Lynn Hulsman - Christmas at Thornton Hall

“Just because I love the food channel, it doesn’t mean my brain is soft,” I’d told her. “I happen to like Prunella Paulson.”

“I wrote a journal article on that woman entitled ‘Images of Breasts: Conflating our Desire for Flavor and Nourishment with Sexuality.’ She sells with her boobs.”

“What about Piers Conley-Weatherall?” I asked, naming another well-known TV chef. I smiled just thinking about him. “How can you not love that guy with his outrageous, curly hair and accent?” I mimed throwing a handful of spices into a pot. “Who’s your daddy?” I shouted in a gleeful Yorkshire accent. I never missed an episode. I know lots of people are like this with celebrities, but I felt like I really knew him. I followed him on Twitter because I loved all the sweet tweets he sent about his kids and the normal life his family seemed to have. They ate dinner, they went camping, the kids were allowed to believe in Santa Claus – something of which Mother didn’t approve. “He just draws you in.”

Mother scowled. “Him.”

“I think he’s adorable,” I said. “He’s the kind of man you’d spontaneously hug.” Mother raised an eyebrow. “Well, maybe not the kind of man you’d spontaneously hug, but the kind normal people would. Admit that you like my apron with his face on it! It’s really cute.” I’d won it in a Facebook contest.

“The apron that asks, ‘Who’s Your Daddy?’ No, the man has a catchphrase , Juliet. He sings to food . He lives life in a dream. I don’t want to discuss him.” She took a long, hard look at me. I was a little uncomfortable under her gaze. “Really, sometimes it’s hard to believe you’re my daughter.” That stung. I wanted to be her daughter. She was my mother, and we all worship our mothers, don’t we? I vowed then and there that I’d become the kind of woman she would admire, someone she’d see as a scholar and a colleague. Become the therapist she wanted me to be.

But I still loved Piers.

I didn’t bring it up again, but I watched his show, even reruns, every night with the sound turned low, before falling asleep. Something about him soothed me.

Mother is the most respected psychiatrist in Louisville, Kentucky, where I grew up. She divides her time between her elite clinical practice and teaching at the university. For kicks, she writes science articles. I like to think I’m more fun than she is, but I did inherit her work ethic. If she could succeed, I could succeed.

A car blared its horn, startling me out of my reverie. Focus on the job at hand, I told myself.

I glanced at my dashboard clock. I was making good time. Jasper Roth told the agency to have me arrive before the early guests were going to bed so that I’d be on deck to make midnight sandwiches and still be up early to lay the elaborate and excessive breakfast he always demanded.

The hours at Thornton Hall were long and brutal, but at least Rose the housekeeper would be there. Just thinking about her nearly made me cry. The pure kindness she beamed was so unfamiliar: I think Mother skipped parenting school the day unconditional love was taught.

I rifled around in my purse for a breath mint, remembering I hadn’t eaten all day and hoping to take the edge off my hunger. On the passenger seat beside it, among the many bags of groceries, was a sack of Welsh blue potatoes from Sainsbury’s. Roth reveled in having the best and most expensive of everything, so in the morning, I’d roll the potatoes in some dirt from the driveway and wrap them in brown paper. That way, when my boss came to micromanage, he’d assume I’d gone to the market and purchased them from a farmer. I needed a shortcut or two. I’m doing the best I can, I thought. And that’s good enough. Aunt Suze told me to repeat that to myself as often as possible.

Thrown next to the potatoes was a pile of wrapped gifts for Ben’s family. I’d almost chucked them, but my frugal side put the brakes on that. If nothing else, I could pass them out to the staff at Thornton. After last year’s cancelled Christmas, I’d made sure to shop in advance for all Ben’s relatives, including the family spaniel. I’d even asked Posy to “style” me for the evening I was sure he’d pop the question, though without telling her why. From the beginning, she’d never been Ben’s biggest fan.

I finally saw a BP station. I was bursting, and I hadn’t eaten a thing all day. Was the queasiness in my stomach only hunger? Or dread? I felt so disenfranchised. I hit the loo, then bought myself a Lucozade, a packet of crisps and a pork pie in cellophane. Sitting under a street lamp in the parking lot, I took huge, greedy bites. I knew I was eating for comfort, but didn’t care. I deserved any pleasure I could get at the moment. This ersatz meal was a lurid example of what chefs eat when they’re not working, and I inhaled it with gusto.

With the heat off in the car, I was freezing. It was the bone-deep damp that can’t be escaped here. Why does England have to be s o cold ? My cottage on the grounds was likely to be as freezing inside as it was outside when I arrived. Had taking this job been a panic choice or the right thing to do?

Slugging back my Lucozade (which was making me even colder…why in God’s name didn’t I get a cup of tea?), I wished I could beam myself back to before I’d even met Ben. I longed to be in Posy’s lavish Parisian apartment, where she’d taken me in for nearly three years. She rescued me in Paris after I’d followed Stephen there, although she’ll tell anyone who’ll listen that I rescued her.

Given my start in Paris – struggling junior chef barely earning enough for rent – that level of luxury was something I never dreamed of. Well, to be honest, given my middle-class suburban ranch house growing up, being in Paris was something I never dreamed of either. Like a lot of things before I’d met Stephen. Like being stone-cold dumped in the most romantic city in the world.

Stop dwelling, Juliet . That’s “anti-luck thinking” according to Aunt Suze. Positive visualization will manifest positive results. God, Mother would have a field day if I said that out loud. I secretly subscribe to “Suze Wyatt’s Make Your Own Luck” e-newsletters. My aunt also authored the book Follow Your North Star to Happiness. Following her lead, I created my own “Heart Phrase”. Goofy, I know, but when Aunt Suze explains that we should all pick a mantra and proclaim our truth, it sounds so right.

“Food is my new passion.” I’d tested that out on Mother from Paris, when I’d started working my first kitchen job at Chez Henri. After being humiliated in the city of love, I couldn’t go crawling home, so I took the only job I could get, and made the best of it.

“I’m sorry,” she’d said. “Did you just say, ‘Food is my new passion’?”

“No,” I’d answered quickly. At this point, most people could say, “Put Dad on the phone.” I imagined a jolly father who would say, “ Don’t mind your mother. You know she loves you. I’m proud of you for following your dream.” Although, u nfortunately, there is no jolly father.

Back in Paris, Posy introduced me to Charles, an American, and his lover, Luc. They opened my small-town eyes. Charles threw legendary parties, during which he draped the apartment with red velvet swags and rigged up champagne fountains from fish-tank pumps and vintage birdbaths. His motto had always been I know it’s too much, but is it enough? Luc got me that first job at Chez Henri, as a hostess and busser, lying wildly about my French. I was a spectacular failure at front-of-house. My first night, I insulted the local commissaire de police by seating him next to the kitchen, and delivered an expensive bottle of port to a restaurant critic’s table, calling his mistress by his wife’s name. I forced myself to suck it up. In my halting French, I apologized and told the chef and owner Henri that if he wanted to send champagne to make up for my blunders, I’d work the hours to pay for it. Impressed, Henri told me something in French that sounded like, “You are a man, and I like that in certain women.” Instead of a pink slip, he gave me an apron, and sent me to the kitchen where I learned to cook through trial by fire, under Henri, that exceptional chef with a mercurial temper. To this day, when people ask me where I trained, I tell them, “In Paris, at The School of ‘Not Like That, Stupid!’ ”