Recipe for Love (16 page)

The contestants, production and camera crew and the judges were all assembled in the reception room where they’d been first briefed on the competition.

Sarah, who managed to look remarkably efficient at the same time as being slightly nervous about being on television, cleared her throat.

‘Hi there. As Mike says, I’m Sarah and I’m the wedding planner, and I have to confess I’m very anxious about you lot doing the food for a wedding I’m in charge of.’ Her warm smile made everyone laugh, as they were meant to do.

‘It’s a champagne and canapés event, but they have to be substantial. We don’t want everyone falling down drunk after five minutes. That’s scheduled in for later.’

Her audience laughed again.

‘I want you each to make ten sorts of canapé and ten of each kind so we end up with seven hundred. That’ll be ten each for every guest, which should be enough to keep them upright. The wedding is at twelve tomorrow.
The
couple are getting married here, in the chapel, and so the guests will want feeding at one o’clock. Now I’m going to hand you over to the judges to give you more details.’

There was a ripple of excitement in the room. Weddings tended to have that effect although the men in the group were a little less enthusiastic. Sarah went to join an attractive man standing at the side. He put his arm round her and kissed the top of her head. Zoe assumed it was Hugo. Gideon stepped forward.

‘Right. We want five hot and five cold canapés. You need to think what you want to make, look up recipes etc. and then get your ten canapés passed by any of the three judges or by Sarah. Then you can start cooking, but remember lots of them will need to be very hot out of the oven, or assembled on the day so they don’t go soggy. There are a lot of ingredients here’ – he indicated a long table piled high with food – ‘but if you want anything that isn’t here and you have time to go shopping, feel free. We’ll give you money.’

Cher put her hand up. ‘But what’s to stop us buying a lot of sausage rolls from the shop and just heating them up?’

‘The fact that we’d know you’d done that and you’d be disqualified. Any more questions? No? Fine. Oh, one thing you’ll be pleased to learn: there’s a certain amount of ready-made puff pastry on the table but not enough for everyone. We don’t want too many vol-au-vents.’ Gideon paused. ‘And if we’ve passed something pastry-based for too many people, you’ll have to think of something else. We want variety and originality. Thank you.’

It was terribly hard to think when you were in love, Zoe discovered, but she had to put Gideon out of her mind and just focus. She didn’t bother to join the race to
the
table to bag the pastry. She got out her notebook and started to write.

Pignatelli, rice balls, beef in Yorkshire puddings, miniature pizzas
– not very exciting but vegetarian –
frittatas
, she wrote. That was five hot canapés. What could she do cold? She had to be quick or other people would get the ideas and then she’d have to think of something else.

After a few minutes frantic thinking and writing, she ran over to the judges.

Anna Fortune took her list. ‘No to beef in Yorkshire puddings, frittatas and if anyone else offers me asparagus with parma ham I shall scream.’

‘Sorry,’ said Zoe, although it wasn’t really her fault.

‘And what are these rice balls?’ Anna regarded her through narrowed eyes.

‘Italian. Ham and cheese with some veg maybe, in rice, deep fried in egg and breadcrumbs.’ She used to do this without the ham quite often for friends. They were tasty and very cheap if you didn’t mind the calories.

‘
Arancini
,’ said Anna.

‘Or
supplì
,’ put in Gideon. ‘Elizabeth David called them
supplì
.’

Just hearing him say ‘Elizabeth David’ made her stomach turn over with lust. Really, it was coming to something if one of the most famous and important names in the culinary world was a trigger for her desire. Just for a nanosecond their eyes met. There was hardly a flicker in his but she knew he was thinking what she was thinking. Oh, he was lovely! she thought, but then realised that lovely as he was, he was a judge and she hardly knew him. In the little time she’d had to herself since their night of passion she had come to the conclusion he probably wasn’t a keeper. Or rather
she
wasn’t. She’d keep him, no question. But he wouldn’t keep her. She doubted she was
more
than a diversion for him. Someone who was fun to be with for a while but only while she was there, in front of his nose. But that was OK. She knew that’s how it was. She’d be sad when the competition was over, or rather was over for her, but she wouldn’t regret her affair with him. She would enjoy it to the maximum while it lasted and then move on knowing she’d had a wonderful time with a wonderful lover.

She gave him a very tiny wink, not closing her eye but twitching the corner of it. He responded with one of the same. She felt her mouth move in a betraying smile. She clamped it shut and focused on what Anna was saying to her. It all felt deliciously illicit.

Eventually she was dismissed by Anna. ‘Go and see what ingredients are left and if you can make what you’ve chosen with them, fine. If not, think again!’

There were too many ingredients missing for Zoe to be able to do many of her chosen canapés, which immediately made her wonder if there had been enough food provided – and if there had been, whether Cher had concealed it somewhere. Mind you, given the skimpiness of her outfit it clearly wasn’t up her jumper. Zoe had to change her plans and so one of her cold canapés, using smoked salmon, had to become soup in a shot glass.

There were no shot glasses provided but Zoe had an idea that Fenella might well have some. She had a ridiculous amount of equipment, she had told Zoe. As there was nothing else Zoe could be getting on with, she went over to the house to ask.

She reached the kitchen and found a powwow going on. Sarah, looking tight-lipped and strained, was talking to Fenella and Rupert.

‘I just can’t believe it. This woman is supposed to be reliable – she’s one of the top suppliers in the country
according
to all the glossy magazines. And to just forget to do it? Does that make sense?’

‘Well …’ Fenella seemed to think it was a possibility.

Not Sarah.

‘The woman is running a business! This cake represents a lot of money! And she’s forgotten to do it!’

‘Don’t get in a fret, old girl,’ said Rupert, ‘I’m sure we can get another one made. Or pop down to Waitrose—’

Fenella and Sarah turned on him. ‘There isn’t time to make a cake that size, let it cool, ice it, decorate it and have it ready by noon tomorrow!’ said Sarah.

As Zoe had listened to this exchange a plan had formed in her mind. She liked challenges and before she could help herself she jumped in. ‘Excuse me,’ she said.

‘What?’ Fenella, usually so placid and helpful, seemed a bit impatient.

Sarah, who Zoe remembered too late was one of the judges for this task, looked as if she was only a second away from snapping Zoe’s head off.

‘Cupcakes,’ said Zoe. ‘We could all make them. I’m brilliant at icing them. Set up a production line and we could get seventy cupcakes done really quickly. We just need the cases, of course.’

Sarah breathed deeply, possibly for the first time for several days. ‘That is a bloody brilliant idea,’ she said eventually, after Zoe had become convinced her head was going to be cut off and used in place of a wedding cake. ‘It’s not what the bride wanted but it’ll save her several hundred pounds and as the dress went way over budget she’ll be grateful.’ She suddenly giggled. ‘Talk about a meringue! She’s got the whole bloody Pavlova!’

‘But what about the competition?’ objected Rupert. ‘If Zoe’s making cupcakes, she won’t be able to focus on her canapés. Just sayin’,’ he finished.

‘I’m a judge! Surely if she makes cupcakes for a wedding cake, for my wedding, she’ll have to go through to the next round.’ Sarah looked at Rupert, her expression more diffident than her determined words. ‘Won’t she?’

WHILE SARAH WAS
overseeing arrangements in other parts of the house, Zoe asked Fenella about shot glasses.

‘Oh yes. Loads of them. Certainly enough for the wedding.’

‘Good. I’d better get back and do some cooking then.’ Zoe frowned. ‘I don’t think they provided enough food, you know.’

‘They’ll get more. I hope! I’m not having a wedding at Somerby that’s under catered. And Sarah won’t have it either.’ Fenella had to sit down to recover from this thought and the anxiety of the missing wedding cake.

‘Maybe they did provide enough and people snaffled more than they needed,’ muttered Zoe.

‘Cher! I’m sure it’s her! You should have seen her with Hugo – and Gideon.’ Fenella paused in the way women do when they’re longing to ask another what happened the previous night but don’t quite like to. Zoe could tell she was burning with curiosity.

Zoe, who was trying very hard to function while deeply distracted by a barrage of emotions she couldn’t exactly identify, was tempted to confide. She trusted Fenella and without her best friend Jenny on hand she was the next best thing. ‘Gideon is
lovely
,’ she said, blushing.

Fenella was indignant. ‘And so he lied to me? He didn’t leave you to sleep, “perfectly chaste” as he said in such a wonderfully old-fashioned way?’

‘Er – no. But to be fair, it was my fault.’ She gave a shuddering sigh as she remembered the night before. ‘I did sort of jump on him.’

‘But he didn’t mind?’ Fenella said, less indignant now.

Zoe giggled. ‘Don’t think so.’ She stopped giggling suddenly. ‘I do know I’m mad. And you don’t need to give me the whole “will he still respect me in the morning” speech. While I do think he’ll respect me and everything, I’m not letting myself get carried away.’ Not in her head, anyway. She couldn’t speak for her heart on this occasion.

‘That’s good,’ said Fenella, blatantly not believing her. ‘But are you sure? He seems very nice but …’

Zoe gave a bright smile. ‘Oh, I’m sure to break my heart a little, but that’s part of the fun, isn’t it? You get those moody moments, a few songs that make you well up a bit, and a concert ticket or something that you keep in a box. But that’s all right!’

‘Have you ever actually had your heart broken?’ asked Fenella. ‘I promise you, it’s not to be taken lightly.’

Zoe considered, thinking that she might well be about to experience it, although a spark of hope that it might be more than just a fling burned steadily inside. ‘Well, no. But I did break someone else’s heart – or at least he said I did. I don’t think it lasted terribly long.’

‘Well, real heartbreak is truly horrible,’ said Fenella. ‘Before Rupert and I got together we had a bit of a blip and I’ve never been through so much torment. Even thinking about it now, when we’re married and so happy, I get remembered pain.’

‘I will try to carry my heart about very carefully.’

‘“Lock it up in a box of golden,” as the folk song says.’ Fenella chewed her lip, obviously considering how to go on. ‘I like Gideon, I really do. I think he’s a nice man …’

‘But?’

‘I’m not sure he’s the settling-down kind. I mean – he’s so dashing and attractive, and you’re a lovely girl. You’re not like him in that way.’

Zoe sighed deeply.

‘I may be quite wrong. I don’t know him all that well.’

‘It’s all right. I know exactly what you mean. You mean you see him with someone more sophisticated, who’s like him.’

Fenella put her hand on Zoe’s. ‘I think I’m trying to say he’s not good enough for you.’

‘Unfortunately, it’s too late for the warning. We have had sex and I fully intend to have it again, as much as I can before it’s all over.’ She heard the defiance in her voice and hoped Fenella didn’t think she was being too brazen.

‘But don’t risk the competition, Zoe. No man is worth that. If anyone, particularly Cher, finds out they’ll tell the world. You’ll have to leave and that would be dreadful. You’re so good at this. And if Gideon is a good man he’ll wait until it’s over.’

Zoe nodded, thinking that when the competition was over she would probably never see Gideon again. She felt a flutter of anxiety. Although she’d breezily told Fenella she was fine with a moment of passion, her heart persisted in saying otherwise.