by Fiona Leitch
I cleaned the workbench on auto-pilot, my mind going over and over Nathan’s words. All the times we’d flirted over the last few months… Had it been in the back of his mind then, that one day he’d be going back to Liverpool? Was that why he’d never made a move?
And why did he need to talk about it? It was a no-brainer, surely. If he stayed here he’d more than likely be a DCI for ever. Don’t get me wrong, the rank of detective chief inspector is certainly nothing to turn your nose up at (it was higher than I’d got, but then I’d been happy pounding the beat, and being a mum as well already gave me enough to juggle), but Nathan was only thirty-five, and he struck me as being ambitious. But then, he had moved down here in the first place, so maybe career wasn’t as important to him as I thought. But he was worried about his parents, and if he moved back he’d be much nearer them – and his ex, whom he’d never really talked about but who had clearly broken his heart. But, but, but… Round and round my mind went, until—
‘Oww!’ I lent across the hot plate to wipe off a smear of grease, and gasped as my bare forearm touched it. I’d turned if off but those things stayed hot for ages. I dropped my cleaning cloth and clutched ineffectually at my arm.
‘Jodie! You all right?’ Tony stood at the counter, watching me in alarm.
‘Yeah, I just burnt my arm on the bloody hot plate…’ I was in pain, but more than that I was furious at myself for being miles away, and furious at Nathan for distracting me even though he wasn’t here. I inspected my arm, and when I looked up again Tony was right next to me, inside the truck. He gently took my arm and led me over to the sink.
‘Run it under cold water,’ he ordered, turning on the tap (the truck was hooked up to a garden hose in the courtyard outside). He held my arm under the flow of water, taking the heat out of the burn.
I blinked madly, wanting nothing more than to burst into tears, but if I did he’d be really sympathetic and lovely, and I’d cry even more, and he’d ask me what the matter was, and then I’d tell him about Nathan and I’d be forced to admit things (to myself as much as to him) that I’d been ignoring relatively successfully for a while now, and that’s just not how I do stuff. I don’t go around admitting to having feelings, for God’s sake. I am a world-class bottle-upperer. Usually.
‘Is that helping?’ asked Tony. It was so nice to have someone talking to me with such concern in their voice. He was very close, and he had that frilly shirt on again. I shut my eyes and then had to wrench them open quickly as an image of Tony ascending, Mr Darcy-like, from the depths of the ornamental lake floated across my mind. Only this time there was no small dog or pondweed spoiling the picture, his shirt was fully unbuttoned, and the six-pack underneath was so well defined it was practically a twelve-pack. And there was definitely a bit of chest hair lurking there, in my subconscious…
‘Are you all right?’ he asked, and I forced myself to smile at him, although by now I wasn’t sure how I was feeling, or who I was feeling it about. Pull yourself together, you daft tart, I told myself sternly.
‘Yeah, I’m just annoyed with myself,’ I said, truthfully enough. ‘I knew that hot plate would still be warm, and I still leant over it like an idiot.’
He carefully turned my arm around so he could look at the dull but angry red skin on my forearm. He pursed his lips as he inspected it, then looked up and smiled.
‘I think we might have to amputate it,’ he said. ‘Probably from just below the chin.’
‘If it gets me out of washing up, I’m game,’ I said. He laughed and let go of me, stepping back slightly as he did so. I felt a twinge of disappointment mixed with relief.
‘You’ll live, Nosey. Us Penstowians are made of sterner stuff than that.’
‘It’s just a flesh wound,’ I said. ‘Tough as old boots, me.’
‘Not quite as smelly though.’
‘Not quite?’
‘Well, it is proper hot in here, innit? You’re sw— I’m sweating like a pig.’
‘Nice save,’ I said. ‘Anyway… I’ve got to finish cleaning up the breakfast stuff before I can start lunch prep.’
‘You mean, get out my way, Tony?’
‘Something like that. You filming this morning, or do you just enjoy dressing like Long John Silver’s camp younger brother?’ I pretended to look him up and down with disdain, but actually those tight trousers and the shirt were surprisingly alluring…
Tony laughed. ‘Faith says I looked just like Mr Darcy when I rescued the dog yesterday,’ he said. My heart leapt.
‘Did she?’ I sniffed. ‘I didn’t know there was a dog rescue in Pride and Prejudice. Is that the version where he’s an RSPCA inspector?’
‘You know, you’re not as funny as you think are,’ said Tony.
‘I’m still hilarious, though.’
He laughed. ‘Yes, dear, you’re hilarious.’ He looked out across the counter as, from outside the truck, came sounds of movement. ‘Uh-oh, it sounds like Lucy’s on the warpath. I’d better go. She wants everyone on their best behaviour today, because Mike Mancuso’s going to be here.’
‘And Mike Mancuso is…?’
‘The producer. One of these old-school Hollywood types, by the sounds of it.’
‘A poor man’s Charlton Heston with a big mouth?’
‘Haha! Yes, going by the way Faith was talking about him.’ He looked out again, and then turned back to me. I re-arranged my face – I’d been thinking you and Faith seem VERY cosy – just in time. ‘Are you all right now?’
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Thank you. Now off you go before you get into trouble!’ I opened the back door of the truck and held it for him. ‘Mind the stairs. Oh, and what we talked about before – the Scooby Doo scenario – be careful, yeah? I think they’ve struck again. Busted some lights this time.’
Tony raised his eyebrows. ‘Really? I’ll keep me eyes peeled for anyone suspicious. But with Mike Mancuso around, hopefully they’ll be too scared to strike.’
I shoved all thoughts of Nathan’s new job and Tony’s (possibly hairy) chest to the back of my mind and finished clearing up, then started peeling and chopping veg ready for lunch. I thanked the absent Gino for his menu plans; I wasn’t following them exactly, but it was good to have some ideas to work from. A pasta dish, a vegetarian option, salads, and either a curry or some kind of meat and two veg dish. And chips, always chips.
I love cooking, always have, always will. But I had to admit that this hadn’t been the type of cooking I’d had in mind when I’d retrained as a chef. I hadn’t exactly imagined myself working in a Michelin-starred restaurant; the hours aren’t conducive to maintaining a healthy family life, plus there aren’t many (any) establishments quite on that level in Penstowan. But I supposed that a part of me had wanted that; I had wanted the opportunity to experiment with new ingredients and complicated recipes, and I’d wanted to cook the sort of food that would blow people’s socks off (in a good way) when they tasted it. But everyone’s hosiery was safe from my tuna pasta bake, and you don’t get an OBE for Services to the Culinary Industry by serving chips with everything (even if they are golden and crispy).
I sighed as I scraped all the peelings into a plastic bin (they were going to a local farm as food for the pigs). I shouldn’t complain; it was less messy than rounding up drunks on a Friday night in Clapham, and it was certainly safer, hot plates notwithstanding. And the cast and crew seemed to appreciate the food that I dished up for them.
‘Hello?’
I jumped as the voice disturbed my thoughts, and looked up. A round-faced man with spectacles and a big smile peered across the counter at me. ‘Delivery for Gino Rossi?’
‘That’s me,’ I said. The delivery man raised his eyebrows, as I clearly didn’t look like a Gino Rossi, but didn’t say anything. ‘What’ve you got for me?’
‘Just the one.’ The delivery man lifted a big insulated polystyrene box up onto the counter. ‘Sign here, please.’ I scrawled my name on the delivery sheet, and then began
tearing at the sealing tape.
Inside, packed in ice, were two fish of a type I didn’t think I’d seen before; I certainly hadn’t cooked them. I looked at Gino’s menu list, but other than a couple of salmon fillets put aside for Faith and a few nondescript white fish portions in the freezer in case Kimi wanted them, there was nothing on the list about seafood.
‘All right?’ Zack stood at the counter, looking hot and sweaty.
‘Blimey, what’ve you been up to? You look all—’
He laughed. ‘You were gonna say ‘red in the face’, weren’t you? I’m black; we don’t go red. We just sorta glow. Sexily.’ He winked at me and I laughed too.
‘Yes, I was, and yes, you do.’
‘We just did this big fight scene,’ he said, pouring himself a glass of water from the jug on the counter. ‘Well, it’ll look like a big fight scene, but we’ll shoot most of it in the studio in front of a green screen later. You know what that means?’
‘They superimpose the background and that afterwards?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s right. All we shot was the end bit, with the house in the background so they can copy it into the CGI. I just beat this dark knight bloke in a sword fight and I’m standing there with my foot on his body and my blade drawn…’ He drew his sword – which was ornately carved and set with a red jewel in the handle – and brandished it, clearly enjoying himself. ‘And I’m like, yeah, I’m the man, and in the background on the horizon this massive dragon monster appears.’
‘Cool.’
‘Yeah.’ He put his sword back in its sheath, sighing in exasperation as the jewel fell out of its setting. He bent down and picked it up. ‘Bloody thing keeps falling off. Plastic tat. Sam made me run around for half an hour like a nutter, to get me looking like I’d just beaten the crap out of the evil horde. I’m knackered now.’ He nodded to the insulated box. ‘That my fish? I got a text from Gino saying he got a text from the delivery company…’
‘This is yours?’ It made sense now. ‘Of course, for tonight. What is it? I don’t think I’ve cooked it before.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll be preparing it. It’s fugu.’
‘Fugu?’
‘Pufferfish.’
I stared at him in amazement. ‘Pufferfish? But that’s poisonous, isn’t it? Unless you know what you’re doing.’
‘I do know what I’m doing.’
‘But…’ I shook my head. ‘We had a talk from a sushi chef on my course, and he said that chefs have to study for like two years before they’re allowed to prepare it. Restaurants won’t take on a fugu chef unless they’ve got this specific qualification.’
‘I know, and I’ve got it,’ he said. ‘I lived in Japan for nearly a year when I was filming The Black Samurai, and while I was there I learnt how to do it. I trained under a fugu master.’ He did a mock kung fu pose. ‘Seriously, I’m a black belt in fugu.’
‘Really?’ I was sceptical. Well, I ain’t eating it, I thought, but then I wasn’t going to anyway, was I? The star of the movie, Kimi, was. A massive THIS IS A BAD IDEA!!! klaxon went off in my head. ‘Um, you do realise this shoot is cursed, don’t you?’
He laughed. ‘Ah, come on, I thought you had more sense. I know the others think that, but I’m not superstitious. I grew up in South London, I had enough real stuff to be afraid of without jumping at shadows.’
‘I know, and no, I don’t really believe in curses. But you can’t deny that weird stuff keeps happening. Faith getting locked in, Kimi’s dog, Gino’s accident…’
Zack looked uncomfortable. ‘Yeah, I know… But I wanted to do something really nice for Kimi and Aiko. Now Kimi’s famous they spend most of their time in America, and I know Aiko misses Japan.’ He didn’t meet my eyes and, despite what he’d said about not going red, I could tell he was blushing. So it was Aiko he’d been trying to impress with his dog-sitting skills, not Kimi. Bless him. He shook his head. ‘Anyway, if it is cursed it’s already gone wrong, because it was just supposed to be the three of us, and then Kimi invited Faith and Jeremy along too, because she said she goes to bed early and she thought I’d be bored if I got left alone with Aiko.’ Poor Zack. Getting left alone with Aiko had obviously been his plan, but now he’d been roped in to cook for all of his co-stars. I smiled at him.
‘We’ll make it a really nice night for Aiko and Kimi,’ I said, deliberately putting Aiko first. He blushed again. Aww, sweet. ‘I’ll help out and do some Japanese rice and veggie dishes or whatever you want me to do, and you concentrate on the fugu. But if I have any doubts over the safety of what you’re serving, I’m putting a stop to it, okay? I’m the qualified chef here, and it won’t look good on me if something happens.’
He looked like he was going to protest for a moment, then stopped. ‘Okay.’ He looked around at the sound of someone calling his name. ‘Gotta go. Monsters to kill and all that. Laters.’
Chapter Eleven
I was still unconvinced that serving potentially poisonous pufferfish was a good idea, but I could see why Zack wanted to do it; he was desperate to impress Aiko. Well, I’d make sure he impressed her with a proper Japanese banquet, so if I managed to convince him not to serve the fugu it wouldn’t be obvious that a major part of the meal was missing. I put a cauliflower pasta bake (a cauliflower cheese/mac ’n’ cheese crossover, made with vegetarian cheddar) in the oven and left a chicken casserole simmering on the stove, then grabbed my phone and went down a Google rabbit hole, looking for Japanese recipes. There were a lot of them…
I briefly surfaced in time to serve up lunch – Tony popping by for a plate of the yummy cheesy pasta and to check I hadn’t tried to set fire to myself again – and then I was left to my own devices. Sam, the director, had apparently been cracking the whip today in a bid to get filming back on schedule, and instead of the leisurely, drawn-out lunches of the last couple of days, with cast and crew wandering in and out of the canteen area as they were free, it was a case of fill up with carbs and get back on the horse – in some cases literally.
I rifled through the cupboards in the food truck and was relieved to see that Gino had already bought in some Japanese ingredients; he’d obviously had the same thoughts as me. I was pleased to see jars of umeboshi (pickled Japanese ume plums) and fukujinzuke (or ‘lucky god’ pickles, containing seven types of vegetables to represent the seven gods of fortune), as, according to Google, pickled veg was a must at a Japanese feast, and all of the recipes I could find for it took at least two days to prepare. I only had a few hours. There were several packets of soba noodles and some miso paste, so I earmarked them too, and a small bottle of sake; the rice wine, when mixed with soy sauce, garlic, ginger, and lots of black pepper, would make a great marinade for fried karaage chicken, and I could do something similar with tofu for Kimi, leaving out the sake because of her rice allergy. And I could make a tempura batter and fry up lots of different vegetables in it, to serve with the noodles.
I was so intent on my research that I didn’t see who left the box on the food truck counter. I didn’t even know it was there until I turned round to make myself a cup of tea. It was a plain white cardboard cake-box, no decoration, no card. I looked round but there was no one about, so I carefully lifted the lid. Inside were ten cupcakes in shiny gold paper cases, all topped with a swirl of snow-white frosting. Each was beautifully decorated with the palest pink hand-crafted, sugar-paste cherry blossoms, sprinkles of red, pink, and black picking out the colours of the flowers. Sugar jewels studded the centre of each bloom, and a fine, powdery red glitter dusted the ridges of frosting. Each one was slightly different, all equally stunning and delicate but unique works of edible art.
‘Whoa…’ I said out loud, in awe of whoever had made these amazing and no doubt delicious treats. There was no card or message inside the box, but the Japanese cherry-blossom theme made it obvious who these cakes were intended for. I just wished I knew who they were from.
‘Wow, those are amazing!’ Daisy was as impressed as I was.
> ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked in surprise. ‘Did you finish early? The taxi—’
She rolled her eyes. ‘It’s half past three. What are you like?’ I looked at my phone (not that I doubted her), and was amazed to realise that I’d spent the last two hours planning Zack’s Japanese feast. I’d only really done it to keep myself busy and avoid thinking about Nathan, and it had worked, only now I was thinking about him. Goddammit. Every time I thought about him leaving it made my tummy feel funny, like I’d eaten a live eel and it was slithering around inside me. It’s bizarre when you think about it, the way they (whoever ‘they’ are) always talk about the heart when it comes to love, because as far as I can tell the stomach is the true seat of the emotions. When I’m happy I celebrate by eating cake or ice-cream or chocolate (or all three); when I’m unhappy, I smother it with, well, more cake and ice-cream and chocolate. And when I’m in love, it feels like it’s full of butterflies. Or eels… Not that I was in love with Nathan or anything daft like that. Ha! As if. Hmm…
Daisy was looking hungrily at the cakes. I sighed.
‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ I said, ‘but I assume they’re for the dinner party tonight. Someone dropped them off.’ I put an arm round her shoulder. ‘But I know where there are some chocolate biscuits, and I know where one Zack Smith is filming.’
‘Really?’ That made up for not being able to eat a cupcake.
‘Yup. Dump your school bag in the truck and let’s go and watch.’
We wandered around to the other side of the house, munching chocolate biscuits (I had to quieten that eel down somehow) and chatting about our days. Daisy’s best friend Jade had mentioned going to the pictures, something I normally wouldn’t allow on a school night, but I was going to be busy with Zack’s party and I wasn’t sure when I’d be finished. Mum was planning to stay the night at mine so she could babysit Daisy (not that I was allowed to use the word ‘babysit’ anymore, not when she was going to be a teenager in a week or so), but I was prepared to admit that an evening with her nana watching The Chase and playing Scrabble probably wasn’t that enticing a prospect. Jade was going to ask her mum Nancy, and if she agreed to take them, and if it was an early enough showing, I was happy to allow it.