Recipe for Disaster (6 page)

The Capital was so trendy it was rumoured that even
Gwyneth Paltrow was unable to get a table one night.
Members of cool and edgy rock bands ate there, and
television presenters who wanted to be seen as cool. It was
so expensive that Jake would have had to take out a
mortgage to afford dinner.

The chef who had created its reputation was currently off
work, enjoying a protracted nervous breakdown. In his
place was his brother, who couldn't cook quite as well but
was sleeping with the owner's wife.

Jake got the distinct impression that, despite appearances
to the contrary, the restaurant was on its way down.
It happened. Restaurants come and go – actually, most of
them go. Coming down with a bump after the happy glow
induced by the principal's praise, he saw in reality that the
atmosphere in the kitchen was often so bad (think sinking
ship and rats) that he didn't really want to stay, if there
hadn't been the urgent matter of an overdraft to pay off
first. He had spent a brilliant but pricey week in Italy,
learning how to make pasta from a master, and now was
seriously in debt. But it had been worth it. The chef's wife
had taken him to her heart – literally. Every morning he
would be enveloped in a squishy, garlic-and-herb fragranced
embrace, fed huge amounts of food and told
that he looked too peaky. He had worked hard, but the
food, the glorious red wine and the sun had left him feeling
as fit as a butcher's dog.

Harry was furious that Jake hadn't died in a plane crash
on the way, or at the least chopped his fingers off in a pasta
machine, but they were both lowly commis chefs at the
moment so Harry's plan of action called for discretion and
cunning.

Harry had plenty of spare energy for this, because on his
days off he could kip at his cousin's flat in Hampstead,
lulled to sleep on Egyptian cotton sheets and cocooned
from the traffic behind triple-glazed windows. When he felt
peckish there was always some fillet steak or smoked salmon
in the fridge.

Jake, on the other hand, had found the cheapest bedsit
in the whole of London. It was above an Indian supermarket,
and opposite the sort of pub whose clientele
consider it a poor do if there isn't at least one fight at night.
Jake would lie in bed, under a woefully inadequate duvet,
shivering and listening to the sound of glass bottles
breaking over people's heads.

His diet would have been just soup, made from
vegetables picked up from a local market, because that was
all he could afford. But he had made friends with Mr Patel
downstairs, who had left Bombay twenty-five years ago but
was still dreadfully homesick, and was thrilled by Jake's
genuine interest in Indian cuisine. He took to leaving a
portion of the family's curry on Jake's doorstep most nights.
Jake was usually so tired he would eat it cold, standing up,
before falling into a fitful doze on a bed so uncomfortable
he was tempted to lift the mattress up to see if there were
nails underneath.

When he came into work hollow-eyed, Harry would look
over in mock concern and say: 'You look rough. Been
burning the candle at both ends again?'

Although Jake's work was always impeccable, Harry's
words gave the impression that Jake was a bit of a party
animal, which made their boss, who was seriously stressed
to start with, look at him with some suspicion.

Kitchens are busy places and people often bump into
each other, but Jake always seemed to get jostled when he
was using a sharp knife or stirring a hot sauce. Scalded or
cut, he would swear profusely, and Harry would shrug and
grin an apology. It gained Jake an entirely undeserved
reputation for being humourless and grouchy.

Also, if they all went out for a drink after work, Harry
always bought several rounds while Jake (mindful of his
bank manager, who was making increasingly threatening
noises) tried to nurse half a shandy through the evening.
No one actually said he was mean, but the unspoken words
hung in the air alongside the cigarette smoke.

He was often too tired to make much conversation, but
he watched. Did the others not realise they were being
befriended by a shark? Harry had predatory eyes, clear,
focused and hungry. The others might think him a good
sort but Jake was determined not to land between those
expensive, gleaming white teeth.

The one bright spot was Jill, one of the restaurant's
ever-shifting population of waiting staff. She was freckled and
funny, and a truly terrible waitress, but at least she always
turned up for work, though this wasn't due to professionalism,
but because she couldn't bear to be parted from Jake.

They had been going out for only a week before she said:
'I know this is so totally the wrong thing to say, but I have
fallen in love with you. Do you want to kick me out?'

'I haven't finished counting the freckles on your nose yet,
let alone the rest of you. I'll let you know when I've
finished,' he teased. 'Anyway, the feeling is mutual because
you are practically perfect, you know. You're gorgeous, you
make me laugh and, most importantly, you don't seem to
mind that this bed is as hard as a rock and so short our feet
dangle over the edge.'

She was always chronically short of cash as well. If they
were off on the same day they would walk to the nearest free
exhibition, or lie in bed eating cold curry and making love.

He was enjoying himself so much he didn't want to spoil
it by taking her home to meet his family yet. This was
because they were mad. Mrs Goldman never believed in
using one word if you could slot in at least another fifty,
even if they contradicted each other. She was always on the
lookout for a molehill to turn into a mountain. Jake was
convinced his father had taken up bird-watching just to get
out of the house, but as he hardly uttered a word when he
was in it, it was difficult to tell the difference.

Four of the kitchen staff had left or been sacked within
hours of each other that month, so no one had been able to
have much time off. Jake was knackered, but it was his and
Jill's first afternoon off together for three weeks and he had
it planned down to the last minute. He was going to take
her on the bus (cheap) to an exhibition (free), which would
leave him flush enough for pasta for two at an Italian
restaurant round the corner. He was just outlining this plan
to her when his mother rang.

'There is an enormous bird flapping around in the attic.
I can hear it!' Jake's mother had a phobia about birds.

'Well, where's Dad?'

'Out.'

'Are you sure?'

'Of course I'm sure. It's always the same. I don't know
why he bothers to call this place his home and does he take
his phone with him? No! It is right here in front of me on
the sideboard. I told him to shut the window in the attic but
he must have forgotten, and heaven knows what it is
dropping onto the boxes up there. Imagine the smell! Oh
my God! Maybe it is laying eggs; before we know it there
will be a whole flock of them. There is that box belonging to
your oma up there – it is all we have left of her!'

'I'll come right over, Mum,' said Jake, putting the phone
down. It was easier to say it now and cut out another twenty
minutes of kvetch.

He sighed. 'It's going to take ages to get across London
and she won't let me out of her clutches until I've had at
least two cups of tea and an update on everything our
neighbours have been up to, even though she knows I don't
know who half of them are.' He smiled at Jill ruefully. 'Then
there will be an intensive interrogation of every aspect of
my life for the last six months, followed by analysis, criticism
and entirely unsolicited advice.' He didn't want to do any of
this, but he was a good Jewish son. In his head he saw his
precious time off vanish like smoke. He might as well have
been working.

'Don't worry,' said Jill gamely. 'To be honest, I could do
with spending the afternoon asleep, anyway.' She kissed
him, but although she tried not to show her disappointment,
she knew it would be ages before they got more time
off together.

'Thank God you are such a nice person,' said Jake, and
rushed off.

Jill mooched round the restaurant kitchen in an aimless
way. She was tired, but the sun was shining and she wasn't
rostered for an afternoon off for at least another ten days.
It was all a real bummer.

Harry was apparently absorbed in sharpening his knives
but his hearing was acute when it was something that could
be turned to his advantage.

'I've been stood up as well. My girlfriend is off sick with a
migraine,' he lied. He didn't have a girlfriend at the moment,
but he wanted to appear casual and unthreatening. 'It's such
a nice day, isn't it? There's supposed to be a good jazz band
on in Hyde Park later this afternoon. Hey, do you fancy
going? I'll buy you one those mocha coffee caramel things
you're always going on about. They sound really revolting,
but if you like them . . .' He grinned at her disarmingly.

Jill thought about this. She knew Jake didn't like Harry
but she didn't really understand why. He seemed perfectly
nice to her so she couldn't see any harm in his suggestion.
He just wanted some company for the afternoon, in a
brotherly sort of way. She wouldn't even have to tell Jake.

The following week it was Friday the thirteenth. But Jake
wasn't superstitious so he strolled into work whistling
cheerfully. It was payday and he planned to cook Jill a
fabulous meal that night. He had already been out and
bought a bunch of roses on tick from the flower shop on the
corner, and a bottle of Mr Patel's best wine, which wasn't
actually that good but none of the other off-licences
operated a buy now, pay later scheme. Jill had seemed a bit
down recently, which wasn't like her at all, but when he
asked her what the matter was she had just shrugged and
said she must be coming down with a cold or something.
Jake wasn't surprised. His room was distinctly damp as well
as chilly, but tonight it was full of Mr Patel's entire stock of
candles. It would be so warm they might have to eat supper
in the nude, which could be fun.

She was already at work when he arrived, polishing wine
glasses. He crept up behind her and kissed the back of her
neck.

'Hello, beautiful.'

Jill jumped about two feet in the air and dropped a wine
glass.

'Oh, shit.'

'Hey, don't worry – it was my fault anyway. You're a bit
jumpy this morning.' He tried to kiss her again but she
moved her head so that his lips landed on her chin and he
sensed it wasn't a good moment to try again.

'Are you all right?'

'Of course,' she snapped, and then gave him a weak
smile.

'Sorry, Jake. I've just got such a bad headache.'

'Oh, poor you. Try and survive till tonight and then I will
cosset you and comfort you. Leave the glass – I'll clear it up.'
He went out and so didn't see the look on her face, which
was of intense guilt, mixed with irritation.

Why was he always so bloody nice, she thought, conveniently
forgetting that this was why she had fallen in love
with him in the first place.

Later that evening Jake looked round his room with
satisfaction. OK, most of the candles were the sort you
would only use in a power cut and the ones that were
scented were giving off a slightly curried fragrance, but the
flickering lights hid the damp patch in the corner rather
well.

Jill gave a rather wan smile when she saw the roses,
before sitting down at the table and putting her face in her
hands.

'Jake, we need to talk.'

He went very still. It was not going to be good news. This
loaded little phrase never meant anything of the sort. In his
experience, 'we need to talk' never involved anything
remotely resembling a two-way conversation. No, what it
meant was 'I have an overpowering need to tell you lots of
things you would rather not hear and, frankly, anything
you might have to contribute isn't going to make any
difference.' Oh crap.

'I'll just put the steaks back in the fridge then. I don't
suppose we're going to want them,' he said coldly.

'Oh, please, just leave them and sit down.'

'Certainly not. Whatever you might have to say will not
be a good enough excuse for treating food badly.' He
busied himself in the kitchen for a few minutes, putting off
the horrible moment. It also gave him a small amount of
satisfaction to make her wait.

She was sitting at the table, shredding a napkin into tiny
pieces.

'Things haven't been right between us for a while now.'

'Haven't they?' This was news to him.

Jill swallowed and wished he would open that bottle of
wine, but he just sat there, very still, waiting.

'I've been seeing someone else.' When he didn't respond,
but just looked at her blankly, she burst out: 'Oh, please
don't make this more difficult than it already is!'

'For whom, exactly? You or me? Because it's bad enough
for me as it is. But let me help you out. By "seeing" someone,
I take it you mean you've been sleeping with him.
You're terribly sorry; you never meant this to happen and
you certainly didn't mean to hurt anyone.'

This was exactly what Jill was going to say, but it didn't
sound quite the same coming out of Jake's mouth.

'So, who is it?

'You don't want to know.'

'That means you are too scared to tell me.'

She took a deep breath. Jake wasn't the violent sort, but
you never knew, and this might be the one thing that would
tip him over the edge.

'It's Harry.'

Jake continued to sit very still and concentrated on
keeping his face under control. He was damned if he was
going to let her see how shocked and upset he was.

'That's a very stupid thing you are doing.' That was
good. He sound quite calm, almost casual, but he knew it
had hit home because she flinched.

'I knew you would say that, but –'

'Even before we were going out I told you to stay away
from him, didn't I? He is a devious, manipulative, arrogant
shit who will sleep with you for a while and then dump you
because that's what he's like. I don't want to burst the
bubble of your self-esteem, but he's just using you to get at
me.'

'Thanks! Anyway, he told me you would say that!'

Jake leaned back in the chair, eyes narrowed. He was so
angry he was almost detached from the whole thing. Which
was good, but he knew the pain would come later.

'Let me see, I suppose he took you for a drink and it just
sort of escalated from there. You can spare me the details.'

She had intended to do that anyway. It would be
impossibly hurtful to Jake to explain how much fun she had
had that first afternoon. They hadn't done anything wrong
either, just listened to some music, which neither of them
had liked, and talked, a lot. It turned out that they had
plenty in common, so much that it seemed imperative and
entirely natural to arrange to meet again. OK, this time it
was in the sort of cocktail bar she'd always longed to be
taken to (what woman didn't?) and yes, they had drunk
Bollinger, which she'd only ever heard about on
Ab Fab
, but
it was really to do with their personalities seeming to mesh
together. That and the fact that when his hot blue gaze
looked down at her (he was so tall!), being with him was like
basking in a Mediterranean sun. And it was certainly
unthinkable to describe how Harry's huge bed was made
for the sort of inventive sex that would result in serious
injury if they tried it on Jake's lumpy single mattress.

Jill concentrated instead on saying how sorry she was.
She said it in so many ways Jake half wondered if she'd
consulted a thesaurus before coming out. Eventually he
could listen no longer.

'Enough! Is that the gist of what you have to say?'
She nodded miserably.

'Then you might as well just fuck off.'

When she'd gone, Jake lay down on his bed, watching the
thirty-two candles dripping wax on the carpet and trying
not to think about the fact that she had probably gone to see
Harry, who was most likely even now enjoying the sex that
he had planned for his own evening. Jake was awake for
most of the night, thinking about little else.

Jill certainly had gone round to see Harry, but was
shocked when his door was opened by a very beautiful girl
wearing one of the bath towels she herself had enjoyed
using. As she stood there in horror, Harry himself
appeared, flagrantly, insultingly, wearing nothing at all and
not giving a shit about it either.

'Oops,' was all he said, but it was enough.

Jill stared at him silently for a minute, while it slowly
dawned on her what a fool she had been. 'You are such a
loser, Harry. For some reason your personality is permanently
in negative equity. I don't know why you feel the
need to steal from Jake to make up the shortfall, but it will
never be enough.'

For a second, Harry's mask dropped to show a face
twisted in anger, then he smirked. 'Loser? With all this? I
don't think so, babe!'

The swirling cauldron of emotions in the kitchen the
next day was about as appealing as one of Mrs Goldman's
casseroles – a dish she inflicted on her family from time to
time and which was based on the simple premise that if you
bunged roughly equal measures of the pantry and the
fridge into the oven, something edible would emerge. It
almost never did.

Jake was sad and furious at the same time, which made
his head feel quite curdled. He tried very hard to leave all
this personal stuff at the kitchen door, so to speak, and stay
professional, but he wore a permanent scowl and spoke
only in monosyllables. An equally unappetising combination
of shame and despair made Jill clumsier than ever,
while Harry's glee made him simply insufferable. He waited
until the kitchen was full of people before holding out his
hand and saying in a loud voice: 'I hope there are no hard
feelings, mate? Please don't take this personally.'

'Why not? We both know it is,' said Jake acidly and
stalked off, giving Harry all the time in the world to tell
everyone how it wasn't really Jake's fault he was such a bad
loser.

To all this was added the chef's hangover, which, even by
his standards, was of monumental proportions.

It was a morning of curdled sauces, dropped crockery
and knives sliding smoothly into fingers instead of
vegetables. The third plate that Jill dropped echoed round
the chef's throbbing head and sent him staggering to the
first-aid box.

'Fucking hell! There isn't even one aspirin left in here!'
He glared at everyone, holding his head and his bloodshot
gaze came to rest on Jill, whose eyes were so swollen with
crying she couldn't see she was putting all the knives in the
forks tray.

'Stop messing up my kitchen, you stupid woman, and go
and get me some aspirin, the extra strong sort,' he roared,
and threw his wallet at her.

She scuttled off. On her way to get her coat she saw Harry
laughing with one of the other waitresses and trying to pinch
her bum. When she got to the shop she couldn't remember
why she was there and had to wander up and down the aisles
for ages. The supermarket had a help desk and she was very
tempted to lay her head on the counter and ask for some but
she didn't think they would be up to dealing with emotional
fuck-ups. When she got back she was so late the chef had got
tired of waiting and had sloped off home.

With difficulty she staggered through to the end of the
shift, giving everyone the wrong orders and looking totally
blank when they complained. No one left a tip that
lunchtime. She was bringing the last plate back to the
kitchen when Jake looked up briefly. His eyes were dark
and sad, and she suddenly remembered all the fun they'd
had. She couldn't possibly go on working with him. She was
crap at her job anyway. She would go home to her mum.
She would do it right now. There was no point in waiting
for her wages because she probably owed more than that in
broken crockery anyway.

Putting her hand into her pocket for her phone she
found she still had the chef's wallet. She groaned. Jake was
the only one left, wiping surfaces with a furious energy.

'Look, I'm going home for a while, could you give this
back?'

'Whatever,' he said with studied indifference. She tossed
it over to him and it landed in his tool box.

He forgot about the wallet almost instantly. It was his
evening off, which he spent with two bottles of appalling
red wine no one else in the supermarket had wanted. The
only CDs he hadn't sold were Coldplay and Leonard
Cohen, but they suited his mood perfectly.

After listening to three and half hours of angst-ridden
musings on the bleakness of life, perversely he decided that
things weren't that bad. He had lost a woman – well, so had
plenty of others before him. More importantly, he still had
cooking. To lose that would be the real tragedy.

Meanwhile, back at work, the chef was having a small
temper tantrum at being one waitress down. Taking into
account the fact that she was the worst waitress they'd ever
had, it was probably no bad thing, but she seemed to have
gone off with his wallet.

'I'm sure she put it in your office, Chef,' said Harry,
always helpful.

'Well, it's not there now.'

Harry knew where the wallet was because he had seen it
and covered it up with a tea towel, but was taking his time,
waiting for the right moment.

It was a busy night. When the chef's knife snapped under
the pressure, Harry offered him one of his. 'Mind you, I
think Jake's left his.'

'Silly bastard. He knows he shouldn't do that. I'll have
one of his; it serves him right for not taking them home.'

Harry bent down and schooled his face into a careful
controlled look of surprise and confusion. He was practically
salivating at the thought of revenge. The chef
glanced over impatiently, then stopped.

'Fuck – what's he doing with my wallet?' he exploded.

'Well, I'm sure there's some sort of explanation,' Harry
said, pretending to sound placating.

'You bet there is – he's a bloody thief!' The chef was a
man of simple emotions and massive grudges. He always
gave in to them.

When Jake walked into work on Monday he was sacked
on the spot. What could he do, sue? Yeah, like he had
plenty of spare cash for a court case. To make things worse,
he then found himself the object of press attention, all of it
unwelcome. 'College Star's Theft from Top Eatery' was the
worst headline, from hacks seizing a double opportunity to
sully both Jake's college and the restaurant. By the time he
finally managed to get hold of Jill to try to clear his name,
two weeks had passed and the chef had moved on, with his
wallet, to a new job somewhere in the Med. This gave the
press another field day when they blamed Jake for his
departure. Things got so bad, he had to invest in a pair of
dark glasses. During his enforced and poverty-stricken time
off, Jake had ample time to sit around and fantasise. These
dreams were:

1. That the Mediterranean was full of sharks.
   
2. That the chef got drunk one night and fell overboard,
   where his fat white bottom would provide a
   tasty snack.
   
3. That Jill fell into a decline and became a nun,
   because she had lost the one true love of her life.
   
4. That all journalists would spend the afterlife being
   spit-roasted in some sort of hell dimension.