‘Well, not yet,’ Ella said, amazed again at how the bush telegraph had spread the news throughout Hazy Hassocks within forty-eight hours. ‘Maybe not at all. We don’t even know if we’ll be chosen. We haven’t heard anything.’
‘Best hope you don’t.’ Patsy frowned as she dished up two cream slices and two banana milkshakes and shook her head towards George building a sugar lump garage for his favourite lorry at the window table. ‘Why you had to apply in the first place beats me. It’s the child I feel most sorry for. Kiddies don’t need their heads turned by all this celebrity nonsense. That poor little lad won’t know whether it’s Tuesday or Christmas at this rate.’
Ella laughed. ‘George is fine. George knows what’s going on, and if – great big if – we’re chosen, then George will be kept out of the limelight. He won’t be in any danger. Anyway, Poll always makes sure he understands everything.’
‘That’d be a miracle,’ Patsy snorted, ‘given as Poll hasn’t got a clue what’s going on herself half the time. And another thing –’ she pointed at the counter ‘– what’s this, I ask you?’
Ella followed the trajectory of the jabbing finger. ‘Er, two cream slices and two milkshakes?’
‘Exactly! And what sort of breakfast is that for a kiddie? Oh, I’m not saying it’s not tasty, well, I wouldn’t, would I? But it’s no substitute for a proper breakfast.’
Ella sighed. Sometimes Patsy’s straight-talking became a touch too wearing. ‘He’s had a proper breakfast. We’ve all had a proper breakfast. Hours and hours ago. We were up before five. I was out in the dewy dawn – with George – collecting eggs from wherever the hens had decided to lay them. We then went indoors and boiled them. And we had them with soldiers made from Billy’s bread. And he had freshly squeezed orange juice and milk. This is a treat because George is just off to play with his friends and he’s already helped me with the Big Sava shop and he’s starving again. OK?’
Patsy shrugged her pink-overalled bosom right up into her shoulders. ‘Hmmm, well, yes, all right then. Ah, and I’ve heard, from Constance and Perpetua Motion, that Poll was right worried you wouldn’t want to stay on out there at Hideaway Farm seeing as how you hadn’t signed a contract.’
Ella drummed her fingers on the counter. Was there no part of her private life considered untouchable by the Hassocks jungle drums? How on earth had that become Hassocks gossip?
Poll had only mentioned to her, on the evening of the day Anthony and Denise had visited, that she hadn’t yet signed her contract. And Ella had said she’d sign it as soon as it arrived, and they’d all drunk quite a lot of wine in the dusky garden to celebrate the Dewberrys’ Dinners thing, and Poll had said she’d chase the contract up with her solicitor the very next morning.
Patsy flicked imaginary flies away from her Perspex-covered display of what the older Hassocks residents referred to as bag-you-etties. ‘That Amy Reynolds from Lovers Knot what works in Big Sava told Connie and Perpetua. Her sister, Amy’s sister, that is – plain woman, face like a scone – Amy’s sister, that is, not Amy – Amy got the looks but no brains to speak of – works in the solicitor’s office in Winterbrook. Nothing gets past her.’
Not even client confidentiality, Ella thought, mentally untangling the torrent of information.
Oh, well, it was hardly a state secret.
‘Actually, I’ll be staying on for the full three months, with or without a contract.’
Patsy exhaled noisily. ‘Well, I hope you know what you’re doing. You’re a grown-up and I suppose even working for Poll Andrews has to be better than being on the dole. But I still worry about that poor child living in a houseful of oddballs. I worry about all of you out at Hideaway.’
‘Please don’t.’ Ella smiled, turning away quickly before she said something she’d regret for ever. ‘There’s absolutely nothing to worry about.’
Not exactly true, she thought, joining George at their favourite table and sharing out the cakes and shakes. Since Anthony and Denise’s visit, Hideaway Farm had been like – as Patsy would no doubt say with irritating smugness – a mad house.
They’d thought, dreamed and talked endlessly about nothing else but Dewberrys’ Dinners, always carefully prefacing every sentence with ‘if we’re chosen, of course’.
They’d discussed menus, and clothes, and nerves – they’d talked an awful lot about nerves – and menus again and cooking times and what it would be like to meet Gabby and Tom Dewberry in the flesh… And then they’d gone back to nerves again.
They hadn’t – at any time – talked about winning.
‘Excuse me.’ Lobelia Banding leaned across from her neighbouring table. ‘Lavender and I think we should give you some advice.’
Oh Lordy, not again. Ella smiled kindly at the Banding sisters. Today the cycle helmets were covered with a pastel mist of frou-frou netting, a mass of plastic flowers and several clip-on butterflies. Presumably their summer look. Sadly, Lav and Lob were also wearing hi-viz tabards. Over their lacy off-white vests. And very little else.
‘Really? How lovely. I always welcome advice,’ Ella lied bravely. ‘And – um – I do like the jackets.’
Lob preened. ‘Well, we weren’t too sure about them at first being as they’re very bright colours and we tend to favour a nice neutral, but the cycle helmets have kept us safe for years, and now we’re getting on a bit – I’ll be eighty-nine next birthday you know, and Lavender is already eighty-six – and because we both want to live long enough to get our one hundredth birthday cards from our dear Queen – or that nice young Prince Charles if we should outlive Her Majesty – we didn’t want to take any chances.’
‘So,’ Lavender joined in, ‘we watched all the programmes on the television about road safety and safety at work and everyone was wearing one of these.’ She stroked her Day-Glo yellow tabard lovingly. ‘So, we asked young Lulu Blessing’s Shay – because he gave us the advice about the cycle helmets – to find us some nice jackets to keep us doubly safe.’
‘And,’ Lob finished triumphantly, her net and flowers and butterflies wobbling furiously over the cup of tea she was sharing with her sister, ‘he did. Not matching, of course. We’ve never copied each other. So I got orange and Lav got yellow. Both with the silver stripe though. Lovely and cosy they are in the winter but we do get a bit sweaty on these hot days.’
‘Er, yes, I expect you do.’ Ella bit her lip and concentrated on scooping up cream from her plate and wished it didn’t remind her quite so much of that lovely time in the ice-cream van with Ash. ‘Um, and you said you had some advice…’
‘Oh, yes.’ Lavender nodded. ‘Lobelia and I think you shouldn’t do it. You and young Poll and all those bank robbers and axe murderers at Hideaway. Go on the telly, that is. You’ll only end up in a prefab. They all do. We read it in the magazines in the dentist’s surgery.’
George blew bubbles into his milkshake.
Ella shook her head. No, they’d lost her this time. She’d become pretty adept at translating Hazy Hassocks speak over the weeks, but this made no sense at all.
‘A prefab? Sorry, but why, if we, er, go on the telly, would we end up in a prefab?’
‘Because they all do,’ Lob repeated. ‘It goes to their heads. They go on the telly then they get hooked on pharmaceuticals and end up in a prefab.’
‘She means rehab,’ Topsy Turvey shouted helpfully from her corner table.
Ah, right…
Ella just managed to keep a straight face. ‘Well, of course I’m really grateful for your concern, but honestly, we don’t even know if we’ll be chosen yet – there are loads of applicants – and if we are, then it’s only a cookery show. It’s not like sex ’n’ drugs ’n’ rock ’n’ roll, is it?’
‘Only a cookery show?’ Mona Jupp interrupted. ‘You don’t want to tell Tarnia Snepps that. She thinks she’s going to be chosen and it’s her passport to becoming one of Simon Cowell’s new best friends.’
‘Ah.’ Essie Rivers, who was, Ella noticed,
holding hands across the table with Slo Motion, nodded. ‘And that Geordie bloke that calls himself Giovanni over at Willows Lacey, he reckons he’ll be picked and turn into the next Jamie Oliver.’
‘Oh!’ Lavender clasped her hands together. ‘I love him!’
‘Me too.’ Lob nodded. ‘Specially when he was with that Merle Oberon in Wuthering Heights.’
Deciding that there was only just so much of Hazy Hassocks’ elderly residents a girl could take without reaching for a machete, Ella made hurry-up motions with her hands at George, gathered her Big Sava bags together and stood up.
‘I’m sure we’ll be fine. And we’re very unlikely to be picked for the show anyway – but I’ll let Poll know you’re worried about her. She’ll be very touched.’
‘She already is.’ Patsy flicked a damp J-cloth across the table recently vacated by Gwyneth Wilkins and Big Ida Tomms. ‘Not to mention being away with the fairies.’
‘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…
Chapter Twenty-three
‘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.’
The Way to a Woman's Heart Page 18
