‘. . . Laura? Assuming this is actually you – then hello, this is Adam – the not-banker guy whose doughnut you commandeered . . . half-commandeered. I’m sorry the restaurant tried to poison you last night, I take full responsibility. To make up for it I was wondering: are you free for breakfast on Thursday? My shifts are a nightmare but I could do seven thirty a.m. till eight thirty a.m. And also you still owe me for that doughnut . . . So yes, ring me back before I call in the bailiffs. And even if you can’t find the money, say yes anyway.’
God, I feel bad about the dim sum. And I absolutely will pay for the doughnut; I’ll buy him breakfast, give him the fiver, make some sort of amends, and be done with it. Yes, that’s exactly what I’ll do.
Kiki’s written half a page of notes already: ‘Head chef’s name is Adam Bayley. He’s just been poached from The Little Green House, before that he was at Ducasse, then in San Sebastian and Tokyo, and before that at Jonn’s in Chicago.’
‘Did you not get his inside leg measurement, Kiki?’
‘I wouldn’t say no. Presumably he’s the fit one, not the one who looks like Meatloaf?’
On her screen is a photo of Adam with Zavragin. The shot looks ten years old, and in it Jonn is presenting Adam with a diploma. Adam must have been mid twenties – his hair cut short, making him look even younger. He has those eyes that are a combination of utter sweetness and naughtiness.
‘He looks like one of those sensitive ones who’d be proper filthy when you got down to it,’ she says. Thinking back to the way he consumed that doughnut yesterday, she’s probably right: healthy appetite.
‘Hang on, did you say The Greenhouse, in Mayfair?’
She checks her notes. ‘Little Green House, in Bray, senior sous.’
That’ll be why I don’t know his name. But two years ago I had an outstanding bacon millefeuille there, and a fall-off-the-bone lamb dish with cumin. He probably cooked it.
Well, it’s a start. At least he’s telling the truth about his job, though it would be better if he had been lying. But even so, I think the blond chef was running the show last Thursday. Maybe Adam had the night off? But that would never happen in an opening month. Maybe he was in another part of the restaurant? Perhaps they have a prep kitchen . . .? Weird, though.
I text him back: Breakfast good, my treat. Where suits?
He replies instantly: If you’re OK to come to the Square Mile do you fancy The Haute? Great views, and then I’ll have more time with you.
I love The Haute. I gave them 18 stars when they opened. That’s how you should do a restaurant in a skyscraper – at the top of the building, not in the basement.
But 7.30 a.m., east, up at 6 a.m. – do I like him that much? With all the potential stress involved if he starts talking about work and I have to pretend to know nothing about anything? It would just be so much easier to walk away from this situation right now, much smarter not to get involved.
See you at 7.30 a.m. Laura.
7
‘Can I have some more toast, please?’ I say to Sophie, who is standing in her kitchen, hands deep in a giant mixing bowl, fingers smothered in sticky cherry marzipan.
‘Help yourself,’ she says, poking her elbow towards the toaster. ‘Could you pass the icing sugar first?’
I leap off the stool and grab the pack. ‘Do you want a slice?’
‘I’m having dinner with my sister-in-law in an hour,’ she says, rubbing flour off her watch face with her cheek. ‘Shit. In forty-five minutes, in fact.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Urgh, Shelliii’s a nightmare, no way I’m doing raw food, so we’ve settled on a Japanese place near her hotel.’
‘When is she flying back?’
‘Sunday, but she’s got a casting with some director here on Saturday, so I’ve said I’ll look after Elektra rather than leave her with a random babysitter for the seventh day in a row.’
‘Why didn’t they just leave her with your brother or your mum in California?’
‘Er, because Shelliii thinks Elektra is an accessory, not a small human – and a beautiful three year old makes Shelliii look even more lithe for forty than her Chloé jeans do.’
‘She’s very . . . driven, your sister-in-law, isn’t she?’
‘Do you mean she’s a selfish bitch?’
‘Well, no . . .’
‘This is the woman who had an early Caesarean so she could guarantee Elektra was a Leo!’
‘What’s the icing for?’
‘This?’ she says, holding her hands up like a sugar-coated Lady Macbeth. ‘Actually, can you give my nose a quick scratch?’
I gently tickle the side of her nostril and she laughs. ‘This,’ she says, nodding back down at the bowl, ‘is prototype Battenberg, going horribly pear-shaped. It was meant to be cherry and white chocolate squares . . .’
‘OMG! Can I say OMG?’
‘It might have been OMG but I think I scaled up wrong. Yesterday the marzipan was too crumbly and now I’ve overdone the corn syrup. Try,’ she says, pointing her elbow at a spoon on the counter.
I scrape a sludge of cerise paste out of the bowl and give it a brief smell before I taste it. ‘It’s a bit sweet for me, Soph.’
She shakes her head in irritation. ‘I thought so – but customers do seem to prefer sweeter. Fine, I’d better start getting ready.’ She tips her head towards the taps for me to turn on.
‘Do you want me to wash up while you change?’
‘No, thanks, I’ve got to fix it when I get home Anyway, you didn’t even get round to telling me when you’re seeing the chef again?’
‘Breakfast, Thursday!’ I say, feeling a little thrill of delight at the thought.
‘Now that is OMG!’ she says, clapping her hands together, gently prising them apart and licking her index finger, then wrinkling her nose. ‘Too sweet.’
‘And you really think Roger’s right about me not saying anything?’
She gives it a final thought. ‘Yeah. I mean it’s such early days. It feels like a big deal right now because you’ve only just written the review – but it’ll seem less of a big deal next week.’
‘Maybe . . .’
‘Seriously, if I’d told Will when I first started seeing him half of the awful things going on inside my brain, he’d have run for the hills.’
‘Like what?’
‘Well – like the fact I wasn’t over James at that point, at all. I still thought about him every day. And I used to feel guilty – like I should tell Will everything because that’s what you’re supposed to do in relationships – but I’m so glad I didn’t because it wouldn’t have given us a chance to get off the ground in the first place.’
‘Yeah,’ I say, kissing her goodbye. ‘You’re probably right.’
8
To: Laura
From: Sandra
Subject: Punctuality
It’s after 10.00 a.m. and you are not at your desk; not sure where you are, Laura?? Need to see you ASAP.
Five of us sit on the first floor: Roger has his own office, my desk is right outside, and Sandra, Azeem and Jonesy, our commercial director, sit in the open-plan area in front of me. Whenever anyone wants to speak to anyone else they get up and walk the four seconds to their colleague’s desk – because, you know, you could throw a rubber and not fail to hit each other’s heads. You could throw a rubber pretty hard. Azeem occasionally corresponds via email, but only when the room is deathly silent and he’s trying to make me laugh. (Sandra’s head shot from her LinkedIn profile, Photoshopped on to various Fraggles’ bodies.)
Sandra’s the only one who tries to communicate exclusively via email. Partly it’s because she doesn’t like face-to-face interaction with anyone lower down the food chain; partly it’s because she likes a full paper trail of everything she’s done, but mostly it’s because she likes a full paper trail of everything anyone else has failed to do.
Not sure where you are, Laura?? Is that true, Sandra?? It’s 10.03 a.m. She s
aw me arrive at 9.50 a.m., smile, say hello and walk into Roger’s office for a catch-up. Then she saw me head for the kitchen, where she’ll have heard me boil the kettle (Guinness Book of Records: world’s noisiest kettle.) Perhaps I was in there for three minutes instead of two because I have Adam on my mind – but it was three, tops. I swear she’s keeping a file of every time I’ve spent more than three minutes in the toilet. One day I’ll bribe IT to break into Sandra’s neo-Stasi folders, delete them all and replace her GOOD, BETTER, BEST screensaver with a photo of a cheery Guatemalan coffee farmer.
She’s looking at me now, so I head to her desk armed with my notepad and a fake smile.
‘You wanted to see me, Sandra?’
She starts typing, then looks up as if surprised to see me standing there. ‘You’re back.’
I smile so hard, if the skin on my face was a balloon, right now it would pop.
‘What’s this I hear about you changing the flat plan for April’s issue?’
‘Roger’s signed it off.’
‘Yes?’ she says, staring up at me with a frown. ‘And?’
‘Sorry, are you asking me a question?’
‘No, I am not. I’m telling you that I oversee all flat plan changes,’ she says. ‘Unless someone’s changed my job description overnight.’ She smiles thinly.
‘Right. OK, Sandra.’
‘And Roger’s told Dean to increase The Dish from a page to a DPS?’
Clearly you know that or you wouldn’t be asking me . . .
‘Firstly, that change should have been briefed directly to me,’ she says.
‘Roger told me he’d take care of it.’
‘And secondly if you take up the whole DPS, I have to move that fractional ad.’
‘OK . . .’
‘And there’s a hugely sensitive leader on Damian Bechdel in April requiring everyone’s full focus, the last thing we need to worry about this month is the fluffy stuff . . .’
Would she call Henry’s film reviews fluffy stuff to his face?
‘Must you hog all that space?’
My knee-jerk reaction would be to say I’m not cutting a word: Roger’s approved it, Roger loves it, Roger’s my boss – and if she has a problem, speak to him. But one of my New Year’s resolutions is not to rise to provocation: count to ten before answering back. It’s not working out too well with Jess, but she’s been my sister a while. Sandra is a different beast.
‘Have you read the piece, Sandra?’
‘Is there a reason I need to?’
Only interest. Or politeness. Or so you know what you’re talking about . . . Take a breath . . .
‘It’s a list of ninety-nine problems with the restaurant, because they were playing the Jay-Z song, “99 Problems”, while we were in the queue for two hours, so I wrote the ninety-nine problems with the restaurant. For example, instead of a “bitch” being a problem I said the kitchen’s a problem . . . I just thought as an idea it had a certain . . . symmetry . . .’
‘A symmetry?’ she says, crossing her arms tightly and turning to an imaginary twin Sandra next to her with a face that says, Get her with her symmetry! Who does she think she is? Jumped-up yet over-qualified secretary! Only got that job because her mother used to work with Roger. Shall we destroy her, invisible twin-Sandra? Yeah, come on, let’s! We haven’t tasted blood for hours!
‘You do realise,’ she says, breathing out forcefully like she’s taking a lung-capacity test, ‘that you are fundamentally writing about beans on toast, not reporting on Bosnia?’
Nice alliteration Sandra! But the Bosnian conflict ended in the mid nineties, so if you are going to be a cow, try to be a more contemporary one.
Count to ten . . .
And another thing! Did you know, Jonathan Gold of the LA Times won a Pulitzer Prize for his restaurant column? A Pulitzer! – only the most prestigious prize in American writing! Fluffy stuff . . .
Count to twenty . . .
‘Sandra, there were so many things wrong, I wanted to demonstrate the scale. But how about once legal and the subs have had a look, I’ll see if I can shorten it?’
She sighs. ‘And what’s the central image on this spread?’
Why does she have to be like this? It’s not my fault Fergus Kaye was ‘let go of’ . . . It’s entirely Fergus’s fault. If anything Roger kept him on well past his sell-by date. It’s not like I asked Roger to give me the gig; I told him to find a proper journalist with a food background; he told me he had faith in my voice. I said I’d never even heard of an amuse-gueule till I read Fergus’s column; Roger said buy a copy of Larousse. I asked whether a coffee palate was really transferable and then he told me to shut up and stop being a wimp. He took a massive chance on me and I try not to disappoint him. There’s no point trying not to disappoint Sandra; her gall bladder secretes serotonin instead of bile.
‘The central spread, Sandra . . . Hmm . . . It’s either a photo of a deconstructed eel dish in brown butter . . . Or a photo of a gold-plated toilet with large breasts, my memory fails me . . . Hang on a minute . . . it’s the gold toilet with breasts!’
‘A toilet with breasts, that’s the tone you want for your piece?’
‘Yep.’ As you know, because Roger will have briefed you on photography in your editorial catch-up. ‘That’s exactly the tone I want.’ I smile as convincingly as a Miss World runner-up.
‘Let me know about that word count,’ she says, and resumes typing so ferociously I’m surprised her keyboard doesn’t snap.
I’m really going to have to practise this counting to ten thing.
To: Laura
From: Azeem
Subject: URGENT BUSINESS
WTF did you do to piss The Laminator off this early in the morning, borrow her stapler?
To: Azeem
From: Laura
Subject: re: URGENT BUSINESS
Don’t pretend you weren’t eavesdropping, and don’t make me bitch about her on email, I’m scared I’ll accidentally send it to her . . . She’s looking at me RIGHT NOW, am sure she knows I’m typing about her.
To: Laura
From: Azeem
Subject: Picture attached
Meanwhile, check out this Troll doll!! Look familiar? The hair is the exact same shade of pink, do you think it’s actually a photo of Sandra when she was a baby?
To: Azeem
From: Laura
Subject: re: Picture attached
A striking likeness – but for one obvious thing: this Troll doll is clearly smiling. Now stop it! I have important things on my To Do list!
Not strictly true. Still, it’s publication week so I busy myself looking through March’s issue. The leader is an in-depth feature on the Glaswegian Mafia. There’s another feature on gay marriage. Our European correspondent has written a comedic analysis on which country spoils its cats the most, and then there’s travel and reviews: film, arts, books and food.
While the other writers have headshots at the top of their columns, my byline has a picture of a knife being sharpened. (When I won Best Newcomer at the FWA three years ago and Roger went on stage to pick up the award, I admit I was a bit gutted – Dad would have loved a photo for the mantelpiece. Sandra had drunkenly leant across the table and whispered: ‘Hard to blow your own trumpet when there’s a silencer in it . . .’ It’s the same sentiment Jess has but Sandra means the opposite. Sandra’s delighted I don’t get credit in my real name but my ego is girl-sized, not Fergus-sized; I can think of little worse than being in the papers myself.)
March’s issue only went on sale yesterday but the Twitterverse will have picked up on something already. Ah yes, no surprises, straight to the kittens . . .
@minkowki: Brilliant article on spoilt Euro cats in #TheVoice – reminds me of Cat Cafés
@MissKittyBotbot: Tokyo Cat Cafés #furryamazeballs!
@Goatlover: Check out Tokyo Owl Cafés – #Harrypotter
Tokyo Cat Cafés, let’s have a look what that’s about . . . Oh my goodness, how
extremely Japanese. Ah, but look at this adorable fluffy cat hiding from another cat, in a paper bag! This café’s website has headshots of all the cats waiting to meet you! Look at little Birt! He looks like he’s just been wearing a bowler hat! I send a link to Dad and Jess: even she’ll find it funny. Maybe I should suggest to Fabrizio he introduce some guest cats for customers to stroke; might give him a stroke . . .
I flick briefly to my own column. There’s my review of a New Mexican restaurant located in an old ironmonger’s shop – Kiki came up with the headline ‘Albuquirky’. Also my review of Trovese in Kensington, ferociously over-priced (£23 for Penne Arrabbiata?) And there’s my piece on Pop-Ups: I’ve questioned whether we’re seeing novelty over substance: last summer a pop-up Mac ’n’ Cheese place on the rooftop of a luxury clothing store on Bond Street received gushing coverage in the press but the pasta had been as soft and grey as autumn/winter’s cashmere.
That’s the thing about food in London: it’s become super-fashionable: posh burgers, trendy chickens, exposed filament lighting and Mayfair basements posing as Brooklyn bodegas. Some restaurants seem to have forgotten a simple fact: eating out should start with good food.
No doubt someone will get the hump over my piece – Lord knows there are more important things in this world to get annoyed about. But guaranteed, once an opinion is printed, people kick off. And nowadays they do it online, globally, in a heartbeat. It’s only ever words, twenty-six letters, just in different orders. Words.
9
I’d forgotten how nervous I feel when I go on a date with a man I actually fancy. Last night I couldn’t sleep and when I wake at 5 a.m. there’s a tense throbbing in my stomach. Why on earth did I agree to a 7.30 a.m. date? I have dots for eyes at this time in the morning. At least when I met Adam on Sunday, I had a gin-and-tonic-meets-fury rosy glow to my cheeks – but today I look like a ghost. A dead ghost. Well OK then – a ghost.
Outfit . . . This blue and white polka dot dress is lovely! Short sleeves though . . . I open the curtains to peek outside. The sky is still black and it’s that changeable time of year – one day icy, the next almost springlike so you never know where you stand. What the hell – I’m sweating with nerves anyway, I’ll be fine after a coffee.
The Dish Page 7