Breakfast at Stephanie's

Chapter 1 "Elizabeth Arden?" It was the third Saturday before Christmas and Stephanie Glassman, resident pianist at the Oxford Street branch of Debenhams, was sitting at a white baby grand on the ground floor, playing "Winter Wonderland." She couldn't have looked less Elizabeth Ardenlike if she'd tried. Unless, of course, Miss Arden used to celebrate the festive season by dressing up in a tacky Mrs. Claus Christmas outfit, which included a fur-trimmed thigh-high skirt and Teutonic blonde wig with plaited Alpine shepherdess-style earphones. As she carried on playing, Stephanie looked up from the keyboard and saw a bulky, tweedy woman standing at her side. She was weighed down with carrier bags, and her face exuded faint desperation and the urgent need of a large gin. Stephanie had been at Debenhams for two weeks now and the haunted, get-me-out-of-here Christmas shopper look was one she had come to recognize only too well. "I'm looking for her Perpetual Moisture," the woman panted, desperation rising. "It's for my sister-in-law in Stoke Poges. She swears by it. Lord knows why she bothers. Got a face like a fossilized custard skin. Harrods and Selfridges have both run out. Of course, if I had my way the poisonous old boot would get a box of Newberry Fruits and a Jamie Oliver video and be done with it." While the woman paused for breath, Stephanie gave her a warm, sympathetic smile. "The Elizabeth Arden counter is just over there." She nodded. "Behind Dior." "Right, well, if they haven't got it I think I'll plump for a foot spa. That way I can always live in hope she might electrocute herself." Stephanie thought it best to remain noncommittalat least regarding the electrocution bit. "A foot spa's always useful," she said. "Or gardening gloves and a pair of pruning shears, maybe." With that the woman huffed off toward the Elizabeth Arden counter and Stephanie segued into "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." Being Jewish, Stephanie's family didn't do Christmassomething for which she knew her mother, Estelle, had always been eternally grateful. The spring cleaning, shopping, baking and fish frying frenzy of Passover was enough to send her racing for the Valiumwithout having to cope with Christmas as well. Stephanie, on the other hand, had always rather resented the family's lack of Christmas celebrations. Traditional as they may have been where Passover was concerned, her parents weren't particularly observant. For a start, they ate nonkosher food. When she was a kid they went out for Chinese dinner nearly every Sunday night. Her father was a ferocious advocate of cha siu pork, believing its medicinal qualities to be infinitely greater than those of chicken soup. Her grandmother, who usually accompanied them on these jaunts, refused to touch the pork. On top of this she always insisted on going through what Stephanie called her preening ritual, whereby she painstakingly picked out all the pork and prawns from her yung chow rice and piled them up in her napkin. Christmas was like pork. You could "have it out"like the turkey lunch at the Finchley Post House, even the midnight carol service at The Blessed Virgin down the road (her mum loved the tunes)but on no account was it to be brought into the house. As a child, Stephanie ached to take part in all the Christmas excitement and always felt jealous of her non-Jewish friends. Each year at junior school, just before they broke up for the holidays, all the kids in her class (except her, David Solomons and the QureshMargolis, Sue is the author of 'Breakfast at Stephanie's' with ISBN 9780385337335 and ISBN 0385337337.