The Worst Case Scenario Cookery Club Read online

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I’m here for beginners’ cookery?’

  ‘This is us,’ Alex confirmed.

  ‘I’m Bella. I was worried I’d be the last to arrive.’

  ‘You very nearly are,’ Alex admitted. ‘You can hang your coat up over there. Then come and join us here.’

  ‘I thought there would be more people.’

  ‘So did I. But a smaller class makes for more personal teaching. Their loss is your gain. Have you washed your hands?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Bella pulled a face like a naughty child then headed for the sink.

  ‘I’m going to nag you about that a lot over the next six weeks,’ Alex told her.

  ‘I need a lot of nagging,’ Bella said.

  The last to arrive was Liz Chandler. Alex recognised her at once from the dental surgery. She’d already apologised profusely over email for the dental chair debacle. Fortunately, that was just another funny anecdote for Alex now.

  ‘I’m glad your jumper dried out,’ she said.

  ‘Your turn to get messy today,’ Alex told her.

  Liz took the last seat on the front bench. After washing her hands, of course.

  ‘Well, this is it,’ Alex finally addressed his modest crowd. ‘Welcome to my Absolute Beginners’ Cookery Course.’ He opened his arms to take in the room.

  All three students looked behind as if hoping to discover that the rest of the class had silently filled up while they were settling in.

  ‘I’m Alex Barton,’ he said. ‘And I’m a chef. I’ve been working in food for the past eight years. I’ve worked in big canteens and tiny cafés. I got my training in London—’

  ‘And you ended up in Newbay?’ John asked.

  The two women chuckled. Everyone who’d grown up in the faded seaside town harboured fantasies of escape.

  ‘Yes, well. More of that later,’ said Alex. ‘I’m sure you’ll be hearing plenty about me over the next six weeks. What I want to know is why you’re here. Why have you decided to learn to cook? Why now? Why haven’t you done so before? Are you really all absolute beginners? What made you decide to join this particular course? John?’ Alex picked on him first.

  ‘Well,’ said John. ‘I must admit I’ve spent my adult life being spoiled. I married a wonderful woman and she was a wonderful cook. I never lifted a finger in the kitchen because I never had to.’

  ‘Lucky man,’ said Alex.

  ‘But nine months ago I lost my darling Sonia to a stroke.’

  Liz and Bella murmured condolences. That was a pretty fresh wound.

  ‘And while her friends and mine have done their best to take very good care of me, inviting me round to eat and bringing me stuff to heat up in their Tupperware, I think it’s time I learned to stand on my own two feet again. And I don’t want that to mean eating toast for the rest of my life.’

  ‘We’ll make sure of that,’ said Alex. ‘Though there’s nothing wrong with eating toast if you stick something good on top of it.’

  That was reassuring for Liz.

  ‘Bella? How about you?’ Alex asked.

  Bella straightened up in her seat. She’d come right from work and she was wearing a tailored black suit that gave her an air of competence and authority. When she spoke about cooking, however, she sounded less sure of herself.

  ‘The thing is,’ said Bella, ‘I feel like I should know how to cook already.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ Alex asked.

  ‘I mean, I did know how to cook. Cooking was my father’s passion and when I was small, he was always showing me how to make this, that or the other. My twelve-year-old self could have cooked a family dinner no problem, but I seem to have lost the knack. I work long hours and when I get home, I very rarely feel like putting in another shift at the stove. But I know I eat way too many sandwiches and ready meals and that’s got to be bad for my health. I suppose, what I’m looking for is to brush up on my kitchen basics so putting together something from scratch doesn’t feel like such a chore.’

  ‘We can help with that,’ said Alex.

  ‘I also know I need to expand my interests,’ Bella continued. ‘I don’t seem to do anything but work these days. And it’s always nice to make some new friends.’

  She glanced shyly from John to Liz. John rewarded her with a smile.

  Liz was too distracted to listen to Bella’s reasons for being at the community centre that day. She was looking at Brittney’s Bites.com on her phone. Corinne had alerted Liz by text that Brittney had published another new post in which she discussed her devotion to yoga and its astonishing impact on her sex life (and by extension on Ian’s). Who knew that yoga tuned up muscles you couldn’t even see?

  ‘Liz,’ Alex interrupted her. ‘We’re just talking about why we’re interested in cooking. What is it that made you sign up?’

  With the sight of Brittney’s bottom, raised to the air in the ‘down dog’ position, still seared on the back of her eyeballs, Liz answered Alex.

  ‘Knife skills. I want to learn some knife skills,’ she said.

  Bella and John moved imperceptibly further away.

  Chapter Nine

  Liz got her wish. Knife skills were the first item on Alex’s agenda. After he’d established that Liz was only joking when she said that was why she’d signed up.

  Bella and John relaxed once more as Liz confessed her real reasons for wanting to learn to cook.

  ‘I’ve got a teenage daughter who won’t eat anything I put in front of her. She thinks I’m trying to finish her off with ready meals. I do my best,’ Liz said. ‘But I’ve got a full-time job. I don’t have time to cook.’

  Bella nodded sympathetically but Alex assured them that everyone had time to make dinner.

  ‘But I’m tired when I get home and I’m just not that interested in cooking,’ Liz continued. ‘I know I should be. I’m only doing this because of Saskia. Her father has run off with a health-food blogger and I think I’m losing out by comparison in my daughter’s eyes. I’ll do whatever it takes to make her believe that I love her. If that means learning to cook, I’ll do it. I just want to be a better mum.’

  ‘Thanks for being so candid,’ said Alex.

  Liz suspected she’d said too much.

  ‘That’s three very different reasons you’ve got for signing up. I wish I felt that being interested in food was the main motivator for you, Liz, but I don’t mind if you’re only here because you feel like you ought to be. The lessons are the same. Over the next six weeks, I’m going to take you through the basics every chef has to learn. I’m also going to show you some excellent cheats. It’s my opinion that cooking should be a pleasure and never a chore. By the end of the course I hope you’ll agree. Now, shall we get going?’

  Alex had the class don their aprons. John and Bella had remembered to bring their own, as per Alex’s email, but Liz had forgotten hers so she had to get her spare hygienist’s uniform out of the car and put that on instead. At least it was clean. Was she imagining it or did Alex blanch when he saw her dressed up for her day job?

  When everyone was ready, Alex gave the traditional health and safety speech that was compulsory for every community centre session. It included where the class should assemble in the case of a fire.

  ‘Though there’s not going to be a fire,’ he assured them.

  ‘You haven’t seen me cook yet,’ Liz replied.

  After that, Alex gave another health and safety speech, in specific regard to knives.

  ‘These knives are as sharp as a surgeon’s blade,’ he said. ‘But you have to treat them with confidence. Nothing will get you into trouble more quickly than acting unsure of your knife.’

  Liz picked her knife up for the first time. Her collection at home comprised a blunt bread knife and three small paring knives from Ikea. They all had crooked blades. Fortunately, she very rarely tried to use them.

  ‘We’re going to be practising on an onion.’

  Alex demonstrated first. Talking all the while, he picked up hi
s own enormous flashing blade. He showed his students how they should hold it. Not by the handle, like a virgin cornered by the monster in a horror film, but with thumb on one side of the blade and forefinger curled against the other.

  ‘To give you more control.’

  Then he showed them how to keep the tip of the knife on the board as they worked and how to hold the item they wished to cut with a claw-like grip, fingertips curled in to protect them from the edge of the blade.

  With his hands in the correct position, Alex reduced his onion into slivers in a matter of seconds. After that, he demonstrated the technique necessary for dicing, cutting another onion so quickly that no one had time to cry.

  ‘Your turn,’ he announced.

  Bella and John stood up eagerly, if a little nervously. Liz stared at the two onions on her board and silently christened them ‘Ian’ and ‘Brittney’. She was astonished when Onion Ian fell into two halves at the first chop. Crikey, the knife was sharp.

  ‘Good,’ said Alex. ‘Now, take it slowly. Remember everything I’ve told you. Each step makes the process easier and far safer. Curl your hand around the handle. Hold the blade steady with your thumb and a crooked forefinger. Not straight. You’ll catch the edge. Hold the onion firmly as though you’re an eagle and it’s a wriggling fish. Make a claw and dig those nails in if you have to. No need to pull the face to match.’

  Liz realised she was grimacing.

  ‘Point of the knife on the board for leverage. It’s an up-down motion. You’re not sawing back and forth. Slowly, slowly. It takes years to reach my sort of ninja speeds.’

  Liz cut the roots and the top off Ian the onion. She discarded the papery outer skin. Then she held the onion down on the board with the claws of a velociraptor. Cooking was already proving to be more fun than Liz had expected. With every pass of the knife, she was sure she felt some of her frustration being sliced away.

  ‘Nice work,’ said Alex, when Onion Ian lay in a pile of perfect pieces and Onion Brittney had met her fate by dicing. ‘You’ve already mastered the basics of knife skills. I think I’ll call you Chopper.’

  ‘Thanks, chef,’ said Liz.

  But chopping an onion was just the beginning. Alex wasn’t going to see that good food go to waste. The onions were to form the basis of the class’s first recipe, which was to be a chicken curry.

  Preparing the chicken required more knife skills and another lecture on health and safety in the kitchen. This time with regard to kitchen hygiene.

  ‘I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that you must use a different chopping board when you’re preparing poultry. Veg, meat, fish and chicken should all have separate boards.’

  He didn’t need to remind anyone but all three students took on expressions which suggested that they each had only one chopping board at home.

  ‘Always wash your hands before and afterwards. I know that some people like to rinse chicken in the sink before they cook with it, but that is one sure-fire way of getting salmonella all over your walls. It just splashes everywhere.’

  Liz thought of her mother-in-law, Janice, who was a chicken-washer. She liked imagining her covered in both salmonella and E. coli. Janice had not been very sympathetic to Liz when Ian moved out to be with Brittney.

  Alex made sure his students prepared their chicken safely. After that, they made a curry paste.

  No shop-bought paste for Alex’s students though. He showed them how to make a Thai version. There was nutmeg to be grated, peppercorns to be ground.

  ‘Nutmeg supposedly has hallucinatory qualities,’ he said as an aside.

  ‘I know,’ said John. ‘We tried to smoke some when I was at teacher training college.’

  ‘How much nutmeg would you need to eat to have an hallucination?’ Bella asked.

  ‘About three of these?’ Alex held one up.

  ‘Have you tried too?’ Liz asked.

  Alex shook his head. ‘Not my thing.’

  Liz was relieved at how the class was progressing. She had worried when she signed up that her fellow students would not really be beginners at all. She thought they would be the kind of yummy mummies who had been making her feel inadequate since she met them at her NCT class before Saskia was even born. John and Bella were more Liz’s kind of people. There was no faking their level of incompetence. Halfway through the class John was already sporting a blue plaster. Crying as she cut her onions at a snail’s pace had quickly done for Bella’s perfect make-up.

  Meanwhile, Alex was rather lovely. He looked a bit like that Luke Evans from Girl on the Train. Though Luke Evans was gay, wasn’t he? Was Alex gay? Liz pondered, as he stood behind her to help place her hands correctly during the onion chopping. He smelled delicious.

  ‘What’s that aftershave?’ Liz asked.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ said Alex. ‘Did I put too much on?’

  Not gay, Liz decided from the way Alex had blushed when she commented on his aftershave. But nearly fifteen years younger than she was. Not that it should matter. Corinne, whose husband had walked out when their twins were three years old, had recently signed up to Tinder.

  ‘I’m telling you,’ she’d said to Liz. ‘Young guys are the way to go. They like the self-assurance of an older woman.’

  Liz did her best to look self-assured as she added her chicken to the pan. Alex nodded his approval.

  ‘Excellent work, Chopper.’

  The nickname was flirtatious, Liz decided. And flattering. You didn’t give a nickname to someone you didn’t think could take it.

  Yes, she was liking this cooking class very much.

  ‘It’s that easy,’ said Alex, when they’d all assembled their dishes. ‘All you have to do now is let it cook through. And that’s taken us …’ he looked at his watch. ‘Half an hour from scratch. If you called your local takeaway, they wouldn’t be able to deliver it so quickly.’

  Alex obviously hadn’t ever ordered a takeaway from Newbay’s Great India Tandoori, where the curry was made in vats and the delivery driver fancied himself as the next Guy Martin. But then you only ever ordered from the GIT if you were drunk.

  While Alex recapped the recipe, the sound of a mobile phone rang out from the coat pegs at the back of the room and Bella’s expression fell as she realised it was hers.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to the others. ‘I’ve really got to take this.’

  ‘Go ahead. You’re not at school,’ Alex reminded her.

  ‘I know, but …’

  Bella sprinted to the back of the room. Liz and John tried to cover the call with conversation to give their fellow student some sort of privacy. Eventually she hung up and returned to the bench with a sigh and a shrug.

  ‘That was work,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to go. I’m a solicitor. A client needs me at the police station.’

  ‘Ooooh.’ The other three made interested noises. They’d been wondering what necessitated the suit.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Bella. ‘Is it all right if I leave you with the washing up?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll get a chance to wash up at some point,’ said Alex.

  Bella took off her apron. ‘It’s been really fun so far. I feel like I’ve learned a great deal already.’

  ‘You’ve been an excellent student,’ Alex assured her.

  ‘Thank you.’ Blushing again, Bella stuffed her apron into her bag and was gone.

  ‘Ah well,’ said Alex, having watched her until she reached the door. ‘I guess that’s all the more for us.’

  Liz was very happy not to share Alex’s attention, at least.

  Alex, John and Liz put the finishing touches to the chicken curry without Bella before Alex dished it up into three metal takeaway trays. He handed a tray to Liz and one to John along with strict instructions for refrigerating and reheating that definitely went over Liz’s head.

  ‘So,’ Alex asked as they got ready to leave, ‘will you be coming back next week?’

  John and Liz both enthusiastically assured him they would.r />
  ‘Tell anyone you like to come and join us,’ he added as he bid them farewell.

  ‘Well,’ Alex muttered to himself as he gave the demo table a final wipe down after they’d gone, ‘that wasn’t a total disaster.’

  Chapter Ten

  John was quite pleased with the results of that evening’s cookery class. He’d gone from never having cooked anything more complicated than beans on toast or soup from a can to putting together a real chicken curry. To think that he’d always assumed curry was complicated, which was why you had to buy it ready-made or go out to eat it. He looked forward to tucking in when he got home.

  It didn’t take long to get back to the house. John’s mood was pretty buoyant the whole way, but as he pulled into the driveway it started to sink again.

  That afternoon he’d left for the cookery course without remembering to put the hall light on for when he got back. As a result the house was completely dark, underlining the fact that there was no one inside. No one there to greet him. Not even a dog.

  While Sonia was alive, even when she wasn’t at home, the house had never felt empty. Her presence infused the building. The smell of her perfume lingered on her coat in the hall. She left a trail of scarves and discarded jewellery wherever she went.

  John even missed the scrunched-up tissues Sonia used to drop all over the place. Over the years, they had plenty of fallings-out over Sonia’s absent-minded untidiness but as much as John had hated the clutter, he hated even more knowing that when he went inside the house it would be exactly as he left it.

  Without Sonia, the house was no longer a home.

  John took a deep breath and turned the key. He stepped inside and almost ran to turn on the lamp on the console in the hall, like a child banishing demons with the light. He gave himself a start when a figure seemed to loom out of the darkness, until he recognised one of his own coats hanging on the stand. Still he had the urge to go back outside and sit in his car until morning came again.