A Taste for Love
Authors: Marita Conlon-McKenna
Alice loves to cook. She believes the secret of good food is to cook with passion.
Her love affair with cookery has taken her from her parents’ seaside hotel, to Paris and then one of Dublin’s finest restaurants. Then she marries Liam, and is happy to hang up her chef’s hat and cook for her family and friends instead.
But now she’s cooking for one!
Her marriage to Liam over, it’s high time she learned to stand on her own two feet and begin again… Urged on by her friends Alice decides to open a cookery school.
The Martello School of Cookery opens its doors and Alice begins to teach a group of total strangers to create food that is delicious. And in the comfort of the kitchen these strangers find that there is much to learn, not just about baking and sautéing – but about recipes for life…
By the number one bestselling author of
Mother of the Bride
.
A Taste for Love
Marita Conlon-McKenna
For my best friend, Ann Frances Doorly, who loved life and lived it to the full!Acknowledgements
Thank you to my lovely editor, Linda Evans, for her wonderful support, encouragement and work on my books.
To all the team at Transworld UK for their dedication and work on this and all my books, and for making it seem so easy, especially Joanne Williamson, Vivien Garrett and Kate Tolley, and my copy-editor, Lucy Pinney. And to Eoin McHugh and Brian Langan in the Transworld Ireland office.
To my agent, Caroline Sheldon, for her constant support and belief.
To Rosemary Buckman for helping to bring my books to far-flung shores.
Thanks to the ever-supportive crew at Gill Hess, Dublin, for all their work and efforts, especially Gill and Simon Hess, Declan Heaney and Helen Gleed O’Connor, Sophie Hess, Fergus Gannon, Eamonn Phelan, Nigel Carre and Ian Davidson.
To all the Irish booksellers for giving such wonderful support to both me and my books over many years.
To my ever-patient husband, James. You are my ‘rock’.
To my wonderful family who make sitting round a table
telling stories fun: Mandy, Laura, Fiona and James and Michael Hearty and Michael Fahy.
To my gorgeous grandchildren, Holly and Sam Hearty.
To Ann Frances Doorly, who was so much more than a friend. I’m going to miss you so much.
To my lovely friends. I know I drive you crazy talking about ideas and characters, but I’d be lost without you all.
Thanks to all my writer friends, especially Sarah Webb, Martina Devlin and Larry O’Loughlin.
To Maeve Binchy for all her wonderful stories and her constant encouragement of her fellow writers.
To Sharon Slowey, a bookworm after my own heart! Thanks for sharing so many good books with me.
To my friends in Irish PEN - a great club to be in!
And finally, to all my wonderful readers - a sincere ‘thank you’ from this very grateful author.
Alice Kinsella checked the oven. The rich aroma of spices and apricots from the slowly cooking lamb tagine was filling the kitchen. The table was set, the white wine was chilling in the fridge and the red wine was on the counter. Everything looked perfect, and she hurried upstairs as she had only half an hour to get ready and change into something a bit more stylish before her guests arrived.
It was a Saturday night in November, and it seemed strange hosting a dinner party on her own, but she just had to get used to it. She was fed up of Saturday after Saturday sitting in watching DVDs and game shows on TV, and just longed for a bit of decent adult company, everyone sitting around her table with nice food and a few decent bottles of wine. She had always enjoyed having friends around at the weekend or eating out at one of Dublin’s many restaurants, and it was one of the things she missed most now that Liam was gone.
It was almost a year and a half since their marriage break-up, and she was still trying to get used to the loneliness of it, and adjust to life without Liam. At first friends and family had been great – remembering to include her, and asking her
to lots of things and nights out – but she had noticed over the past few months that the number of dinner and party invitations had dwindled. It was bad enough losing her husband, her marriage, and her financial security, but losing people she had considered friends was probably the thing that hurt the most.
As she pulled her pale-grey shift dress on over her black tights, and slipped into black suede shoes, she tried to push all negative thoughts of her ex-husband from her mind and concentrate on the night ahead. She was going to enjoy herself and have a bit of fun, with or without Liam!
‘Hey, Mum, is there anything you want me to do?’ offered her twenty-two-year-old daughter, Jenny, who was home for a few days from Galway, where she was at university.
‘Will you check I put fresh towels in the downstairs bathroom, please?’
Alice glanced at her make-up, understated yet enough to make an impact. Her eyes looked different with a hint of eyeliner, the smoky grey and beige shadow that Jenny had suggested she try, and the new mascara she had treated herself to. Her light brown hair, longer and recently lightly highlighted, feathered around her face. She added a warm peach-coloured lipstick and topped it off with a little gloss before dabbing on some of her favourite perfume.
She was looking a lot better than she had done this time last year, when it had felt like her world had fallen apart, and she had been literally on the floor with anger and rage at the injustice and unfairness of it all. Liam moving out of their Monkstown home and in with Elaine Power, the thirty-eight-year-old marriage-wrecker he now called his new partner. He and Elaine had scarcely known each other,
and yet her husband of nearly thirty years had walked away from his marriage to Alice with barely a backward glance. Their eldest son, Conor, still wasn’t speaking to him, and Sean, their twenty-year-old, tried to avoid his father. Poor Jenny, their only daughter, did her best to remain neutral.
‘I’ve put one of those fancy American towels downstairs.’ Jenny smiled as she came back into the room and sat down on the bed. ‘Wow! Mum, you look great! That dress is so good on you! You’ve lost weight.’
‘Do you think so?’ Alice ran her hands over her firmer hips and flatter tummy. ‘Would you notice?’
Alice had to admit that the only good thing to come out of the most stressful time in her life was that she had, for the first time in years, without going on the Atkins or Weight Watchers diets, dropped ten kilos in weight. She felt the better for it. She was taking far more exercise, and was eating less as she was no longer cooking the kind of meals that Liam enjoyed. A fridge full of red meat and pork and sausages had been replaced by one containing healthy chicken and fish and vegetables!
‘Everyone will notice,’ teased her daughter.
It was so good to have Jenny in the house, even if it was only for a few days. She would be heading off on the train back to college on Wednesday evening, and Alice would really miss her.
Sean was a good kid, but he was rarely around, and seemed always to be busy in college doing something or other. Alice suspected he was still in denial about their situation, and was trying to avoid it and home as much as possible.
Alice jumped as the doorbell went.
‘Will I let them in?’ offered Jenny.
‘Thanks, love. I’ll be down in a minute. I think it’s probably Joy.’
Alice looked at her neck, deciding to remove the classic pearls that Liam had given her ten years ago and put them away in their box. Instead she took out the silver John Rocha piece that Conor and his girlfriend Lisa had given her last Christmas, and put it on.
‘Better,’ she said. ‘Much better.’
Joy greeted her with a huge hug. Her old school friend was always the first at everything and had already made herself at home in the kitchen. She was clutching a glass of red wine while interrogating her god-daughter Jenny about her love life in Galway.
‘Mum, make her stop,’ begged Jenny, mortified.
‘You’re living away from home with no mamma or dadda around,’ teased Joy. ‘I can only imagine what Alice and I would have got up to in our day. There’s bound to be some lovely Galway man around.’
‘Well, if there is … and I’m not saying there is … you and Mum are the last two I’d tell!’
Alice noticed Joy was wearing her regulation black – this time a skirt with a bolero-type wrap-over top – and had made huge efforts with her unruly blonde hair. She was wearing it pinned up neatly.
Ten minutes later Sally and Hugh Ryan had appeared, Hugh carrying three bottles of expensive French wine into the kitchen and putting them on the kitchen island. ‘Some very good wine to go with some very good food, judging by the aroma tempting my taste buds.’
‘Thanks, Hugh!’
They were her dearest friends, and he and Sally had rallied around when Liam had gone off with ‘the witch’ Elaine, leaving Alice virtually penniless. Sally had been a rock over the past year, even listening to her midnight tirades about Liam and ‘his hussy’. While Hugh, practical as ever, had managed to get her a temporary job in the accountancy firm where he was one of the partners.
In the twenty-five years that Hugh had been coming to their house he had never arrived without bringing a highly recommended wine that added to the occasion. He was a real wine buff, and Liam and he used to spend ages talking about various vintages. She was glad that tonight, despite Liam’s absence, he had kept up the tradition.
‘And I’ve got some photos of little Ava, our ten-day-old granddaughter, to show you,’ added Sally proudly.
Alice was so pleased for them, having their first grandchild. It was such a milestone.
‘Champagne to celebrate?’ She laughed as she took the Bollinger from the fridge, Hugh gallantly doing the honours and opening the bottle for her.
‘To little Ava,’ they toasted, as Nina Brennan and her husband David joined them, too.
‘I’ll stick with the red wine,’ insisted Joy. ‘Champagne just goes straight to my head.’
Alice could certainly vouch for that.