‘It’s no use. She won’t go on the grass,’ Mrs Coco insisted. ‘Not without her pushchair. There’s no point Nurse Van Niekerk shouting at me. I’ve tried everything I can to get Coco to change. She’s just so stubborn.’
‘Maybe … I’ve got an idea,’ said Liz. She put her hand into her pocket and opened it to reveal three illicit doggy treats. ‘Bribery. Saving the mental health of mothers since the beginning of time.’
Mrs Coco quickly snatched and secreted one of the snacks before Nurse Van Niekerk could see her. She crouched to give Coco a ‘good talking to’ when in reality she was just letting Coco get a whiff of the synthetic bacon-scented deliciousness that could be hers if she only played the game.
It worked. Coco took a tentative step onto the grass, following the treat hidden inside Mrs Coco’s hand. Progress was still painfully slow. The other dogs were already finishing their second circuit.
While they were on their third circuit, Dr Thomas appeared. He jogged – actually, he sprinted – right across the centre of the field to meet them.
‘Excellent work, everybody! This is how we keep our weight under control. Exercise in the open air. It’s easy and it’s free.’ He did some jumping jacks. ‘I’m sorry I’m joining you all a little late this morning. We had a kitten go into a seizure. All sorted now, though. She’s going to make a full recovery. I’m sure you understand where my priorities had to be.’
The assembled owners murmured their assent.
‘But now you have my full attention. Until the next crisis. So let’s just jog on back into the surgery, shall we, and do that Waggy Weigh-In?’
And then Dr Thomas did jog back with the ease and grace of movement that suggested he was no stranger to running and a couple of hundred metres was absolutely no big deal. Nurse Van Niekerk followed after him at a slightly less impressive pace. Though only slightly less impressive, Liz thought. And then came the Waggy Weight Losers, all of them secretly glad to be able to use their dreadfully lazy dogs as an excuse to walk more slowly.
‘I would be running like Dr Thomas but …’ Mr Hercules cast a look down at Hercules, the Scotch egg on four sticks.
The run may not have left Dr Thomas out of breath but it had left his hair out of place. He was still smoothing it back down when the Waggy Weight Losers trailed in. Liz wondered whether anyone had ever told him that he looked better when his hair wasn’t strictly slicked down in the manner of a Fifties’ civil servant in a BBC costume drama. Nurse Van Niekerk probably liked it like that.
‘OK. Take a seat,’ he said. ‘Or stay standing if you feel like it. The human body is built to stand. Did you know that? It’s sitting down that puts the strain upon our backs. We talk about taking the weight off our feet but we’re actually putting a great deal more pressure on our spines in a sitting position. It’s the same for your dogs. They were built to move. They like to move it, move it.’
Dr Thomas broke into an impression of the guy from Reel 2 Real, who’d sung the huge hit ‘I like To Move It’ back in the nineties. Or maybe he was channelling the singing lemur from Madagascar, which had been one of Saskia’s favourite films. Anyway, it was obviously a line Dr Thomas had trotted out before because Nurse Van Niekerk danced along with him. As did Mrs Coco, from the safety of her seat.
It was embarrassing. But also, supposed Liz, faintly endearing to see the vet making a tit of himself. He really was prepared to do anything for the animals.
‘Enough of my dad dancing,’ he said. ‘Let’s get these puppies weighed. In reverse order today.’
‘Oh no,’ said Mrs Coco to Liz. ‘Coco was so hoping to get it over with quickly.’
‘Twinkle,’ Nurse Van Niekerk called.
Twinkle stepped forward sheepishly. He was eating something he’d found on the floor. Could have been anything. Possibly rabbit droppings. He came in at two hundred and fifty grams more than he should.
‘Ted,’ said Nurse Van Niekerk. ‘Exactly the same weight as before. Which simply isn’t possible if you’ve been following the weight-loss plan and the exercise regime properly.’
‘Have you been following it, Mrs Ted?’ Dr Thomas looked Liz straight in the eye.
‘Mrs Chandler,’ said Liz.
Dr Thomas waved away that small consideration.
‘I don’t know why this is happening,’ Liz said. ‘I have been following the diet to the letter. Someone must be sabotaging my efforts.’
Nurse Van Niekerk raised an eyebrow.
‘Have you spoken about Ted’s condition with the other members of your family?’ Dr Thomas asked.
‘Of course.’
‘Has he escaped the garden this week? Might he be getting into somebody’s bins?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Then it’s a matter of stepping up the exercise. I hope you like to move it, Mrs Ted.’
Liz slunk back to her place.
The rest of the dogs were weighed and measured. Biscuit was up. Monty was down. Coco was down but only by a fraction. Dr Thomas chastised, consoled and cajoled. He reminded the owners that they were their dogs’ self-control. They were their animals’ conscience. It was no use pretending otherwise. They had to stick to the diet and set the walking times.
‘Make exercise a daily habit,’ said Dr Thomas. ‘Set your alarm for half an hour earlier in the morning and start every day with a stroll. You’ll feel better for it too.’
The owners tried to appear interested but Liz was sure all of them found the prospect as unappealing as she did. Get up at half six for a walk in the dark before work? No thanks.
Dr Thomas brought the session to a close with a few suggestions as to websites the WWLs might like to check out.
‘You’re not the first ones to fight this battle,’ he said. ‘And you won’t be the last. See you next week everybody.’
He left them with a salute. It was time to check on the kitten.
‘Thank you for helping me out today,’ said Mrs Coco as she and Liz walked out into the car park. ‘I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come up with that treat. Coco was really determined to stay put. I just wish I didn’t have to bribe her.’
‘Don’t beat yourself up about it,’ said Liz. ‘Every parent knows you have to choose your battles.’
Mrs Coco nodded sadly as she loaded Coco into her pushchair.
‘Mrs Ted, Mrs Coco,’ Dr Thomas caught up with them. ‘Next week I’d like to see you both making a little more progress. Perhaps Coco could even walk to the session,’ he added. ‘Remember, ladies. Dogs like to move it, move it.’
He boogied on by.
‘A-hole,’ Liz mouthed.
Mrs Coco giggled.
‘He means well, though,’ Mrs Coco said.
‘I suppose,’ Liz conceded.
‘And,’ Mrs Coco whispered, ‘he’s terribly good looking. Don’t you think he looks like Hugh Jackman?’
Liz agreed with that too but she wasn’t going to say so. Besides, good looking, as far as Liz was concerned, had a great deal to do with personality shining through. Dr Thomas had the personality of a sadistic PE teacher.
Still, Liz was in no particular hurry to get home from Waggy Weight Loss that day. She had nothing else planned for the rest of the weekend. Nothing but doing Saskia’s laundry. Funny how that never got done at Ian and Brittney’s house.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Liz loaded Ted into the car again and drove back home via the supermarket. On the way there, the manner in which Ted was nosing the passenger seat – he was sitting in the back that day – gave her an idea. He could still smell the fish pie. The fish pie she never got to taste, though Ted had obviously loved it. Oh, how she had been looking forward to tasting that dish. Maybe she should make another one? After all, no one said that she wasn’t to do any cooking whatsoever between classes. It would be good practice. A great idea to consolidate what she’d learned before Alex’s careful instructions got buried beneath all manner of daily thought crap.
Ye
s. She was going to make another fish pie.
Leaving Ted in the car with the window rolled down by a couple of inches, even though it was only twelve degrees outside, Liz headed into Sainsbury’s with intent. She was going to make this fish pie extra special. She was going to add some prawns. They’d made a very simple version in the class but Alex had suggested all sorts of ways they could jazz it up.
Liz gathered the things she always needed – dog biscuits, milk (two extra pints in case of white sauce disasters), a family size bar of Dairy Milk (the one treat she had never given Ted no matter how hard he pleaded) – then she went to the chilled fish shelves. Hmmm. The choice already made it harder than she’d expected. Did the base fish have to be cod? She couldn’t see any.
‘There’s more over here,’ said a voice behind her. She turned to see that she was being addressed by the man on the fresh fish counter. The man she’d been ignoring for at least the past seven years. Most people did ignore him. His fresh fish displays were very beautiful but while the whole fish, complete with eyes and tails, were compelling to look at, they were also slightly frightening if you didn’t know what to do with them. The good citizens of Newbay preferred their fish to come in fingers rather than with fins.
‘What are you looking for?’ the fishmonger asked. ‘I’ve got some great coley today. Or fresh anchovies? Look at these little fellas. All you have to do is make a bit of batter, drop them in the oil and seconds later …’ He mimed picking one up by the tail and eating it whole. ‘My favourite.’
‘I’m after something a bit, er, bigger,’ Liz said. ‘For a fish pie.’
‘Ah, can’t beat a bit of fish pie,’ said the fishmonger. ‘Then you’ll be wanting something like this.’ He pointed at the loin of some poor sea creature. Was that a cod?
‘Yes, please,’ said Liz. Would he take the scales off for her? She was just about to admit that she was a culinary novice when she sensed someone step up to the counter beside her.
‘Mrs Ted?’
Oh no. It was Dr Thomas. That man popped up like a blinking Hugh Jackman-shaped mushroom.
‘Dr Thomas,’ Liz nodded. ‘How nice to see you again. And so soon.’
‘Jerry,’ Dr Thomas greeted the fishmonger by his first name. They were obviously well acquainted.
‘Evan. Good to see you, my man. Got some special fish for you today. I was just telling, er, Mrs Ted, about the anchovies but she wants something bigger because she’s making a fish pie.’
‘Mmmm, my favourite,’ said Dr Thomas. Evan, as he was to the fishmonger.
‘She’s going to start with this,’ the fishmonger indicated the grey-scaled loin.
‘Excellent choice.’
‘I’ll just wrap it up.’
He started before Liz could protest about the scales. And the bones. Were there bones in it?
‘So you like to cook?’ Dr Thomas asked her.
‘I do,’ said Liz.
‘What will you be wanting to go with this?’ Jerry the fishmonger asked. ‘A few prawns?’
‘Got to have a few prawns,’ said Dr Thomas.
Liz watched helplessly as Jerry the fishmonger added six, complete with legs, heads and those whiskery bits, into a bag.
‘And you’ll want some of this …’
‘Oh yes,’ Dr Thomas agreed, as Jerry offered Liz the tentacle of an octopus.
‘Octopus? Of course,’ Liz said gamely. ‘And I prepare that as usual, do I?’
‘Depends what you mean by usual,’ said Jerry.
Liz had the feeling he was messing with her but she did her best not to let on.
‘I always add some mussels to mine,’ said Dr Thomas.
‘Absolutely,’ said Jerry. ‘And a handful of vongole too.’
‘Would be rude not to,’ was Dr Thomas’s opinion.
The last thing Liz had intended to do was add shellfish. Wasn’t that a sure fire way for an amateur cook to get into trouble?
‘This fish pie of yours is going to be magnificent,’ Dr Thomas told Liz. ‘What time do you want us to come round?’
‘Ha ha,’ Liz laughed. Unconvincingly.
Suddenly Jerry the fishmonger was busy bagging up half the ocean when all Liz had wanted was a nice clean fillet of cod and directions to the frozen aisle where the ready-peeled prawns were kept. By the time Jerry had finished, with Dr Thomas’s enthusiastic encouragement, Liz was the proud owner of a bag of seafood that would cost her twenty quid. Twenty quid! She could have bought at least five ready-made pies for that and she hadn’t even started on the cheese and potato topping.
‘Thanks,’ she said weakly. ‘Gosh, this is going to be yummy.’
‘It certainly is,’ said Dr Thomas. ‘You’ve made me think I should cook a fish pie tonight as well.’
‘Can’t go wrong,’ said Jerry.
You bloody well can, thought Liz.
‘Oh, Mrs Ted, before you go …’ Dr Thomas called her back.
Liz paused.
‘It’s not mentioned on the Waggy Weight Loss diet sheet but fish is just as good for dogs as it can be for us humans. Quite a few commercial dog foods are actually fish-based.’
‘Are they really?’ Liz half sighed.
‘Yes. But even better is if you take a simple piece of white fish or salmon and steam, bake or grill it fresh. Just remember not to add any seasoning and make sure you check thoroughly for small bones.’
‘Of course.’
‘Perhaps you can put a little unseasoned fish aside for Ted when you’re making your own delicious supper. What a lucky family the Teds are going to be tonight.’
‘Yes,’ said Liz. ‘Well, I must be going. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, Dr Thomas.’
‘I will. I was really glad to see you this morning, by the way. I knew you’d rise to the challenge. I can tell how much you love your dog. See you next week, Mrs Ted!’
Three minutes later, Liz loaded her fortune’s worth of fish into the boot of her car and slammed it shut. How on earth had she let herself be steamrollered into buying so much? What did it matter if Dr Thomas found out she was an incompetent in the kitchen? He already thought she was an incompetent when it came to looking after her dog. She couldn’t sink much lower in his opinion, she was sure. And yet he’d been surprisingly friendly away from the surgery. Hadn’t he almost praised her for going to Waggy Weight Loss?
She wondered briefly who he would be cooking for that evening. Nurse Van Niekerk? No, it was fairly obvious that particular crush was unrequited. Dr Thomas paid less attention to Nurse Van Niekerk’s puppy dog eyes than he did to those of the real puppies who crossed the threshold of his surgery every day.
Did he have a wife? He didn’t wear a wedding ring. But then, you wouldn’t, would you, if there was a possibility that you might have to stick your hand up a cow’s bum at some point during the working day. Did Dr Thomas do cows in any case? He’d referred to ‘dad dancing’. Did that mean he had kids? Liz imagined a row of three boys arrayed in order of descending height, following Dr Thomas as he ‘moved it’. Did they laugh at his antics or were they mortified as Saskia would have been? What was Dr Thomas really like?
Back home again, Liz put away her shopping. She stuck the bag of fishmongery in the fridge in one big lump, not bothering to take out the individual packages so carefully wrapped up by Jerry.
She had an awful feeling it would all go to waste. Twenty quid straight into landfill just because she hadn’t wanted to look like she didn’t know what she was doing in front of Dr Thomas. Again.
Liz made herself a cup of tea, sank into the sofa and contemplated ordering a takeaway.
No! She suddenly sat up straight. She’d already bought her food for that weekend. Twenty quid was twenty quid. It was enough to buy a lunch at the deli for the whole flipping week. There were whole families living on less. Liz was damned if she was going to waste it. She could make a fish pie. She’d made one before. It couldn’t be that difficult to do it again. Anything Dr Thomas could do … Liz got out th
e recipe sheet from Thursday night’s class and tried to extrapolate from Alex’s instructions for a medium pie for two how she might go about making a fish pie as big as Moby Dick.
At least she had a big dish. When she and Ian got married, Liz had put all manner of kitchen equipment on their wedding list. They had a beautiful set of baking dishes. The big one had never been used. Not for cooking anyway. For a while, it had lived on top of the Welsh dresser, used as a catch-all for the odds and ends that didn’t have another home. When Ian moved out, Liz had hidden the dish away. Every time she looked at it, she thought of the day they’d spent unwrapping their wedding presents when they got back from honeymoon.
‘When on earth are we going to use that?’ Ian had asked.
‘When we have a dinner party,’ Liz had told him.
They never did have a dinner party. That was something else that was going to change once Liz had mastered this cooking lark. Now, how did you make a white sauce again?
Liz nailed the white sauce and the pie, when it came of the oven, looked magnificent. Even better than the one she’d made in class. The potato on top was perfectly crisp and browned in all the right places. Liz wished she had someone other than Ted to show. She wished she had someone to share it with too. The finished dish was big enough for eleven rugby players and a referee. The only thing she’d left out was the octopus.
She even took a picture and put it on Instagram, making sure to ‘dress the set’ as Brittney had advised her readers in a blog post about what made her Instagram pictures so successful. To dress her set, Liz covered the knackered old kitchen table with a checked cloth. The dish covered the worst of the stains on the cloth. She then arrayed four napkins in a fan alongside the dish and on top of the napkins, she placed four sets of cutlery, having made sure there was nothing caught in the fork prongs first (that dishwasher was useless). Then she added a sprig of basil – not quite right but the only greenery she had to hand – and took twenty shots before she posted the best with the hashtags #homecooking #healthyeatinggoals #homeentertaining.
‘See,’ she muttered to herself. ‘You’re not the only good cook in town Brittney Blaine.’ And let everyone wonder exactly whom Liz was hashtag home entertaining, eh?
The Worst Case Scenario Cookery Club Page 12