Guy leaned forward and refilled the empty glasses on the coffee table before Enzo could stop him. Guy lifted his and took a mouthful. Enzo reluctantly followed suit. “But Marc got his revenge,” Guy went on. “About a month later, we had a couple of days off and went up to Paris the two of us. First time there. Went on the train. Well, we visited the catacombs. You know, the bit that’s open to the public, where they dumped all the bones from the cemeteries they redeveloped for housing. A spooky place. Human bones floor to ceiling.”
Enzo nodded, his mind suddenly flooded with recollections. He knew the catacombs only too well.
Guy chuckled. “Marc managed to filch one of the skulls and sneak it out with him. About a week later, back at the Lion d’Or, Jacques had a big stock pot bubbling away on the stove. And when no one was looking, Marc slipped the skull into the pot. You can imagine Jacques’ reaction when he went to check on the reduction about half an hour later, and saw a foreign object in there. And then his horror when he fished out the skull. None of us could look. He was apoplectic, demanding to know who was responsible. Of course, no one owned up, and he was never able to prove it was Marc, although I’m sure he knew it was.”
He drained his glass. “I’m certain he must have heard us all laughing our asses off up in the attic that night and cursed the day he ever took on les freres Fraysse.” He lifted the bottle. “Another?”
“No, no thanks,” Enzo said hurriedly. “I’ll not sleep if I do.” He hoped that Guy would take the hint.
But Guy was lost in his memories again. “You’d have thought it would be Marc that would drop out and not me.” He shook his head. “My problem was, I just didn’t really have the talent. But Marc hated it. I mean he really hated it.” Guy looked at Enzo, frowning at the recollection. “Until we came down one morning. And everything changed.”
Enzo found his interest piqued, in spite of his pressing sense of Sophie still hiding in his bathroom. “How?”
Guy grinned. “I don’t think any of us had ever seen the Blanc brothers smiling. But they were like two Cheshire cats that morning. The whole family was in the kitchen, the daily routine abandoned. They were opening bottles of Champagne. And, damnit, if they weren’t pouring glasses for the apprentices, too. Unheard of, Enzo. Unprecedented.” His eyes were wide and shining as he recalled the moment. “They’d just had a call from the director of the Guide Michelin. They were to be given a third star in the forthcoming edition. Well… the phone never stopped ringing. There was a constant procession of folk in and out of the kitchen. It was magical, glamorous. A crowning glory. Here were these two surly, bad-tempered brothers whose magic in the kitchen had elevated them to the status of superstars. And Marc saw that. And suddenly he knew exactly where he wanted his life to take him. He wanted that superstardom, too. More than anything. And it changed his life.”
He sat for a while, still lost in the moment, then slapped his thighs and stood up. “A quick pee and I’ll leave you in peace to get to your bed.” And he headed for the bathroom door before Enzo could dream up some excuse for stopping him.
Enzo got slowly to his feet and waited for the commotion that was certain to follow. But all he heard was the sound of Guy urinating in the toilet and then flushing it. The sound of rushing water came from the taps, and then a few moments later Guy emerged to recover his bottle and the two glasses. Enzo was still tense, but Guy seemed oblivious.
“Listen, Enzo, I want you to have lunch in the dining room tomorrow. On me. The full three-star treatment, a true taste of the vrai style Fraysse.”
Enzo was both astonished, and excited. He knew that the full menu ran to nearly 200 euros. It was a rare privilege even to sit down to a three-star Michelin meal, never mind have someone else pick up the tab. “That’s very generous, Guy,” was all he could think to say.
Guy grinned. “See you tomorrow, Enzo. Good night.” And he vanished off into the hotel.
Enzo closed the door behind him and hurried into the bathroom. There was no sign of Sophie. Where the hell had she gone?
He was startled by the sudden sound of the shower curtain on the bath being pulled roughly aside, and a pink-faced Sophie stood perched in the bath glaring at him.
“You couldn’t have got rid of him sooner?”
Enzo shrugged helplessly. “I tried Sophie.”
“Not very hard.” She spoke through clenched teeth as she stepped out of the bath. “Seemed to me you were more interested in scoffing that damned mirabelle.” She sniffed the air. “I can even smell it off you.” As she strode out into the sitting room Enzo followed. “Next time someone knocks on the door when I’m here, let’s just pretend you’re asleep, huh?”
She opened the door a crack and peered out into the hallway before opening it a little wider. Then she turned back and lowered her voice.
“And don’t think I’ve forgotten about you and brother Jack. I want that story, papa. The whole, unexpurgated truth.”
And then she was gone, slipping off into the darkness, pulling the door softly shut behind her.
Chapter Twelve
Enzo wandered into the bathroom to wash his face and brush his teeth. He felt tired, slightly heady from the mirabelle, and still heavy with the emotion of unburdening himself to Sophie about Jack. It was something he had never intended to do, and yet now it was out in the open, he wondered how on earth he had been able to keep it from her for so long.
He thought, too, about Marc Fraysse. How, in some ways, they had a lot in common. The dominating elder brother, the early lack of ambition or direction in life.
But while Marc had found his raison d’etre in a career-long quest for les trois etoiles de Michelin, Enzo had found his motivation in a more negative way. The overweening desire to do better than his brother. To prove himself superior in everything he did. School grades, university degree, career, marriage. It had taken a long time, and Jack’s complete indifference, to make him realize that measuring yourself against others was a futile pursuit. But some lessons come too late in life to be able to undo the mistakes you make in learning them.
He went through to the bedroom and undressed before slipping between the cool sheets of his bed. Despite his fatigue he lay for a long time unable to sleep, turning on to one side, then the other, before lying finally on his back and staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. He cursed the restless thoughts that filled his mind and held sleep at bay, before throwing back the covers and padding through to the sitting room again to retrieve his laptop.
He carried it to the bed, propping the pillows at his back so that he could sit up with the computer balanced on his thighs. The screen cast a strange blue light around the bedroom, and he felt the glare of it illuminating his face. He reopened the file of Marc Fraysse’s fragmented memories and scrolled through them in the dark, searching for… what? He had no idea.
Then something caught his attention, and he brought his cursor to a stop on the scrollbar. It was the name ‘Elisabeth’ which had registered on his consciousness, and as he sped read through the first few sentences at the top of the screen, he realized it was Marc’s account of their first meeting.
It was one of those secret meals that Elisabeth had told Enzo about, which the apprentices from the Lyon d’Or had cooked for the trainee nurses in the lakeside boathouse. A first rendezvous organised by one of the older apprentices, co-opting the assistance of the others to partake in a night-time raid on the kitchen, borrowing pots and pans and stealing food from the larder.
I remember the first time I saw her, Marc wrote. There in the boat house as we all sat around the fire. Her face was caught in the light of the flames. A soft, warm, flickering yellow light. And I thought she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I had no idea then how that chance meeting would drive a wedge between Guy and me, a war of hatred and attrition that would last for the next twenty years.
Enzo sat up, startled by the unexpected revelation. There had been no hint in anything the family had told him so far of any kind of a feud between Marc and Guy. He spent the following ten minutes scrolling back and forth through the notes and anecdotes. But there was nothing to explain exactly how, or why, Elisabeth had caused this rift between them.
He closed the lid of the laptop, and slid it down on to the floor, lying back again in the dark, feeling the warm arms of sleep enticing him into their soft embrace. And as he slipped, at last, into a restless, dream-filled slumber,
