Recipe for Disaster

by Miriam Morrison

But Kirsty had been working in catering since she was fourteen. 'Chefs are all mad. They're all as competitive as crazy. There's always loads of bitching and back-stabbing in this business. Actually, Jake is one of the good guys and if he says this guy is a bastard, then I believe him.'

  But Kate, well aware of her other life as a journalist, was determined to be objective and impartial, and she was bound to need some quotes from him in the future.

  Harry had a very pretty girl with him, whom he almost completely ignored. He was far too busy scanning the room for imperfections, like a heat-seeking missile homing in on its target. Kirsty, as the more experienced, was supposed to serve him, but she was delayed by a couple at another table who needed taking through the menu very slowly.

  Kate walked over cautiously, annoyed with herself for being nervous. He wasn't a gangster, for heaven's sake. She was also incensed that he looked at her like he wanted to leap on her and gobble her up.

  Oh God, she thought, another unreconstructed male.

  But then he smiled and his blue eyes crinkled attractively, and instead of being a bastard, he was terribly polite. It made a nice change to go through the menu and wine list with someone who knew what they were talking about. Actually, he knew more than she did, but he was very nice about it.

  'Well, what does he want?' growled Jake as she came in with the order.

  Your head, on a plate, apparently, thought Kate, but she said: 'Calves' liver salad followed by two bloody fillets.'

  She didn't think it was a good time to say that Harry had pressed her arm with anxious concern and asked: 'They can do a properly rare fillet here, can't they?' as if Jake were some callow youth just out of catering college.

  Jake had every confidence in himself, but he felt as nervous as if he were cooking for food critics Michael Winner and A. A. Gill, and a pack of Michelin inspectors in one sitting. He knew Harry had deliberately picked a plain steak because there was nowhere to hide behind it. Jake also knew his crew were good but that didn't stop him hovering anxiously over their every move like a midwife presiding over a difficult birth.

  Every leaf of the watercress salad was inspected, and the calves' liver, which had been briefly introduced to the pan, was laid on top as tenderly as if it were a baby. He quashed the fantasy of adding ground-up glass to it and asked Kirsty to serve it, which really annoyed Kate, who felt she was quite capable of carrying two small plates to a table without bringing his restaurant into disrepute.

  But there were plenty of other customers to think about and the time slid by. That was the good thing – the only good thing – about this job, she thought. There simply wasn't enough time to dwell on the awfulness of it until it was all over.

  Harry insisted on saying thank you to Jake in person after his meal. 'Don't bother him – I'll just pop down to the kitchen.'

  'No bloody way,' growled Jake, already shrugging on a clean chef's jacket. The kitchen was his lair and Harry would only set foot here again over his dead body. He would meet him in the arena, sorry, restaurant where Harry would have to curb his tongue.

  The other customers were gratifyingly pleased to see him. Jake was generally too reserved to do the sort of walkabout some chefs revelled in, but it was nice to hear so many compliments. Chefs soaked up praise like a sponge; there could never be enough of it. He gritted his teeth, took his hands out of his pockets and then put them back in again because they looked more relaxed there, and tried to saunter over to Harry's table, repeating silently to himself: 'Remember we are in public.'

  'Hello, how are you?' As if I care.

  'This is a nice little place you've got here.' Christ! The colour on these walls went out of fashion years ago. What was the look you were aiming for? Oh yes, doctor's surgery, circa 1972.

  'I hope you enjoyed your meal, both of you.' You know it was fantastic and I bet every mouthful stuck in your throat.

  'Oh, excellent grub, wasn't it, darling?' A bit better than the chippy down the road, I suppose.

  Grub! You condescending little prick! 'It's good to see you can take some time off.' Bloody part-timer – that's no way to run a restaurant.

  Harry shrugged easily. 'It's been a piece of cake really. I couldn't have asked for an easier ride.' You look like shit. Been up all night worrying about the cashflow, eh?

  'Of course the real work starts when you're open, doesn't it?' You won't be smiling then – you won't keep any staff longer than a day.

  'Oh, I'm ready for it. I've got plenty of stamina.' You won't know what's hit you.

  I'll see you drop dead before I give you a single customer, you bastard.

  Kate was eavesdropping shamelessly. She could pick up all the innuendoes as clearly as if they were being shouted across the room. It was like watching two lions fight it out over territory on a David Attenborough programme. She could almost hear his fluid tones on the voice-over. 'These two magnificent animals are circling each other looking for the right moment to strike. When they do, it will be a fight to the death . . .' Oh, no, there was no way she was going to spend the rest of the night on her knees, trying to get blood out of the carpet. She nipped out, waited a few seconds, and then nipped back.

  'Excuse me, sorry for interrupting – there's a phone call for you, Jake.' She followed him back to the office. He stared at the phone, which was still on its cradle.

  'Sorry. I made that up, but I thought I should help you beat a retreat.'

  For a second, he looked furious at her interference. Then he grinned. 'Yeah, you did the right thing. Cool move.' He looked closer. 'You've got shadows under your eyes.' He ran his finger lightly across her cheek. 'No, they won't budge – it's tiredness, not streaky mascara this time. I know, let's get cleared up while everyone's clearing off and then we'll make Godfrey cook us supper and Hans open a few bottles of wine.' He didn't want to be alone, even though he was dog-tired. He knew he would just think obsessively about Harry and how much he hated him, and torture himself about what Harry's next move might be. There was bound to be one. I wish it was just the two of us, sharing the wine, he thought, then shook himself. He had no right to be having thoughts like that.

  Kate followed him slowly back to the kitchen, and not just because her legs were tired. Her cheeks were tingling from where he had touched her. Oh dear, I don't need this, she thought.

  Later, when they were all sprawled at the bar, she glanced round and said: 'I like this place better now it's all tidy and there are no customers.'

  Jake hooted with laughter. 'It's a good time of day – the calm after the storm and cash in pocket,' he agreed.

  Godfrey was practising his chat-up technique because he fancied a girl down the road. It turned out he didn't have a technique to speak of. 'How does this look?' he asked, arranging his features in what he hoped was a seductive look.

  'Like you've got your dick caught in your zip,' said Jake promptly.

  'So, do you have any hobbies, apart from cooking?' asked Kate. She wanted to get to know him better.

  'Yeah, breathing. There's no time for anything else,' he said.

  He was leaning against the wall, cradling a whisky, slitty-eyed from fatigue and other people's cigarette smoke. He was looking pretty seductive himself, even though he wasn't trying, thought Kate, comparing his style with Jonathan's at the Gazette. The journalist enjoyed wearing the trappings of his success. He had his hair cut regularly and always wore expensive aftershave. Jake, on the other hand, looked like he hadn't tried, because he really hadn't. There were dark circles under his eyes as well, and his hands had two new burn marks to add to the old ones. But Kate had seen how tenderly they coaxed life into ingredients.

  The conversation turned to food. Did these people ever think about anything else?

  'The best way to seduce a woman is with a meal. Tender spring lamb, very pink and delicate and, to start with, fresh asparagus because you have to eat with your fingers,' said Jake dreamily.

  'Is that what you cook for your girlfriend?' said Godfrey, searching for a
pen so he could take notes.

  'Hell, no. Georgia thinks rare meat is still alive,' said Jake gloomily. Where was she again? He remembered her rash, but he couldn't remember the city. Shit, he'd forgotten to set the video for her again! If he didn't pull his socks up, this relationship would go the way of others, sacrificed to the incessant demands of his job. If he wasn't careful, he would end up old, alone and tetchy, with only a tattered copy of Larousse Gastronomique for company.

  'So why are you and Harry such enemies?' asked Kate, who, though she had heard most of the story from Kirsty, wanted it from the horse's mouth.

  But Jake clammed up like an oyster shell. 'He's a bastard – that's all you need to know.'

  'He seemed very nice to me,' she said innocently, knowing that riling people was sometimes a good way to get them to open up.

  'So do tigers when they are sitting snoozing in the sun. His charm is his greatest weapon. He should come with a sign on his forehead: "Believe nothing I say." There's no side to him – whichever way you look at him, he's horrible.'

  'You're not always that nice yourself when you're cooking,' retorted Kate, still smarting from several, in her opinion, unjustified rebukes that evening.

  Jake's eyes narrowed. 'Why are you so interested? Looking for a villain for your novel? I suppose he would make a good swashbuckling pirate or smuggler. What exactly is it you're writing again?'

  This wasn't fair. He was turning the tables on her. She was too tired to invent plot lines for spurious books at this time of night.

  'You make it sound like I'm writing some sort of bodice-and-bloomers crap,' she began weakly, but was rescued by Tess, who had been on the phone to her mother, who was Angelica-sitting.

  'She woke up and won't go back to bed until she's said hello.'

  Jake obligingly took the phone. 'Hello, Angel. Why aren't you asleep?'

  'Because my dollies have been naughty and I have to tell them off, of course!'

  'Oh, I see. Why have they been naughty?'

  There was a pause, during which Angelica sucked the phone noisily and considered.

  'They wet their knitters instead of going to the loo,' she said eventually. Jake was baffled by this until he remembered she still had difficulty with her ks.

  'I think that's the first time I've seen you at a loss,' teased Kate.

  'Children are quite scary; I would much rather cook for several hundred bad-tempered punters, to be honest.'

  He watched Godfrey trying to chat Sally up. As Sally was pathologically shy, he was happily doing all the talking and singularly failing to notice that her eyes were glazing over with boredom. Jake butted in shamelessly. Sally was brilliant at what she did, but her self-confidence was dreadfully low and it was affecting her work.

  'I might shout a bit when it gets busy, but I've never bitten anyone yet,' he teased, but she didn't laugh. The trouble was, she took everything very seriously and brooded on things too much.

  'Your work is great, but you should know by now there's no time to nursemaid anyone who is having a crisis of confidence. Maybe if you said to yourself at the beginning of the shift: "I am good and that's why I am here", it might help.'

  Kate was quite scathing about women who were too feeble to look after themselves in the workplace but, despite herself, she was touched by Jake's evident concern for all his staff. She knew that, in most professions, a lot of bosses would have said 'Sink or swim' and not really cared.

  'I am aware that women can still have a rough time in this profession. The trade attracts some real low-lives. If you're a paranoid little shit with the hide of a rhino and the sensitivity of Attila the Hun, you'll feel right at home. Or if you are a complete idiot,' he added, watching Godfrey who was trying to drink a flaming sambuca and had just burned his nose. 'You've got to be tough to survive the heat and the criticism. Did Tess collapse in a heap when I didn't like her hollandaise sauce yesterday?'

  'Didn't like! What you said, Boss, and I quote, was, "This stuff looks like it belongs in a hospital lab. It's what people excrete, not eat." '

  'Oh dear, did I?'

  'Yeah, but you were nicer when I got it right.'

  Jake grinned and yawned.

  'Maybe I should smoke dope, like Hans. Would it make me wittier?' said Godfrey. They all looked over. Hans was asleep, his mouth open, snoring gently.

  'I knew this guy once –' began Kirsty.

  'Oh, no, here we go again,' muttered Tess under her breath. 'You know if you ever write your memoirs you're gonna require half the remaining rain forest.'

  'Well, that's OK, 'cos the back of a stamp would do for yours,' said Kirsty, and smirked when everyone laughed. 'Anyway, as I was saying, this guy, he was having an affair with my sister's brother-in-law's second cousin, but we don't talk about him. Well, he used to work at the Go-Rite garage out along the Windermere road, though my dad says that most cars don't after they've been there – go right, I mean – so –'

  'What? Yes! Who!' Hans's snores had got so loud he had woken himself up.

  'Be quiet! I am in the middle of a story!' Kirsty took a deep breath. 'Oh bugger. I've forgotten.'

  'We all need some sleep. Now Kate is dropping off.'

  'My eyes are closed but I am still firing on all cylinders. I was thinking.'

  'Napping, more like,' teased Jake. 'Well, what were you thinking about?'

  She opened her eyes. Jake's dark eyes were on hers. He had a trick of looking at you as if you were the only person in the room, she thought. You, she wanted to say. I was thinking about you. 'Oh nothing, just about what we've got to do tomorrow,' she lied.

  'Yeah, there's a hell of a lot of prep to do. Off you all go. I need my beauty sleep.'

  'You'll need a hell of a lot of it then,' said Tess.

  Kate dragged Godfrey out by the simple method of grabbing the seat of his pants and pulling. 'I'll give you a lift home but only if you leave the bloody matches behind!'

  Chapter Twelve

  Kate was not in a good mood. First, there was the email from Jonathan.

  'Hi, babe.' Who did he think he was – Austin Powers? 'Why have we heard nothing from you? As far as I know, you are only a few miles away, not halfway down a cave in Afghanistan. Can I see some copy, and you, for a drink this evening?'

  Kate typed 'No and no', added 'Fuck off, you sarcastic prick' and then deleted it. Jonathan was, after all, as he was fond of reminding her, her superior. Then she pressed 'Send', switched off her computer and then had to switch it on again to check she really had deleted the rude bits.

  The previous night Jake had spent what she considered a ridiculous amount of time showing Godfrey how to make an omelette.

  'For goodness' sake, it's just a few eggs in a pan,' she muttered now, getting some out of her fridge. She would show him. Any competent person could make an omelette. She beat eggs furiously, threw them into a non-stick pan and went off to put some mascara on.

  When she came back, the inside of her pan seemed to have become stuck to the bottom of her omelette, which looked and tasted like something that might be better used wiping a car windscreen. It so wasn't going to be eggs for breakfast then.

  Bloody Jonathan! Did he know just how hard waitresses had to work? It wasn't just the long hours. She was so tired when she got home she was practically nodding off in the shower. There was a whole reel of taped episodes of her favourite television thriller to catch up on, but she just couldn't seem to stay awake long enough to find out which particular life-threatening catastrophe was facing America at the moment.

  She calmed down and admitted Jonathan did have a point. She was letting the job get in the way of her real work, and there was plenty to make a start on. She had downloaded some pretty juicy gossip on Jake and Harry. But one of her ideas – how chefs cut corners so they could rake in more profits – didn't apply to the kitchen she was working in. She knew Jake was short of money, but he was passionate about buying only the best-quality ingredients. He was one of the most critical and explosive
people she had met, but she was starting to respect him for that. He was also very kind to Sally, who was a really pathetic drip, even if she could make cakes. Kate had no patience with her. Life was a tough deal and you just had to grit your teeth and get on with it.

  Jake might blow a fuse if there was a drop of sauce in the wrong place on a plate but he worked like a dog without complaining, even the other night when he'd just about sliced the end of his finger off. His language was choice, but he'd calmly bandaged himself up, managing a pale grin at Sally, who was having hysterics and threatening to phone an ambulance.

  Then he'd gone quietly back to work until it started bleeding again, when he had apologised for not being able to help them clear up at the end of the shift.

  He was bad-tempered, he was brave, he was good looking . . . oh dear, concentrate, Kate told herself. But it was no good. She couldn't work here. She would break into the between-shifts calm and quiet of the kitchen and hope that the atmosphere would spark some inspiration.

  A pale sun was filtering through the clouds and there were plenty of people about, mainly couples with children too young to be dragged up the fells. Kate had never walked up a hill by choice in her life before and until recently had considered that shoes made specifically for walking in were not worth buying.

  To take away the hideous taste of the omelette she bought a couple of doughnuts and ate them while she walked.

  Sitting outside the kitchen door was a box of lobsters. She had no idea why, but Jake would go ballistic if he found them. It would be kinder on everyone's nerves later on if she shoved them in the cold room and pretended she had been there when they were delivered.

  Kicking the door open with her foot she staggered inside, knees buckling under the weight of the heavy box. She put them down and stood looking at them doubtfully. The last time she had seen a lobster it was ready to eat. These weren't. In fact she was sure they were still alive.

  What was she supposed to do now? Fill the stockpot with water so they could frolic away happily until they were murdered? Would they die anyway if it wasn't salty water? It would be really good if she could do something knowledgeable with them to impress Jake, but what? And was it her imagination or was the biggest one trying to edge its way out of the box?