Recipe for Disaster (9 page)

'Tell you what, I'll come round and tell you tomorrow. It
will take your mind off the fact that you've got your head
down the loo.'

Godfrey's face was almost as red as the beetroot soup he was
learning to make. He and every surface within a three-foot
radius were covered in debris. Jake didn't mind about the
floor or the fact that Godfrey looked very silly with parsley
in his hair, but he minded a lot about his worktops.

'That garlic is far too close to the dough, which should
have gone in the fridge an hour ago, and those carrot
peelings should be in the bin by now. You've finished
prepping up the stock so TIDY UP!'

It was always the same. They always wanted to cook when
what they should be doing was learning how to organise
themselves first.

'Look at the state of you! You don't know where you're
at because everything is in such an awful mess! What did I
say to you when we began? You wipe your board down after
every job and you wipe your knives clean after you've used
them, just like you wipe your arse after every crap!' He
grinned.

Everyone laughed. Poor Godfrey, who had been feeling
that everything was spiralling out of control, watched with
gratitude as Jake swiftly reduced chaos to order with a few
deft gestures.

'But you are always on my back shouting at me to hurry
up. It makes me so confused,' protested Godfrey. Cooking
at home was never like this.

Jake smiled, but sympathetically. 'Of course you're confused
– you're a novice. But that shouldn't stop you trying.
Work at it and it will come right, which I admit in your case
will take so long I'll probably have given up the will to live,
but miracles may happen. I was in your shoes once.'

The kitchen chorused gleefully: 'Never, Chef! You were
born perfect, Chef!'

Godfrey sighed happily. He loved it here, the heat, the
terror, the frantic pace, even the insults. This was a good
thing because they rained down on him so regularly he
should really take an umbrella to work. But he knew he had
already learned more than he ever had in the back of the
class at school, where he had spectacularly failed every
exam he turned up for. His head was now so full of
information he thought he might burst. In fact, last night he
had, but that was only because he was tasting every dish on
the go, as well as eating three large meals a day.

It was ironic, given that he was a cook, that Jake couldn't
actually recall the last time he had sat down to a proper
meal. He tasted all the time as well, of course, and still
carried three tasting spoons in his pocket as he had been
taught at college, but a whole meal – like normal people?

Chance would be a very fine thing indeed, he mused,
pouring himself a cup of coffee, which was destined to
follow the fate of all the others and go cold before he got
time to drink it. He went through to his office. The staff
were clearing up and pushing off for a kip before evening
shift but he had a pile of paperwork to catch up on, a job he
hated and always put off as long as possible. This was the
tedious side of running a business.

He made a mental note to order more wine glasses to
replace the ones that had gone the way of all glassware.
Hans should have done this, as bar manager, but he had
been totally useless today, getting orders wrong and losing
bills.

'What you smoke when you are off duty is entirely up to
you. But if you turn up for work again off your head, you
will be sacked on the spot. Is that clear?'

'Absolutely,' said Hans unhappily. He was enjoying
working for Jake and didn't want to blow it. Hans was a
wannabe hippy and Jake was forever having to tear down
posters that he had put up advertising protest marches.

'But, why, Boss? The plight of the coffee farmers in
Brazil is
schrecklich
, I mean terrible!' he had protested a few
days earlier.

'I agree, but the march took place last Saturday. In
London. When we were slightly busy. None of us could
have got there. Why don't you spend your afternoon off
sourcing some decent fairly traded coffee for the restaurant
to use?'

Also, fighting with Hans's hippy spirit was a Teutonic
drive towards neatness and order. Generally, all the
restaurant glasses stood to sparkling attention behind the
bar like a crack troop in the army, and customers' bills were
lined up as if they were on parade. But now Hans was so
upset at the thought of losing his job that he had a
disastrous lunchtime shift and got so many things wrong he
was convinced Jake was going to sack him anyway,
especially when he called Hans into his office.

'I bollocked you this morning and you deserved it, but I
don't bear grudges, so chill out, man.'

Hans grinned and went off much happier.

What else was there to do? Oh, yes, the toilet in the men's
loo was only flushing when it felt like it, which wasn't often
enough. He could call a plumber, but it would be cheaper
to fix it himself. Jake yawned and stretched – the life of a
chef was such a glamorous one.

Also he had to write a prep list for Godfrey. It was
imperative to give beginners at least ten things to do all at
once at the beginning of their shift. It focused their little
minds and taught them to move swiftly and with grace. At
the moment Godfrey was blundering around like a small
hippo on steroids. It was going to be a long haul.

Tess put her head round the door. 'Someone to see you,
Boss.'

It was the drunken redhead from the night before,
ghostly pale under an enormous pair of dark glasses. Jake
hadn't ever realised before how attractive red hair was. This
made him even crosser. He groaned, and then snapped: 'I
suppose – well, I hope – you've come to apologise. I'm not
sure I need this now.'

'You're right, I have. I am sorry to bother you, but you
must let me grovel.'

'It will be my pleasure.' He waved her in impatiently.

Oh dear. He wasn't at all pleased to see her. Shame.
She'd thought this had been an excellent plan. 'Staff
needed.' So here she was. And despite her throbbing head
Kate was enjoying seeing him. He looked as tired as she did,
though, but why? I bet he didn't spend the night throwing
up, she thought.

'I am interested in just how many ways you can say sorry
for last night. But don't throw up on this expensive carpet
or I will have to hurt you.'

The carpet was actually threadbare and barely worth
small change, but it gave her a faint glimmer of hope. He
obviously had a sense of humour, so this might just work.

'There's nothing else to express but my shame. My deep
shame. I am abject. I behaved appallingly.'

'You certainly did. You were a complete idiot and you
looked like you got plenty of practice at it.' He shuffled
some papers around on his very untidy desk in order to
cover up a picture of the kitchen at work, as depicted by
Angelica.

'It's no excuse, but I had too much wine on too little food.
It won't happen again, I promise. I'm not really like that.'

'No, it won't. People have been booted out of restaurants
before now for asking for some salt. I think I am quite
within my rights to hope never to see you again.' He hoped
he looked as if he really meant it.

'No chance of a job, then?'

Jake's jaw dropped.

'Yes, I know it's a huge cheek but you don't get anywhere
without chutzpah, do you?' She took off her glasses and
fixed him with what she hoped was an honest, open gaze.

'You want an answer right away? How about: I would
sooner cut off my right foot?'

'Of course you would and who would blame you?'

Think, Kate. Except that today this was a bit like asking
Steve Redgrave to row through treacle. Food – what did she
know about it? Oh. Nothing. But she had flicked through
the biography of a chef this morning, in between waiting to
throw up.

'You are tired,' she said, trying to sound soothing. 'Your
headache is probably worse than mine. You won't have
slept properly in weeks and when you do, you have terrible
nightmares. You just know your supplier will forget to
deliver the mushrooms and no one will tell you until
tonight, when you need them. Your punters will complain
the steak tartare is undercooked and your commis will
think it's really funny to lock a waitress in the walk-in
freezer. All you want to do is cook and shout at your staff,
but someone has lost the corkscrew and your waitress keeps
getting
concasse
and
consommé
mixed up.

'Now, you might not be ready to believe this, but I am
your salvation. I speak fluent English when I'm sober,
which I will be for the rest of my life, I can assure you. I am
intelligent, hard-working and dependable. In time you will
forget last night ever happened.'

Despite himself, Jake was intrigued. That description was
nothing like his own kitchen, of course, but . . . Then he
looked pointedly at her Gucci sunglasses. 'If you can afford
those why do you want to work here, where your pay packet
will be so small you may need prescription glasses even to
see it?'

Excellent. She had got her foot firmly wedged in the
door. The rest should be a piece of cake. Oops, don't think
about food.

'It's a good point. For the last five years I've been
working in advertising, where to be frank, I probably
earned more than all your staff put together. I was made
redundant. Sure, I had some job offers lined up, but it
seemed the right time to start working on the novel I've
been planning since I left university. I've given myself a
year to get it into print but my savings won't last that long
without some extra income.' Well, she was going to write a
story of sorts, wasn't she?

'What's it about?'

'What's what about?'

'Your book,' he said patiently.

'Oh.' Blast. She really hadn't thought this one through
properly. 'It's, er, an historical novel about smugglers in the
Lake District.'

'I think it's been done before,' he said kindly.
Bloody hell! He should be too busy to know about
literature.

'Well, there's always room for another,' she said firmly.

Jake had a suspicion there was a hidden agenda here,
though he couldn't work out what it was. But then
waitressing was a job plenty of people did while they were
trying to do something else. He had employed budding
ballerinas, actresses, even a guy who was considering going
into the priesthood. Most of them were still there, toiling
away and dreaming, apart from the priest, who had gone off
to become an accountant. He thought, I do need another
waitress pretty damn quick. She seems quite bright and she
can walk in a straight line when she's sober. She's very nice to
look at. What the hell has that got to do with anything?

'You look like you can serve food without spilling it, I
suppose,' he said, aiming to sounded grudging and barely
interested. 'If you work for me you will be smartly dressed
and sober at all times. Your shifts will finish when the
customers leave – it's their call, not yours. I will not tolerate
any whining about your workload, your wages or any
pathetic excuses for turning up for work late. Ditto excuses
for not turning up at all. Sickness, death, plague – I've
heard them all before and none of them moves me in the
slightest. So, to sum up, you will adopt an unfailing courtesy
to the punters and an unfailing commitment to the work I
will pile on you. Oh, and anything you break will be taken
out of your wages. Is that clear?'

She wondered if he knew how sexy he was when he
glowered. Anyone who worked for him probably spent
their holidays chilling out on a labour camp in Siberia, just
for light relief.

'The only reason I am offering you a job is because I want
to punish you for last night. You can start tonight at five
thirty on a week's trial. You won't get paid until the end of
the week, just in case you do turn out to be a moron, after all.'

'Thank you so much!'

'Oh, I don't think you are going to be grateful,' he said
grimly.

She stood up to escape and promptly dropped her bag.
Its contents, included a slightly battered tampon, spilled
out across the floor. Jake picked up her diary, which was the
sort that had a supposedly uplifting but actually nauseating
message at the start of each day. Lydia had bought it for her
as a joke.

'Apparently today you will feel the spirit of change
flowing through your body,' he read out mockingly.

Outside Kate decided that the only things flowing
through
her
body were blood vessels soaked in alcohol.
Never mind, a kip and some invalid food and she would be
as right as rain. She felt very pleased with herself. This guy
had fascinated her – in a purely professional capacity, of
course – from the moment she had first clapped eyes on
him. It was shame that when all this was over and Jake
found out his kitchen had been harbouring a traitor, he
would want her blood in a mixing bowl, but that was the
price she would have to pay for being a spy.

Kate spent the afternoon snoozing and dipping into
Antony Bourdain's cooking memoirs. In growing disbelief.
The chefs seemed to spend their time taking vast quantities
of drugs, playing nasty jokes on their colleagues and
shagging everyone in sight. She giggled. They sounded a
bit like journalists, actually.

In between small bites of dry toast, she logged onto the
Internet, where waiters had their own website. The ways
they took revenge on awkward customers would put you off
eating out ever again. They broke every health and safety
rule in the book, and the things they did to people's meals
before they served them made her want to gag. Some of it
wouldn't go down in a family newspaper. Well, she could
get round it with innuendo and, anyway, stuff like this
could easily be sent to the national tabloids.

It was time to get ready for work. She cast a longing eye
at her bed then focused on the contents of her wardrobe. It
was important to get this right. She didn't want to be too
smart and therefore too conspicuous, but she was determined
to make an impression. She wanted to make Jake
respect her and take her into his confidence. Her longsleeved
woollen top was flattering and drew people's eyes to
her breasts (never a bad thing), and she had a tight black
skirt, which skimmed her figure nicely but wasn't obviously
tarty. Now for shoes. Fuck-me stilettos were obviously out,
but the pointy, kitten heels she wore to work would do.