Hilde Van Mieghem was born in Antwerp in 1958. She made her screen debut in Hugo Claus's 1981 film drama Friday. She has since appeared in many Belgian movies and television series, as well as playing an anarchist in Steven Soderbergh's film Kafka. In 1997 she wrote and directed her first film De Suikerpot (The Sugar Bowl) - a short which won awards at numerous international film festivals.

 
Mother and daughter
Seven years later she wrote and directed her first feature length film The Kiss (in Dutch: De Kus) - a psychological thriller about a 16 year-old girl drawn into prostitution by her boyfriend. The film featured her actress/daughter Marie Vinck in the leading role and Van Mieghem herself played the mother of her daughter's character.

Van Mieghem has translated her experience of writing for the screen into a disturbing and dramatic short story for Radio Books. In fact, the story generated so much interest when it first appeared that it has led to a two-book publishing contract for the author. One is a family saga set in Antwerp, Brussels and Hamburg. The other will expand her Radio Books story into a novel.

Sympathetic caress
The story has a strong cinematic structure moving both forward and backward in time. It's about a woman who's been rewarded for her hard work with a luxury holiday at a gastronomic hotel in Provence. But events spiral out of her control after an evening of celebration and too much champagne.

"La Bonne Etape. That's the name of the gastronomic four-star hotel I chose... All the aromas of Provence on my plate. But in particular it was the sentence, "privacy and peace are guaranteed in this beautiful historic building with only eight rooms" that won me over. A hotel surrounded by kilometres of Provencal landscape with 15 guests at the most. An oasis of peace.

Paid for by the company, a bonus for the hard work of the past months, the past years, a sympathetic caress in the form of seven days' rest. Forty-four-year-old single mothers deserve a little attention now and then, even if it consists of sending them as far away as possible. On their own."

The French Chef by Hilde Van Mieghem was translated by Michael Blass. It's read by Helene Michaud.

The series Radio Books is an initiative of the Flemish-Dutch Huis de Buren in Brussels, in association with the Flemish radio broadcaster Klara and Radio Netherlands Worldwide.