by Laura Kemp
‘Do you know something? I’m sick of hearing you banging on about Mikey. It’s all you talk about.’
‘I can’t believe this,’ Vicky says, standing up, struggling to comprehend how Kat can justify her treachery. ‘You’ve just humiliated me and yourself and you’re blaming me for it!’
‘You’ve made me feel second best the entire time. Like you wish Mikey had been here not me.’
‘When did I ever say that? You’re warped, you are. Is that why you tried to snog Conor? To get me back?’ The realization that Kat has been silently seething all this time, for days, weeks, months even, is like a slap on the face.
Kat lifts her chin defiantly.
‘Oh my God, that’s it isn’t it? You’re jealous. That is so twisted… I can’t even begin to…’ Vicky stares at her open-mouthed. She thought she knew Kat inside out, that they were best mates. But this changes everything.
Vicky begins to back off, frightened by where they go from here: even if they can find a way through this, their friendship will never be the same. She doesn’t care about leaving Kat now, she can go to hell. Vicky marches off, sickened by Kat’s viciousness. She steps between bottles and fag ends, then her stomach recoils when she sees a syringe. These people are disgusting, fucking over the locals, who have to put up with this self-indulgent shit. No wonder Kat loves it. Vicky stomps on, up the beach, not looking behind her.
That’s what it takes for Kat to come to. She’s by her side now, pulling at Vicky’s arm with cold sticky fingers, trying to bring her to a standstill.
‘Just leave me alone.’ Vicky bellows it into her face. Her outburst is like taking a peg out of a grenade: her body begins to judder as the venom from Kat’s violence spreads within.
Kat begins to wail and she drops to her knees. Her hands are covering her eyes and there’s snot coming out between her fingers. When she comes up for air, her mascara is smudged all over her cheeks and she’s grimacing, desperate. As if she’s in a horror film.
‘I’m… sorry… Vicky,’ she says in shaky gulps. Her lips are misshapen, grotesque. ‘I don’t know what’s happening to me…’
Vicky is trying to catch her breath. She wants to go for her, tell her it’s always about her, that she’s an insecure cow. But she’s shocked by this falling apart before her.
How did they get this far together and Vicky didn’t notice it was brewing? She’s stung by the realization that Kat has been struggling the whole time. That’s why she’s been swinging from one emotion to the other. She’s been quietly cracking up.
‘I’m sorry,’ Kat says, over and over, falling into the sand.
The adrenalin subsides and Vicky feels heavy with tiredness. A strip of light bleaches the horizon.
‘I should never have come. I’m a fraud, I thought I could do this, but I can’t. I’ve hated everything about it.’
She’s crumbling and Vicky feels helpless.
‘I’m a monster,’ Kat says, looking pleadingly into Vicky’s eyes. ‘Help me.’
The anger has gone now: Vicky begins to feel pity instead. So she gets down beside her, takes her in her arms and tells her they’ll sort it out.
‘It’s been so easy for you,’ Kat says, her head tucked under Vicky’s chin. ‘Like, you just loved it from day one. I never thought I’d be like this. I thought I’d be the one who flourished. But I hate it: the cockroaches, the constant moving around, the anxiety about getting food poisoning or getting lost or the expectation to have the best time. I’ve realized I need routine, not this…’
‘That’s why you’ve been getting wrecked,’ Vicky says.
‘Yes and I’ve bottled it up, I’ve been so stupid. I haven’t failed before…’ She sounds weak, childlike. Vicky wonders how long it’ll be before Kat leaves her. For this is the end of their journey, there’s only one way forward for Kat and that’s going home.
‘You don’t have to stay, you know,’ Vicky says, realizing that she isn’t ready to go back yet. She’ll be fine by herself. She’ll be scared, but she will be okay.
But Kat hasn’t heard her. ‘You’ve blossomed. I’ve been so envious of you, the way you’ve just got on with it.’
Vicky is knocked for six: jealous? Of her? When Kat has everything going for her.
‘But why?’
‘I dunno. I’ve always felt not good enough. Even with you and Mikey. Like, this was supposed to be our thing, but I’ve felt like you’ve just wanted Mikey here instead of me.’
‘That’s not true, no way,’ Vicky says. But she understands the feeling of ‘otherness’, of not being included. ‘Look, we’ve had some great times…’ She quickly raids her memory to prove it. ‘Ayres Rock was ace, wasn’t it? And we had a ball in Buenos Aires. ‘I do miss Mikey, madly, of course I do. But I’ve never wished you weren’t here. Apart from that thing with Conor.’
She shakes Kat to make her see that last bit was a joke.
‘Oh, don’t,’ Kat says, ‘I feel terrible. I’m so sorry.’
Vicky thinks back to how she must’ve sounded, bringing up Mikey at moments when Kat wanted it to be special just for them.
‘I’m sorry too for making you feel bad about Mikey. I do talk about him a lot, don’t I?’
Kat sits up then and gives her a sad smile. ‘Don’t go mad…’ she says, which makes Vicky clench her stomach muscles. What is she going to say next? She can’t cope with any more drama right now. ‘…but I wonder if you’re in love with Mikey, just a tiny bit.’
Vicky’s heart stops. ‘What?’
‘I’m just putting it out there, that’s all. No one compares to him.’
Her heart starts beating again. Very fast.
‘That’s crap!’ Vicky says, ‘He’s just… Mikey. I don’t see him like that.’ But she hears her head and heart whisper in unison that there was that second when she lay beside him on her mum and dad’s lawn, wondering… She shakes it away and then tries to pull Kat up to standing. It’s getting late or early or whatever - it's time to sleep. The music is coming down like the people save for the odd casualty raving into the dawn.
‘No, let’s watch the sun come up,’ Kat says, tugging her down. ‘It’s going to be a beautiful one.’
They sit in silence for a while admiring the wispy streaks of orange and pink and blue. Vicky senses this will be their last shared moment for a while.
‘It’s weird, coming all this way to find out stuff,’ Kat says.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, we’ve come so many thousands of miles but what we want most of all is back home.’
Vicky goes to challenge her. In spite of all the arguments, she’s had an amazing, eye-opener of a time. Yet how many emails has she sent to Mikey, asking him to visit?
As the sun crowns where the sky meets the sea, she wonders if Kat might just be right.
Chapter Ten
V
Cowbridge
‘Right. Bollocks to it. That's enough. I’m closing up,’ Pierre said, turning the open sign on the door of The Big Cheese.
‘Right you are,’ Vee called from the till and began to cash up. It was a typically rainy April Saturday afternoon, their last customer had come in an hour ago and the pair of them had already cleaned everything that didn't move. ‘Anything you want me to do in particular because I’ve done the fridges, coffee machine, floors and—’
‘We’re having a team meeting,’ he declared, clapping his hands together and rubbing them furiously.
In the five days since she’d started working for him, she’d found out Pierre was even more of a funny old bean than she’d thought.
He served her coffee and croissants every morning, insisting she sat down to eat, while he got the shop ready for the breakfast rush. There was a magnetic weather map on the wall on which he diligently stuck up the day’s forecast. A basket of single-stem roses would arrive just before opening, which he’d hand out to ladies and gents with their brown paper packages of food and drink. And he’d make deliveries to local o
ffices and businesses on his strange custom-built trike and trailer rather than via the chiller van parked out the back.
And now, even though there was just two of them, he was calling them a team. But she was comfy with it all.
‘I hope it’s Brie-f,’ she said, waiting for a reaction which didn’t come. ‘Geddit?’ she asked, as he cleared the tables of sugar bowls.
Pierre completely ignored her attempt at a joke. ‘You require training.’
‘Oh, give me a chance! I’ve not been here a week! I promise you, I will get… feta.’ She tittered aloud as she counted the day’s takings. The protracted silence made her look up.
He had crossed his arms and was examining her with curiosity. ‘You’ve done very well this week. Very well indeed. You’re excellent with the customers, punctual. Meticulous with hygiene. Enthusiastic. Willing to learn. In fact, you have a thirst for knowledge. And, unlike my bastard of a brother, you do not pinch the stock.’
Vee beamed and self-consciously patted her hairnet with her latex-gloved hands. Finally, after weeks of despair, it was all starting to come together. Less and less, she thought of Jez and she hardly thought of Mikey at all. Life was on the up! And it was all thanks to Kate who’d helped her out, and Pierre, who’d taken her on during a one-minute interview once he’d found out her catering background.
‘But,’ he boomed, ‘you are not giving the cheese enough respect.’
She chuckled and sighed, he really was hilarious. And a bit scary. Mum and Dad had worried she might be a bit bored in a deli, but somehow this bizarre man’s devotion to his trade, not to mention his quirkiness, turned it into a twinkly Aladdin’s cave of treasures and belly laughs. It also helped that Pierre was astonishingly attractive although clearly she wasn’t interested: with his thick shiny brown curls and permatan, he was definitely the result of good posh breeding. He was bound to be part of some Beautiful People set with his symmetrical chiselled features: his wide green eyes were exotic and mysterious, his Romanesque nose posed above perfect red lips, which sat above a nut-cracking jawline. The dimple in his chin looked as if it had been thumbed by God himself. Yes, all in all, Vee was very content in her job.
‘I am telling you the exactitude of the matter,’ he said sternly, which stopped Vee in her tracks. The comfiness she’d felt from the second he put her behind the counter drained away as she realized he was being serious.
‘You’re too rough with the cheese. It’s understandable, a very common error among beginners, but I need you to think of every piece of cheese you handle as the last dodo’s egg on earth.’
Vee nodded slowly at first, bemused by his obsessive words. But then when she remembered his distress after she’d dropped a wheel of some French variety on the floor on her first day, she started to get it.
‘Be tender, reverent, humble, deferential,’ he implored.
And then he tore off his black Big Cheese T-shirt and stood there topless, apparently unaware that undressing in public, in a deli, in front of your new employee wasn’t the done thing. With his leather apron around his waist, he looked like he was in one of those saucy charity calendars. Vee was unsure what was going on: why did he have to strip down to make his point? There were worse ways of being given a lesson, she supposed, feeling all of a dither.
His body was magnificent: sculpted strong shoulders presented a clean, hairless muscular chest, two ripe nipples and a torso so taut you could use it to grate parmesan. Gulping, she tried to concentrate on his face. Because she kind of fancied him in a she-could-appreciate-his-hotness way. That didn’t mean she wanted him to do an Orlando Bloom and get it all out though.
‘The cheese we sell is artisan,’ he said, holding his thumbs and fingers together, oblivious to Vee’s cheeks, which were boiling out of embarrassment and awe at his physique, ‘hand-made using the traditional craftsmanship of skilled cheesemakers. They are complex in taste, aged for textural characteristics, a product of intense chemistry. A change in the quality of grass eaten by the cow or goat or donkey can ruin everything. It is a delicate process, dating back five thousand years.’
She jumped as he leapt to the door leading to the storeroom and produced a starched white lab coat, which he threw on with aplomb. It ruined her view somewhat but at least Vee would be able to concentrate on his actual words a bit more. Then he got a pair of industrial goggles and rested them on top of his head.
‘Cheesemakers know the precise amounts and types of ingredients used. It is a science,’ he said, which explained the outfit. ‘But it is also an art. Not…’ he said, thumping the counter, ‘that the world recognizes it. A sommelier is the term used for an expert in wine, there is a formal qualification, for heaven’s sake. But while it is just as critical to pair cheese with other foods or to keep it at exact temperatures, there is no such equivalent term or training. It is a scandal.’
He stared at her and she realized he was waiting for her to agree. So she did, vigorously.
‘Which is why we must serve cheese to the highest standards, to show our customers that we are not a supermarket and we do not deal with blocks of cheddar from a mass-produced mechanical process.’
He was right! She’d noticed how limp and processed the cheese was at home compared to Pierre’s practically still-breathing produce. His face lit up when he saw the light bulb go on in her eyes.
‘You understand?’ he asked, heavy breathing with excitement.
Yes! Yes, she did. ‘Yes! Yes, I do,’ she breathed back, almost as entranced by his passion as she was by his torso.
‘We, you and me, Vee, we are connoisseurs. We,’ he sang, ‘know our Bleu de Severac from our Pule.’
Vee panicked. ‘Oh God, I don’t, Pierre. What are they?’
‘This is what today’s training will teach you. Bleu de Severac, from ewe’s milk from the Midi-Pyrénées, creamy, tangy, sublime, increasingly rare due to European Union bacteriological correctness. Pule is the world’s most expensive cheese made from the milk of Balkan donkeys, fetching a thousand euros a kilogram.’
‘Right, okay. But we haven’t got them… have we?’ What if they had and she was about to be sacked for her ignorance, for crimes against cheese?
‘Non, my budding maître fromager. But… come with me…’
It was as if she was hypnotized: she followed him wordlessly into the back room where he rattled around in a bottom cupboard and pulled out half-full bottles of red then white wine from the fridge, which he claimed was making a clicky noise and, with a sigh and a glint in his eyes, he’d have to get that electrician in back again. Then he nipped into the deli and brought in a tray of goodies and invited Vee to sit at the table.
‘And now, we taste…’ he said, pouring out two glasses. ‘I am going to teach you how to pair wine and cheese, to pay homage, to love cheese tender. Then you can pass it onto our beloved and noble clientele.’
An hour later, Vee knew that Shiraz went with asiago, sparkling accompanied Havarti and dessert and port coupled up nicely with blues. And she was as pickled as an onion thanks to Pierre’s generous sloshing.
‘Right,’ he said, finishing his glass and wiping his mouth with gusto, ‘would you be able to drive?’
‘What? Now? Hardly! I’m going to have to get the bus.’
‘No, no, no,’ he said, shaking his head, as if she’d said something completely preposterous. ‘A week Friday. I have a delivery coming from France. They drop off in London then head back. I’d go but I can’t drive. My bastard of a brother used to take care of that. You can take the van. Refrigerated, sat nav. A joy to drive, apparently. But I never learned. We were driven around in embassy limos when we lived in London and I liked cycling so…’ He gave a Gallic shrug and then a British nod.
‘Yes, of course, that’ll be good, a day out.’ She was pleased that he’d thought she was trustworthy enough to get behind the wheel. And she understood he was putting her in a position of responsibility.
‘Marvellous,’ he said, putting the money away in the
safe, switching off the lights then giving her a set of keys. ‘I think you have real promise.’
‘Aw, I’m so touched!’ she said, heartened by his gesture.
As she locked up, she realized he was still dressed up.
‘You not getting changed then?’ she asked. ‘Out of your lab coat thing?’
‘It’s for a fancy dress party. Doctors and nurses. I’m going as a surgeon,’ he said as if she was thick. ‘Fancy coming?’ he said. ‘Unless you’re washing your hair, that is?’
Then his face went shy as if he was bashful because it sounded like he was asking her on a date.
‘Actually, I am! But not like that. My Mum’s friend, a hairdresser, is coming round to sort out this mess,’ she said, pointing at her hair. And the truth was, while she saw he was attractive, there was no spark between them – he was her boss and too out there for her. ‘Otherwise, I’d have loved to. Right, I think this is my bus coming now so—’
‘Bus?’ he roared, his eyes aflame. ‘I won’t hear of it. You’re Team Fromage now. I’ll drop you home in a cab. I’m going into Cardiff. The taxi rank is just up here.’
‘That’s so nice, thank you,’ Vee said, her heart running not just from keeping up with his giant stride but from the simple acts of kindness that she had never expected to find here, in the place she now called home.
Chapter Eleven
K
Roath, Cardiff
The jaunty theme tune of The Archers taunted Kate as she sat at the gleaming marble breakfast bar at her parents’ house.
Over-bright and forceful, the music perfectly summed up her mother’s masquerade, who was humming along while she made coffee on her top-of-the-range machine. The omnibus edition of the serial was always on here of a Sunday morning; it was an essential box to be ticked on Mum’s keeping up appearances checklist. Soaps on the TV were ‘common’, but this saga of country life was acceptable because it was on Radio Four. In Pam’s world, in this well-to-do suburb of Cardiff, it was the perfect subject for small talk, along with tennis club gossip and the downturn of Marks and Spencer’s ladies’ wear.