Recipe for Love (4 page)

Slightly apprehensive about being seen by the crew and judges, Zoe was relieved to spot a large man in the kitchen, which meant Fenella wasn’t on her own. The large man – rather to her surprise – gave her a bear hug and kissed her fondly.

‘Thank you so much for helping my pregnant wife!’ he said. ‘For that you deserve rubies, coffers of gold but failing those, what about a glass of red? Or would you rather have a gin?’

‘Rupert! said Fenella, looking far less stressed than when Zoe had last seen her. ‘Zoe – you look lovely by the way – this, as you’ve probably gathered, is my husband, Rupert.’

‘Hello, Rupert,’ said Zoe, accepting the glass of wine he handed her and feeling a bit of a hypocrite for refusing Cher’s offer with such a priggish excuse.

‘Do sit down. Because you helped earlier there’s no great rush and anyway, Rupert will do it.’

Zoe pulled out a chair and looked around the kitchen properly; there didn’t seem to have been time before. She decided it was perfect. Huge, with an Aga the size of a car, an old dresser, a sofa, a refectory table long enough for a small school and a stone-flagged floor. There were
pictures
on the walls, a large bookcase full of an assortment of what looked like cookery, gardening, flower and bird books, and a lot of clutter. It felt like a proper home.

‘I’d love a kitchen like this,’ she said.

‘I’d like it better if it didn’t have a money pit to go with it,’ said Rupert, having just tasted the stew and tossed the teaspoon into the sink. ‘Although, of course, we do love the house too.’

‘Why wouldn’t you? It’s wonderful!’

‘It is,’ agreed Fenella, ‘but it’s so expensive to renovate and keep up. We keep having to think up ways of earning money from it, which is why we were so thrilled to get this cookery competition gig.’

‘We nearly didn’t,’ said Rupert, ‘as we’ve got a wedding right in the middle of the competition.’

‘Rupert! I don’t think you were supposed to say that. It’s a surprise. I mean, all the tasks are a surprise – the contestants aren’t to be told about them till the night before.’

Zoe chuckled. ‘Well, I won’t tell anyone.’

‘Fortunately, the wedding planner for it is a mate of ours, Sarah, and she managed to convince the couple that the enormous amount of money they’ll be saving by having you lot do the catering was well worth a bit of inconvenience.’ Rupert, apparently deciding he had a bit of spare time, had joined the two women at the table.

‘Darling, it won’t be inconvenient – we’ve made sure of that.’

‘The food is a bit of a risk,’ said Rupert. ‘But it often is at weddings.’

‘Not at Somerby,’ said Fenella primly.

Rupert laughed and Zoe basked in the warmth of the easy banter between them. How wonderful to be secure in the knowledge that you loved and were loved in return.

When Zoe got up to go, Fenella said, ‘Now do help yourself to anything from here you might need. Milk, for example. There is some in your fridge, but if you run out you can come back and get some. And there are packets of biscuits in this box here. Rupert brought in fresh supplies.’

‘I wouldn’t want to take anything you might have plans for.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Rupert. ‘We have specially designated biscuits for clients. I’m not allowed near them.’

Zoe hurried back to the room and brushed her teeth so no one would smell red wine on her breath.

‘Where have you been?’ asked Cher curiously.

‘Oh, just round and about,’ said Zoe through the toothpaste, feeling unaccountably guilty.

‘Well, if you don’t hurry we’ll miss the bus.’

A couple of hours later they were back from the pub, being ushered up the stairs to the committee room at Somerby by a slightly harried Rupert. ‘Here we are!’ he said, opening the door to a big room with a huge table in it. He paused as they all filed in. ‘The judges are still eating I’m afraid but some of the production team are here to talk to you. I must go and serve the pud.’ He left the room as fast as he decently could.

Zoe and the others sat at the chairs arranged round the table.

‘Good evening, everyone!’ A good-looking blonde woman with a very faint American accent, hair like Marilyn Monroe and eyes like sapphires walked into the room. The steel beneath her beauty shone through. ‘My name is Miranda Marlyn. You probably all know I’m the head of the production company that is making this programme. And we are all sure that it will be a huge success – for us and for you.’ She paused. ‘It’s going to be very intense.
As
you probably know by now you’ll be doing a challenge roughly every two or three days.’ The tension in the room went up a notch as her gaze slid over every contestant, making Zoe, at least, feel she’d already been judged – and she hadn’t won.

‘We would expect you to be preparing on the other days but there will be a break somewhere in the middle. Anyway, Mike will go into more detail. I hope you’ve all had a chance to get to know each other during the meal. The thing to remember is that although you are competing, a lot of the tasks will involve teamwork. There’ll be marks for leading a team and being a team player as well as for excellent cooking.’

Another steely stare. By now almost everyone (except Cher) was looking twitchy. Zoe enjoyed teamwork but always thought of herself as a second in command rather than a leader. Would she have the force of personality required to make a plan and get her team to follow it?

‘Now I’m going to pass you over to Mike.’

Everyone clapped as she sat down.

‘Hi, guys,’ said Mike, who, after their pub meal, seemed like an old friend, helpful and unthreatening. ‘Now, unlike some cookery competitions, you haven’t yet met your judges …’

‘We knew that,’ whispered Cher, emboldened by several glasses of wine over dinner.

‘… because the auditions were done by other people.’

‘For God’s sake! We were there! We know the bloody judges were too “busy”’ – Cher made the movement with her fingers to indicate inverted commas – ‘to turn up!’ Her
sotto voce
was getting less
sotto
by the minute.

Mike’s tone was consoling. ‘But you are going to meet them tomorrow, and I’m sure you’re all very excited about that.’

‘I’m wetting myself with joy,’ said Cher, no longer bothering to keep her voice down.

Fortunately for Zoe’s embarrassment threshold, the rest of Mike’s talk gave Cher no excuse to mutter and Zoe listened with half an ear. The rest of her thoughts lingered on the other contestants, some of whom she’d spoken to in the pub, and others just observed from a distance.

There was the wild young man with a shock of hair that stood almost upright. She’d chatted to him and found out his name was Shadrach. He was passionate about food and seemed to suit his name. Then there was motherly Muriel who had escaped her family with glee, describing herself as ‘only a good home cook’ but who looked to Zoe like strong competition.

Previously, Cher had sashayed her way round to where two young men sat, legs apart, feet tapping, the testosterone almost visible as if it were steam coming off sweating horses. They – Zoe knew them to be Dwaine and Daniel – practically had ‘Competition’ tattooed on their foreheads. Cher had done a lot of hair-flicking and lip-moistening and had allowed both of them a peek down her cleavage. That was apparently her version of team-building. And it could work, Zoe thought. But supposing they both fell in love with her? There could be a horribly noisy scrap, with blood on the carpet. Now, in her seat at the front row, Cher sent messages saying ‘look at me’ with her eyes, hands and hair.

Sitting just behind Zoe and Cher there was a rather serious girl whom Zoe hadn’t spoken to yet. She could be a potential winner. She was shy, with mousy hair held back by an unbecoming slide but she had a determination that was evident even from a distance. She was Becca. Next to her were two older-looking men, one of whom
was
called Bill, and Shona, who’d informed Zoe over dinner that she was a ‘bag of nerves’.

‘OK, people,’ said Miranda Marlyn, standing up again, ‘that’s all you’ll hear from me until the end of the competition. As Mike says, tomorrow you’ll meet the judges and find out what your first task is. I should warn you all, though, that our judges will make Lord Sugar look like a teddy bear. It’s a very tough business and you need to be equally tough to succeed.’ She swept out, a young man with a clipboard, who was obviously her right-hand-man, in tow.

Everyone was now milling round, chatting, sizing up the opposition, as if they finally realised the competition was about to start. There were an awful lot of people to take in, thought Zoe, but with ten contestants and several people from the television company, there was bound to be.

Someone came up behind Zoe. ‘Well, that was all pretty much as expected, don’t you think? I’m Alan, by the way. We didn’t get a chance to speak over dinner.’

Alan was medium height with thick greying hair with a hint of a tan. He seemed faintly familiar and she wondered if they’d actually met or if he was an actor or something.

‘Zoe.’ She put her hand into his outstretched one. ‘Do I know you from somewhere? Television, perhaps?’

He inclined his head. ‘It’s possible. I was a jobbing actor for years, but not recently. Cooking is what I’m into now. Hence the competition.’

‘So what do you hope to get from it?’ Zoe was always curious about people but having asked her question wondered if she’d been a bit abrupt and so confessed her own motives. ‘I’m in it for the money myself but my room-mate, Cher – over there? The beautiful blonde
wowing
those young men? – she’s looking for fame.’ She paused. ‘What about you?’

Alan didn’t seem to mind her asking. ‘I suppose I want them both: fame
and
fortune. I fancy a riverside pub, with food. You know the sort of thing: boats moored up outside, summer food, chilled white wine, beautiful young people with platinum credit cards, who come because it’s the new hot place to go.’ He laughed. ‘But I also want families. Somewhere granny and all the kids have a good meal in relaxed surroundings.’

Zoe smiled back at him. ‘It sounds as if you’ve written the brochure already.’

‘I admit I am being a little bit previous, but that’s what I’ll do if I win the competition. You?’

‘I fancy a little deli with pre-cooked meals so people have the convenience of a takeaway but with really good food.’

‘Oh! Lovely idea. You should get to know Gideon Irving. He’s a big importer of olive oil, olives, stuff like that. You’d need that if you had a deli.’

‘Oh? I thought he was a food writer.’

‘He is, but he’s also part of a big co-operative that sources delicatessen-type foods from all over the world. The food writing is a sort of hobby – although it is his passion.’

‘How do you know all this?’ Zoe was gripped.

‘A cousin of mine was on some committee or other with him. Apparently he had to be bullied into being a judge.’

‘Really?’

Alan nodded. ‘Yes! According to my cousin he said he didn’t want to eat a lot of grim recipes handed down from grannies who’d learned to cook during rationing in the War.’

‘Goodness! Was your cousin actually present when he said this?’ It could easily be just a rumour.

‘Yup. He told the committee about how he’d been forced
to
say yes.’ He frowned slightly. ‘He does sound appallingly arrogant.’

‘He does,’ Zoe agreed. She knew this much herself.

‘And he can be a bit bad-tempered. Doesn’t suffer fools.’

She’d picked up this much too. ‘Oh.’

Alan nodded wisely. ‘So better go carefully with him. Your friend Cher might find she’s up against a man she can’t charm.’

Zoe laughed. ‘Yes, but you know what men are like – always susceptible to a leggy blonde.’

‘Not all men.’ Alan was giving her a look that could have just been friendly but might be significant.

Zoe thought about him. He was nice but a little old for her. Then her mind flicked to Gideon Irving. He wasn’t much younger than Alan and yet she’d definitely found him attractive. Just as well she’d been warned. Although had she been told anything she didn’t know? Not really, apart from about the food empire.

Gradually everyone dispersed, some to local B and Bs, and the rest to converted outbuildings.

Back in their room, Cher took so long in the bathroom that Zoe had to resort to brushing her teeth by her bed and spitting down a handy drain outside. But in the morning, after Zoe had silently condemned her as a selfish cow, Cher had chatted in a friendly way and lent Zoe a hair product that definitely helped her curls look more meant and less randomly natural. She was a tricky one, Zoe decided, as Cher stood behind her, looking into the mirror at Zoe and adjusting a last curl so every hair was perfect.

The meeting with the judges was to be held in the large marquee in the field just by the house. They found the
others
inside swapping notes about accommodation and wondering what the judges would be like. Almost everyone was nervous. The night before had been like a party. Now, in the marquee, slightly chilly in the early morning, it felt like a competition.

‘It’s like when the school hall turned into an exam room, isn’t it?’ Zoe whispered to Cher as they found their name badges.