One of the things that had always made Melville’s stand out in Trudy’s mind was its enticing display of pastries. They were displayed on an old-fashioned sweet trolley that was constantly being paraded around the room. The desserts looked attractive, each on a silver pedestal, sitting on a lace doily. Trudy found herself staring wistfully at meringues, tiramisus, Pavlovas and a wealth of other tempting choices.
While Trudy had been trying to regain her composure, Bill had ordered a pair of steaks.
‘Perhaps I didn’t want a steak?’ Trudy suggested.
‘Perhaps you didn’t,’ Bill agreed. His tone was amicable and his smile was broad, in contrast to the stiffness of his words. ‘But, since you’re due for a very severe punishment from me, I think you should be thankful for whatever I decide to put in front of you.’
She swallowed. The inner muscles of her sex had clutched and clenched when he said ‘punishment’. She wondered what he had in mind. She hoped it would involve some form of restraint. Knowing that she couldn’t ask him if he was going to tie her up, she asked, ‘Why am I due for a punishment, Mr Hart?’
He waved the question aside and opened his mobile. There were pictures from the previous night’s awards ceremony. She was surprised to see he had taken photographs of a handful of celebrities including two cricketers, a rugby player and two actresses. It looked like Harvey had caught photographs of Bill climbing on to the stage to receive his award.
‘You obviously had a fun night,’ she told him.
Bill was pointing at the cricketer. ‘That man’s been a hero of mine since I were nowt but a lad,’ he explained. ‘He’s one of the county’s most capped batsmen and I can’t tell you how exciting it was to shake his hand.’
‘And the rugby players?’
‘Huddersfield. Forwards,’ he said. From the reverent way he mentioned the team and their positions, Trudy guessed the answer would mean a lot to anyone who followed rugby. To her the two men just looked like very broad-shouldered sportsmen with broken noses and black eyes.
She studied him in silence and wanted to ask again, ‘Why am I due for a punishment, Mr Hart?’ More importantly, she wanted to know if the punishment would be severe enough to make her cry out in shock and pain. When Bill was delivering discipline he managed to chastise and excite her in such equal measures that she found the whole experience too stimulating to ignore. She didn’t dare ask the questions for fear that he would answer honestly.
‘The next time I’m invited I’ll take you with me,’ he promised.
‘Who’ll look after Boui-Boui?’
‘We might have to close it for the night.’
She blinked, amazed that he had even suggested such a thing. Bill was so committed to the success of his restaurant that she didn’t think he would ever close for a night merely to attend an awards ceremony. It was hard to think of a more romantic gesture.
A waitress came with their steaks.
They fell silent until she had left them to enjoy their meal.
Trudy couldn’t contain her question any longer. ‘Why am I due for a punishment, Mr Hart?’
He grinned. ‘You’re looking forward to being punished, aren’t you?’
She tried to give a nonchalant shrug, as though she wasn’t bothered either way. It was impossible to make the gesture look properly insouciant. ‘I always look forward to our time together, Mr Hart,’ she replied carefully.
‘If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you sometimes go out of your way to deliberately earn a punishment.’
She sliced herself a portion of the steak and chewed to cover her grin. Once she’d swallowed she said, ‘That might be true sometimes. But not on this occasion.’
He looked set to reply and then, glancing at something just beyond her range of vision, stopped himself. Trudy followed his glance and saw the sweet trolley was being wheeled in their direction by a tall waiter in purple shirt and black pants.
She fell dutifully silent and watched the desserts being taken past.
Aside from the usual range of panna cotta, sweet roulades, tortes and chocolate marquise she was taken by the sight of a cherry muffin. Like all the other desserts, the cherry muffin stood alone on a pedestal. This was in a scarlet paper case, the golden sponge having risen slightly above the upper rim of the paper. In the centre of the sponge, half-baked into the muffin, sat a dark morello cherry. The stem was still attached.
Trudy knew that was what she wanted for her dessert and she mentioned as much to the waiter when he came closer. He smiled his approval and made a note. When he had gone Trudy waited a beat before repeating her question for Bill.
‘What makes you think I’m deliberately trying to earn a punishment?’
He fixed her with a solemn frown. ‘What’s Donny’s game?’
Donny? She cringed inwardly and knew they should have discussed her former friend before. Cursing herself for not having said something, she nodded understanding.
‘Donny wants a third of Sweet Temptation.’
‘A third? What the chuff for?’
‘He claims he was there when we first started the company.’
‘My father was at the Cavern in ’57 when the Beatles first performed live as the Quarrymen. That doesn’t mean I’m entitled to a share of Paul McCartney’s album profits.’
Trudy considered this as she ate more of her steak. ‘I can see his point to some extent. Charlotte, Donny and myself all came up with the idea for Sweet Temptation together. It was going to be a group endeavour and, in some ways, we have shut him out.’
‘Do you want to give him a third of the company?’
‘Of course not. He had you put in prison. He used Charlotte in a really bad way. And he tried to push me out of the company.’
‘Then we need to stop him,’ Bill decided. ‘This sort of bullying is persecution.’
‘Harvey says to leave it for today. He seems to think the story will die down.’
‘Harvey’s probably right. But what about the next time Donny decides to try and cause embarrassment?’
Trudy said nothing. There was nothing to say.
‘And why didn’t you tell me that he was making threats again?’
There was steel in his voice when he asked the question. If she’d had any doubts before she heard that tone, Trudy knew now that this was why Bill believed she deserved to be punished.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I forgot.’
‘We promised there’d be no more secrets.’
‘I know. It wasn’t a secret. I just forgot.’
‘I’m going to punish you for this when we’re next alone.’
‘Punish me? How? What will you do?’
He leant over the table and whispered in her ear. His voice was a sultry balm against her lower lobe. She could feel the warmth of his breath tickling the nape of her neck as he shared a series of intimate ideas and delightfully depraved suggestions. He told her how he was going to undress her. He promised that he would redden the cheeks of her backside. He went on to say that she would be forced to bend over, exposing herself to him, while he used the strap of his leather belt to make her remember that they didn’t keep secrets from each other.
Trudy moaned softly at the prospect.
Bill wasn’t finished.
He kept his mouth close to her ear as he explained that he planned to punish her backside until she couldn’t take any more, and then he was going to work on the sensitive flesh of her breasts. He claimed to have bought a pair of nipple clamps that he was going to attach. Then he’d make her wear them while he took her from behind, spanking her backside in rhythm as he rode her to a climax.
‘That’s how I’m going to punish you,’ he told her.
Trudy nodded breathlessly. ‘When can we do that?’
‘As soon as you’ve finished your radio broadcast,’ he promised.
She wanted to groan with frustration. Admittedly, Bill’s words had helped her forget her worries about the impending ra
dio show. But now she didn’t want to waste an afternoon sitting in a dull radio studio when there was the possibility of being with Bill and suffering the delightful punishment of his wrath.
‘As soon as you’ve finished your radio broadcast,’ he said again, ‘I’ll be outside here waiting to take you home.’
Hearing the words, Trudy knew it was going to be bliss.
Chapter 17
‘Here in the studio today, we have the incredibly talented chef, entrepreneur and all round goddess of the kitchen, Miss Trudy McLaughlin.’
Trudy laughed at ‘goddess of the kitchen’. She was confident the smile was still in her voice when she said hello to Kevin, the presenter, and thanked him for welcoming her into the studio. A moment later she realised her voice had been broadcast to a ridiculously large number of people. The radio station boasted a decent audience share. One of the producers had told her that a quiet afternoon show garnered around six thousand listeners.
Her mouth went dry.
Her chest felt tight.
She didn’t dare imagine what people would make of her squeaky, trembling voice coming through the speakers of their radio.
It wasn’t easy to feel comfortable in the studio.
With glass windows on either side, it was akin to being placed in a goldfish bowl. On one side of the studio the producer and her production team were watching. They occasionally made gestures of encouragement or other sign-language communications. A lot of the time they seemed to be talking amongst themselves and shifting the sliders on substantial soundboards. When they did look up, Trudy felt as though she was under the most intense scrutiny.
The window on the other side of the studio faced the outside world. Trudy could see people walking up and down the street, now and again pausing to peer in, and generally making her feel watched and conspicuous.
From this seat in the studio Trudy had watched Bill climb into the Audi with Daryl. He had wanted to stay and be with her while she did her first broadcast but she had told him she didn’t need the extra pressure. She felt sure his presence would make her nervous and, being uncharacteristically bossy, she had ushered him away and told him to call Daryl for a lift.
She supposed it was her other arguments that swayed him. Someone needed to do the usual preparations for Boui-Boui this evening. As she was committed to doing the radio show, Trudy figured Bill was the ideal person to manage that chore. She was pleased, before parting, that he took her in his embrace, kissed the cup of her ear and said, ‘When we’re alone together this afternoon, I’ll make you regret giving me commands.’
The thought of those words still made her inner muscles quiver with unsated need.
The air in the studio seemed to bristle with potential importance. It was, she thought, as though every utterance she might make could be weighty or significant or magnificent. She could sense a dense silence lurking between every sound. She assumed that the quality of the silence had something to do with the acoustics of the reinforced glass and the soundproof walls.
It wasn’t a particularly pleasant phenomenon. To Trudy it seemed sinister and unnatural.
She was hesitant about speaking, initially fearing that she might say something stupid or embarrassing when she began talking into one of the huge, hanging microphones. She worried that she might lisp every sibilant and that she would ‘um’ and ‘er’ and ‘ah’ her way through conversations. She dreaded the idea that she might simply start babbling nonsensical phrases. Trudy had expressed this final doubt to Kevin, who simply laughed and said that his listeners expected nonsensical babble from him so there was no need to fret that people wouldn’t enjoy that when it happened.
It was another comment that helped put her at her ease.
‘Trudy is here today to talk about all things baking,’ Kevin explained. ‘She’s going to share a recipe with us this afternoon and she’ll be here for a phone-in later if you have any cookery concerns or culinary questions.’
Before Kevin had gone into the studio he had sat down to have a coffee with Trudy and the show’s producer. They had seen the news stories about the Sweet Temptation bitches and both of them wanted her to promise that she wouldn’t use the platform of the radio show to refute the claims.
Remembering Harvey’s warning of that morning, Trudy assured them that she wouldn’t be mentioning the claims, even though they were all lies.
‘Trudy’s here to answer all your culinary-related questions and more,’ Kevin promised his listeners. He caught Trudy’s eye and added, ‘The only thing that Trudy won’t be talking about is the scurrilous stories that were in this morning’s paper.’ He grinned and loaded a track before saying, ‘However, just in case anyone’s wondering what we think about that story here in the studio, I’ll give you a clue with this next song. This is “Paper Lies” from Marillion.’
Trudy smiled.
As the music played she was told to speak into the microphone so a technician could check her sound level. She counted numbers and managed a line or two of poetry before receiving a thumbs-up.
There were three computer monitors in front of Kevin. Two were touch screen and one was mouse operated. He used them all with a casual ease to load music and jingles and consult various news and internet resources. There was a modest control deck of sliders and dials in front of him which he occasionally touched and tweaked. When the Marillion song had finished Trudy found her nerves had abated and she told herself it would be easy to chat with him and discuss recipes and baking.
‘Trudy has been good enough to bring in a box of her muffins,’ Kevin told his audience. ‘And I’m not joking when I tell you that this is the best thing I’ve ever had in my mouth.’
Trudy laughed and thanked him.
The producer knocked on the studio window and waved a disapproving finger.
‘Apparently,’ the presenter said, ‘I can’t say that this is the best thing I’ve ever had in my mouth. Our producer thinks the comment is a little too risqué.’
Trudy giggled.
The producer looked stern but amused as the banter turned raunchier.
‘What should I say?’ Kevin asked. ‘I enjoyed gobbling on these?’
The producer’s eyes widened in disbelief.
‘They’re firm and succulent and super-satisfying?’ Kevin tried.
Trudy had to place a hand over her mouth to suppress her laughter. It didn’t help that the producer looked genuinely distraught. For some reason her outrage made Kevin’s cheeky double entendres seem all the more daring.
Kevin offered a pair of Trudy’s muffins to any listeners able to call into the studio and then he went straight into Bruce Springsteen singing ‘Hungry Heart’. When a couple did call in to take Kevin up on his offer, he got them into the studio and had them confirm, live on air, that the muffins were the best thing they’d ever had in their mouths.
The producer was rolling her eyes in good-humoured disbelief.
Trudy wondered if listeners were finding this exchange as entertaining as she did. Kevin was naturally witty and he played the role of a comically injured clown with meticulous understanding of his audience. He also seemed to genuinely like the mixture of muffins she’d brought into the studio.
The whole experience was proving to be a lot more fun than she’d expected.
It wasn’t until the phone-in that she encountered a problem.
‘Our first caller has a question about baking,’ Kevin explained. The information had been fed through to him from the producer who was screening the calls. Kevin pressed a button on the console before him and said, ‘This gentleman is called John Smith and he’s got a question about oven timings.’
‘Hi,’ Trudy began cheerfully. ‘How may I help you today, John?’
‘My name’s not John,’ a familiar voice said. ‘My name’s Donny. And my question isn’t really about oven timings. I want to know if it’s true, like the papers say this morning, that you used to live with a man and a woman?’
Kevin and the produce
r exchanged confused glances.
Kevin was making a throat-cutting gesture.
The producer was glaring at Trudy, as though waiting for her decision. Trudy could read from both their expressions that this was not who the caller had said he was, nor was this the subject the caller had said he wanted to discuss. She wondered how the radio team usually coped with prank calls like this one. And she wondered what Donny thought he was doing, trying to embarrass her with this latest trick.
As the silence grew more intense, she understood that she had to act swiftly. She held up a hand to show Kevin and the producer that she was willing to take the call. Taking a deep breath before responding, she hoped Donny could hear that she was completely untroubled by the way he had inveigled his way onto the show.
‘Hello, Donny,’ she said with forced cheerfulness. ‘Thanks for your call. I used to have a friend called Donny so it’s nice to talk with someone who has that name.’
Kevin was studying her curiously.
Trudy kept her expression blank.
‘And in answer to your question,’ she went on. ‘The answer is yes. It’s true that I used to live with two fellow students. It wasn’t quite as exciting as the newspaper story suggested. But I’m sure you know how some people exaggerate stories for the benefit of the newspapers. Why are you interested, Donny?’
The line went dead.
‘Are you still there, Donny?’ Kevin asked cheerfully.
The producer, sitting behind a panel of glass, nodded approval at the way Trudy had responded to the question.
Everyone in the production room seemed to silently sigh with relief.
‘It seems Donny didn’t really want to talk with our celebrity chef and kitchen goddess,’ Kevin declared theatrically. ‘I think you frightened him off with the honesty of your answer, Trudy.’
She laughed. It was the worst call she could have had on the show. Now that was behind her she felt like she could rise to any challenge.
‘So let’s go over to the next caller,’ Kevin continued. ‘This is Betty and she has a question about serving main courses.’
Turning Up the Heat Page 15