“So, anyway, my birthday arrived, and we sat down for dinner—me and her and Dad—and we ate blini with smoked salmon, and asparagus soup, and raspberry sorbets in little shot glasses, and it was all going swimmingly until the main course—the complicated chicken thing. It looked fabulous, but the meat was still bloody when we cut into it.”

“Ugh.” Cory’s lips twisted against my neck.

“With anybody else I’d have set my knife and fork down straight away, but this was Stella’s long-awaited feast, her birthday extravaganza, and I was . . . I was scared. I do know how ridiculous that sounds, but it’s true. I had a kind of hot flush from head to foot, and I remember thinking, Maybe I should just eat it and say nothing; maybe it’ll be fine; maybe it’s better to be sick later on than to upset her now.”

Cory drew back slightly so that he could look me in the face. “You ate it? You ate the raw chicken?”

“No, because Dad’s a whole lot more straightforward than me, thank goodness. He said, ‘Lovely idea, Stella, but completely inedible,’ and that was that.”

“How did she react?”

I rested my chin on his shoulder and rolled my eyes.

“Well, that’s the really stupid part because—against all odds—she was going to be fine about it. I know she was. I know by the way she looked at me across the table. She was about to say something self-deprecating, and we were going to bin the chicken and eat the dessert and laugh the whole thing off, but then Dad—I don’t think he even glanced at her, I don’t think he even thought about it—he just said, ‘Now, Stella, it’s not the end of the world, so don’t start sulking.’ And before you know it, we’re in the middle of this ludicrous row, with Dad saying, ‘I knew it. I knew you’d get in a mood.’ And me saying, ‘Dad. She’s fine. Just leave her be.’ And Stella, all teary and shrill, going, ‘I’m not in a mood! Why are you telling me I’m in a mood?’”

I thought for a moment I was going to cry, but I started laughing instead.

“It all blew over though?” Cory sounded serious. “I mean, presumably . . . ?”

I sighed and wiped my eyes. “It did in a sense, but she never, ever cooked again.”

“What . . . literally never?”