Cooking the Books (12 page)

I could believe it. I was just managing to remove my mistreated arms from their grips when Ms Atkins, full of chicken soup, issued forth from her dressing room like an army with banners. Mr Leonard hurried over to her but she brushed even that great artist aside. Holding his useless makeup brush he watched her as she strode to the set, shoving aside the crew.

‘I’m back now,’ she announced in a steely tone. ‘Thank you, Emily,’ she added, as Emily, crestfallen, slunk off set to her side. ‘Now, where were we?’

The cast readjusted themselves. Harrison, waiting for his entrance, sighed, ‘Magnificent.’ Emily fumbled for a hand- kerchief. Ms Atkins was in entire possession of the room.

I was going home. I did not like the company in which I found myself. I shucked my apron and started walking.

Home was lovely; devoid of actors, pique, pain or humili- ation. Also devoid, alas, of Daniel. Horatio and I had a quick drink on the roof and then I decided to deal with my emails. Amid the usual dross was one from Jason. I knew that he didn’t have a laptop so I assumed that he was writing from an internet cafe.

Job hard. Fd gd. How things? Miss yu
.

I wondered what to reply. I could say the same about my present life. Food was undoubtedly good. Work was hard. I missed him, too. We had adopted roles from Patrick O’Brian’s
Master and Commander
and I missed not having my midshipman. Daniel came in as I was pondering my reply. He read the email over my shoulder and chuckled.

‘What should I reply?’

‘Just as you feel,’ he advised.

So I replied
Things good. Miss yu tu
, which was all true. Daniel kissed the back of my neck. ‘You’ll be a geek before long,’ he told me.

‘So, “How things?” as Jason would say,’ I asked him.

‘Terrible and sad,’ he replied, quoting AA Milne. ‘I have reached a dead end. Pockets seems to have had the documents, and he has, as he told us, “filed them in the proper place”. The only way I can find the proper place is to follow Pockets. I have been doing that. But he has nothing he deems worth filing so he hasn’t been near his stash. I have been leaving printed papers about with elaborate casualness all night and he hasn’t even noticed them. A police patrol threatened to pick me up for littering.’

‘What have you been using as bait?’ I asked.

‘Just newspapers and so on.’

‘Why not give him these,’ I offered, handing over a bundle of financial documents. ‘They’re copies of my shop accounts. Perhaps he will consider them worthy.’

‘I’ll try it tonight,’ said Daniel, kissing me again. ‘And how are things at the soap set?’

I told him about Ms Atkins’ collapse.

‘The really unpleasant thing was the way they just re-formed and went on,’ I said, putting on the kettle. ‘And that Emily was a perfect copy of the star. No, not a copy—a pastiche. She just put on the red suit and the personality with it. It was very strange. Would you like to go out to dinner?’

‘I would,’ he said. ‘You must be tired of cooking. Where shall we go?’

‘Let’s just walk around and see what’s open,’ I suggested. Melbourne is a good place for this. There are innumerable—well, I expect the Chamber of Commerce has counted them, but I haven’t—cafes and bistros and little restaurants which only seat twenty people on old orange crates. They come and go and reopen with a new speciality daily, so there is always something surprising available. And you need to enjoy it while you can, because it might not be there when you thread the alleyways next week and find that it has reinvented itself as a Moroccan takeaway.

I finished my accounts and Daniel consulted with his BlackBerry and then we issued forth into the warm dusk, in search of a diverting culinary experience. Summer had relented for the moment and I was not sweating into my decorated kurta by the time we found a little Japanese restaurant in Bourke Street which had an encouraging population of Japanese students in search of tori teriyaki just like Mother makes. We were drinking our miso soup when I became aware that other persons had felt the need for some Tokyo cuisine.

Ensconced in a booth were Ethan, Emily, Tash and an unknown female with glasses. I thought she might be one of the crew. They were laughing and drinking sake. I pointed them out to Daniel and explained who they were. He was already rising from his seat. I joined him and we went over to the TV table.

‘Eth!’ exclaimed Daniel. ‘I thought it might be you!’

‘Daniel!’ Ethan stood up, always an unwise thing to do in a Japanese restaurant if you are over two metres tall. He ducked his head under a hanging ornament and gripped Daniel’s hand. ‘You still haunting the city, then?’

‘You still making pictures?’ asked Daniel.

‘Yep,’ said Ethan.

‘Yep,’ said Daniel.

Some sort of ritual exchange, I assumed. Emily caught my eye and shifted uneasily in her seat. The woman with the spectacles introduced herself as Sasha, the producer of
Kiss the Bride
. I was vague as to the respective roles of producer and director. Sasha was small, thin, and fined down to the bone, with a nose I could use to cut cheese and very bright eyes behind the pickle-bottle lenses. They had almost finished their dinner, while I was aware of my stomach making grumbling noises. The table was covered with bits of script. Tash gave me a big grin chock-full of country goodness.

‘Join us?’ asked Ethan. ‘Only we’ve got to go soon.’

‘Just came to say hello,’ Daniel said. ‘Nice to meet you all.’ And he ushered me back to our table, on which now reposed rice, tori teriyaki, that strange and fascinating Japanese coleslaw and potato salad and Daniel’s sashimi, which he loves even more than the Mouse Police do. I poured myself another cup of green tea and picked up my chopsticks.

‘So you know our Ethan?’ I asked. ‘How?’

‘Met him when he was doing a documentary on the homeless. Showed him around the traps and introduced him to Sister Mary. He went on the Soup Run. Twice. Once with a camera and once on his own, just to help.’

‘I have never seen him without a camera,’ I told my beloved. ‘Look, he’s got one now. At dinner.’

‘Film people are strange,’ agreed Daniel, picking up another piece of tuna and slathering it with the ferocious pale-green wasabi. ‘It’s almost as if they can’t be in the action; they are always observers. They see the world through the lens and it sets them apart. That’s why he came back the next night without the camera, I think. And he was good with the kids.’ He heaved a wasabi-scented breath. ‘They don’t have access to any good role models and they aren’t used to strong men who don’t hit people. One of our lost souls attacked him because he was new and instead of punching him Ethan just enfolded the kid in a big bear hug. By the time he let go the kid had stopped freaking out. I like him,’ concluded Daniel. ‘This wasabi is really strong,’ he added admiringly, wiping his eyes on his paper napkin.

Pausing only to marvel that people would willingly inflict wasabi on their innocent mouths, I hopped into my chicken, which was excellent. But the crowd in the booth drew my attention. They were chuckling, snuggling close, popping bits from each other’s plates into mouths as though they were mother birds. Daniel followed my gaze.

‘All the earmarks of a conspiracy, eh, Corinna?’ he managed through the scalding of the horseradish. I was intrigued. What was poor Emily doing, cuddled close to the bulk of Ethan, giggling at his jokes, in company with both the producer and the director?

It was none of my business. But still.

I shook myself, summoned up some civilised conversation, and paid attention to my dinner. Melbourne was striding past. Office workers were going home, all still glued by one ear against a mobile phone to their business and their boss. Bits of Japanese and scraps of English floated past us. Daniel and I are both eavesdroppers by avocation and he was nearer to the
Kiss the Bride
table. I could tell from his expression that he had heard something interesting.

We paid and left and in the warm street I snuggled up to him and demanded, ‘All right, what are they talking about?’

‘Replacing someone called the Superbitch,’ he replied.

We discussed it all the way home and reached no conclusion—mostly because we lacked enough data. In any case, I said firmly, it was not our problem. Daniel reluctantly agreed and we shelved the matter. We spent the evening watching
Doctor Who
—I was still undecided about the new Doctor—and then I went to bed with Horatio because Daniel was about to set forth on his Pockets-watch. He loaded his satchel with a thermos of iced lemonade and stowed away a packet of chicken sandwiches. He was obviously going to be out all night.

So I and my cat put ourselves virtuously to bed and slept the sleep of the healthily exhausted until it was six and time to let Bernie in to start the day’s baking. While nibbling my toast with blackberry jam I noticed a piece of pale yellow paper on the kitchen table. It was grimy with fingerprints. When I turned it over, it read
Truth lies
. Cryptic. Something of Daniel’s, I assumed, and went down the stairs to feed the Mouse Police, count the slain, and put the rye bread on. Today, from my list, was going to be Hungarian. You cannot have Hungarian food without rye bread.

I was thudding and kneading while Bernie—with, as usual, not a hair out of place—made Hungarian honey cake. I con- sidered that grubby bit of paper. Where had Daniel found it? Was it the product of a strange mind, like that man who painstakingly lettered
Eternity
in beautiful copperplate all over Sydney? Or Jason’s friend who had been arrested as a graffitist when he returned to finish his tag, which consisted of fluffy white clouds against a blue sky with the legend
Aspire
? Jason’s friend had explained his tag as an exhortation to youth to rise above poverty and mischance to greater things, and apparently the magistrate had believed him to the extent of giving him a non-conviction community-based order. Why write
Truth lies
? An expression of existential despair? A philosophical statement? Or was it just the port-and-battery-acid speaking? These were deep matters but I ran out of patience with barren speculation quite quickly and got on with the bread. I sprinkled caraway seeds and got the whole baking into the oven before I poured my second cup of coffee, which Bernie took as an invitation to converse.

‘What do you think was wrong with Ms Atkins?’ she asked.

‘Famine,’ I replied. ‘Silly woman hadn’t eaten for two days.’

‘She must have gained weight,’ Bernie told me. ‘Emily says that Ms Atkins weighs herself at the exact same time every morning. Nude.’

‘Sick,’ I commented.

‘Apparently a lot of them do it,’ she told me. ‘They have a massed weigh-in for the players and anyone who gains weight will be told to go on a diet. It affects continuity, you see.’

I could not see that a kilo or so was going to make any difference to a camera. I said so. Bernie shook her head.

‘It’s not Ethan who insists on it,’ she said dotingly. ‘He likes to see people eat. He said so.’

‘If he offers you any of his scrambled eggs with chilli oil, refuse,’ I advised. ‘That stuff will slaughter every tastebud you own.’

‘I like hot food,’ she told me. Ah, that Ethan’s attractiveness transcended cuisine. I smiled and went on with my coffee. The bakery was full of the scent of honey cake. Superb. I asked about the recipe.

‘The secret is to mix the honey in really well,’ she said, deflected from dreams of Ethan. ‘If there’s any left on the surface of the mix it will burn. It still tastes nice, but it’s black.’

‘Good for a Hallowe’en cake,’ I observed.

‘Oh, special occasion cakes are such fun.’ She clasped her hands in rapture. ‘Birthdays, Christmas, Easter cakes, Hallo- we’en cakes. I am going to have such a fun career if I can get a job. I made a Simnel cake with the marzipan decorations for my masterclass. I formed and tinted them like primroses. I got an A.’

I determined that, if I had any influence, Bernie should get a pastry cook’s position somewhere. Marzipan is notoriously difficult to deal with and Simnel cake is not an easy thing to construct. It has eleven adornments on the top, one for all the apostles except Judas. Servants used to be given one to take home to their parents on Mothering Sunday.