The Secret Cooking Club

by Laurel Remington

  A MESSAGE FROM CHICKEN HOUSE

  I love cooking – actually, it’s often more fun than eating what I make (or maybe that’s just me)! All that chopping, mixing, seasoning and tasting – there’s nothing better than getting together with friends and family to make a glorious concoction for us all to enjoy. And that’s what Laurel Remington’s delicious tale is all about: our downtrodden heroine gradually discovers the perfect ingredients for friendship and family – through cooking! Laurel certainly knows the recipe for a great story – and our own ‘writers’ bake-off judges at the Times/ Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition agreed, as they made this yummy novel the winner . . .

  Bon appétit!

  BARRY CUNNINGHAM

  Publisher

  Chicken House

  Contents

  1 The Worst Day of the Week

  2 The New Girl

  3 A Bad Day for Somebody

  4 A Noise in the Night

  5 Rosemary’s Kitchen

  6 The Little Recipe Book

  7 The House Next Door

  8 A Taste of Cinnamon

  9 The Scent of Childhood

  10 A Dollop of Tears

  11 A Spoonful of Secrets

  12 A Dash of Friendship

  13 A Nameless Gift

  14 The Big Laugh-in

  15 Mrs Simpson

  16 Banoffee

  17 Secret Samples

  18 In the Hall . . .

  19 The Secret Cooking Club Strikes Again

  20 The Betrayal

  21 Buttercream

  22 The New Secret Cooking Club

  23 Too Good to be True

  24 Stick to the Ribs

  25 Ketchup Sky

  26 Maple Syrup

  27 Brainstorming

  28 An Idea

  29 The Plan in Action

  30 The First Post

  31 Mum’s Little Helper

  32 An Unwanted Visitor

  33 The Warning

  34 Hiding Out

  35 Finding the Magic

  36 Friends and Followers

  37 The Showdown

  38 Hundreds and Thousands

  39 The Bake-A-Thon

  40 The Secret Ingredient

  41 Epilogue

  Copyright

  THE WORST DAY OF THE WEEK

  The ketchup bottle farts and the last dregs splutter on to my sister’s toast. My stomach twists, but to be honest, I was already feeling sick. It’s Friday morning, 7:50 a.m.

  Ten minutes to go.

  ‘Is there any more, Scarlett?’ Kelsie wipes her chin with the sleeve of her school shirt, leaving a sticky red streak on the cuff.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘We’re all out and Mum forgot to order more. But you’ve got enough.’ I point to the lake of goop that’s already smeared all over the toast – on top of the butter. Disgusting. Kelsie’s almost seven, but she still eats everything with ketchup like it’s some kind of fifth food group.

  I push my soggy Weetabix around the bowl with the spoon, but I can’t eat. My classmates are probably bouncing off walls now that it’s almost the weekend; texting their friends; packing for sleepovers; making cool plans. But not me. Right now, I wish a hole would open up in the centre of our kitchen and swallow me up.

  Because at 8:00 a.m. Mum’s blog post goes live.

  My eyes dart frantically around the kitchen. Maybe I could stop it by shutting off the power, or ‘accidentally’ dropping Mum’s laptop in the bath, or becoming an amazing hacker and starting a virus that targets the computers of her thousands of followers – all in the next seven minutes. But I know it’s too late. The new post is already on the server, hovering in cyberspace. Ready to pop into existence and broadcast the embarrassing details of my life to the world.

  What will it be this week? I think back to everything I’ve done. Not much, since I quit all my clubs and activities at the end of last term. That put a stop to the posts about Top ten reasons to bin your kid’s violin, and Tap-dancing . . . did I give birth to three left feet?

  But even so, there’s all the things I haven’t done – like keeping my room tidy and making sure Kelsie washes her hands after she uses the toilet. Two weeks ago, Mum did a ‘funny’ little quiz about it: Which has more germs – my daughter’s room or a public loo? That one generated over two hundred comments from her followers, and got her five new advertisers for cleaning products on the site. That night, she ordered in a pizza so we could ‘celebrate’. Kelsie ate my share (with ketchup) and I sat in my room wondering if it’s ever going to end.

  I give up on breakfast and take my bowl to the sink. The water runs upstairs and I can hear Mum humming. She stayed up late putting the finishing touches on her post, and the fact that she’s up early must mean it packs a punch. ‘Hurry up,’ I say to Kelsie. ‘I don’t want to be late.’ Not that I ever want to show my face at school again, but better that than see Mum and pretend we’re some kind of normal family.

  ‘But I need more ketchup.’ Kelsie pouts down at her plate. She scrapes her soggy bread and licks the ketchup off the knife.

  ‘Look, I’ll get some at the shop after school, OK? Now go and put your shoes on.’

  I grab her plate and take it to the bin. On top of the overflowing rubbish are a few pieces of balled-up paper. I fish one out and uncrumple it. It’s a printout of Mum’s new post that went live – I check my watch – one minute ago. I look at the title: Bye-bye, Oxford, my daughter has no interests.

  The words blur on the page as my eyes swim with tears.

  THE NEW GIRL

  I walk Kelsie to the gate of her school. A few of the mums whisper to each other when they see me. They’ve all read the new post. When I walk up the hill to my school, a boy from the rugby team pulls a face at me. ‘Bye-bye, Oxford.’ He fakes a sob and a little wave. The two boys he’s walking with start laughing. ‘Hey, tell your mum we want another post about your knickers,’ one of them shouts.

  ‘How about one on your knickers,’ I say, rolling my eyes. Because what else can I do other than play along? The day the post went up about the fact I still wore Disney Princess knickers was literally the most embarrassing of my life. Until the post Did something die in that PE bag? went up. And the one on our talk about the ‘birds and the bees’. My face is burning as I hurry off to the classroom. I know that everyone at school has already read the latest post. There’s nowhere to hide.

  My first class is English. I take a seat at a table at the back, too flustered to realize that Gretchen is sitting right in front of me. She turns halfway round in her seat.

  ‘Hi, Scarlett, you OK?’ She sounds friendly, but I know it’s all an act. Gretchen was one of the first girls to try to become ‘new best friends’ with me when Mum’s blog got popular. Back then, I’d thought it was cool that so many people wanted to be my NBF. But then I overheard Gretchen and Alison whispering together. Gretchen was saying how she wished her mum would write a blog about her. It would be so much more interesting than my mum’s blog because she was running for student PTA rep, whereas I was the ‘most boring girl in the world’. I’d cleared my throat so she’d known I was there. ‘Oh hi, Scarlett!’ – she’d recovered like the PTA princess she is. ‘How was your weekend?’

  ‘Fine,’ I’d said then, and now I just shrug and say nothing. I don’t ask how she is, because (a) I don’t care, and (b) I don’t want to hear about the student council, her new lavender bedroom suite, her horse-riding lessons, or any of the other things that Gretchen does, because there’s no one broadcasting her bad bits to the world.

  Alison doesn’t even bother to be friendly. She ignores me, rummaging in her bag for her lip gloss. Alison’s beautiful – tall and blonde with perfect skin and big green ey
es – and what’s more, she knows it. If she was Mum’s daughter, there would be no bad bits to broadcast. If I was her, I wouldn’t have the time of day for people like me either.

  Our form teacher, Ms Carver, comes into the room and starts writing on the whiteboard. The bell rings, and just then someone runs past me up the aisle to an empty seat at the front of the room. It’s Nick Farr, the cutest boy in the whole world. All the girls in my year think so.

  ‘Good of you to join us, Mr Farr,’ Ms Carver says, raising her eyebrows.

  ‘My pleasure,’ Nick replies. He turns round in his seat and winks at Alison. My insides droop like a wilting flower. Not that I want a boyfriend yet or anything, but never in a million years will boys like Nick notice that I even exist. And under the circumstances, that’s probably a good thing. I’d die if anyone found out I liked him and it ended up in Mum’s blog.

  Because that’s another thing I have to thank Gretchen for. I ignored the ‘most boring girl in the world’ thing, and for a while, set about trying to make her like me. I worked on her PTA rep campaign, joined a few of the clubs she was in, helped her with her grammar homework, and tried really hard to be her friend.

  But around then, Mum started blogging about more personal stuff – like that I bought a deodorant with my pocket money, that I still sleep with my old teddy, and that I was ‘trying to get in with the popular crowd’. Things I’d never told Mum, because I’d stopped talking to her by then. Someone was leaking stuff. I had my suspicions, so I told Gretchen some made-up things – just stupid stuff about wanting to dye my hair pink and get my nose pierced. Some of it showed up in Mum’s blog. I was mortified – but not very surprised. I confronted Mum but she managed to twist things around. She said that ‘one of my friends was worried about me, and if I ever needed to talk she was there to listen . . .’ blah, blah, blah (and that maybe when I turned thirteen next year I could get my ears pierced). Whatever. So that’s when I quit all the clubs and activities, and stopped hanging out with Gretchen and Alison. I mean, why bother?

  Ms Carver begins the lesson. My mind churns with thoughts about Mum, and how I wish that I could start a new life in a new town where no one knows me. Then maybe I could go back to being like I was before – a fun girl with lots of friends, eager to try new things, and laugh at myself when I made mistakes. Was I really that girl only a little over two years ago? I can barely remember a time when I didn’t have this gnawing shame in the pit of my stomach.

  I stare straight ahead at the clock on the wall, when all of a sudden I’m jarred back to reality by something Ms Carver is saying: ‘. . . and really, it takes a lot more than good marks to get into a top university.’ I swallow hard. Of course – my teacher’s read it too.

  Just then, the door to the classroom opens. Mrs Franklin, the head teacher, walks in, followed by a girl I haven’t seen before. She’s wearing the same boring old uniform as the rest of us, but there’s something about her that makes me look twice. For one thing, she’s really pretty – with black, shiny hair, a roundish face and bow-shaped lips that seem to naturally curve into a smile. But more than that, she looks like she might be nice. She glances at me for a second and our eyes meet.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ Mrs Franklin says. ‘This is Violet Sanders. She’s new today and she’ll be joining you.’

  The head teacher gestures to the one empty seat – two away from mine – and the girl sits down. She takes out a notebook and pencil from her bag, biting her lip like she’s a little nervous.

  ‘Fine. Welcome, Violet.’ Ms Carver shuffles her papers and goes back to the lesson.

  The new girl stares straight ahead. I glance over at her. Violet. I feel like we’ve got something in common because our names are both colours. But whereas my name seems all wrong – Scarlett is a name for a vibrant, sexy, confident girl; not one with dishwater blonde hair, a body that’s all elbows and knees, and who’d rather hide in a bag than draw attention to herself – Violet’s name seems to suit her. Even her eyes seem to be a bluish-purply colour. It crosses my mind that maybe we might be friends – if she doesn’t know who I am, it would be like a clean slate. But just then, Gretchen looks at Violet over her shoulder and smiles. The breath fizzles out of my chest. That’s it, then – Violet will be claimed by the popular crowd, my secret will be revealed, and that will be that.

  And that’s exactly what happens. After class, Gretchen and Alison walk Violet out of the room shoulder to shoulder like they’ve been best friends for ever. They eat lunch at the same table in the canteen. I watch them from across the room. Gretchen shows her something on her phone, and points at me. Violet glances over and I look away. Nick comes up to their table and sits down and they all start chatting and laughing together.

  At that point, I can’t take it any more. I get up, throw the remains of my tasteless beans and mystery-meat sausages in the bin, and hang about in the loos until the next class begins.

  A BAD DAY FOR SOMEBODY

  By the end of the day, everyone at school has lost interest in the blog post, and I’m off the hook for another week. I walk home slowly, too exhausted to be embarrassed any more. When I see Mum, I’ll pretend that everything’s fine – because if I don’t, she’ll just blog about my ‘attitude’, and how I don’t appreciate the difficulties she faces.

  Which is just so wrong. I kick hard at a rock in my path. I’m proud of Mum and what she’s achieved. In less than three years, she’s well on her way to becoming a really successful ‘mummy blogger’. Each week, her followers log in to read her posts about the trials and tribulations of raising two children as a single mother after her husband ran off with his personal trainer. We rarely ever see Dad nowadays, and Mum refused to take any money off him from the moment he left – not even for me and Kelsie. She got on with her blog in order to support us. Which she’s done.

  Her proudest moment, at least as far as her followers are concerned, was when Dad came limping back a year or so ago, asking for a share of her blog money. She told him where to go in a vlog that went viral.

  Now she writes her weekly post, and in between, she has a lot of guest bloggers posting to her site, and a ‘Rant Page’ for anyone to post on if they want to complain about their kids, husbands or partners, friends, work, mother-in-laws – whatever. She’s got lots of advertisers, and is even working on a deal with Boots to make a ‘Mum’s Survival Kit’ that they’ll sell in all their stores.

  So it’s cool that she’s an online celebrity, and while we’re not rich or anything, she’s made enough money for us to move into a three-bedroom house where I get my own room and don’t have to share with my sister. But there’s one big problem. Her trials and tribulations, rants and things she has to ‘survive’ mostly involve me, and sometimes Kelsie. I know she loves us, but sometimes I think she really must hate being a mum.

  I walk slower and slower the closer I get to home. The thought of another evening spent watching Tracy Beaker with Kelsie makes me feel like a rag doll with the stuffing knocked out. I wonder what Violet is doing tonight. Probably spending a nice evening with her parents; telling them about her first day at school and the ‘cool’ new friends she’s made; then settling down to play a board game, or practise piano, or learn Chinese or something—

  As I turn down my road, my heart leaps to my throat. An ambulance with flashing lights is parked at the end of the terrace, right in front of our house. Two paramedics are loading a stretcher inside. Mum once told me that ‘it’s a bad day for somebody’ whenever there’s an ambulance, or the police come round.

  I start to run, my school bag banging up and down on my back. Is it Mum? Kelsie? As the blue and white lights wink on and off, all the mean thoughts I’ve ever had about them flash before my eyes. I wish I could unthink them.

  The paramedic shuts the ambulance door. I realize that they’re actually in front of the house next door. An old woman called Mrs Simpson lives there. I’ve never met her, and I only know her name because a delivery man who was looking
for her house came to ours by mistake. Her house is kind of spooky – the curtains are always closed and I’ve never seen a light on. When we moved here a few months ago, Mum talked about inviting her over for tea, but surprise, surprise, it never happened.

  I walk up to the paramedic. ‘Is Mrs Simpson OK?’

  ‘She’ll be fine. She had a bit of a fall,’ he says. ‘Got a bang on the head. She managed to dial 999, otherwise . . .’ He shakes his head. ‘You a relative?’

  ‘No. I don’t really know her.’

  He climbs into the passenger seat. ‘OK, well – she’s in good hands now; we’ll take it from here.’

  The ambulance pulls away and the siren begins to wail. I stand alone on the pavement, watching until it disappears round the corner. In the other houses in the road, there’s not even a curtain twitching in a downstairs window. No one seems to have noticed anything.

  Inside our house, Kelsie’s watching TV in the living room. I plunk down my bag and go to the kitchen. The door to Mum’s office – the ‘Mum Cave’ – is open.

  ‘Scarlett? Is that you?’ she calls out.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. Anger simmers in my chest. Mum has so many thousands of online ‘friends’, but has never paid the slightest bit of attention to the old lady next door. Not that I have either. And now it might be too late.

  ‘Guess what?’ Mum rushes out of her office like a slightly rumpled whirlwind. She enfolds me in a hug. For a second I almost give in to the comforting feeling and hug her back. But all too soon, the other stuff comes rushing back. I pull away.

  ‘What?’ I say warily.

  ‘I’m in Boots! They signed the contract today. They’re going to stock the survival kit in two hundred stores to start with. Isn’t that brilliant?’

  ‘Um, yeah.’

  ‘Here, let me show you the prototype.’ She goes to the counter and picks up a little box printed with purple and pink camouflage. ‘We’ve got some hand lotion and sanitizer, a gel face mask, earplugs, lip balm, jellybeans, and a hollow chocolate egg with a Mum’s Survival Tip inside.’