The Dish (17 page)

‘You don’t need that second sentence,’ she says.

I look at the page – she’s right, as always.

‘Then this whole section about water:

“25. Can your Water Waiter really not take an order for Diet Coke? The
Water Waiter oughtta . . .

“26. Let’s spend a minute with the Water Waiter (if only his name was Walter, but no: Stefan.) Stefan described your fourteen waters’ provenances. Tahiti, Cumbria, the Dolomites . . . I’m quite loyal to Thames Water but Stefan explained that ‘House water’– triple filtered in-house – was the closest thing if I was ‘on a budget’.

‘Down to here:

“33. Still on that water:
£8 for a small bottle of in-house tap water? Next time: put your hand in my pocket and steal directly – much quicker.

‘Halve it – and that colon is superfluous.’ She scribbles it out, then tips her head as she reconsiders. ‘Actually, keep it. Then these:

“41. Rock salmon is not salmon from Rock in Cornwall.

“42. It is also not ‘Rock and roll’ salmon – nice try, waiter number three.

“43. It’s
OK to not know the answer – but don’t lie!

‘Amalgamate to one – and finally:

“92. Semi-open kitchen – great to see the chefs at work. Less great when you have a kitchen run by a head chef who seems unable to control his team or even his frying pan
.

‘It’s quite vague,’ she says, turning to me with a questioning look.

‘Kiki, they were all over the place, you could feel the chaos in the air.’

‘So put something more specific?’

‘At one point there was a mini fire – the saucier must have let some cream run on to the solid top. I actually started feeling sorry for the station cooks, they panicked . . .’

‘Put the fire in?’

‘You know what? Don’t. I need to keep word count down, and lose the word “head” from “head chef”.’ It’s the least I can do.

‘So it’s worse than that Chelsea burger
place?’

‘Same owners! The Russian one wanted Kanye to play at his one year old’s birthday.’

Kiki mimes a fake vomit on her desk so convincingly it makes me feel sick just watching.

‘You should have heard the girl on the table next to us, moaning about how her dog wouldn’t fit in her Hermès bag,’ I say.

‘Have you seen this?’ Kiki types ‘handbag – dog – California’ into Google, then clicks on
a photo of a labradoodle strutting down Hollywood Boulevard on its hind legs, carrying a handbag on its front paw. ‘I can’t believe the sub didn’t go for a WAG joke in that headline,’ she says in disgust. ‘Amateur! And check out these poodles doing the conga!’

‘Gotta love the Internet.’

With Kiki’s revisions, the review will go down a few hundred words, though not enough to placate Sandra. I
tinker with it till the end of the day, my heart growing heavy. Part of me thought Sophie was right and Adam would be in touch. She was probably right about me refusing to meet him for tea, it will have come across as harsh; still, I had my reasons. Though I can’t work out now if it was instinct or pure paranoia – post-Tom I get the two confused.

I take my phone out to double-check Adam hasn’t
texted. No, nothing. I feel the disappointment afresh, a dull flip in my chest. Maybe I should text him to say I could do tea after all?

No. I shouldn’t have had breakfast with him in the first place: this serves me right. My phone weighs heavily in my hand, my thumb hovering over his name. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to say hi? My thumb taps insistently on the phone like a heart beat. I put my phone
back in my bag, then take it straight out again, hold my breath and press delete, and delete his messages and his emails.

All gone.

And I feel so disappointed in him, or in the situation, or perhaps in myself, that when I find an email later from JPM asking me for a drink tomorrow at the most over-priced, pretentious bar in London, I say yes please, that would be lovely.

‘Good shoes,’ says Azeem, as he spies me putting the finishing touches to my outfit: dangly earrings and a pair of purple suede heels: minimal effort, no point trying to compete with the Beckham-clad Botox-faces at Marabou. ‘Hot date?’

‘Lukewarm, at best, Az.’

‘Luke Warm’s a lucky guy.’

‘Not remotely funny, even by your standards.’

‘Meow.’

‘Sorry. I’m in a grump. Where are you off to,
anyway?’

‘Blues Kitchen with the ad boys. Come for a swift one?’

‘I’m waiting for a call back from Stationery World . . .’

‘Living the dream, Laura.’

I’m really pissed off with Jess. Ever since our row I can’t help but notice the boring parts of my job now feel even more tedious. I’m in no rush to meet JPM – far from it, I only said yes out of despair. Still, Az is right; there’s more fun
to be had on a Thursday night than waiting for a call about missing lever arch files. I’m clearly irritable about Adam; it’ll pass.

The phone rings a moment later. That’ll be the files. ‘Roger Harris’s office, Laura speaking.’

‘Laura speaking, it’s Azeem speaking. I’m downstairs.’

‘Don’t tell me: Bradley’s back.’

Azeem once called in hushed tones to tell me Bradley Cooper was in reception.
He must have been in to see the TV guys upstairs! I raced down, only to find it was Jimbo, our 18-stone bike courier, wearing baggy meggings and a sweaty Mötorhead Live at the NEC T-shirt.

‘No Bradley – but there’s a package on front desk with your name on it.’

‘Roger’s tickets for his seminar next week, they said they’d bike them over.’

‘I don’t think so. Not unless they’ve warmed them up
and stuck them in a cake box.’

Bless her! Well, that’s a chocolate lining to a grey day. I’m tempted to eat Sophie’s cakes while they’re oven-fresh but I strongly suspect I’ll need a healthy dose of sugar and fat to cheer me up in about two hours’ time.

I’m goi
ng to kill Jess.

Technically you could call JPM handsome; his face is well structured, his hairline good for a forty-three year old.
But there’s nothing attractive about him once we start talking, or rather he does.

And I would have left by now, I would, but I am conducting an experiment to see how long it will take him to ask me a single question, even if that question is ‘Laura, what do you think of me?’ I may well see in my 40th birthday sitting on this Philippe Starck Perspex Ghost chair, if the piles don’t kill me first.

So far he’s covered his career: highest earning trader at Paribanque, retired at thirty, now investing in emerging markets. Also covered: the stunning refurb of his Fulham pad: glass staircase from kitchen to ground floor, floating glass staircase to the roof terrace, retractable glass roof. Lots of glass . . . even a flatscreen TV in the shower. (Sounds like a fire hazard to me.) Also, his cars:
his Mercedes SLK, and the VW Touareg – he needs space for his golf clubs and actually it’s the same body frame, doors, et cetera as the Porsche Cayenne. It’s practically the same as the Porsche. (If only his T-shirt said
My other car is a Porsche
I might warm to him. But no; it says Hollister.)

He’s currently talking about his ex. He can’t bring himself to say her name, but refers to her only
as The Ex. I am so tempted to ask whether the bloke she was shagging had a flatscreen TV in his shower too, but Jess would never forgive me.

‘I was married less than a year and my ex walks away with two point three?’ he says. ‘How is that fair?’

I nod.

‘You’re divorced too, right?’ Oh, if only that counted as a real question I could leave, but it’s rhetorical so it doesn’t count. ‘I hope you
didn’t fleece your ex like The Ex fleeced me.’

‘We were together nine years, married for two – but I didn’t take a penny.’

‘Are you serious?’ Aha! A question! Now I can go!

‘I used to earn the same as Tom. Besides, the day money actually helps mend a broken heart . . .’ I shrug.

‘Your sister didn’t mention you were a hippy.’ He looks unimpressed. ‘And now you’re a journalist?’

‘What?’ I put
my mojito down a little too forcefully.

‘Your sister said you write for a newspaper?’

‘Did she indeed?’ I pick the straw out of my glass, my thumb pressed over the top, then release the cocktail, drop by drop, back on to the crushed ice. ‘Well, I’m a secretary.’

‘I thought you were a writery type?’

‘Yes: I write emails and letters.’

‘That’s temporary, presumably?’

‘No.’

‘But I’m sure your
sister said you do something with food?’ All of a sudden it’s Twenty Questions – I’m so killing Jess, twice.

‘I just like to eat.’

‘Oh. Do you want some food?’

‘No, I’m fine, thanks. I should be getting on.’ I pantomime look at my watch: I can’t believe we’ve been here less than an hour.

‘I consider myself a bit of a foodie. This place does great small bites, nothing too heavy.’ He glances
at the menu, snaps it shut and beckons the waitress over.

I reach forward to look: pretentious, over-priced fusion food, designed for customers with made-up eating disorders.

‘We’ll have four mackerel kimchee rolls and an eel ponzu ceviche but does that have soy? No soy,’ he says to the waitress.

‘Are you allergic to soy sauce?’ I say.

‘It has wheat in it.’

‘Are you coeliac?’

‘Wheat is bad
for you.’

‘Could we have the avocado salad too, please?’ I say to the waitress. JPM’s gaze moves from her cleavage to my thighs then swiftly back as he realises I’ve clocked him.

‘And do your noodles have wheat in them? They do? Terrific, egg fried noodles with crispy duck.’ I smile warmly at her. ‘And extra sweet chilli sauce, please.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll pay for them,’ I say, catching his
look of disapproval.

‘Did you know avocados are full of fat? And one bite of duck has three hundred per cent more grams of fat per hundred grams than skinless turkey breast meat.’

‘Oh, please tell me more about skinless turkey breast meat?’ It is possibly my greatest achievement as an adult female that I manage to say this sentence without it sounding sarcastic.

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely! I’m
super interested. Like, is that nutritional analysis based on the breast being . . . boiled in water or fried in a non-stick pan?’

‘Griddle pan, I think. I suppose you could poach it.’

‘I shall try that!’ Next time I give a flying rat’s tit what you think about my weight.

‘Do you not . . . are you not . . .?’

‘Not what, JPM?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ he says, then blows out the air in his cheeks. ‘Do
you ski?’

‘Ski? No.’

‘I just did my Advanced Off-Piste All Terrain in Verbier. I did Tough Mudder last year.’

I shrug my total lack of interest.

‘Have you not heard of it?

‘Hmm, I did read a piece about the modern male mid-life crises. Men nowadays either have an affair, buy a menoporsche or do the fitness thing.’

‘Did you just say
men-o-porsche
?’

‘Yes, it’s an expression. Have you not
heard of it?’

He shudders. ‘There’s nothing wrong with keeping fit.’

‘And there’s nothing wrong with the fat in an avocado – it’s the good fat, there is such a thing.’ Though obviously never to be found on a woman, as far as JPM is concerned.

He opens his mouth, his jaw juts out as if he’s about to say something rather unpleasant and then he decides better of it. I have a vision of Jess’s eyes
darkening. A vision of her ranting about how RUDE and UNGRATEFUL I am on email tomorrow, and the day after . . .

‘So, JPM. You’re a foodie; do you cook much?’

‘My ex used to do the cooking, clean and lean stuff. No point cooking for one, I usually grab a bento box after the gym and I eat out a lot with clients.’

‘Where do you like to go?’

‘There’s so much going on in London, a lot of very
cool places. I like Chiltern Firehouse, La Petite Maison in Mayfair, they’ve got one in Dubai too, I always pre-order the Label Rouge chicken with foie gras.’

‘What’s Dubai like?’ I always imagine it would be soulless and money-obsessed.

‘The weather’s great, the shopping – they’ve got exactly the same places we’ve got here.’

‘So you sit on a plane for eight hours and end up in a sun-scorched
version of Knightsbridge.’ But with a few less women’s rights.

‘Exactly! Terrific place for a holiday, you feel right at home. You should go.’

Yeah I
should
go – home. Right now, to Maida Vale.

It’s nearly 11 p.m. by the time I extricate myself. For some reason, while JPM is able to ski a black run backwards, blindfolded, while giving Victoria’s Secret models multiple orgasms just by thinking
about them, he is unable to detect disinterest. That is
so
the key to success: be utterly thick-skinned, impervious to other people’s opinions of you. What’s that quote by Chanel? ‘I don’t care what you think about me, I don’t think about you at all.’

I’m sure JPM’s a perfectly nice guy. Scrap that: I’m sure he’s not. But either way he’s about as far from my type as I am from his. When he asked
me who my role models were, and I told him my mother, Tina Fey and Dorothy Parker, he said ‘No men?’ – then gave me a look that screamed: LESBIAN!

And when I asked, in a moment of drunken generosity, if he’d like to share a cake and mentioned I happened to have some Battenberg in my bag, he looked at me as if I’d asked him to lick a still warm badger I’d gnawed to death.

His loss, I can have
it all to myself while I enjoy the final night of an Amber-free flat. I fling my coat on the sofa, off come my heels and I leave them
on the living-room carpet.
I grab my toaster from the bedroom to join us: I’m having a pity party, guest list: me. I fetch the cake box and lift the lid, ripping it roughly past its sellotape closure. Is it the milk chocolate version she mentioned on Tuesday or
a revised dark chocolate? Quite heavy box, she’s probably made both.

Oh. Or neither.

Inside the box are nine miniature pastries sitting on purple tissue paper. Three praline pecan brioches, three raspberry and chocolate croissants, and three savoury pinwheels – caramelised onion with bacon and rosemary.