The Way to a Woman's Heart

by Christina Jones

  And as long as Roy didn’t squeeze…

  What had Ash said all those weeks ago? That if – big joke – Roy ever escaped he’d only be looking for warmth and company. Well, it looked like he’d found it.

  The producer was making wrap-up motions.

  Tom cleared his throat. ‘Well, ladies and gentlemen, that was another spectacularly perfect old-fashioned three-course meal from the lovely and exceptionally talented cooks here at Hideaway Farm. And as we leave our first delicious feast in finals week in Berkshire to travel on to, um, –’

  ‘Norfolk.’ Gabby giggled. ‘Oooh – I mean, yes, tomorrow it’s the turn of our eastern area heat winners, so don’t forget to tune in, and, oooh, Ash, stop it, er… and now Tom has a really important message for you all.’

  Tom looked blank. ‘The voting details. Oooh, Ash, don’t!’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Tom nodded, his eyes bleak. ‘This week, of course, it’s down to you, the viewers, to choose the two finalists who will be cooking live in the television studio on Friday. You can ring or text your votes for your favourites on the numbers showing on your screen now.’

  ‘The lines will be open every evening this week from nine until midnight.’ Gabby sniggered, casting coy girlie glances at Ash. ‘So to vote for tonight’s contestants you need to add zero one and so on… and –’ she giggled ‘– oooh, that’s sooo lovely.’

  Tom looked shell-shocked. ‘Er, yes, and all the usual restrictions apply. You can find all the details on our pages in the listings magazines or on our website. And remember, this is down to you, the viewers – Gabby and I have no say in who you choose to be this year’s Dewberrys’ Dinners finalists – so vote for your favourites, and you’ll see them cooking again on Friday.’

  ‘But – ooh, yes, Ash! – the results will be announced early on Friday morning when we’ve seen all four semi-finalists and you’ve had a chance to vote – but do remember, oooh,’ Gabby said breathily, ‘just what’s at stake for the lucky winner. A lovely cheque, a Dewberrys’ Dinners trophy, and joining forces with Tom and me to open their very own – oooh-I-say-yesss! – restaurant –’

  ‘So,’ Tom butted in, white-lipped, looking like he wanted to kill everyone, ‘let’s say goodbye to everyone here in Berkshire, and, please, start dialling now! Goodbye! Goodbye!’

  Gabby waved. So did everyone else.

  ‘Pickin’ a Chicken’ indicated that the ordeal was over.

  The crew were clearing up even before the last notes had faded away.

  ‘Wasn’t that fab?’ Poll breathed happily as she allowed herself to be de-mic’d. ‘Didn’t everything go well? Apart from Trixie, of course, but no one would have seen her, would they? The viewers, I mean?’

  The director sniggered and said unfortunately not – she was off camera for the entire mind-blowing performance – but probably no one would have minded because didn’t everyone have a mad old bat relative tucked away somewhere?

  ‘And no one noticed Ella had gone, did they, duck?’ Billy grinned.

  The runner boy said he doubted it. The cameramen were very good at covering up disasters of all sorts.

  Gabby, Ella noticed, had her eyes closed and was rubbing up and down against Ash.

  Oh Lordy – time to act… Ah, too late.

  Gabby screamed.

  And carried on screaming. And jumped up and down. And flapped her hands.

  Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at her.

  ‘Gabby.’ Tom frowned. ‘Whatever’s the matter? Do stop it, there’s a good girl.’

  Pretty damn ineffectual, Tom, Ella thought, walking slowly behind the table. Gabby’s hysteria really was becoming a little bit annoying.

  ‘Shut up!’ Ella hissed at her. ‘You’ll scare him!’

  ‘Scare Ash?’ Poll queried. ‘Why would Gabby want to scare Ash? And why’s Ash bending down? What’s he doing down there under the table?’

  ‘What’s he done to you?’ Billy frowned. ‘Ah, he’s a lad and a half is our Ash.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Ella hissed at all of them. ‘Just keep quiet. Please. Roy’s under the table. He’s, um, hugging Gabby’s leg.’

  ‘Who’s Roy?’ Tom looked perplexed. ‘Is he one of the crew?’

  ‘Roy? Oooh nooo!’ Poll howled. ‘How on earth did he get down here? Oh, this is terrible! That’s our chance of winning gone out of the window.’

  ‘Sod our chances of winning,’ Ash muttered from under the table. ‘Right now, I’m just worried about Roy. Gabby, stand still and do not kick!’

  Gabby, gibbering and whimpering, stood still at last.

  Ella stooped down under the table. Ash was gently trying to coax Roy away from the slender ankle by stroking his head and making reassuring cooing noises.

  ‘Shall I find him something to eat?’ Ella whispered, kneeling beside Ash. ‘And try to tempt him out?’

  ‘No point. He’s full up. I just don’t understand how he got all the way down here without someone spotting him, and I’m sure I locked the vivarium. Mind you, I was thinking about other things when I fed him this morning. I was pretty distracted, so I suppose I could have just clicked the hinges into place and forgotten to do the locks. And he’s very inquisitive, and I suppose with all the fuss today, no one would have noticed him.’

  ‘Not with all these huge bundles of cables around, no,’ Ella said, wondering if it was the imminent Dewberrys’ Dinners or the imminent Onyx moving in that had distracted Ash and opting for the latter. ‘He’d have been really well camouflaged.’

  Ash sat back on his heels. ‘I think we’ll just have to play a waiting game.’

  ‘Mmmm.’ Ella pulled a face. ‘He’s anchored very firmly.’

  ‘I do not want to hear that.’ Gabby’s voice wavered from above them.

  Ella giggled. Ash suddenly grinned at her. Ella sighed. It meant nothing. Under different circumstances it would be really, really nice to be up close and personal with Ash under the kitchen table. But now…

  ‘Seriously, we’ll just have to wait until he’s decided he’s had enough cuddling,’ Ash said. ‘And that could take hours. There’s no point in – Christ! What the hell is that?’

  Ella blinked as a cascade of small red and blue stars swooshed under the table like a miniature whirlwind. The red and blue glistened and glimmered, danced together, and finally sparkled into a sort of shimmering purple mist. For a second she could see nothing at all, then the air cleared and the swoop of glittering coloured stars was gone as quickly as it had arrived.

  And Roy and Gabby had parted company.

  ‘What happened? Did I just dream that?’ Ash frowned.

  ‘Was that some sort of optical illusion?’

  Bemused, Ella shook her head. ‘Nooo, actually, call me completely mental if you like, but I think that was Ruby and Larkspur doing their stuff.’

  ‘OK.’ Ash frowned a bit more. ‘You’re completely mental. Who the hell are Ruby and Larkspur?’

  ‘Oh, you’ll have to ask Trixie about them.’

  ‘What? Fairies? You’re telling me you honestly believe in Trixie’s fairies? You think that… that… well, whatever that was just now was fairies?’

  ‘I’ve got no idea what it was or what I believe in any more, but if it was Larkspur and Ruby –’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Larkspur and Ruby – it’s what Trixie was singing about – and they’re the names of today’s fairies and –’

  Ash shook his head. ‘Stop right there, Ella, please. Now you’re scaring me.’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s OK, I scare myself sometimes, too. But if it was Ruby and Larkspur, they seem to have done the trick, don’t they?’

  ‘Um, yes… I’ll admit that. Whatever or whoever they are or that was, it’s nothing short of miraculous.’ Ash hauled most of Roy gently into his arms and stood up. ‘I’ve known Roy do his cling-on act for days before now.’

  Gabby, seeing Roy in all his massive glory for the first time, screamed again.

  ‘Sshhh.
’ Ash shook his head. ‘He’s fine now. And so are you. You won’t even be slightly bruised. He only did it because he loves you.’

  Gabby, white-faced, was shaking from head to Louboutin’d toe. Ella, pulling herself to her feet, felt momentarily sorry for her. She’d probably have reacted in much the same way – only probably without quite so much screaming. A girl has her pride.

  ‘Oh, blimey O’Reilly!’ Tom’s mouth dropped open at his first sight of Roy. ‘No wonder old Gabby was upset. Where the heck did he come from?’

  ‘Asia,’ Ash said, still stroking Roy’s head.

  ‘Long journey,’ Tom said, looking stunned. ‘Nice snake, though. Are you OK now, Gabby?’

  ‘No I’m bloody not. I think I’m going to faint.’

  No one rushed to catch her so she didn’t bother.

  ‘Can you grab his tail end?’ Ash said softly to Ella. ‘Like you did before, when we first moved in? Then we’ll get him back upstairs.’

  ‘OK.’ Ella grabbed.

  ‘Oooh.’ Gabby took a tottering step forwards and simpered shakily at Ash. ‘My hero! You rescued me from that… that… awful creature.’

  ‘His name’s Roy,’ Ella said, cross on Roy’s behalf. ‘And Ash didn’t save you – ow!’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ Ash grinned cheerfully. ‘Which means we’re still in with a shout for the final, I hope?’

  ‘Well, of course.’ Gabby sat down in the rocking chair. ‘Oh, sorry, I do feel rather wobbly.’

  ‘That’s because it’s a rocking chair,’ Ella said, shooting ‘smug, slimy, conniving clever bastard’ looks at Ash.

  Gabby smiled weakly. ‘We have nothing whatsoever to do with the voting on the semi-finals. That’s solely down to the viewers’ votes this week, but certainly, if I had my way, Ash, you’d not only get to the final but you’d get a bravery award as well.’

  Ash was still beaming triumphantly as he and Ella manoeuvred Roy out of the kitchen.

  Chapter Forty

  The rest of the week flew by. Again, the temperatures soared, and the east, west and north Dewberrys’ Dinners finalists did their stuff.

  The recriminations over Trixie’s shenanigans, and Roy’s escape, had been long and loud, with Trixie – who claimed a major part, with the aid of her fairykins, in the rescue of Gabby from Roy – being told in no uncertain terms that if she hadn’t got squiffy on her herbal tinctures and thrown all the doors open for the sodding fairykins in the first place, then no rescue would have been required.

  She’d stomped up to her room and sulked for ages.

  Ella had almost returned to her former sunny mood.

  Almost. OK, so she was getting over being officially single again, and she and Ash were talking again, and friends again, and it was lovely, but it still wasn’t what she wanted.

  After Roy’s escape, they’d returned him to his vivarium and stood and watched in relief as he’d hauled himself happily back round his sphagnum moss and watering holes before subsiding beneath one of his hot rocks. And Ash had thanked her a lot and then they’d left Roy and hurried downstairs, because Tom and Gabby were leaving and she knew Poll would want them there for the farewells.

  So, Roy had thawed the ice, which was lovely, but there was still Onyx and the ‘moving in’ thing to deal with.

  Ah, well, Ella thought, one step at a time… Let’s see if we get through to the final first, then I’ll sort out the rest of my life. She’d always felt Scarlett O’Hara’s method of thinking about nasty stuff tomorrow, not today, was a pretty good principle to follow.

  Everyone who had watched the programme told them they’d been better than ever. Ella’s parents phoned from Majorca and said they’d found a television showing the programme in ‘Eduardo’s English Eaterie’ and, once they’d let it slip that they were related to Ella, they’d been treated to free sangria all night and her gran had had to be carried home.

  And George, returning from his sleepover with Doll Blessing’s brood, excitedly told Ella they’d been allowed to watch the show in their pyjamas while eating chips. This latter seemed to have impressed him far more than the fact that his mum had been on the telly.

  On Tuesday, the Pink Barbie team had made everything they cooked lilac. It was very clever and exceptionally pretty, although they all decided that lilac ratatouille didn’t look quite right. On Wednesday, the fish and chips team from Devon made a fundamental error by doing everything shaped. Sadly, their pasty-shaped pudding wasn’t quite cooked and flopped into a gloopy pancake with lumps. And on Thursday, the skinny crew from Newcastle deviated from their original Geordie Slap-Up in quite spectacular style. They moved from Tyneside to Thailand and produced a totally stunning selection of beautiful dishes. There was no doubting their culinary ability, but as Gabby pointed out, with eye-watering acidity, curried rice pudding with a pickled lime sorbet was not one of her faves.

  ‘Oh, dear me! I wouldn’t know which one of them to pick, would you? It’s anyone’s guess,’ Poll sighed, as the final notes of ‘Pickin’ a Chicken’ died away in the peaches and cream sitting room. ‘And we won’t know if it’s us until after midnight when the phone lines close for voting.’

  ‘That’s ages to wait.’ Ella stretched her bare legs out along the sofa. ‘But they said they’d ring whatever happened, didn’t they? They’ll tell us if we’ve won or lost. So it won’t be just if the phone rings we’ll know we’ve won, it could go one way or the other.’

  They all groaned.

  ‘I think,’ Billy said, hauling himself from a deep armchair in search of yet more ice-cold drinks, ‘that we ought to just forget it for the rest of the evening and get an early night and go to sleep and wait and see what happens in the morning, because they’ll leave a message, won’t they?’

  ‘Forget it?’ They all screamed. ‘Sleep? Are you joking? We’re going to stay awake and be counting the seconds for the next three hours.’

  And they were. Almost. George was put to bed at an almost unheard of ten, and Trixie gave up the ghost and said a sleepy goodnight at just after eleven.

  So, when the phone rang at 1.15 am, the rest of them woke with a jump. Bleary-eyed, hot, uncomfortable and dry-mouthed, they blinked both at each other and round the stuffy sitting room.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Poll said, yawning and stretching. ‘If it’s bad news I can cope with it.’

  They all knew she couldn’t, but said nothing.

  Ella suddenly felt very sick. It was all so near now. And it mattered so much to Ash and Poll. And yes, damn it, to her too. To get this far – to have so much fun, to be actually cooking live on television, and to have proper professional chefs enthuse about your creations – had been absolutely brilliant. It couldn’t end now, it just couldn’t…

  Oh, but Poll was ages…

  The sitting room door opened. They held their breath.

  ‘YES!!!’

  They all leaped to their feet and hugged one another and danced round and round.

  ‘It’s us and the Pink Barbie team,’ Poll said breathlessly. ‘Now let me try to remember everything… Well, they’re sending a car for us tomorrow afternoon. And putting us up in a hotel overnight afterwards, and it’s just us – not Trixie or George or Onyx – oh, and they’ll provide all the ingredients we need. So I said we were going to do a whole new menu this time and –’

  ‘What?’ they chorused in horror. ‘A whole new menu? By tomorrow? Are you mad?’

  Poll beamed. ‘I didn’t think it would be a problem.’

  They all stared at her.

  ‘What?’ She frowned. ‘Oh, come on, we’ve got loads of ideas. Things we rejected for the second round. And I thought we could just have a little run-through now and…’

  ‘Poll, love,’ Billy said softly. ‘It’s two in the morning.’

  ‘Is it? Oh, well, maybe we could get up early and have a little run-through then instead?’

  ‘No bloody way,’ they groaned together. ‘And no bloody time.’

  ‘Well, it’s probably best
not to overdo it, anyway. We’ll be perfectly able to go straight in when we’re in the studio.’ Poll beamed. ‘Now, don’t confuse me. What else did they say? Oh, we can wear what we like tomorrow as long as we stick to their guidelines, so I said I thought we might wear assorted pastels this time.’

  ‘Pastels?’ Ash and Billy looked horrified.

  ‘Well, yes, because,’ Poll smiled happily, ‘I thought we could put together some of those recipes we tried out, before we settled on the cheesy ones for the second round, that we thought would go well for a country wedding theme, and that pastels would look really pretty, like confetti.’

  They all frowned at her.

  ‘But,’ Ash said, ‘I did the mains when we practised that menu, and you and Billy did the starter, will that be allowed?’

  ‘Of course it will,’ Poll said robustly. ‘Anyway, you’re the brilliant proper chef, Ash, you should have a chance to show off your talents. So, if Billy and I do the sweet-pea starter, you can make that incredibly intricate veggie tower with all those different blended layers, and Ella can make that lovely celebration strawberry fluff pud.’

  ‘But we’ll have to let them know, won’t we?’ Billy said. ‘So that they can get all the ingredients in?’

  ‘Ella can email them in the morning. Everything will have to be brought in fresh anyway.’ Poll was still unfazed. ‘And we have practised that one loads of times anyway. It’ll all be absolutely fine.’

  They sighed. And hoped it would be.

  Ash suddenly flopped down on the sofa. ‘God, though, we’ve really, really bloody done it.’

  ‘We have… It’s going to be sooo incredible – oh, but no!’ Ella groaned. ‘We can’t leave Trixie here alone. Not with George. Not tomorrow.’

  ‘Why ever not?’ Poll frowned. ‘Not that I was intending to leave George here, anyway. I’d already arranged for Doll to have him again if we got through to the final. But surely Trixie will be OK here, won’t she? It’s only one night, after all. I don’t think she’s a nervous person, is she?’