The Critic by Peter May

heat.
    Michelle watched, fascinated, as she finished her salad
entrée
of goat’s cheese and
gésiers
. She looked at Enzo, a sudden question occurring to her. ‘Why do the French call a starter an
entrée
?’
    ‘Because that’s what it is,’ Enzo told her. ‘The entry to the meal. It’s a French word. It’s Americans who have corrupted it to mean a main course.’
    ‘I suppose you Europeans think Americans have corrupted everything.’
    Enzo smiled. “Not
everything
. You make some pretty good wine in California.’
    ‘My father thought so. Californian reds made up most of his top ten. That and a handful of Bordeaux.’
    ‘No Burgundies?’
    ‘He loved Burgundy. He just didn’t rate it as highly. He adored pinot noir, but not as much as cabernet or merlot or syrah.’
    ‘Which makes his ratings very much a matter of individual taste.’
    ‘Of course. What else is a critic going to do, but say what it is he likes and what he doesn’t? A lot of people followed my father’s recommendations and found that they agreed with him. That’s why he was so successful.’
    ‘For someone who wasn’t speaking to him, you seem to know a lot about your father.’
    She shook her head in vigorous denial. ‘That was his fault, not mine.’
    Enzo let her sudden flame of anger die again before he said, ‘You talked earlier about curling up with him on an armchair, watching television together.’
    ‘That’s when I was just a kid. He used to call me his little fish, and I would make these fish mouths at him and make him laugh. And he ended up calling me “fishface.” My friends were horrified. But I was happy enough. I used to figure it meant he loved me.’ She pushed the remains of her salad away, as if she had suddenly lost her appetite. ‘But that was before his newsletter took off big time.’
    A light came on in a central courtyard which was open to the sky beyond French windows. There were tables and chairs out there for summer diners, potted plants, crimson ivy creeping up brick walls, and a large woodstore at the back to feed the fire. Michelle was distracted for a moment before gathering her thoughts again.
    ‘At the height of his celebrity, he had nearly sixty thousand subscribers. That’s still more than Robert Parker has today. But he started off with just a handful. It was a hobby. He loved to drink wine. He and mom had friends round for blind tastings, and they’d all get drunk. And summer holidays were always spent wine-tasting, touring around
châteaux
in France in the cheapest rental car he could find. The great would-be connoisseur of fine wines pitched a tent every night and slept under canvas. He was a bank clerk, for God’s sake. He couldn’t afford any of it, and he was spending more than fifty percent of his income on wine so that he could taste it and rate it for his precious newsletter. Mom had to get a job, and boy did she hate that!’
    Enzo saw how the gentle glow of the fire was reflected in her face, soft hollows and flickering light. There was something touching, childlike in her intensity, but her eyes were feral, and at times when she turned them on him, he had a disconcerting sense of her sexuality. Something in the way she looked at him. Something predatory.
    ‘Of course, when he got successful and subscriptions were going up every month, he never had to buy wine at all. It arrived on our doorstep. Cases of the stuff. Everyone wanted him to taste and rate their wines. What had started as a hobby, turned into a passion, and then an obsession.’ She examined the backs of her hands, as if they might provide some kind of window to the past. ‘That’s when we lost him. When he quit his job and the money began to come in, and we started being able to afford the things we’d only ever dreamed of.’ She shook her head at the irony of it. ‘Just as life should have begun to get good, it started falling apart.’
    ‘How did he make his money?’ Enzo was puzzled. ‘He couldn’t