‘They weren’t in the way. They’re lovely company, truly,’ she answered as she worked the dough.
He frowned at her, trying to think the last time anyone had said the twins were lovely company. He wasn’t sure it had ever been said since his divorce. God knows the children took it badly. Even though they weren’t great parents, the children wanted them to be together.
He had wanted to tell them that sometimes parents staying together is actually worse in the long run for everyone but he couldn’t explain that to his children because then he would have to tell his kids about his own childhood and he never wanted expose them to that level of drama.
A gambler for a father and a faded nightclub singer for a mother whose toxic marriage made Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s seem like a fairy tale. And as the eldest of the four children, he did the parenting in lieu. He’d been parenting since he was nine and he should be good at it but he realised it was different with your own kids. He was so used to barking orders at his siblings he assumed this would work on the twins but it didn’t. It just made them fight for his attention by behaving badly. He walked upstairs to his study, thinking.
He shouldn’t have spoken to the chef like that but he was truly surprised to see the boys so happy at the kitchen bench and he wasn’t often surprised.
And Christa wasn’t fazed by him at all. She stood there and stared at him in such a way that he felt both bothered, offended and extremely intrigued.
Marc wasn’t one of those people who called themselves foodies. To him, food was simply a necessity to survive. He would eat the same thing every day if he could as long as he didn’t have to prepare it.
He had a chef back in San Francisco but he made a lot of sushi and ramen for the boys and he preferred protein shakes and the occasional salad.
This chef was making pasta with his sons? It was as though he’d walked into an alternate universe where carbs were back and his children were well behaved.
Adam walked into the study and put the laptop in front of him. ‘Those figures have been fixed,’ he said. ‘And I’ve backdated your address on the financial compliance forms to Pudding Hall from June, when you decided to buy Cirrus. That way you will have been in the UK for the right amount of time to own a media service.’
Marc nodded and checked the figures again.
‘Then you will be the biggest media owner under fifty,’ Adam crowed. ‘I’m already lining up the interviews in my head.Fast Company,Wall Street Journal, NBC, CNN, BBC Stock Report – it’s going to be huge.’
Adam worked harder than Marc some days, and when he told him he had to come to the UK to live for enough time to be eligible to buy the streaming service Adam hadn’t paused for a moment. He came to Pudding Hall because he loved to work and Paul came with Adam, which was fine with Marc. As long as Adam could get the deal through, he didn’t care where he spent the holidays.
‘You can’t tell anyone yet though,’ he reminded Adam, even though he knew he didn’t have to. He thought for a moment. ‘Did you get Christa to sign the NDA?’ he asked.
‘Yep, all done,’ Adam said.
‘And Peggy?’ he asked. ‘She seems nosy.’
The last thing he needed was her spreading information about what he was working on.
‘Peggy? She’s signed,’ said Adam. ‘Thought I doubt she would be the one to callThe New York Timesabout the big media deal that will put Lachlan Murdoch on notice.’
Marc wondered about Peggy but she had been a part of Pudding Hall for thirty years, and had overseen it from the last owners to Marc buying the home, managing the contractors and decorators while he was in the States.
But when he arrived, it felt empty. There was no doubt it was beautiful. It had been on the cover ofArchitectural Digestand was the most pinned country house on Pinterest yet it felt like a movie set. Christmas should be joyful and fun and instead the house felt like an Airbnb. He thought about getting Christmas decorations or getting someone to decorate it for the boys, but it felt hollow.
He would apologise to Christa at dinner, he thought.
‘Tell me about Christa.’
‘Christa Playfoot. She and her ex-husband had a restaurant in Mayfair. Very well reviewed. Paul and I ate there a number of times. It’s everything a brasserie should be.’
‘Why is she cooking for me then?’
‘Because she’s getting a divorce, the restaurant is closed and you’re overpaying her to make protein shakes and hotdogs for the boys.’
Marc rubbed his temples and sat back in his chair. ‘The boys were making pasta with her and I ruined it.’
‘Pasta?’ Adam seemed surprised. ‘Is that a healthy option? Considering their mother loathes them having carbs.’
‘I guess so,’ Marc said. ‘I’m not great at this parenting full-time thing. But I don’t have the time to micromanage their macro intake at the moment.’
‘You don’t have to micromanage them, just love them,’ Adam reminded him.
‘Thanks, Dr Phil,’ said Marc but he knew Adam was right. Since he and his wife had separated he had the boys full-time while she decided to take her share of the settlement and invest in all sorts of schemes from movie producing, collagen juice bars, to investing in new mobile phone technology from Latvia. Marc had no idea if anything she was spending her money on was a good investment but what he did know was she didn’t want to parent at the moment and he was left holding the babies.
