The Worst Case Scenario Cookery Club Page 2

  By having you killed? was what Liz wanted to type into the comments box. She resisted the urge and went into work.

  Chapter Three

  Liz had not intended to become a dental hygienist. Who does? But when it was time to leave school, the psychology course she’d hoped to join was oversubscribed. Her parents persuaded her that working as a dental hygienist was still about making people better able to face the world. And it was far better paid than most counselling. Danger money, Liz now knew.

  She had grown to like her job though. Certainly, she liked the people she worked with. Her boss, Vince, was a good laugh. As a recovering alcoholic, he was slightly less a good laugh than he used to be but at least the laughter was no longer nervous. Julie on the front desk was slightly gormless but sweet and could be relied upon to ensure Liz got to read the latest copy of Hello! before it went into the pile in the waiting room. Meanwhile, Corinne the dental nurse was one of Liz’s best friends. Like Liz, she’d ended up in dentistry accidentally. She claimed it had ruined her dating life.

  ‘There is not one man in this town I could kiss,’ she said. She’d seen inside the mouths of most of them and it was rarely a pretty sight.

  Everyone in Newbay tried to get into Vince’s surgery. Even when he was still drinking and you were just as likely to come out with a new hole in your teeth as get one filled. He was the only dentist in town still taking NHS patients.

  Liz understood Corinne’s complaint, though working at Pearly Whites Dental had been good for her love life. Once. She’d met Ian when he came in to sell Vince a year’s supply of White Up Your Life bleach and activator. It didn’t work very well and Vince soon switched to another supplier but unfortunately, by that time, Liz was already hooked into Ian and his way with superficial stains.

  There were times when Liz found her job boring but she liked that she could do a day’s work then leave the surgery and forget all about it. There was no taking work home from the dentist’s office. You couldn’t take the patients with you. Thank goodness. On the morning of the anniversary of Ian’s sudden departure, however, Liz found herself taking home into work.

  All the way into the office she composed snappy comments in response to Brittney’s latest blog post.

  ‘Goddess-made connection, my arse!’ she said out loud while waiting at the traffic lights. The man in the car beside her looked surprised. It was still warm for September and Liz forgot she had her windows rolled down.

  ‘Sorry!’ She gave him a little wave.

  Liz continued to mull over Ian’s corny secret message in that ghastly puppy card while she set up and tested her equipment for the day. She was still gnashing her teeth at the thought of Ian actually bothering to put a flower in a stupid chi-chi ‘bud vase’ when her first appointment walked in.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said, without even saying hello.

  Then she pulled the lever that made the chair flip backwards as though she was Sweeney Todd sending her client down to be made into pie. She clipped a bib around the poor chap’s neck and brought up the patient’s notes on her computer screen.

  ‘Alex Barton?’

  Twenty-nine years old. Lived near the train station. Worked as a chef.

  ‘That’s me,’ he responded somewhat nervously.

  ‘Any issues?’ she asked.

  Ian had issues. Writing silly love notes to a girl almost half his age. Letting himself be referred to as ‘the Darling BF’ in a blog post that could be seen by anyone. A blog post that made oblique reference to his sex life. Ugh! What if Saskia had read it?

  If Alex Barton had any issues with his teeth, Liz certainly didn’t hear what he had to say about them. She had him open his mouth and stuck her mirror straight in. She made some disdainful sounds that were more about Ian than the state of Alex’s dentition – though poor Alex didn’t know that – and got to work.

  ‘Hold this.’ Liz positioned the water jet and the suction pipe in the side of Alex’s mouth and had him keep them in place.

  ‘Goddess-made connection,’ she muttered.

  ‘Wha …?’ Alex tried to ask.

  Liz was on auto-pilot as she scraped at stubborn tartar and prodded at Alex’s gums. She might have been looking at his teeth but the picture in her mind’s eye was all Brittney and Ian reaffirming what the ‘Goddess’ had given them. She squinted to make the horrifying image go away. At the same time, she involuntarily pressed down on the water jet pedal and nearly turned Alex’s time in the dentist’s chair into a water ride.

  Alex spluttered upright and Liz suddenly came to.

  ‘Oh my gosh. I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘This equipment … I’ve been telling Vince it needs looking at for months.’

  Both Liz and Alex knew it wasn’t the equipment that needed looking at but Alex remained tactfully silent on the matter.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I must have moved.’

  Alex was soaked from neck to navel. Liz handed him a wodge of blue paper towels, which had the absorbency of tracing paper. That is to say, not much.

  ‘This is terrible,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe what just happened.’

  ‘It’s really OK,’ said Alex, squirming as Liz attempted to pat dry what she could reach. ‘I’m a chef. I’m used to getting messy.’

  Liz used one of the blue towels to pat her own face, which had caught some of the spray. As the realisation of what she had done finally hit her, she wanted to take a whiff of Vince’s gas and lay down on the floor to die. When you had your tools in someone’s mouth, you were supposed to be one hundred per cent present. This was the first time ever Liz had let her concentration slide to such disastrous effect.

  It was because of him. Because of Ian. Still! Surely she should be over him by now?

  She pressed the damp paper towel to her forehead and slumped in despair (as far as she was able on her ergonomic stool).

  ‘Do you want to carry on?’ Alex asked with trepidation.

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Liz, answering another question entirely, ‘I’m really not so sure.’

  Liz did go back to Alex Barton’s scale and polish. She let him choose the music that played while she worked – he went for Coldplay, which was unfortunate, but given the circumstances … And then she gave him a dozen mini toothpaste tubes. Free samples from Ian’s firm as it happened, though he no longer was the go-to rep for dentists in the Newbay area. Alex accepted the toothpaste gratefully – ‘Can never have too much’ – but then he asked Liz for a favour. He reached into his rucksack and pulled out a small pile of flyers.

  ‘It’s a bit cheeky but can I leave these?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Liz. She was just glad he wasn’t thinking of suing. However, his kindness, coupled with the fact that now he was out of the chair again she could clearly see he was the hottest patient she’d had in years, was making her feel like a schoolgirl. Schoolgirl? Huh! He must think she was a daft old bag. She felt her cheeks colouring up again.

  Subtly fanning herself with the flyers, Liz promised she would press them on every single one of her clients. It was the very least she could do. Only after Alex left with his clean teeth and a damp jumper did Liz look to see what he was selling.

  ‘Beginners’ cookery class. No experience required. Learn to cook fantastic food from scratch in a friendly and fun environment. Newbay Community Centre. Every Thursday 6pm.’

  Hmmm. Liz had never been much of a cook herself. Seemed like a faff when you got such good ready meals from Sainsbury’s. And she was a working mum. She didn’t have time to cook from actual ingredients.

  With Alex gone, Liz wandered into reception. She put the flyers on Julie’s desk and did a few deep breathing exercises. Her next client required her full concentration.

  Must. Not. Think. About. Brittney.

  ‘Goddess-made connection!’ Liz raged at the empty waiting room.

  ‘You been on the blog?’ asked Julie sympathetically. ‘Seen that puppy card?’ It turned out everyone in the surgery had.

  Cha
pter Four

  Alex would have gone home to change after his dental disaster but there was little point. He didn’t have another decent jumper to change into. The one he’d been wearing that morning was the only one he owned that hadn’t been moth-eaten into lace. Alex was dreading the winter when he would have to wear that grey jumper every day, unless something happened to alter his financial circumstances quite dramatically. He was saving for something far more important to him than new threads.

  For now though, it was almost warm enough to pretend he didn’t need a sweater at all. He took it off and stuffed it into his rucksack. The wet patch on the front of his shirt would dry more quickly if open to the air.

  Alex had wanted to look good that day because he was planning a publicity blitz. He was going to visit every hotel, restaurant, shop and salon in Newbay, asking them to stick his cookery school flyer in their windows. He was determined to make his first cookery course work. He wondered, as he walked along the promenade, whether he had left too many flyers from his supply in the dental surgery.

  But it wasn’t long before he discovered how difficult it would be to persuade the local shopkeepers to display his little poster. Some of them wanted money for the favour but Alex was wary of forking out a fiver for the privilege of having his poster pinned on a shop window corkboard obscured by stickers advertising lottery tickets and electricity meter top-up cards.

  The bigger hotels were a bit better. The receptionist at The Majestic said she might be up for it herself. That bucked Alex’s spirits.

  ‘Everyone is interested in cooking,’ the receptionist assured him. ‘Everybody has to eat, don’t they?’

  Alex agreed. Cookery shows were the biggest thing on television. The fuss when the BBC lost Bake Off showed just how much the Great British public loved to bake. Or at least loved to watch other people baking.

  But with a week to go Alex had received only five email enquiries in response to having handed out hundreds of flyers. He’d duly sent out the details and instructions as to how the interested parties could ensure their places before the ‘highly popular’ course sold out. After that, nothing. Not one of them got back to him again. Was the course too expensive? Had he plugged it too hard? Alex could only hope that the following Thursday would not find him entirely alone in the Newbay Community Centre kitchen.

  On the other side of town, John Barker was alone in his kitchen. Again. He had the refrigerator door open and he stared into it as though waiting for the friendly Hotpoint to tell him what to eat. But alas, there was no lady of the larder to reach out with a swordfish steak, and the longer John stared, the less he seemed to see.

  It wasn’t that there was nothing in the refrigerator. Quite the opposite. It was actually pretty full. The ladies of the Newbay Theatre Society, aka the NEWTS, the amateur dramatic club to which John belonged, had made it their business to see he was fully stocked. After John’s wife Sonia’s sudden and unexpected death, Angela from wardrobe quickly arranged several of the NEWTS women into a rota to deliver fresh cooked meals to John each and every day. A sort of bespoke ‘meals on wheels’. Nine months later, the food parcels were still arriving. At least, from a couple of the more determined widows.

  But John couldn’t keep up with their generosity – grief had stolen much of his appetite – and he quickly lost track of who’d delivered what and when and how it should be reheated. The result was that he now had dozens of unlabelled Tupperware tubs in the fridge. Half of them must be well past their use-by date but he didn’t have a clue which.

  Eating something from John’s fridge had taken on shades of playing Russian Roulette, with salmonella taking the role of the live bullet. He pulled out two containers from the top shelf and opened them both. He sniffed at them tentatively. Sonia could always tell if something was on the turn just by taking a whiff but John had no clue. Was the gelatinous orange pasta dish in the left-hand container actually off or did it smell that way because it was cooked by Annette? Was that Thai curry meant to be green or was it mouldy? Was this the dish that had been prepared by the notoriously unsanitary Moira?

  Once again, John resealed the Tupperware containers and put them back in the fridge. Then he grabbed his coat and his car keys and headed for the bar at the NEWTS’ converted church theatre. He’d have a pint of beer and a pasty there. And hope he didn’t bump into any of the ladies.

  Thankfully, Moira was not at the theatre that night. She had zumba on a Friday when she wasn’t in a show. Instead John joined his good friend Trevor Fernlea behind the bar, intending to work a shift in return for a free Ginsters’ Cheese and Onion pasty.

  The bar was quiet. There was a dress rehearsal going on in the auditorium for the following week’s performance of The Pirates of Penzance. When Trevor had to step in to read for the absent Derek, who was playing the Sergeant of Police, John was left entirely alone. He polished a few glasses and wiped the bar down. Then he set about tidying up the display case that contained leaflets about local tourist attractions and ads for upcoming NEWTS performances.

  And flyers for a cookery course.

  John hadn’t seen those before.

  He read the course description with interest.

  ‘No experience necessary.’

  Well, that was certainly him.

  John knew he couldn’t keep accepting the generosity of the ladies of the NEWTS forever. Not without someone getting the wrong idea. He was sure his name was already being linked with Moira’s in all sorts of erroneous contexts. Trevor had asked him outright whether he was having a ‘thing’ with Annette. John was horrified by the idea that he might have eyes for anyone. His beloved Sonia had been gone for less than a year. Those food parcels and their accompanying rumours obviously had to be stopped.

  Perhaps it was time for John to get out of the heat and into the kitchen. He tucked the flyer in his pocket. Maybe he would sign up.

  Unlike John, Bella Russo had grown up in a kitchen. Her father Ugo, an Italian through and through, prided himself on his cooking skills and Bella loved to watch him at his work. When she thought about her childhood she thought about her father’s food. His home-made pasta. His melt-in-the-mouth melanzane parmigiana. His terrifically naughty tiramisu.

  She loved to come home from school to find him in the kitchen.

  ‘Taste this,’ he would say. He’d cup his hand beneath the tasting spoon so it didn’t drip on the way to her mouth. Then he cupped his hand beneath her chin as she tasted. In those moments she felt so nourished and so cherished. In the Russo household, food was an expression of love and Bella’s father was the best cook in the world.

  So it seemed perfectly logical that when Ugo was made redundant from the canteen at the fishing tackle factory, which was closing down and taking forty jobs with it, he should set up a restaurant of his own.

  There was a small sandwich bar near the Newbay train station. The owner was ready to retire. Ugo saw an opportunity. The Russos could take over the bar and give it an Italian twist. The café already had a clientele and Ugo’s mates at the factory assured him they’d be regulars too. The Russos had the money. Just about. Ugo and Bella’s mother Maria had been saving for a rainy day for years. Here was that rainy day and their chance of future sunshine.

  Bella, who was only twelve at the time, was right behind her father. She listened to his plans for the scruffy old café and thought they were wonderful. It would be painted in the colours of the Italian flag. The tables would be covered with checked tablecloths. He’d install a pizza oven.

  ‘I’ll call our restaurant “Bella’s”,’ Ugo said. ‘And one day you’ll be in charge of the kitchen.’

  Maria had other ideas.

  ‘We can’t risk it. Those savings are all we have.’

  Maria was eventually persuaded – Ugo was a very persuasive man – and the café beneath the train station did become ‘Bella’s’ Italian takeaway. Bella cut the red, white and green ribbons her father strung across the door on the opening day. All his friends fro
m the factory came by for a glass of free Prosecco and Ugo’s world famous risotto.

  The café lasted just three years before the bailiffs turned up.

  ‘You see where your father’s fancy ideas got us?’ Maria said as she waved her hand around their tiny sitting room after it all went wrong. ‘If I didn’t have my hand on the purse strings, we’d be living on the streets. There’s no money in cooking, Bella. When you leave school, make sure you get yourself a proper career. You’ve got the brains to do it.’

  Ten years after Bella’s closed down, Ugo died of a heart attack. He’d never quite recovered from the heartbreak of the café going bust. By the time he died, Bella felt she’d already lost her father long before. The jolly man she loved had become a bitter, angry stranger. Frightened by the way her father’s joie de vivre had crumbled along with his ambitions, she’d worked hard at school to make sure she’d never end up disappointed and broke. Her father’s failure made her see that dreams were for fools, as her mum had always known. So at thirty years old, Bella worked as a solicitor specialising in criminal law for a small Newbay firm. What career could be more proper?

  There was certainly never any lack of work for a lawyer in Bella’s area. Recessions might make people cut back on eating out but they had no such effect on crime figures. If anything, Bella was busier than ever during the lean times as financial stress led people to make drastic decisions and silly mistakes. As a result, Bella could be found in her office or at a police station at least six days a week. Lunch was at her desk or in the car. The sandwich bar she frequented would have her order on the counter even as she walked in the door at one o’clock. Coronation chicken on a wholemeal baguette.

  For the evenings, there were ready meals.

  The station café had never reopened.

  On the Friday before Alex’s course was due to start, Bella went to the sandwich bar at lunchtime as usual. Unusually, there was a queue. Waiting patiently in line for her coronation chicken baguette, Bella picked up Alex’s leaflet from the small pile on the counter.