The Way to a Woman's Heart (26 page)

‘Ah!’ Mona Jupp pounced on the word with all the relish of a terrier with a fresh marrowbone. ‘That’s another thing! Poll’s got one of them daft old bats what believes in fairies living out at Hideaway now, hasn’t she? She was at the Evergreens Club last week telling everyone they had a
fairy name
. Said I was known as Bladderwort Bramblemouth or something. Tosh and tomfoolery!’

‘Ah, she’s been in here with that nonsense, too,’ Patsy said darkly, deftly flicking crumbs into the J-cloth. ‘Daft as a damn brush, she is. She’ll go down a treat with that bitchy Gabby Dewberry – if you gets picked for the programme. Specially if she starts telling her that her name is HoarFrost SpikyKnickers or summat equally apt. You’ll be off before you’ve even started – you’ll have to watch that one.’

As this was pretty close to Ella’s own thoughts about Trixie, she said nothing, smiled again at the Pantry’s regulars, mopped at George’s mouth and hands, grabbed him and her shopping, and dived out into the High Street.

Whoa – but it was even hotter today. As they made their way back to the Big Sava car park, Ella wiped the perspiration from her upper lip and tried not to stare enviously at a coterie of teenage mums with scraped-up hair and stomachs protruding over sportswear that had never seen the inside of a gym, and their obligatory accessories: cute plump baby in buggy in one hand and a mobile phone in the other.

She could do without the hair and the stomach and the sportswear – and even the mobile phone – but, oh, those babies…

She hurried quickly past. This morning, the sun shimmered in mirage pools on the road and even the colonnade of towering sycamore trees seemed to give very little relief from the soaring temperatures.

Hazy Hassockers were already drooping as they plodded to work or shop and the air was heavy with the mixed fragrances of Lynx and Ambre Solaire. It was exactly like being in Benidorm – only with less tasteful clothes.

‘Right, I’ll drop you off at Doll’s.’ Ella dumped the bags in the boot before strapping George into his booster seat. ‘And Mummy or Billy will collect you. OK, sweetheart?’

George clutched his lorry, waved a fistful of sugar cubes, beamed broadly and said that would be lovely, thank you, in his own inimitable style.

At least, Ella thought as she negotiated the car park, one
of the Hideaway residents was clearly unfazed by the never-ending wait for news from Anthony and Denise – or even Gabby and Tom themselves. The rest of them jumped every time a phone rang, and rushed to collect the post from the hall in the morning.

And tonight they were going to have a rehearsal of their first menu – just in case they were chosen. They’d all agreed, over and over again, that half the time they wanted nothing more than to be chosen for
Dewberrys’ Dinners
, the other half they simply couldn’t imagine anything more hellish.

Oooh though, Ella thought, squinting through the windscreen as she inched into the High Street, if only they
knew
…

‘Shit!’ Ash jumped around Hideaway’s kitchen sucking his fingers.

‘Oh, dear, you need dock leaves,’ Poll advised from the other end of the table as she peeled artichokes. ‘But as you haven’t got any and we’ve got no time allowed to pick them, maybe running it under cold water would help? I knew there’d be a problem with nettle soup.’

‘I didn’t get stung once when I was picking them.’ Ash, eyes watering, continued to shake his hand as he ran it under the cold tap.

‘Probably,’ Ella said as she vigorously beat butter in a basin with a wooden spoon and fought the urge to offer to kiss the injured fingers better, ‘because you were wearing gloves then.’

‘Yeah, OK,’ Ash said wincing, ‘but I can’t cook in gloves, can I?’

Billy, who was sifting cream of tartar and flour at the far
end of the table, motioned towards the wall clock. ‘If we’re doing this to time, then stung or not, Ash, you’re just going to have to get on with it. We’ve already had five minutes.’

The rehearsal was in full swing. Just in case…

The kitchen was stiflingly hot despite several fans whirring monotonously, and all the doors and windows being open. The evening sun streamed in, maliciously dancing across the cooking chaos.

Ella started to beat two large eggs together with a wire whisk. She looked across at Ash. ‘OK now?’

‘Oh, yeah. Just got three fingers blowing up like balloons and another ton of nettles to prepare.’

She giggled. ‘No gain without pain.’

‘Cliché alert,’ Poll snuffled, peering into a small bowl of vinegar. ‘Does anyone think I’ve over-soaked these artichokes?’

‘And that sounds like the start of a bad poem,’ Ella giggled, tucking her hair behind her ears again before resuming her whisking.

Maybe, she thought, one eye on the clock and the other on her adding beaten eggs slowly to beaten butter, this extremely retro menu hadn’t been the best one to choose. However, that was the whole point of the rehearsal. The dishes they’d picked were ones they were happy to make and should be cooked to perfection after three-quarters of an hour. And they’d rehearsed the choreography of all working together, moving from table to cooker and back without getting in each other’s way, many times – without the actual cooking.

Now it just remained to be seen if it all
worked.
Just in case…

As there was clearly going to be no time for Billy to bake bread in
Dewberrys’ Dinners
’ allotted forty-five minutes of airtime, he was making 1930s Ballater scones to compliment Ash’s wartime recipe of nettle soup; Poll was cooking a main of Jerusalem artichoke pudding – a popular dish from the 1950s – with baby vegetables from the garden; and her own dessert was an ancient Athole pudding – one of her gran’s favourites – with a wine sauce.

‘Ten minutes!’ Billy shouted, dissolving baking soda into a saucepan of milk. ‘We’ve had ten minutes!’

Everyone looked panicky and worked even quicker.

Ella, still stirring, watched Ash, urticaria forgotten, as he chopped onions and garlic with rapid movements. The smell was gorgeous and it was, she thought, extremely sensual, watching someone so skilled, so at ease, so talented.

His movements were silky smooth. Unlike her and Poll, good amateur cooks, Ash was clearly the consummate professional. He was lost in his art, unaware now of anyone or anything else, his long fingers working their magic on the ingredients as he sprinkled and tasted and sprinkled some more.

Ella shivered.

Ash made cooking sexy. Very sexy indeed…

Billy, having thrown all his ingredients together and kneaded them quickly into a tacky dough, was industriously scattering flour everywhere. His face and hair were white. ‘Fifteen minutes! Are we all on time?’

Ash and Ella nodded.

‘I’m not sure.’ Poll stared at her artichoke mixture. ‘Am I supposed to have peeled my veg first? Are the potatoes supposed to be on now?’

‘Twenty minutes for potatoes,’ Ash said softly. ‘You know that, Poll. You can do that in your sleep. No need to panic.’

‘Oh, yes – right… Thank you.’

Ella smiled at him.

He grinned. ‘See? I’m no shouty chef. I can be quite nice sometimes.’

‘Most times.’ Onyx, wearing tight cut-off jeans, very high heels and a tiny lilac top, drifted through the kitchen doorway. ‘I passed Trixie and George outside, they said to come straight in.’

Everyone beamed welcomes. Ella sighed.

‘It all smells fab.’ Onyx curled herself sinuously into the rocking chair out of the way. ‘But how’s it really going?’

‘OK, I think.’ Ash gingerly scooped his nettles into the bubbling stock. ‘No major incidents.’

‘Apart from a few stung fingers,’ Ella said tartly as she viciously grated lemon rind. ‘The nettle soup has claimed its first victim.’

Onyx laughed. ‘I told him he should just open a tin of tomato like normal people… Much safer.’

They worked on, getting hotter and hotter, more and more flustered, and more and more in each other’s way.

‘You know,’ Billy puffed as he checked his scones in the oven to be met by a further blast of hot air, ‘we’re making far too much mess. And we’re all wanting to use the same space
at the same time. It’s completely different now we’re actually cooking. We’re going to have to do this over and over again to get it right.’

Poll whimpered.

‘Move over,’ Ella muttered, carrying her Athole pudding carefully across the kitchen. ‘This is going to have to go in now.’

‘So’s mine,’ Poll said, spreading the last of her creamed potatoes over the artichoke mixture. ‘Oh, this is awful. I’ve got lumps.’

Onyx made sympathetic noises from the rocking chair. ‘All going well, dears, is it?’ Trixie appeared in the doorway. ‘Young George is just adding a new bridge to his motorway so I thought I’d just pop my head in and see what’s what. Good Lord, what a bloomin’ mess in here. It never looks like this on the telly.’

Hot, tired and frazzled, they all glared at her.

But, Ella thought, she was right. Four cooks, working together on four different dishes, collided all the time and made one heck of a mess. Even if the food was OK they were going to have to work really hard on the choreography and the clean-and-tidy aspect. Just in case…

‘Um, and I don’t like to mention it, dears,’ Trixie said, ‘but should that oven be smoking like that?’

‘Bloody hell!’ Billy rushed back across the kitchen. ‘My scones have caught alight!’

Ella and Poll ran straight into one another.

‘My artichokes!’ Poll shrieked.

‘My pudding!’ Ella yelled.

Ash swore as his nettle soup bubbled teasingly to the top of the saucepan, hovered for a moment, then cascaded, lava-like, down the sides with a malevolent hiss and a torrent of flames.

‘Stand back!’ Billy commanded, flapping at the clouds of smoke billowing from the depths of the cooker. ‘Everyone stand back! And where’s the fire extinguisher?’

‘You don’t need a fire extinguisher,’ Trixie said happily. ‘After my own little incendiary incident, I know exactly what you need.’ She patted her curls, adjusted her beads, threw back her head and started to sing: ‘Dandelions so full of gold/Douse these flames to ashes cold/With your glittering water never ire/Use your magic on this fire’

Ella, completely horrified, had a fleeting glimpse of everyone else just staring open-mouthed at Trixie before the sweltering kitchen became as cold as ice, and vivid zigzags of gold flickered everywhere like a million darting fireflies.

‘What the… ?’ Billy muttered.

Poll gave a little gasp.

Ash and Onyx said nothing at all.

Ella stared at the cooker. Everything seemed to go into reverse. The acrid smoke curled in on itself and disappeared. The darting golden movements were no longer there – if they ever had been – and the kitchen had returned to its normal sweltering temperature.

‘There you go, dears,’ Trixie said happily. ‘All sorted.’

‘What the hell was that?’ Billy shook his head.

Onyx laughed shakily. ‘Did someone just do something there?’

Ella and Ash stared at one another.

Poll clapped her hands. ‘Trixie, was that
fairy magic
? Oh my word.’

Trixie preened. ‘See, I told you. The fairies are always there to help. Now maybe you’ll believe me.’

‘Believe you nothing.’ Billy tottered across to the cooker. ‘Good God, though – look!’

They looked.

Ash’s soup had returned to its pre-eruption simmer and the hob was pristine. Inside the oven, everything was cooking as it should have been – with no taint of smoke, no sign of burning…

‘There you are, dears.’ Trixie patted her curls. ‘That’s the fairies for you. They’ve done good, as they always do. And that’s certainly a bit of fairy magic I wish I’d known about when I had my little, um, conflagration. If only I’d known then I could have saved my house. I made sure I checked up on it afterwards, I can tell you, dears. You never know when it might happen again and there’s always so much to learn about the fairy worlds. So that’s when I discovered that the dandelion flower fairies are nature’s firefighters.’

They all stared at her.