The Cotswolds Cookery Club: A Taste of Italy

by Alice Ross

  Connie plopped down on the sofa – so hard, Eric shot off it.

  ‘It would be for six months initially. Longer, hopefully. I’d pay you a decent salary and when Anna comes back you could live in my flat rent-free.’

  Connie shook her head in disbelief. Okay, so running a newsagent’s might not be quite the career move she’d envisaged, but it would mean she could extend her stay in Little Biddington; see how things went with Max; continue with the cookery club…

  ‘There are lots of early mornings. And the paper boys and girls can be a handful. But I think you’d enjoy it.’

  Connie leapt to her feet. ‘I know I’ll enjoy it. And I’d love to accept your offer.’

  ‘Take some time to think about it. And, naturally, it would be on the proviso that, if anything else came up – like your being discovered on Masterchef – then you’re free to go. I know it’s not your ultimate career goal, but it would buy you more time here.’

  ‘I don’t need to think about it. I honestly feel like I belong here.’

  ‘Well, you’d be hugely missed if you left. The cookery club would fall apart for a start.’

  ‘You’ll be the biggest miss. I’m sure half the customers only come into the shop to see you.’

  ‘Well, if that’s true, I’m sure there’ll be even more in to see your lovely face. Isn’t that right, Max?’

  ‘Isn’t what right?’ asked Max, stepping in from the garden where he’d been snipping fresh herbs.

  ‘Connie’s going to look after the shop for me for a few months, while I take a little foray into the world of retirement.’

  ‘Is she now?’ Max’s mouth curved upwards and his eyes twinkled as he regarded Connie. ‘That is good news.’

  ‘I’m pleased you think so,’ she said, twinkling back.

  The trill of her mobile shattered the moment.

  ‘Hello. Is that Connie Partridge? Writer of the Cotswolds Cookery Club blog?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s Sasha Hainsworth here. From the Galloping Gourmet magazine. Are you okay to talk because we have a proposition for you?’

  Connie flopped back down onto the sofa.

  ‘I hope you’re sitting down because I think this news might come as rather a shock. A very nice shock, I hope.’

  ‘I’m sitting down,’ said Connie, so delighted at Eleanor’s proposal – and Max’s response to it – that nothing could have improved her mood. Or so she thought.

  ‘Well,’ began Sasha…

  Turn over for an exclusive extract from A Taste of Spain,

  the second scrumptious story in The Cotswolds Cookery Club series from Alice Ross…

  Chapter One

  Trish Ford stared across the kitchen table at the slogan emblazoned on daughter Amber’s T-shirt.

  The difference between your opinion and pizza is that I ask for pizza – stared back.

  Amber’s plentiful range of T-shirts included other insightful maxims perfectly suited to her fifteen years – such as Whatever, Shh No One Cares and I’m Not Always Rude And Sarcastic – Sometimes I’m Asleep

  Trish had often considered printing a range for forty-two-year-old mothers like herself, featuring slogans such as It’s All Downhill From Here, Life Does NOT Begin At 40, or, to sum up her feelings today - I Don’t Know Why I Bother.

  A phrase she seemed to be employing with depressing regularity of late.

  She didn’t, for example, have any idea why she bothered cleaning Amber’s room, given it reverted to its default state of carnage within two hours. Nor had she any idea why she bothered assiduously ironing piles of Amber’s newly-laundered clothes each week, when the girl insisted on everything being re-ironed the day she decided to wear it. And why on earth she’d bothered spending two hours in the kitchen making a chicken and tarragon plate pie for dinner, just to watch her daughter pick at a few runner beans, then shuffle the rest about her plate with a look of disgust clouding her pretty features, completely passed Trish by.

  Her doleful musings were cut short by an announcement from the fruit of her loins.

  ‘Actually,’ sniffed Amber, setting down her fork and shaking back her mass of honey-blonde corkscrew curls, ‘I’ve decided to become a vegetarian. Have you seen how they force-feed chicken and geese to produce foie gras?’

  Trish hadn’t. Nor did she want to. And not because of a lack of interest in animal welfare: all their cast-offs went to the RSPCA charity shop, she made a monthly contribution to the World Wildlife Fund, and the only eggs that ever entered her kitchen were those produced by the happiest and most liberated of chickens. Today, though, she had other matters on her mind. Matters far closer to home, which were the reason she’d spent so long slaving over the proverbial hot stove: to try and take her mind off them.

  Over the years, Trish had trialled a range of relaxation techniques including: running (- which didn’t last long due to it involving far too much … well … running), yoga (- too relaxing. She’d fallen asleep in the relaxation section at the end and woken up dribbling), and meditation (- during which, despite several attempts, numerous scented candles and a CD of “singing” whales, she’d failed to prevent her mind straying to crucial matters like whether to put on a load of washing). Thankfully, during these trials, one activity had emerged which had completely hooked her. One which, following a course at the local technical college, had revealed a whole new world: cooking. Previously viewing the activity as an unavoidable everyday chore, she’d discovered that by experimenting with recipes, being adventurous with flavours, attempting dishes from countries she’d never previously have dreamed of visiting, and expanding and perfecting a range of associated skills, cooking not only produced a tangible and – hopefully - delicious result that tickled all the senses, but it fascinated, absorbed and – above all - relaxed her.

  That fateful morning last October – exactly ten months ago now - when Ian had informed her – over his shoulder as he’d departed for the office – that they needed to have A Serious Chat that evening, Trish had been so anxious about what the Chat might entail and just how Serious it might be, that she’d rustled up a veritable feast in a bid to calm her nerves. Not that any of it had been eaten. Every morsel had ended up in the bin. Because The Chat, just as she’d suspected, had been very Serious indeed: Ian was leaving her – for his twenty-five-year-old personal assistant, Chloe.

  For all her mounting apprehension, Trish hadn’t been surprised. Desperately hoping she was wrong, she’d spotted all the cliched signs: the sudden requirement to work later than usual; the whiff of perfume on clothes; the teeth-whitening, intense fascination with hair gel, and the weekly purchasing of yet more designer boxers. Plus, she’d had the unfortunate privilege of being seated next to the rather-too-fragrant Chloe at Ian’s office Christmas party. Despite her own sartorial efforts that evening – a hairdresser’s appointment to pin up her shoulder-length wavy hair – the same honey-blonde as her daughter’s; a new frock – which, although her usual size twelve, flattened and smoothed in all the right places; and outrageously expensive sequined silver sandals – adding four inches to her five-foot-three frame, Trish had found herself wondering – once again – why she’d bothered, as she’d languished in the shade of the radiant – and young – Chloe: a polished, shiny package of toned tanned perfection, with a degree in business studies, a shimmering sheet of glossy black hair, and an impressive set of 36DD’s.

  ‘So, what do you do?’ the younger woman had demanded, steely green, perfectly made-up eyes boring into Trish’s insipid blue ones.

  Trish had been tempted to reply ‘I’m a naked tightrope walker’. But, instead, she’d stuck to the truth: ‘I illustrate children’s books.’

  One side of Chloe’s plump glossy mouth had curled upwards. ‘Ducks and things?’

  Trish had caught her decidedly less juicy lip between her teeth. That very day she’d been working on a Daisy Duck book. But, judging by the younger girl’s reaction, ducks
evidently weren’t “cool” – as Amber would say. ‘Amongst other things’, she’d replied, as politely as she could muster.

  ‘What? Like trains with faces and fat postmen?’

  The blatant condescension had caused Trish’s ingenuous smile to dim, anger to stir in her stomach, and her gaze to slide from the girl’s mocking one, to the chocolate orange trifle she’d hardly touched. The urge to tip it down Chloe’s ample cleavage had been overwhelming.

  And she suspected, from the way Ian’s eyes had repeatedly migrated to his assistant’s chest, that he’d been experiencing a similar urge – albeit for different reasons.

  For a woman who’d not long since “celebrated” her fortieth birthday, the experience hadn’t done much for Trish’s self-esteem, which, for months, had been slowly edging southwards, along with her average 32B’s, her less than pert derriere, and the majority of her flesh.

  And now Ian and Chloe were not only shacked up together in the girl’s “luxury apartment”, but another “development” had arisen in their relationship. One Ian – with his well-honed delegation skills – had requested Trish inform their daughter of.

  ‘You don’t mind telling her, do you?’ he’d bleated on the phone earlier. ‘I think she’d take it better coming from you.’

  Trish, though, knew her estranged husband better than that. It wasn’t Amber’s mental wellbeing that concerned him, but his own physical one. What he’d actually meant was, ‘I daren’t tell her because she’ll blow a gasket and very possibly throw things around.’

  Given the enormity of the “development”, Trish would put money on her daughter blowing several gaskets, if not an entire engine. And an extra fiver on her throwing things around. The complete opposite to her behaviour in her more formative years. As a child, Amber’s gaskets had remained polished and intact. And she’d never hurled so much as a proverbial toy out of her proverbial pram. She’d been as close to perfection as Trish could imagine any child being: sleeping through the night from two months old; embracing potty training like it was the latest craze; skipping off to nursery without a backward glance; and eating anything placed in front of her without the slightest demurring.

  ‘God, she’s perfect,’ her friends would enviously sigh when grumbling about their own offspring’s failings. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are’

  Trish, though, had been very conscious of her luck. And had always harboured a sneaking suspicion it wouldn’t last. That, upon entering teenagerdom, Amber would rebel – coming home with unmentionable parts of her body pierced, and boyfriends who didn’t wash and spoke only in words of one syllable. But she hadn’t. Despite Trish waking up with palpitations on her daughter’s thirteenth birthday, convinced this would be the year it would all go horribly wrong, the child had remained loving, studious and considerate. Which, having heard of some of the mood swings and tantrums her peers indulged in, Trish had been relieved and secretly rather smug about. She may have made only minor inroads into the dazzling fine artist’s career she’d planned for herself when she’d sailed out of university with a first class degree and an esteemed portfolio, but she didn’t mind. Becoming unexpectedly pregnant at twenty-six had been the best thing that had happened to her. And she’d willingly forfeited her design agency job to be a mum – something, although she said so herself, she’d proved rather good at so far, priding herself on the close relationship she and Amber shared, confident they could talk about anything.

  Anything, Trish discovered ten months ago - except the news that Ian was leaving her, or - more specifically – leaving them.

  ‘I think it would be best if you told her,’ Ian had – once again – proposed.

  ‘Actually, I think it would be best if it came from both of us,’ Trish had replied – amazed at her own lucidity, given the bomb which, only seconds before, had obliterated her world.

  Ian had cast a meaningful look at his watch. ‘Can’t stay. Chloe’s waiting outside in the car,’ he’d announced, before scuttling to the hall cupboard, yanking out a suitcase he’d obviously prepared earlier, and legging it down the front path at a speed Trish hadn’t witnessed since the day Mott the Hoople concert tickets had gone on sale.

  Leaving her to do his dirty work.

  Despite the rampant despair and confusion surging through her - plus the overwhelming urge to burrow under the duvet and remain there for the next two decades – Trish had made a valiant attempt to rally, cobbling together some words she hoped made sense, and attempting to break the news to Amber as calmly and rationally as possible: ‘These things happen’; ‘It wasn’t the end of the world’; She’d probably see more of her dad now than she had in the past; and He’d been working so hard lately, they might not even notice he’d gone.

  She’d been prepared for tears – holding back her own so they could indulge in a synchronised session. She been ready to hold her daughter until she sobbed herself dry. And she’d braced herself for some severe name-calling of Ian, the perpetrator. The one eventuality she hadn’t expected had been Amber’s burning fury and the crushing accusation: ‘This is all your fault’.

  And that had been that.

  The end of life as Trish had known it.

  Not only had her husband scuttled off, but her once perfect child, the apple of her eye, the one thing in life of which she could be proud, had sprouted horns, an attitude, and a chest encased in world-denouncing T-shirts.

  And while Amber’s relationship with her father, although frosty at the start, hadn’t taken long to thaw – due to Ian’s polished patter, bags of charm and bulging wallet - relations with Trish had shifted dramatically. They no longer enjoyed heart-to-hearts, fun baking sessions, and girly shopping trips. Now, Amber barked orders and Trish obeyed. An unpleasant state of affairs which, Trish knew, stemmed from her guilt. Her daughter’s mortifying indictment that she was responsible for the break-up, had scorched her like a branding iron.

  Having mentally dissected her relationship with her husband manifold times over the last ten months – with surgeon-like precision – Trish, however, had failed to reach the same conclusion. In her opinion, her and Ian’s sixteen-year conjugal bond had been a happy one. They’d met on a train – her travelling north to visit her parents, him en route to a boozy weekend in Newcastle with the lads. On Trish’s return from t,he buffet car, the conveyance had jolted to a halt, causing her and her cheese toastie to topple sideways – onto Ian. She’d been mortified, full of apologies. He’d been unfazed and ready with humour. They’d laughed. Chatted. Exchanged numbers. And met up again in London. Eighteen months later, the relationship going from strength to strength, Trish discovered she was pregnant and Ian asked her to marry him. Events thereafter included her becoming a mother, and him – in an impressively short time span – becoming a company director, hurtling up the rungs of the computer software company where he’d worked since graduating, at breakneck speed and with several hefty pay rises. With money no issue, and preferring a safer, cleaner, more rural environment to bring up their child, they’d moved from the capital to the adorable village of Cornfield in the Cotswolds – much to Trish’s delight. She’d always dreamed of living in a chocolate box village, one with a hotchpotch of individual properties, steeped in history and oozing quintessential Englishness. And in a house with windows either side of the door and a cherry tree in the garden. With Ian, that dream became reality, bringing with it not one, but three cherry trees, a pear tree, and half a dozen of the apple-bearing variety.

  ‘This is perfect,’ their friends had cooed. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are.’

  But, once again, Trish had. And, once again, she’d harboured the worrying presentiment that her luck wouldn’t last; that something would transpire to burst her perfect bubble.

  As, indeed, it had.

  In the perfumed – and now pregnant – form of Chloe.

  News of whose pregnancy Ian – in his usual cowardly way – had requested Trish break to Amber.

 
Depressingly aware the announcement would go down like a ton of mouldy King Edwards, Trish wondered if, this time, she might just not bother.

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  Copyright

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2017

  Copyright © Alice Ross 2017

  Alice Ross asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  E-book Edition © July 2017 ISBN: 978-0-00-824493-4