The fifty-somethings began to walk back up the beach to the prom.
‘Lovely day,’ the woman said to John as they passed.
Not long after that, John turned for home. He was starting to feel hungry and there was a fish pie calling his name. By the time he got to the house, he was ready for it. He switched on the oven and laid the table for one. He got a beer out of the fridge to have with his lunch. He was probably over his weekly limit of alcohol units but he told himself it was medicinal. Besides, he was seventy. Any damage had been done already.
In forty-five minutes the fish pie was ready. It filled the kitchen with a smell of warmth and comfort. Sonia would have hated it but for John it brought back the cookery class and the camaraderie he was beginning to feel with Bella, Liz and Alex. He enjoyed hearing them chat and banter as they worked. He liked being around the happy energy of three younger people.
John helped himself to a large portion of the pie. He had a forkful before he got to the table. It was delicious.
Three mouthfuls later, John started at the sound of the telephone.
It was the landline in the hall that was ringing. The phone was still where it had been installed in the Eighties, back when people considered calls an intrusion so put it out of everyone’s way.
John had thought about having another socket fitted in the living room but like most people, he found that the landline hardly ever rang any more. Even people of his generation had abandoned the fixed phone for the mobile. Sonia had been a big fan of texting. She and her girlfriends were always sending each other little notes. So now, whenever the phone in the hall rang out, John automatically assumed the worst. Landlines were for cold calls and bad news only. They were for salesmen you didn’t want to speak to or old friends you hadn’t seen in decades ringing to give you the date and time of yet another funeral.
Or …
Every Friday afternoon, at three o’clock precisely, the fixed line in John’s house would receive a call.
John tried not to be in when it happened but that day he was caught out, sitting at the kitchen table with his lunch. The insistent ringing cut through the sound of the programme on the radio. John turned the radio off as if to confirm that he wasn’t imagining it. Or as if, by being silent himself, he could hide in some audible sense from the person on the other end of the line.
He wasn’t going to answer it.
They weren’t really calling for him anyway, John told himself. They wanted Sonia. Of course they did.
The phone rang ten times before the answering machine kicked in. John covered his ears as the message played out in Sonia’s voice. He hadn’t got round to changing it. Didn’t want to. It was as though erasing Sonia’s message would be another step closer to erasing her from his mind.
‘You’re through to John and Sonia. We can’t answer your call right now. Please leave a message.’
The caller did as he was told.
John kept his ears covered until he was sure that it was finished. Then he walked to the answering machine and deleted the message without listening to it first. The caller could have nothing to say that John wanted to hear.
Chapter Eighteen
After that week’s class, Bella had at least managed to make it as far as home with her fish pie. She got it into the oven and onto the table and she was taking her first bite when the phone rang. She was tempted to pretend she hadn’t heard it. She let the call go to voicemail the first time. But whoever it was that wanted her was not about to give up and move on to someone else. Bella reluctantly put down her fork and picked up the next call. It was the DSCC again.
‘I hope I’m not interrupting your dinner,’ said the call centre worker.
‘No,’ said Bella. ‘Of course not.’
Five minutes later she was on her way to Newbay police station again.
‘Jimmy,’ she greeted her favourite client with resignation. ‘It’s you. What a surprise.’
‘We must stop meeting like this,’ he agreed.
‘Let me guess. Shoplifting?’
‘Nope. Guess again.’
‘Breaking and entering.’
‘That’s not my style, Miss. You know that.’
‘TWOC?’
She meant car theft. Taking without consent.
‘Nope,’ Jimmy grinned.
‘An enormous banking fraud that will bring down HSBC and the entire global financial system?’ Bella made a shot in the dark.
‘You’ll never guess,’ said Sergeant Mellor.
‘Urinating on a policeman’s boots,’ said Jimmy, somewhat proudly.
‘Ah,’ said Bella. ‘That doesn’t sound good.’
‘I didn’t know they were a policeman’s boots,’ Jimmy began to lay out the mitigating circumstances. ‘I was on one side of a fence and he was on the other. I was having a pee when I saw these toecaps appear. I was thinking, hello, who’s this then? I turned towards them. I’d totally forgotten I was still peeing at the time.’
Bella did her best not to smile. Jimmy could always make a good anecdote out of his misdemeanours but she knew that this was going to be a particularly tough one.
‘What am I looking at?’ Jimmy asked. ‘Am I going down?’
‘Depends on the policeman,’ Bella admitted.
Sergeant Mellor brought Bella and Jimmy two cups of tea. Once again, she let her client have the only biscuit.
‘You’re trying to fatten me up,’ he said.
‘I don’t think you need to worry,’ said Bella.
Jimmy nodded in agreement. He was thin as a racing snake. ‘You know what,’ he said with his mouth full, ‘I finally worked out where I used to know you from.’
‘You used to know me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I have attended pretty much every time you’ve been arrested for the past five years.’
‘Before then. I mean when you were much younger. When you were still at school.’
‘You knew me then?’
‘Yeah. You went to the one with the blue uniform, didn’t you? The one with the blue and white striped shirts.’
‘The high school,’ Bella confirmed.
‘I know you from when you used to work in that café by the station on the weekends.’
‘The station café. My dad owned it.’
‘That was your dad?’
‘Yes. It was.’
‘Wow, Miss B. I had no idea. He’s a good bloke. Seriously. He always said that so long as we didn’t hang around bothering his customers all day, he would make sure we got whatever was left over when the café closed in the evening. And he was good to his word. Every night at seven o’clock on the dot, he’d drop by the bus shelter nearest the pier with a food parcel. There was always good stuff in it. Stuff we couldn’t believe he was throwing away.’
‘You have to,’ said Bella. ‘When you’ve got a café. You’ve got to stick to the rules about sell-by dates and storage.’
‘They served some great food at your dad’s place. I got quite a taste for pasta salad with sun-dried tomatoes.’
‘No wonder the café went bust,’ Bella said ruefully. While her father was making the rounds of the homeless, she would generally be at home doing schoolwork. She’d had no idea his generous gesture was such a regular thing.
‘Yeah. We were all gutted when he had to close down. He was a very generous man. What’s he doing now?’
‘He’s not with us any more,’ said Bella.
‘Oh, you’re kidding me?’
‘I wish I was. He died three years ago.’
‘Awww. Miss B. I’m really sorry. Was it sudden?’
‘Sort of,’ said Bella. It had seemed sudden at the time but in retrospect Bella knew her father had been fading away from the day the restaurant shut down. Still, she wasn’t sure she wanted to get any deeper into this conversation now. Not while she was on duty. Thinking about her father could only make her sad and it would hardly be professional to cry in front of a client.
Bella
’s dad was just in his early sixties when he had his heart attack. His parents – Bella’s Italian grandparents – had been active well into their eighties. But something happened when the café failed. Ugo seemed to shrink into himself. He aged ten years in a day. He didn’t even cook at home any more. After she moved out, whenever Bella went round she would find him in front of the television, shouting at the contestants on Deal Or No Deal, while Bella’s mother smoked and complained in the kitchen.
‘They say daughters always marry a man like their father but don’t you dare hook up with someone like your dad,’ Maria said. ‘When I met him, I had the world at my feet. I could have married anyone. If I hadn’t fallen for his charm, I could be living in the Villas by now.’
The Villas were in the smart part of town.
‘But you wouldn’t have me,’ Bella reminded her.
‘I’d have had another daughter,’ said Maria. ‘Who wouldn’t have needed to pluck her eyebrows.’
‘Mum!’
‘You know I don’t mean it,’ Maria would say. ‘You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. I just wish we’d been able to give you more. Give you a proper start in life.’
With that, Maria cast a sidelong glance at her husband in the kitchen. She still loved him, Bella was sure. She just wanted him to pull himself together. They had no idea he would never again be the man he once was.
‘Yeah,’ Jimmy mused. ‘It’s the worst, losing your dad. But you’re a lucky woman, having had a father like that in the first place. Aren’t too many gentlemen of that calibre around.’
‘No,’ Bella agreed. She certainly hadn’t come across many. Not that she’d had time to look.
‘But now I know he was your dad, I can see that he passed on his kindness to his daughter. What I like about you, Miss B, is that you never talk down to people like us. When you turn up at the station, you’re exactly the same as I imagine you are when some posh bloke turns up at your office, wanting you to sort out his will.’
Bella didn’t interrupt to tell Jimmy that wills were not her area of expertise.
‘Your dad always understood that everyone has the right to their dignity and I know that you understand that too.’
Bella nodded. She did believe that dignity was a human right. She only wished Ugo had hung on to his. He might have clung on to life.
‘Chip off the old block,’ Jimmy murmured.
‘Right then,’ said Sergeant Mellor, who was back with his own caffè latte. ‘Let’s get this party started.’
Chapter Nineteen
On the night they made the fish pie, Saskia told Liz she didn’t need a lift home from the NEWTS. Georgia’s mother would be bringing them both back. Liz shrugged. She was more than happy for Georgia’s mum to do the pick-up. In her fancy new Range Rover Evoque that wasn’t embarrassing like Liz’s ancient Volvo. Or Liz’s driving style. It didn’t seem to matter how Liz drove, Saskia declared it ‘ridiculous’. Liz was either going too fast or too slow.
‘You’re going to kill me!’ was Saskia’s response whenever Liz went over thirty-two miles an hour.
Or, at the other end of the spectrum, ‘You’re driving like a granny, Mum. The police are going to pull us over to check you haven’t had a stroke.’
That night, Liz was definitely driving like a granny. The fish pie she had made so carefully was the most precious cargo Liz had had in the car for a long while. She deliberated for quite some time as to how she might most safely transport it back to her house. The footwell was technically the safest place in the car. There would be nowhere for the pie to fall if she had to stop suddenly. But the footwell was also where Ted sat on his way to and from walks and Waggy Weight Loss. Liz still hadn’t had the car valeted since the vet visit that landed him in that club. She certainly hadn’t vacuumed the car herself.
So, she took the fish pie, wrapped in silver foil, her apron and an old towel she’d found in the boot, and put it on one of the passenger seats in the back. All that insulation and then the seat belt. It should be fine. Especially if she drove as her old driving instructor would have wanted her to. Smoothly, slowly, looking out for obstacles at least three cars ahead. Ready to apply the brake gently and not so hard that the pie would get whiplash.
Liz drove that Volvo like she was a funeral director with a full boot. Never going over twenty miles an hour, her back straight and her eyes constantly scanning the horizon for hazards. It only took her ten minutes longer than usual to get home.
Success. The pie was in one piece. Liz gave herself a virtual pat on the back. The pie smelled delicious too. She was sure that Saskia would want some when she caught a whiff of that crispy cheesy topping. Saskia had inherited many things from her father – her sharp blue eyes, her broad swimmer’s shoulders, her tendency towards pig-headedness – but thankfully she had not inherited his irrational hatred of one of the world’s best comfort foods.
Liz hummed a happy little tune as she lifted the pie out of the car and unwound the towel and the apron. She had her work bag slung over her right shoulder and her dainty handbag securely across her body but she balanced the pie on her left hand like a pro as she fished out her house keys.
Liz heard Ted whining on the inside of the door as she fumbled with the lock.
‘You can smell my pie,’ she said to him. ‘Well, you’re not having any. It isn’t on the Waggy Weight Loss diet sheet.’
Liz got the door open. Ted, desperate to find out what she was carrying, shot out through the gap. He barrelled straight into her legs. Liz tottered but managed, just about, to keep the pie upright and safe. ‘Whooah! Teddy!’ she said. ‘Calm down, boy.’
Ted ran back into the house ahead of her as he always did, as if to be certain the coast was clear for his beloved mistress to enter safely. Liz nudged the door a little wider with her toe. She stepped into the hall. She tipped her shoulder so that her heavy work bag landed safely on the chair where everyone dumped everything.
‘Fish pie, fish pie, for the apple of my eye,’ Liz composed a little ditty as she moved further into the house.
She kicked the front door shut with an impressive backwards manoeuvre. She took off her cross-body bag without disturbing the pie dish at all. She transferred the dish from her left hand to her right hand so she could take off her coat. She was a genius. A mistress of balance. She could have been a waitress in a Michelin-starred gaff no problem.
She walked into the kitchen, cleared a space on the counter one-handed, then somehow, impossibly, at the very last minute, when she was so nearly in the clear, she tripped. There was nothing to slip on. She couldn’t see what tripped her. She couldn’t feel it. But something had, she lost her poise, and the fish pie hit the floor. The ceramic dish broke in two. The silver foil could not contain its contents. Ted was upon it in a minute.
Liz merely stared at the mess, her hand still in the pie-carrying position.
‘No, Ted, no,’ she said uselessly, as Ted began a whirlwind clear-up mission. Liz pulled him off the pie as quickly as she could but he still got at least half of it down. And a good mouthful of the silver foil too. His poo would be glittering for weeks.
As Liz scraped the remains of the disaster into the pedal bin, Ted wagged his tail as if to say, ‘What’s for dessert?’
‘You’ve just had half a fish pie that was meant to serve four. What am I going to say at Waggy Weight Loss?’
‘What’s for supper?’ Saskia asked when she came in. ‘Can I smell fish pie? I like fish pie,’ she said.
‘Ted had your share,’ Liz told her.
‘What?’ Saskia went from nought to outrage in under a second. ‘But I’m not late. You told me to be home by half eight. It’s twenty-eight minutes past and you already gave my dinner to the dog? Honestly, Mum. That’s you all over. You can’t help overreacting. You’re crazy. I don’t even recognise the woman you’ve become. You’ve got all these weird rules and you wonder why Dad left you.’
Liz took a deep breath.
‘Ted had
both our shares because I accidentally dropped the pie on the floor when I was bringing it into the kitchen. Not because I had some kind of tantrum. But thank you for reminding me that it’s my fault your father left me for a twenty-four-year-old. In any case, I thought you were a vegetarian.’
Saskia saw the broken serving dish on the draining board.
‘Oh,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said Liz.
‘Sorry, Mum. I didn’t know. So, what are we having for supper?’ Saskia asked.
They would have had beans on toast for supper but Saskia reminded Liz that baked beans were full of sugar. So they just had the toast.
‘How was the youth group?’ Liz asked.
‘It was OK,’ said Saskia.
‘What is it you’re rehearsing anyway?’
‘Just a play.’
‘Just a play? Has it got a name?’
‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.’
‘Oh, we did that at school.’ Liz burst into a little snippet of song. Saskia winced. Embarrassing mum was at it again. ‘Can I come and see you in a performance?’
‘Sure. But I don’t know what nights I’m going to be doing yet. Under sixteens aren’t allowed to appear every night.’
‘But you’ll be sixteen by the time the play’s run starts,’ Liz reminded her.
‘Mm-hmmm,’ said Saskia.
‘Talking of which, we’ve got to make some plans for your birthday. It’s less than a month. I was thinking that we could perhaps go to a spa hotel for the weekend. Just you and me. We could have facials and massages and get our nails painted.’
‘Nail varnish is a really fast way to get toxic chemicals straight into your bloodstream,’ said Saskia.
‘OK. We won’t get our nails painted. Are facials still OK?’
‘What weekend are you thinking, Mum? The weekend of my actual birthday?’
The Worst Case Scenario Cookery Club Page 10