Page 101 of Never Too Late
‘Yes! Yes, yes, yes!’ She was laughing now.
‘I’m taking it that this is someone you admire?’ I asked.
Tomas and Sash turned to me as one, exchanged a look that stopped just short of an eye roll before Sash spoke.
‘She’s onlythehottest chef at the moment, hence why you can’t get a table in her restaurant for months at a time. At least, most people can’t.’ She turned her eyes to Tomas briefly with a grin before turning back to me. ‘Honestly, Mum. If you did social media, you’d know who she was.’
‘I do do social media. I watch your videos.’
‘That doesn’t really count.’
‘Yes, it does. It just means I’m very fussy about how I spend my time.’
She bobbed down and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Thank you. But it still doesn’t count.’
‘Well. That’s not changing any time soon. I’ve no desire for any of the rest any more.’
I’d done the Facebook thing as a playground mum and as a local town resident but all it seemed to be was people sniping, either openly or passive aggressively, at others. It made me feel uncomfortable and often stuck in the middle. I’d finally deleted it before we went to Goa. Ironically, just when I had something to actually share, I had no inclination to do so. And then, when I’d deleted it, nothing happened. The sky didn’t fall in or a great chasm open beneath me. So then I deleted Twitter (or X or whatever people were calling it now). After that went Instagram, Threads and BlueSky. The latter I’d never once used and still didn’t entirely understand what it was or how it worked. I cared even less. The amount of time I’d regained was phenomenal and I didn’t miss any of it a jot.
‘Anyway! She’s amazing. She used to be a model.’
‘Ah. Now you say that, the name does ring a distant bell.’
‘Yeah, she was a massive name on the catwalk years and years ago.’ She gave a wave to acknowledge the very dim and distant past of the late nineties. Presumably in Sash’s eyes, Simone was modelling the latest in whalebone corsets and seen as racy for showing a glimpse of ankle. ‘But she trained to be a chef without letting anyone know and had been working under a pseudonym. A couple of years ago, she opened Quatorze under her own name. It’s been booked solid ever since.’
‘I suppose celebrity helps.’
‘Of course,’ Tomas spoke now. ‘But it will only go so far. Her food is incredible. People here are as obsessed with celebrity as anywhere but they won’t pay for bad food, no matter whose name is above the door.’
‘And she’ll really speak to me?’ Sash asked him.
‘Of course.’
Her expression, which at first had been stunned excitement, something I recognised from the first time we’d taken her to Disneyland and were confused as to why she’d looked so meh when Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse had waved at her. And now, like then, the astonishment had slid into a smile and moved through into a full-blown ear-to-ear grin.
‘I don’t know what to say!’
‘Thank you, Tomas?’ I suggested from my seat on the sofa next to him.
‘Thank you, Tomas!’ She jumped up with the apparent intention of hugging him and then stopped, an awareness hitting her of her previous, rather more cool, behaviour towards him. ‘Umm… can I give you a hug?’
Tomas remained silent, but stood from where he’d been perched and opened his arms enough to signal that all was forgotten. His generous nature, both materially and emotionally, had been one of the many attractions both then and now.
‘Thank you so much!’ she said again. ‘You’ve saved my life.’
His eyes met mine over the top of my daughter’s head. A restaurant reservation wasn’t life-saving and he knew it. We both did. Just as we knew having not had it wouldn’t have been fatal. But right now, to my daughter, that was how it felt, and with a welcome thaw in the atmosphere between the two of them, neither I nor Tomas were about to disavow her of that belief.
‘I need to call Benoit and see if he’s free tomorrow evening,’ Sash said as they parted. Tomas remained standing.
‘If I know my godson, I can guarantee he’s free if you tell him where you’re taking him.’
‘He’s been before?’
‘To Quatorze? No.’
Sash looked up from the phone. ‘Really?’
Tomas gave a small shrug before resting his hands in his pockets.
