by Ashley Cain
“Not something I would have thought anyone needed to complain about.” The redhead tapped a red painted fingernail on the back of the chair. “Unfortunately, he must have done it after the crab salad was made that I had, as I found it very bland. It needed a bit of punch”.
“There you go”, Ivan said airily. “That sounds like the Connor I heard about. Always making some suggestions. It sounds like it was probably a misunderstanding. You can probably expect to have a few spats now you have two creative geniuses in the kitchen. Miguel is an excellent cook as well. My scallops with bacon and a poached egg were as good as ever. Please give him my compliments”.
“I will” April fought to keep the smile pasted on her face as they turned to go. She was seething at the remark his companion had made. Her crab salad was a customer favourite and did not need a punch, although she knew what did.
Chapter 15
Sunday was a much better day in the kitchen. The morning was relatively quiet in the café which meant that April could pretty much leave Jerome and Sylvain on their own. They seemed to have got over their sulk and hurried around the café making sure that the relatively few customers that they had were well looked after. This meant that with them out front, April could stay in the kitchen helping out Rachel with her cakes, whilst Connor helped Miguel with the breakfasts. Both Miguel and Rachel seemed subdued though and April was sad that the happy atmosphere of before seemed to have evaporated. She hoped that if Connor started to prove his worth, and become a help rather than a hindrance, things might return to normal soon. It was a faint hope.
April was just about to put a batch of salted caramel loaves in to the oven when she was distracted by raised voices in the cafe. A customer was loudly complaining that Sylvain had brought her the wrong drink and had demanded to see the manager. As she pushed open the door between the kitchen and the café area, she recognised that it was the red-haired woman who had been with Ivan Fletcher the day before. Walking across to the table she discovered that she had asked for a coffee with hot milk and had been given one with cold milk. Why she was making such a fuss over a mug of coffee April couldn’t understand. Sylvain could have easily resolved the problem with a jug of hot milk, but instead the woman had decided to cause a scene. April was trying to calm her down when another shout, this time from the kitchen, made her turn around.
“Please fetch the lady a fresh drink Sylvain” April said quickly, “and I am so sorry, the drink is on the house”.
She hurried back to the kitchen. It was like déjà vu all over again with Miguel and Connor standing up to each other like two young male lions about to fight over a female, and Rachel standing open mouthed by the oven, this time a tray of peanut butter brownies in her hand.
“I can’t cope with this anymore April” Miguel said angrily as soon as her saw her come through the door. “Can I have a word?” He whipped off his apron and strode determinedly to the backdoor.
“No, please don’t Miguel, not yet” Rachel whispered as he passed her, and she looked at April with such sorrowful eyes that April was immediately filled with a sense of foreboding. What on earth was happening here?
“What’s Connor done now?” she said wearily, closing the back door and leaning against it for support. “If he’s really that bad I’ll go in and tell him to leave. This constant fighting is not helping us at all”.
“It’s not bad” Miguel said wearily. “It’s just exhausting. He’s been making comments all morning, sly little digs and suggestions each time you go out of the room. Why don’t you put turmeric in the scrambled egg? Why don’t you add some cayenne pepper to the hollandaise sauce? You should grill the bacon for longer as it is better crispy. There was nothing wrong with the food was there before he came, we got good reviews?”
“Of course there wasn’t, we got great reviews and you’re a good cook Miguel. Look I’ll have a word with him”.
“You need to have more than a word with him, he is so arrogant he doesn’t hear any criticism. Just after you’d gone out to see what the complaining customer wanted, he walked across to the bowl of red cabbage that I had grated for the salads later and added a big glug of orange juice. Said that they always did that at the Belvedere, it helped to bring out the flavour”. Miguel looked close to tears and April felt for him. This was no good at all.
“Look, it’s clearly not going to work”, April said, casting a glance through the window to see what havoc Connor was creating whilst they were outside and he was inside on his own with Rachel. “I’ll tell him I want him to go, that this was just a trial and it’s not working out. I’ll have to pay him a week’s wages as notice but it is worth it to get him out of the kitchen”.
“I think you may want to wait”. Miguel looked uncomfortable and shifted from one foot to the other. “There is something else, not related to Connor, although I guess working with him today has brought things to a head”. He stopped.
“Go on”. April encouraged him to carry on, although she was pretty sure that she was not going to want to hear what Miguel had to say. He looked so tragic, as though his body was trying to fight with his mouth and stop him talking. His mouth won but only just.
“April”, he stuttered. “You have been so good to me, really helped me out by giving me this job, but the thing is”, he hesitated, “the thing is, I’ve been offered another job and it really is the chance of a lifetime and I don’t think I can turn it down”.
“Have you not been happy here?” April was stunned, stricken that she was going to lose Miguel. “I thought you loved working here, you never said anything about looking for another job, or wanting something else”.
April was torn in her emotions, she liked Miguel and wanted the best for him, but also couldn’t help but feel a little bit betrayed. It had been only a month ago that they had sat making plans as to how they could grow the business over the winter. Miguel had come up with the idea of the cookery school, was that it, he was unhappy that she had given Rachel an opportunity but not him?
“If it’s about the cookery school idea that I turned down” she started.
“No April, it’s nothing to do with that at all. I am happy, have been anyway” he said wryly nodding his head in the direction of the kitchen. “Until Connor started. I hadn’t been looking at all for anything else, but the thing is I got this offer unexpectedly out of the blue and it’s so difficult to turn down”.
“What is it?” April sat down on an upturned fruit box and looked at him. She was desperate not to lose him. “Maybe I can match it”.
“I wish you could April, I really do, but I don’t think you can and it isn’t because of the money”. Miguel came and joined her on the box. “Last night there was a knock on the door just after we had got in from work. It was Ivan Fletcher”.
“Ivan Fletcher?” April’s mouth formed in a thin line. She was not at all happy that he was poaching her staff. It started to make sense why he came in to the café so often when Miguel was there and had been paying him so many compliments recently.
“Yes. He is opening a new restaurant, a Mediterranean seafood restaurant in St Helier, down on the waterfront. He has offered me the job as head chef”. He turned is eyes towards her, eyes that she noticed were glassy with tears. “How can I turn it down?”
He couldn’t. April knew that, and in that moment knew she had lost him. And knew that inevitably that would mean that she had lost Rachel too. There would be no reason for Miguel to continue to live in Gull Bay if he was working in St Helier, and if Rachel moved to St Helier then she would not want to continue to travel to Gull Bay and do the hours that she was doing. Damn. Ivan Fletcher had probably offered her the job of pastry chef anyway.
“I’m pleased for you” April said, forcing a smile. She was pleased for him even though it spelt disaster for her. “I suppose that means that Rachel will be going as well?”
“No”. Miguel shook his head emphatically. “We talked about that. Mr Fletcher offered her the job of pastry chef, in charge
of desserts but she is not going to take it. She doesn’t like him, even though she can accept what a great opportunity it is for me. We are going to stay living in Gull Bay and I’m going to drive in to St Helier every day”.
“When does he want you to start?”
Miguel took a deep breath. “Mr Fletcher wanted me to start straight away, the restaurant is opening next week, but I said I would need to think about it and will let him know tonight. But I don’t want to leave you completely in the lurch April, and so I will tell him I can’t start for a week. Would that be alright?”
April nodded although inside she felt like screaming. James wasn’t going to be back for another two months and so she needed to find a cook in a week. Unless? She stared in to the distant thinking hard. Maybe she could just do a very scaled back lunch menu for the next two months and concentrate on the cakes. The bakery side of the business was really taking off and so the loss of some lunchtime revenue would certainly be made up for by the afternoon cake crowd.
Her thoughts were broken by a bang and a piercing scream. The door next to her flew open and the normally unruffled Connor hurtled out, his pristine white trousers covered in a sticky coating of congealed nuts and sponge. Following him in to the afternoon sun came the normally placid Rachel, brandishing an empty cake tray.
“I’ll kill you” she screamed as he disappeared around the corner of the café.
“Hush” Miguel grabbed her as she tried to run past. She dropped the cake tray on the floor and melted in to his arms, dissolving in to great racking sobs.
Whatever happened, whether she closed the café for the next two months and just operated as a bakery, or kept the café open offering a reduced menu, she was going to have to get rid of Connor. If she didn’t, she would have no business and by the looks of it no cook. If Connor continued to work in the café past the weekend then one of them was sure to stick a kitchen knife in his back before the end of the week. April sighed, to think a week ago everything had been working so well.
Chapter 16
Connor didn’t return to the café that afternoon. He telephoned April thirty minutes after he had disappeared, claiming that he had been scalded by the hot mixture and needed to go to hospital. April was tempted to tell him over the phone there and then not to come back, but felt it only fair that she wait until tomorrow and tell him face to face. She also had misgivings as to what he may do if she sacked him just after he had been covered in hot peanut butter and chocolate brownie mixture. Would he try and claim compensation?
“He hasn’t been scalded by anything” Rachel said when she told her that Connor had had to go to hospital. “The mixture hadn’t even been put in to the oven. It was the second batch that I had made”.
April thought as much, and was furious that Connor had lied to get out of returning to the cafe. The mixture, or what she had seen of it as he disappeared around the corner, had looked raw to her eye. If it had been cooked, or even partly cooked, it wouldn’t have clung to his trousers as it did. If he attempted to claim money off her for damages, or loss of earnings, she would make him drop his trousers and show her the burns. The only thing that would be damaged was his pride, she would make sure of that.
“What happened?” she asked Rachel. It must have been something bad to have caused Rachel to be so angry.
“I caught him adding salt to the mixture again” Rachel said. “Didn’t even pretend this time to mistake the sugar for salt. Told me that the salt would add to the flavour”.
“Don’t tell me, let me guess” answered April grimly, “that is how they make peanut butter brownies at the Belvedere”
“Exactly”. Rachel said “But when I asked him what he was doing, he jumped and his hand slipped and half the bag of salt went in. I was so angry I just flipped, picked up the bake tray and just went for him. I didn’t even throw the mixture on to him, he picked up the bowl to defend himself and slipped as he ran around the table”.
“The lying little sod”. April was aghast that he had lied so blatantly when he knew that she would ask Rachel what had happened. And had claimed that he had been scalded when he clearly hadn’t. She wouldn’t put it past him to pour hot water on his legs to stick to his story. It would be his word against Rachel’s, and if her and Miguel were asked to give evidence, she would have to admit that she had seen him running away with Rachel chasing him. She paled, was all this a ruse to get compensation out of her? She started to wonder if everything he had done had been deliberate and part of an elaborate scam to claim money out of her.
There was only one way to deal with this and she was going to have to act quick.
“Right, I am going to see him” April said, “can you and Miguel cope here in the kitchen?”
Rachel looked shocked. “Are you going to confront him right now?”
“I’m going to try and catch him before he does something to himself. I wouldn’t put it past him to burn himself and claim compensation”.
Rachel’s hand flew to her mouth.
“Oh April”, she said, “I hope I haven’t caused you any problems”
“Of course not”, April answered with a smile of reassurance that she didn’t feel. She was sincerely hoping the same.
She had his address from the brief CV that he had provided, Number 8 Rockspur Apartments, and walked the ten minutes along the front of the bay and up the hill to where he lived. She saw that the parking space for number 8 had a newish convertible parked in it, an expensive one. He obviously hadn’t left yet for the hospital if of course he intended on going. Pressing the buzzer for number 8 she didn’t need to wait long for a response.
“Yes?” came Connor’s voice from the speakerphone.
“Connor, its April” she said staring straight at the camera. “I have come to see how you are”
He sounded wary and defensive. “Err, I’m just having a lie down before I try and go to hospital”.
“I’ll take you” she said quickly “it’s the least I can do”.
“Erm,” he hesitated and it was obvious that he had been caught unawares and was having to think of a response quickly. “No, it’s alright. Look April, I’m not really….”
She couldn’t hear the rest of his answer as she had to stand back to let an older couple out of the door. Quick as a flash, before the door closed behind them, she grabbed at the handle and made for the lift. She could see that number 8 was the top floor.
The lift opened in to a small carpeted vestibule with an ornate marble table on which stood a tall glass vase with bright orange lilies. There were two doors, one to the right and one to the left. Knocking on the door of number 8 she could hear the sound of movement inside but no-one answered. “Connor open this door” she bellowed.
When there was still no answer she kept on banging. “Open this door” she shouted, “I need to speak to you now”.
A middle-aged lady poked her head out of the door opposite. “What is all the noise?” she snapped, angrily, “are you another of his women? Every day there is a different one coming and going and none of you can be quiet. Giggling and laughing and falling over in the lobby. I’m sick of this, I’m going to complain to the agent”.
“Connor” April shouted at the top of her voice, “I am not going to go away”. She raised her fist again to bang on the door, but the door was flung open and she nearly hit him on his chest which was bare. Her fist froze in mid-air, inches from him.
“Come in” he said smirking.
“At least you are his age” the neighbour said scornfully from behind her. “I wouldn’t trust him though love” she carried on spitefully as April turned, “you must be about the sixth or seventh woman he has had in this apartment and he’s only been here a month”.
Connor flashed a sparkling white smile across the lobby and his cheeks dimpled. “What can I say Annabel” he said spreading his hands out palm upwards. “Women find me irresistible”. Without waiting for a response, he grabbed hold of April’s arm and guided her in to the apartment, k
icking the door closed behind her with his foot.
“I don’t know why you would think that” April said dismissively, although it was a lie and she suspected they both knew it. Connor was dressed only in some white Calvin Kleins, his bronzed body lean and muscular. A line of black hair rose from the waistband of his briefs up a stomach with a defined six pack to join the hair that spread evenly across his chest. He would have been gorgeous if he hadn’t known it, but April knew that the beauty was only skin deep.
“How are your burns?” she asked, trying not to stare too openly at his legs which were covered in short tight curly black hairs but exhibited no marks.
“My burns?” Connor said momentarily confused. “Oh, you mean the scalding” he said, recovering quickly. “Not as bad as I thought”. He turned to grab a white shirt from the back of a chair and put it on although he left it unfastened.
“Hmm”, April said glancing through the door of the living room in to the large modern kitchen where a cream kettle was whistling it’s head off. “Making yourself a drink, were you?”