Georgia was extraordinarily, incandescently beautiful. She glowed – even at four thirty in the morning, rushing round without a shred of make-up on her luminous skin, clad only in one of Jake's hideously over-washed T-shirts and complaining bitterly that only models had to get up for work this early in the morning. Properly dressed and made up, men would look at her and forget how to speak. Of course, Jake had fallen instantly in lust with her at the party. But it was her apparent vulnerability and fragility that had made him fall in love.
'Ordinary people don't really understand the dark side of my glamorous lifestyle,' Georgia explained earnestly when they finally gravitated towards each other. She looked up at him from under her lashes. 'I so, totally, get why Princess Di had to run away from the paparazzi. They don't know what it's like to be hounded every time you go out for a packet of Tampax. I have nightmares about millions of popping flashbulbs and then I wake up and relive the nasty things other models have said behind my back,' she explained tragically.
Jake nodded eagerly. He too had been the target of a campaign of malice. He glanced briefly at the surging tide of people swilling around them. He hadn't wanted to go to this party, but now he knew why he was here – to meet this creature.
'Don't you just hate these sort of dos?' Georgia was thinking that champagne was so last year – people were only drinking vodka now – and as for the food . . . 'Do they really think it's cool serving those mini burgers in mini buns?' At a hundred and fifty calories a shot, no wonder no one was eating them.
'Pretentious rubbish,' agreed Jake, who loathed food fads, and blinked as Georgia gave him one of her mega-watt sexy smiles.
How cool he was – complaining about things being pretentious was so in at the moment. 'That suit's not new, is it?' she asked.
Jake grinned; it was his best charity shop bargain. 'Yes, I –'
'How clever you are. That retro look makes everyone else here seem so drab.'
'Well, it's –'
'It's so nice finding someone I can really talk to. Everyone else is here just to talk about themselves. Do you know, I was about to run away but fate stepped in so I could meet you.'
Jake had just come off an eighteen-hour shift, the fourth that week. He was befuddled with exhaustion, blinded by the lights, nearly deafened by the roar from the people around them and in no condition to sift sense from silliness. Georgia, however, was an oasis of calm and stillness. Her ability to stand utterly still and become the focus of attention was one of the things that had made her a great model. But in reality, she was chronically insecure, despite her success, because she lived in constant fear of the competition from other models. All the adulation she got was like a meal without calories: however much she gobbled up she was always hungry for more.
At first, Jake's love was like a breath of fresh air blowing through the hothouse world of competition and spite she moved in. Attention from Jake was freely given and honest and straight, and so she clung to him like a vine. It took Jake a while to realise that vines can be choking.
When Georgia confided to him that she was an avid reader, he was delighted – he was so busy that his girlfriends had to have their own interests. But she didn't make clear at first that the only things she read were glossy magazines and pseudo-psychological self-help books. She had nearly as many of these as he had cookery books. There were books about women who loved too much; women who didn't; women who loved the wrong man, and women who loved cats more than men. They had titles like Change Is Not a Four-Letter Word (well, of course it bloody well wasn't), A Guide Dog for the Spiritually Blind, Life Shouldn't Be a Trivial Pursuit and Co-dependency – Break the Chain!. During a night of insomnia, Jake had picked this last one up. After two hours he still couldn't figure out what exactly the hell co-dependency was, except that if you had it you were in big trouble. Eventually he had filled in the questionnaire at the back. Not only was he co-dependent but so was everyone else he knew. In fact, according to this, it was impossible not to be co-dependent. Enraged, Jake had thrown the paperback into a corner and turned to the comforting and sane thoughts of Elizabeth David in France.
Jake wasn't lying when he told Eric that food was his passion. His passion and his life and there wasn't much room for anything else, even something as delectable and irresistible as Georgia. His grandmother was responsible for this. When he was small she told him endless stories about her own grandmother, who had lived in a small village in Poland. Life there revolved around the kitchen – the children sometimes even slept on top of the oven because there wasn't room for them in the one bed. The door was never locked and there was a continual coming and going of people – talking, arguing, crying, laughing – all of which was accompanied by a constant stream of food. What did they eat? asked Jake, who was fascinated by this picture of a very different world. So she cooked for him the comforting and tasty food that was part of her culture: chopped liver, potato latkes and goulash soup. When she was only a baby, the family had moved to Germany in the hope that life would be more prosperous there. And at first they thrived. She was the prettiest girl in her class and the most popular – until the morning her best friend had given her a Nazi salute and her boyfriend dumped her so he could join the Hitler Youth. Then came the lean and terrible years of persecution and flight and hunger. As an old woman, she hoarded food obsessively. When she died, Jake was dry-eyed at the funeral. He had done his crying the night before, when he'd found all the tins and packets of outdated food stacked neatly under her bed.
He sometimes wondered if he cooked to make up for those years of starvation and terror under the Nazis, but when he tried to explain this to Georgia, she had stared at him, uncomprehending. Food was Georgia's enemy, not her friend. She waged a continual, single-minded battle with it, starving herself for days on end and then bingeing. But the first time Jake overheard her throwing up in the bathroom, he was so furious she made sure he was out when she did it again.
'It's a disgusting thing to do to your body! It is wrong and unhealthy, and anyway, if you carry on like that all your teeth will fall out.'
He tried to tempt her with low-calorie but delicious dishes, seeing it as a challenge to his cooking skills, but she wasn't having any of it. When Georgia did eat, she wanted KitKats, Dairylea Dunkers and microwave chips. It was quite a blow to Jake, because surely kindred spirits shouldn't have His and Hers compartments in the fridge?
Now, lying exhaustedly on the expensive hotel bed, he absent-mindedly admired Georgia's perfect bottom as she bent down to peer into the mini bar.
'I don't see how even you can make a restaurant out of that horrible little chip shop,' she grumbled.
Jake sighed. He wished he could describe the vision in his head, but all his creative powers were in his hands.
'Look, I know I'm no good at explaining things, but try and imagine what it will look like after a makeover. A cheap one,' he added hastily.
'No one will want to eat there – you'll lose all your money.' Then, when Jake shuddered: 'Oh, don't be so silly. I was only joking!'
'Yeah, well, I think I must have left my sense of humour in London,' he tried to joke back, but he was so tired and stressed that he could barely think straight. He wondered guiltily if he would be able to stay awake long enough to make love to her and then felt even worse because he didn't want to make love – he wanted to do his sums again to make absolutely sure he'd got them right and this was all affordable, just, and then draw up another plan for how the restaurant itself should be set out. Maybe there was just room for another six covers. It would be cramped but it could make a big difference to his takings. What were the statistics? One in two restaurants failed within a year of opening. 'I've got to be one of the winners!' he said aloud, thumping the pillow.
'It's funny you should say that. The very nice man who bought me lunch on the train up here was talking about being a winner,' said Georgia, taking off her clothes and leaving them all over the floor.
Men were always trying to buy her
meals and then get into her knickers. She really wasn't safe out on her own.
She ran her hands appreciatively down her body, remembering how the very nice man had looked at her. 'He was so charming. Now, what was his name?'
'How should I know – I wasn't there. Now hurry up and come to bed before I fall – I mean, get overcome by lust.'
'But the thing was, he said he knew you. Harold, I think.'
'Never heard of him. Couldn't care less.'
'No! Silly me! It was Harry! He said you were at college together. He said you had worked together afterwards, at that restaurant you don't like to talk about.' She looked up at the strangled noise coming from the bed. 'What on earth is the matter? You look like you've just seen a ghost!'
Jake had jumped bolt upright 'Harry? Are you sure?' he asked hopefully, then when she nodded: 'I wish to God he was a ghost.'
'Oh, he's very much flesh and blood,' giggled Georgia, thinking what very attractive flesh it had been, just the right shape and size.
Jake shivered. He felt shaky and weak suddenly, as if he'd suddenly come down with some dreadful virus.
'I think I would rather come across the plague than Mr Harry Hunter again,' he said, more to himself than anything else.
'What? Oh, don't be silly. He seemed like a perfectly pleasant man,' said Georgia, who was oblivious to nuances, unless they were her own.
'You don't understand,' said Jake through gritted teeth, but she had wandered into the bathroom.
Harry Hunter was Jake's own personal demon, though he still didn't know what he'd done to deserve one. The last time he'd locked swords with this man, Jake had come off very much the worse. In fact, if it hadn't been for an irascible French chef called Louis, Jake would probably now be a hollow-eyed empty shell working in a burger bar. Oh, don't be ridiculous, he said to himself. Pull yourself together, man. What does it matter now, anyway? Lightning doesn't strike twice, does it? But what the hell was Harry Hunter doing in Easedale then?
Chapter Three
'The editor really liked your piece. Actually what he said was, "Only our Kate could make a pile of old bones interesting, but where the hell is her next story?" '
'They weren't bones, Jonathan, they were bricks. And I wish I knew.'
'Well, this has been out for a few days now, so don't leave it too long.' He was always fairly curt in the newsroom, but even more so today.
Kate waited until he was out of earshot and sighed loudly. Neither her personal nor her private life was going well. The previous night at a restaurant, Jonathan had described in rather too much detail a sudden and unexpected reconciliation with his wife. Being Jonathan, he had told the story well and made it both moving and funny. The restaurant had closed and shooed them out before he could come to the subject of what this meant to them, 'them' being him and Kate, but in the end spelling it out wasn't really necessary as far as Kate was concerned. Of course it was over. When she tentatively probed her heart early this morning, she discovered that if it wasn't exactly shattered to pieces, it was quite sore. And even three coffees and a big bacon sandwich later, she still felt a bit frail. She got up resolutely and wandered over to her desk. More than anything, she needed a story now, something to take her mind off things. But flipping through her notebook, nothing shouted out at her.
'Maybe my nose isn't working any more,' she wondered aloud. Kate was famous for her nose.
'Well, use a bloody pen like everyone else!' Seeing her dagger look, Joe, the photographer, pretended to be busy shuffling papers on his desk.
'Your jokes could really do with a makeover,' she said icily.
'Yeah, that's pretty much what the wife says.' Kate winced and he hurried on. 'Oops, sorry – not your favourite word at the moment.'
'Don't worry. Anyway, how does everyone already know about this?'
'Er, because only a fool couldn't read your body language when you both came in this morning. Actually, I think you are both being really professional and civilised about it. You're not really hurting, are you?' he added anxiously.
'No, I'm not. It's just . . . well, three months with me and now he wants to go back to his wife!'
'Well done! You've saved a marriage, not wrecked it!'
Kate gave a wry grin. You had to be tough to take the jokes in a newsroom, but they were mostly kindly meant.
She sighed, wishing she was back on the fells with the archaeologists. Life was simpler there. They spent all day on a bleak bit of hillside, grubbing around in the earth with their trowels, then they sloped off to the nearest pub to get outrageously pissed – and they were perfectly content to spend weeks doing this.
She had been happy there too. Her remit as reporter for the Easedale Gazette was simple. All she had to do was sift through the personalities and Roman artefacts for a double-page spread on what it was like to be a real-life Indiana Jones. And all the components for a brilliant story were already there. The guys were a bunch of Americans with a desperate deadline of their own. They were down to the last couple of days of funding before having to return home empty-handed, when it finally emerged under their trowels from the dark soil: a Roman settlement that the rest of the academic world was convinced didn't exist.
And if that wasn't enough for her, she was then given the unexpected bonus of a really fantastic rumpus with the local archaeology department, who hated the Yanks simply because of who they were (there was a lot of stuff about 'yank' rhyming with 'wank', which Kate unfortunately couldn't put in a family paper). The locals claimed the settlement was theirs; the Americans pointed out that they could hardly say it belonged to them and that it didn't exist, both at the same time, and there followed a bit of a stand-off on site, with trowels being waved threateningly. The Americans all had perfectly white and sparkling smiles as well, of course, so the pictures were good. Kate was thrilled.
And then there was Jim, the expedition leader, who looked a bit like a young Harrison Ford, inhaled whisky as if it was oxygen and knew more about the Romans than Julius Caesar ever had. There was something very sexy about a man who was passionate about his work, Kate decided. And of course that was part of the reason she had fallen in love with bloody Jonathan.
That was what she wanted – another good story. Then at least if she didn't have a love life she could count on her career. But her nose for news wasn't working and there wasn't even anything in the newsroom diary. She had scanned it obsessively, trying to convince herself that a weaving collective in south Lakeland was promising. But really, it wasn't. The weavers were a fearsome bunch of women who were waging war against big business. Kate agreed they had a point, but they were very tedious about it and she didn't do boring.
'Our new chief constable could at least have had the decency to keep quiet about the fact that he once smoked dope as a student,' she said to Joe disconsolately, absentmindedly tidying his desk for him. He winced when he saw the emerging tabletop. Kate was streamlined and minimal in her work space, while Joe could only function in his own brand of organised clutter. She randomly handed him piles of assorted photos and clippings. 'Doesn't he realise that skeletons in the closet are our living?'
'I agree. He's being outrageously honest,' said Joe placatingly, surreptitiously putting the photos back in the same place when she wasn't looking.
She bit her lip abstractedly, and then jumped as the phone rang.
It was her pet constable at the local police station, who often tipped her off with juicy bits of news.
'Kate? Yeah, hi. Do you remember those walkers who never came off the fells last weekend? Well, they've found them.'
'Dead or alive?' Kate wasn't trying to be heartless. It was part of her job to ask.
'Oh, very much alive. Listen, I can't say any more – got to go – but you might want to nip up there and check it out.'
Hmm. There was more to this than met the eye or he wouldn't have rung her up. Five minutes later she and Joe were speeding off to Brownstone Fell.
'Joe, when did you last clean up this
car?' Kate gingerly put her feet down on the floor.
'Oh, dunno. Actually I don't think I ever have.' 'That's my point.' She waved a chocolate bar wrapper at him threateningly. 'I think this has been here ever since I first met you.'
'Probably. Who cares?'
'Well, I do, if I have to sit on it. You are an offence to health and safety.'
'Listen, a few germs never hurt you.'
'Actually, some of them do – and probably most of the ones you are incubating in this car.'
At the bottom of the fell she could see a group of people wrapped in blankets and drinking tea. They looked alive but sheepish.
Kate got out and put on her best empathic face. Sympathy always broke down barriers and loosened tongues. 'I always say, one bit of fell looks so much like another, it's a wonder everyone doesn't get lost!'
'We weren't lost. We knew exactly where we were!' piped up one of them indignantly.
'I believe the weather can turn very quickly,' said Kate.
'Especially if you are stark naked at the time,' said one of the policemen grinning.
'We had to be – we call ourselves the Followers of the Goddess Ceres,' explained one of the men.
'Well, I'd call you a pack of plonkers,' muttered the policeman, as Joe started firing off pictures.
'Stop that! Our religion does not permit the taking of images!' said one.
'Yes, leave them alone!' said Kate loudly, after Joe had given her the signal that he'd got enough. She turned to the leader. 'I'm sorry about that. My colleague doesn't understand these things, but I've always been interested in alternative ways of life and religion. Is this a specially sacred spot?' She hoped she sounded warm and sympathetic.
One of the women nodded eagerly. Kate noticed she had very hairy legs – she would get on well with the weavers. 'It's the Brown Stone, at the top. We believe it has been used in rituals for thousands of years. It is a very significant stone. Ignored for years by you locals, of course.'
Recipe for Disaster Page 3