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Sebastian’s tone caught Sylvie’s attention. A very good friend? As in more than a friend? As in the someone Sebastian had met recently? Her brother had always been good at getting personal details out of her, and keeping his own life secret. She had a hunch he’d just given away more than he realized.
    “It’ll be great to meet him,” she said.
    At a farewell dinner the evening before, Sebastian had taken her to a small Italian restaurant a few blocks from his apartment. The handwritten menu had run to ten pages. When she’d asked him to order for her, he was appalled. “You don’t know about Italian food?”
    “Of course I do. But you’re the expert.”
    “Then you have to become one, too. Italian food’s one of the great pleasures of life, Sylvie.”
    “I thought you told me dancing was.”
    “Food—any kind of food, not only Italian—dancing, love and sleep. That’s all anyone needs to be happy.”
    Sylvie did like food and liked cooking too. She’d just got out of practice, living at home. As she explained to Sebastian, Fidelma had developed food allergies recently.
    He raised an eyebrow. “That would be from the same family of allergies that stopped you having real pets when you were little?”
    Sylvie had forgotten what a good memory Sebastian had. As a seven-year-old, she’d invented an imaginary kitten, one that wouldn’t give her mother allergies. She called it Silky, after the fairy in her favorite Enid Blyton books. Silky miraculously had kittens herself a few weeks later. Sylvie named them after her other favorite book characters. At one stage there were fifteen imaginary kittens living in her bedroom.
    “Why do you hate Mum so much, Seb?” she asked now.
    “I don’t hate her. I actually enjoy her hugely. What I hate is how she controls you.”
    “She doesn’t.”
    “No, of course she doesn’t. And if she did, she doesn’t anymore because I have whisked you from under her sweet little allergic nose. So tell me, what were the last three meals you cooked?”
    “For Mum and me?”
    “For anyone.”
    Sylvie thought back. “Pasta with tomato sauce. Vegetable soup. Tofu and steamed vegetables.” Fidelma had been in a vegetarian phase. Six months earlier she had eaten nothing but steamed fish. Before that, only grilled organic meat.
    “Not a spice or herb to be found? You are what you eat, Sylvie. No wonder your life has been so dull lately.”
    “I told you, Mum’s got a particular palate.”
    “Sylvie, one more day there and you’d have turned into a blancmange yourself. I am going to dripfeed chili and fish sauce into you while you sleep. We can work on you internally and externally. Spice up your life in more ways than one. We can rebuild you. We have the technology.” Sebastian held up his glass. “To your trial run, Sylvie.”
    “To my trial run.”
    They clinked glasses.
    An hour later, their main courses of homemade tortellini and potato gnocchi finished, she refilled their glasses and lifted hers in another toast. “Thank you, Sebastian.”
    “For what?”
    “The wine. The dinner. The escape chute. The house-sitting. Everything.”
    “Don’t thank me yet. I’m hardly started.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Mind your own business.” He called over the waiter then. “Tiramisu to share, Sylvie? No, we’re too old to share. Two servings of tiramisu, Tony, please.”
    They ate their dessert, the rich coffee-soaked cake wrapped in thick cream. Their espresso coffees had just arrived when Sebastian shifted in his seat and said in a conversational tone, “Did I tell you Dad’s living in Collingwood these days?”
    She had been waiting for Sebastian to mention him. It had been the one subject hanging between them since she arrived. She’d expected Fidelma to say something before she left too and been surprised when she hadn’t. Perhaps she felt she didn’t need to. Sylvie had heard it all so many times in her life she didn’t need refreshing. “He’s a bad