It was too bad that oranges were still blue books only. A few thin strips of peel would have completed the dish. At least there was spice. She added sugar and a few cloves. Then she brought it all to the boil and let it simmer.
Time to heat some water for the rice.
I wonder if Antonia has any idea what a treat this is for me. Or, come to that, what a treat is in store for Hector. To be fair, she provided all the ingredients. That meat is superb. It smells delicious.
She’s so inconsistent, talking to me about wanting to do away with Hector, and then going to no end of trouble to see that he’s properly fed.
Unless...
Unless I’ve totally misunderstood what’s going on.
Please God, no!
She’s capable of it.
She knows I’d refuse point blank if she asked me to administer poison to her husband. But what if I’m unaware of what I’m doing?
‘Be generous with the curry powder.’
Curry will mask the taste of arsenic or strychnine or whatever she managed to obtain from her boyfriend Vic, the chemistry lecturer. The plan is horribly clear. She went to her mother to give herself an alibi. In my ignorance I’m about to serve up a poisoned curry for Hector and kill him. When she comes back from Manchester she’ll fill in the blank death certificate and have him cremated.
Or am I imagining this?
He’ll be here any minute.
18
Hector opened the kitchen door and looked in. His eyes lit up when he saw her and he gave a huge sigh of relief, almost as if he’d expected somebody else to be there.
‘Smells nice.’
‘Please ignore the smell.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m sorry. There won’t be any curry after all.’
He gave a gurgle of amusement. He was going out of his way to be pleasant. ‘It’s done. I can smell it. Where is it?’
‘It’s gone.’
‘Gone? Gone where?’
‘Down the toilet.’
‘Is this a joke, Rosie? You wouldn’t make fun of me?’
‘It was a bad curry. You couldn’t possibly have eaten it. I’m going to try and do something else instead. It won’t take long, I promise. Do you like omelettes?’
‘Please — my curry — what went wrong?’
He put it to her with good-natured concern, as if enquiring after the health of a friend. Rose felt compelled to give him an answer. What she told him, however, was a lie. If he was convinced that his wife had set a trap to poison him, he’d go straight to the police. Even if he was unconvinced, he would want an explanation. As sure as God made little apples, the truth about Barry would come out.
She did her best to make it plausible. ‘I suppose I was nervous. Something went wrong in the cooking.’
‘You burnt it?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘I can’t smell burning.’
‘No. It was what went into it. The ingredients. They weren’t right. I’d like to try again tomorrow, if you’ll allow me. I’ll get it right next time. Now will you please let me cook you an omelette or a fried egg or something?’
His eyes had a sceptical glint. He crossed the room to the sink and ran his forefinger around the inner side of the saucepan Rose had half-filled with water.
She moved fast. She reached out to him and grasped his sleeve. ‘Don’t!’
‘You don’t let me taste? Not even taste?’
She snatched up a teacloth and wiped his finger clean. ‘Not even taste.’
He laughed and took a grip on her hand through the towel and squeezed it. She had her back to the draining board so she couldn’t easily move.
‘You know what I think you are, Rosie — apart from Antonia’s best friend?’
Her neck and shoulders tensed. She was suddenly convinced that he’d misinterpreted her actions and was about to make a pass. She was in no state to deal with it. She swayed back and took a shallow, rasping breath.
His hand darted to her face and lightly pinched the point of her chin. ‘A fusspot. A proper little fusspot.’
It was embarrassing on both sides. Faced with her jittery reaction he’d fallen back on a fatuous gesture and the sort of silly, doting thing said by middle-aged men to their simpering wives. He must have felt it as acutely as she, because he backed off at once.
Rose turned to the sink and made a performance of wiping the saucepan clean as her mind raced. Perhaps she’d been mistaken. Perhaps he’d only meant to make light of the problem over the curry. He’d responded to her state of nerves by touching her. It was innocent, a spontaneous gesture.
When Hector’s voice came again it was from a safe distance. ‘I’ll make a bargain with you, Rosie. You cook me curry tomorrow. Tonight I will take you to Reggiori’s.’
She looked across the table at him. He was still wearing his camelhair overcoat and he’d picked up his porkpie hat. ‘I couldn’t possibly.’
‘One little mistake in the cooking and you lose your confidence? This is not good, Rosie.’
‘I’ll make the curry. I said I would. What I mean is that I couldn’t under any circumstances go out to dinner with you.’ She turned to face him across the table. ‘It’s not the right way to behave, you see. I can’t be seen having dinner with someone else’s husband.’
‘You did the other night.’
‘Antonia was with us.’
‘So the people in Reggiori’s know it’s all right. Rosie is Antonia’s friend, not Hector’s lover.’
She felt the colour spread across her face. Mortifying. ‘Please allow me to cook you something else.’
‘Not possible.’ He was adamant, like a chess-player who knew he had mate in three. ‘I had no lunch today.’
‘No lunch. But why?’
‘Antonia told you. I never eat lunch. Only this meal. Now I need — how do you say? — a square meal. Not omelette.’
‘Anything else would take hours to prepare.’
‘Not at Reggiori’s.’
She couldn’t. What sort of woman would dine in public with a married man the week after she’d buried her husband? It would be deplorable. Yet she felt piercingly guilty for depriving Hector of the meal he’d looked forward to eating. The possibility had to be faced that she’d been mistaken about the poison and thrown away a perfectly good meal. And she knew Hector objected to going to restaurants alone; it wasn’t some stratagem he’d just thought up. It was her whole justification for being here.
He lifted her coat off the hook on the back of the door. ‘All right, Rosie. Please forget what I said. I will take you home now.’
She was caught off guard. ‘Where will you eat?’
He gave a shrug. ‘I don’t know. I don’t intend to starve. I will come home, look in the fridge, make myself a sandwich.’
From the fridge. ‘No.’
He arched his eyebrows.
She had a picture of him opening the fridge and finding the rest of the meat, or something else that Antonia had laced with poison. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’
He thoughtfully suggested they sat at a table for four rather than one of the more intimate doubles. To anyone interested it must have seemed that they expected to be joined by the rest of their party later.
‘You look nervous, Rosie.’
‘I am, a little.’
‘You want some wine?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Not many people are here so early as you and me.’
‘No.’
‘That’s good?’
‘Yes.’
He made a noble effort to be entertaining, talking of the gadgets he’d seen at the exhibition and the way women’s lives would soon be transformed. For a man, he had some revolutionary ideas. Most women would have thought of them as mutinous. He talked about the drudgery of housework and rejected the idea that it was a proof of virtue. ‘All that scrubbing of doorsteps. What for? So that all the neighbours will say she’s a good woman like us, scrubs her step every day. Rosie, very soon all those good women will get red hands and lumpy knees. Don’t be like that.’