The Secret Ingredient (4 page)

‘Ross won't be home yet,' said Andie, as they walked up the hall. ‘He was going to the gym.'

‘What's an old bloke like him doing at a gym? Having a . . . what do they call it? A midlife crisis?'

‘Well, if that's what it is, he's doing the right thing and trying to get himself fit.'

‘He's probably just trying to keep up with you,' he said, turning to look at her at the front door. ‘My beautiful girl.'

Ross was hardly too old for the gym, but Andie wasn't going to admit to her father that something about it didn't sit quite right with her either. Ross had allowed his membership to lapse years ago, early in their marriage. At the time he said he wanted to get home to her, not spend another hour after he'd finished at the office, slogging it out in a room with a bunch of sweaty blokes. So why had he suddenly decided to go back to the gym now? Andie had wondered aloud. Ross had dismissed it, saying he'd been feeling a little soft, and at his age he needed to make more of an effort if he was going to keep up with her. And since he'd signed up for Dry July, he was a bit fidgety when he couldn't have a drink after work, so the gym provided a welcome distraction. Which Andie didn't any more, obviously.

Dry July was a whole other thing. Ross liked a drink, but he didn't often drink to excess. So why the need to give it up for a whole month? For a good cause, he'd insisted. Now, Ross was as benevolent as the next overpaid executive, and was more than happy to write a cheque for any number of good causes. But to go to the trouble of getting sponsors and collecting pledges? Not his style at all.

Andie mulled it over all the way home. Jess would probably say she was being paranoid, and she had a point. But Andie couldn't help thinking it had something to do with The Baby Issue. She was beginning to wish she'd never brought it up. Actually that was not altogether true, if she was completely honest. She had to let Ross know what she was thinking sooner or later, she had to plant the seed at least.

They had agreed early in their relationship that there would be no children. At the time Andie wasn't interested; Ross was all she needed. She had felt so lucky to have found someone who loved her the way he did that she had been quite happy to forego the idea of children. And really, they weren't much more than an idea back then. She hadn't ever had a boyfriend who had struck her as good father material, or even good husband material for that matter. And she was still quite young at the time.

Before they got married, Ross had talked her into leaving Lemongrass; he didn't want her showing him and his clients to their table, he wanted her at the table as his partner. Andie all but gave up on being a chef after that. Ross's job involved such long hours they would never have any time together if she worked nights. Their relationship was more important. Sometimes it was hard for her to remember the girl she was back then. Why would it have ruined the relationship to work some nights? Why had she let herself get talked into that?

She did try working days at a couple of different cafés; Ross wasn't particularly thrilled, but he acknowledged that she needed something to occupy her time. She didn't admit to him that making salads and toasted focaccias wasn't exactly rattling her chain either.

Until she became interested in coffee – ‘interested' being an understatement; in fact, calling it an understatement was an understatement. Andie became completely obsessed, learning about the different beans, where they were from, which produced the best shot of espresso, the best crema. She practised until her arms ached and she could produce the perfect cup in every variation that enjoyed its fifteen minutes in the spotlight. Cappuccino, latte and espresso endured, and Andie could make them blindfolded. So obsessed did she become, she seriously considered entering a statewide barista competition, but that was when Ross put his foot down. If she won – which Andie thought was highly unlikely, Ross was just being typically biased – anyway, if she won, she'd have to go on to the national championships, which were to be held in Melbourne that year. Ross didn't mind that so much, but if she was successful there, she'd be off overseas after that. And it was only coffee, he'd pointed out.

Ross worked for a global finance company as a management consultant. Andie had never really understood what it was that he actually did; it seemed very abstract when he tried to explain it. She just knew that he went to a lot of meetings, and was always hopping on a plane to somewhere or other for more meetings: team meetings, client meetings, management meetings, breakfast, lunch and dinner meetings. Would their relationship work if they were both off travelling all the time?

‘But look, I don't mind taking a back seat for a while,' he insisted. ‘I could be a kept man for a change, might be nice,' he added with a glint in his eye. ‘Of course, you would have to bring in the kind of money I do, darling. I wouldn't want to cause any problems with Joanna, we'd have to maintain child support at the same rate.'

Andie couldn't hope to match anywhere near what Ross earned, certainly not making coffee. He did have a point. Coffee wasn't that important, and Andie eventually got over her obsession. And soon after that, she got over working in cafés.

She was back to where she started, with no career and nothing to fill in her days. So she tagged along with Ross on his business trips. Andie would shop in Melbourne, relax by the pool in Queensland or Western Australia, more shopping in Hong Kong and Singapore, sightseeing when they were further afield. But filling her days with shopping and facials and massages was, frankly, mindnumbing.

The only thing that did get Andie excited when they were abroad was the food. She would scour travel guides for out-of-the-way restaurants, meet local chefs and discover the regional specialties and delicacies, and then try to reproduce them when she got home. But she was always stymied in her efforts by the dearth of imported ingredients back then.

Then one day Ross came home all fired up about something. He'd had a lunch meeting in Double Bay and had noticed a ‘For Sale' sign on the shop next door when he arrived at the restaurant. He proceeded to ask the maître d' about it, for conversation's sake more than anything, he told Andie. Turned out the maître d' was beside himself that the gourmet deli was up for sale. The deli actually supplied many of the restaurants in the immediate area; only for small orders, one-off specialty items, that kind of thing. The location was ideal, the hours regular, and there was already a loyal and built-in clientele.

‘It's the perfect fit for your skill set, Andie,' Ross announced.

‘What?' she said, confused.

‘Isn't it obvious?' he said. ‘You're a chef, it's a gourmet deli. It's ideal.'

‘But Ross, my training didn't prepare me for running a shop, just because it sells food.'

‘You also did two whole years of a business degree, don't forget.'

‘How could I forget, I hated it.'

‘Oh,' he chided, ‘that was only because it wasn't your choice.'

‘No, Ross —'

‘Just hear me out,' he interrupted her. ‘I was thinking what a great avenue this would be for you to source ingredients from overseas. You're always saying you can't get what you need here.'

Andie was listening.

‘I'm only suggesting that we go and take a look,' he said, drawing her into his arms. ‘What's the harm in that?'

She shrugged. ‘I suppose . . .'

When she stepped inside the shop door a little bell rang, and Andie started to fall in love from that moment. It was a bigger space than she had pictured in her mind. The curved glass display counter stretched the length of the shop, as expected, but there was a lot of floor space that wasn't being fully utilised. Shelving units and racks cluttered the area, stocked with the kind of ingredients that used to be considered exotic – tins of broad beans and sauerkraut, jars of artichokes and packets of couscous – but which were all readily available from supermarkets now, at probably a fraction of the price. What they really needed to stock were ingredients you couldn't get anywhere else, at least not around here, like truffle oil, tamarind paste, pomegranate molasses . . . Andie wandered through the shop, her head filling with ideas. The counter was enormous, there was plenty of room for a coffee machine. She knew this area was probably already overcaffeinated, but being able to pick up a takeaway coffee with your deli order might just work. And if she cleared out some of these shelves, there would be plenty of room for a couple of small tables, should anyone want to take a load off. The back of the shop was, again, much bigger than she expected. A storeroom, small laundry and toilet all came off a large space with kitchen facilities and an office area. It wasn't a commercial kitchen, but it was well-equipped, and it presented Andie with possibilities . . .

Then it hit her – this would be entirely her own, she could do what she wanted, carve out something for herself. She had always been vaguely uncomfortable about being a kept woman, it went against the grain of everything her mother had tried to impress upon her. She had a little money saved, so she could finance part of the purchase herself, and Ross was happy to make up the difference. Andie agreed, as long as it was only a loan. The shop was so successful that she paid him back, with interest, after a few years. Ross said it was one of the better investments he had ever made.

The Corner Gourmet was a thriving, happy little place to work, and Andie had plenty of challenges to keep her interested in the first few years. She was clearly prone to obsessions – cheese became her first at the deli, then bread, organic produce, truffles, foie gras . . . She held tasting nights that were a huge success, and gave her the chance to connect with other foodies from the local area. They began swapping recipes and ideas, and gradually Andie focused on sourcing rare and unusual ingredients from importers, as well as stocking sweets and delicacies from all across Sydney and beyond. Macarons had been the latest fad, again courtesy of
MasterChef
, but their star was already beginning to wane.

And lately Andie had felt her own interest waning; there weren't any new challenges, only variations on the same theme. There was a huge difference between supplying and creating; and Andie missed creating. The kitchen wasn't equipped to handle much more than takeaway salads, sometimes soup in the winter. She got caught up for a time making sauces, pesto, relishes, that kind of thing, but while they were a hit, she couldn't stock them in viable quantities or on a regular basis. Andie was becoming frustrated by the limitations, being so close, close enough to almost taste the dishes her customers would tell her about, or that the chefs along the strip were adding to their menus. She'd try things in her own kitchen, but half the time Ross had already eaten out, or he'd come home late and the food would be spoiled. So then Andie stopped cooking much at all.

She was beginning to feel like she was just an accessory to Ross's life. She didn't tell him that, it would only get him worked up, and he'd start trying to solve the problem. It wasn't his responsibility. She had to find her own way . . .

Then something strange began to happen. Slowly, intermittently, and quite unexpectedly, Andie began to hear her biological clock ticking away quietly in the background. She ignored it at first, she refused to be that cliché; she did not need to have a baby to be complete. She just needed goals, direction . . . But the ticking became louder, compelling her, creating an urge she had never felt before; it was almost primal. All of a sudden Andie was seeing babies everywhere – and they really did seem to be everywhere: at the gym, in every café and restaurant, parks and shops and beaches. Whenever a pram nosed its way through the door of the deli, Andie found herself drawn to it, barely noticing the mother struggling to manoeuvre it while she cooed and made faces, doing that weird voice thing that adults reverted to when they talked to babies, the emphasis all distorted. ‘Aren't
you
a beautiful girl, oh
yes
you
are
!'

Andie had always believed she could talk to Ross about anything, and she certainly wasn't worried about broaching the subject of babies with him. He was dismissive at first, but then he became angry when she persisted. This was not part of the deal, he said. ‘I've already had my family, I'm done.'

‘But I haven't had mine.'

‘Well, you made that choice back when you married me, you can't renege now.'

‘So there's no room for changing my mind?' Andie had declared. ‘People do change their minds you know, Ross. People change, they grow up. They want different things.'

‘So you're saying you want something different to this marriage?'

The resolve in his tone had shocked Andie at first. What exactly was he suggesting? When the shock subsided, she found a dozen reasons to explain away his attitude. He just needed time, he loved her, he had always wanted her to have whatever made her happy . . . hadn't he?