or two.’

‘Oh, potentially,’ Maggie said, thinking of her aunt’s debts. ‘If it isn’t putting you out?’

‘Not at all, not at all, happy to help.’

‘It seems such a pity to sell,’ Lady Bancroft went on. ‘We’ve stayed in some sensational hotels around the world, haven’t we, darling?’ Another nod. ‘But this place has a magic to it. Wasn’t I saying that earlier, Humphrey, while we were having drinks on the terrace? I’ve always remembered, like a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream – long warm nights and romance in the air.’

Lord Bancroft looked startled. ‘Steady on, Belinda.’

‘Oh, Humphrey. All I’m saying is …’ Lady Bancroft looked up and beamed at Maggie, ‘this place still has that magic.’

‘I’m glad you think so.’

‘Might I ask one further question?’ added Lord Bancroft, as he wiped his finger around the bowl for the last traces of cream.

‘Of course.’ Although Maggie hoped that it wouldn’t be another question about Phil. Suddenly, she felt exhausted by the day, physically as well as emotionally. It was as if she’d been so busy trying to make the hotel feel like it used to – cleaning their room, fetching the wine from the cellar, making dinner, serving dinner – that she hadn’t considered the emotional impact of doing all that she used to here, only without Phil.

Lord Bancroft leant forward, concern wrinkling his face. ‘Was that other waitress all right?’

She checked her phone when they’d gone to bed to see another missed call and a message from Mungo.

Gemma’s booked an appointment with Dr Goodall for Monday 24th June. That work?

She tapped open her calendar. Exactly six weeks from today.

She glanced at the clock. Nearly midnight. Too late to ring. I’m sorry I missed you, will ring in the morning xxx. Facing her phone down on the table, she opened Phil’s laptop to cancel the other guests before more pitched up on the doorstep, expecting a luxury holiday only to find the place overgrown and echoing with the sound of a weeping Audrey.

Maggie scanned Phil’s inbox and flagged every reservation she could find.

Several months earlier, a woman called Liz Woodford had emailed asking for a room for herself and her best friend, Tina, who was recovering from breast cancer. She’s had a rough time of it so I’d like to surprise her with this trip to celebrate her recovery. No husbands allowed!

Very wise to ban husbands, Phil had replied the following day. And how wonderful that you’ve chosen Le Figuier to come and celebrate. I will have a bottle on ice. Make that several bottles. See you then.

Another had been made by a man called Leonard Boxer, who’d asked if he could book the suite because he was planning on proposing to his girlfriend. Could the chef hide the ring in the dessert? I don’t want her to choke but if he could disguise it, I would like that.

Phil answered that it would be possible, and that she was enchantée that Leonard had chosen Le Figuier as the place to propose. I’m sorry to say we have no suite, but I will put you in the room with the best views of the countryside and a four-poster bed.

A lady called Arabella wanted to book a week’s stay before she and her husband had their first baby.

Another man wanted to book a few days as his honeymoon. We’re both getting on a bit and second-timers at the marriage game so we don’t want too much fuss, but I can’t think of anything nicer than lying by your pool with a bottle of rosé and my darling new wife beside me. PS She’s allergic to lobster.

How wonderful, many congratulations, Phil had written back, I will banish all lobsters from the premises and ensure we have a plentiful supply of rosé.

Maggie read on and on, forgetting that she was supposed to be cancelling them. Every booking had been made by someone who’d chosen the hotel to mark a special moment in their lives – a proposal, an anniversary, a honeymoon, a long friendship. Then she thought of the Bancrofts, sleeping upstairs, who’d returned here to celebrate their wedding anniversary; guests were still coming to cherish and celebrate the milestones in life that shouldn’t pass unnoticed, to celebrate love in all its forms. Fewer than before, admittedly, but the place still had it. Or at least, it had something , just as Lady Bancroft had said. It still had a kind of magic, a romance.

When she heard the village bell chime once in the distance, Maggie closed the laptop. It was too late to start replying. She’d do it tomorrow, when she’d also have to get breakfast together for the Bancrofts, check whether they were having lunch in or out and come up with another dinner menu. Her douillons aux poires had turned out well this evening. A touch more vanilla, next time, but certainly good enough to feel proud of. Good enough to charge for.

‘This is only temporary,’ she said sternly to the blue urn, still on the dresser. ‘I’ll look after them for two more nights and then I need to start trying to sort out your monumental debts.’

She shook her head to herself as she flicked off the kitchen lights and made her way upstairs.