Chapter 30
When, after a week, no solicitor’s letter arrived and no newspaper reporter turned up on the doorstep to get the inside scoop
on glass in their puddings, Teddy finally let himself believe that it wasn’t going to happen. But bookings were down, and
for the first time they hadn’t been full on Friday and Saturday night. Teddy couldn’t help feeling the negative impact of
bad reviews was starting to kick in—was this the beginning of the end of everything he had worked for? And there had been
a few hoax bookings too, one for a party of nine who didn’t turn up. If that wasn’t bad enough, that Monday morning the street
was filled with builders working on the premises next door. They were parked on the double yellow lines outside, although
they had council clearance for being there, and dust was blowing everywhere and coating the windows. No one would be sitting
at their outside tables and having lunch today.
“I bet Ciaoissimo has got one of those hotshot business firms in to advise how to make them a massive success story,” said
George when they were all sitting around after their lunch customers had left: a record low of fifteen people. Sabrina really
liked George; he was the quietest of the crew but had the driest wit. He became much smilier when Marielle was there, she’d
noticed. He was always the one who brought her a coffee, a biscuit sharing the saucer with the cup. He more or less leaped
to the machine to be the first to make it for her.
“Maybe you should get someone in as well, then,” Sabrina said to Teddy.
“Have you any idea how much they cost?” he threw back.
“Yes, actually, I do.”
He smiled and wondered again if she was what she said she was. The disbelieving part of him had reasoned that the few ideas
she’d given him so far to improve his business could have been thought up by anyone with a modicum of common sense and a reasonable
interest in interior design. But she was certainly right about “glass man” not pressing charges, and he would have, surely,
if he had a genuine grievance.
Teddy wanted to believe her because he liked her; she fit into his team well. George had taken to her, and he was the most
difficult to please. He’d even entertained her with some of his table magic and practical jokes one night. She’d shrieked
with genuine delight when he “spilled” the cup of fake coffee over her after pretending to trip. The coffee was a lump of
plastic molded to the cup, which was attached to the saucer by a chain. Teddy took George as a benchmark because he was always
the last to melt. Sabrina didn’t try to court anyone’s approval; that was the interesting thing about her. She just got on
with her duties, was last to stop for a break, and was first to start work again. Niccolo and Roberto were two daft pups who
liked everyone, but Sabrina was the first one they’d tried to teach Italian to, most of it dodgy. She would think she had
just learned how to say, “Where is the beach?” but really she’d be asking, “Where are the hot studs?”
Teddy knew that she knew they were taking the mick, but she played along. Flick adored her, it seemed, and that was unusual
for her because she was always more comfortable with male company, apart from his mother. Cilla had done a real number on
her daughter, constantly letting her down, putting her fancy men first. Flick was drawn to Sabrina’s light, he could tell.
And there was light in her and kindness, and he really wanted proof that it wasn’t an illusion.
As for himself, his guard was up and then it went down again on a continuous loop.
When it was down, though, he felt sorry for her, because she seemed like a nice person, gentle and uncomplicated, and she intrigued him, possibly because almost every other woman he’d been involved with was anything but, and he was expecting to be hit from left field with a nasty surprise.
“Okay then,” said Teddy to her, unwrapping a biscuit. “You’ve been here long enough to study the place, so tell me what else
you’d alter apart from the lighting and the table arrangement and knocking down half the kitchen wall so people can see my
head.”
Sabrina laughed. She has a laugh like a tinkly bell , he thought, and deep dimples that appeared when she smiled. And really beautiful eyes, light brown with golden flecks in
them. He hadn’t ever seen anyone with eyes that color before, and it added to the mystery surrounding her.
“Okay, well...” Sabrina tried to make it sound as if she hadn’t been chalking up a mental list since she’d started here.
“You’re always booked up so far in advance that you miss out on customers who might just be here for the day. Why not set
aside a couple of tables for walk-ups?”
“Why would I keep tables empty when I could fill them?” Teddy asked her.
“The amount of people who come in and have to be turned away? They won’t be empty, trust me.”
“I’ve had plenty of room for walk-ups this week,” said Teddy with a grumble.
“Normal service has been interrupted, I know. It’ll recover, but you may have to recalibrate.”
Teddy tilted his head. “What do you mean?”
“If this other restaurant does open, you’ll have to give your customers something they don’t.”
“Like?”
“Like... I’ve been thinking. Those pizzas that George makes, they’re incredible.”
“My darling,” said George, blowing her a kiss across the table, which made her smile.
“I think people would want to see them being loaded into the pizza oven. Open up your kitchen, as I told you before. Let people
watch you chatting and laughing and enjoying creating your dishes—it makes everything taste better.”
She was crazy, pazza .
“How can it make the food taste better?” asked Teddy.
“Psychological effect. Trust me, it works. Those cupboards in the corner could be shifted next door; they’re only housing
pots and pans. You’d lose about a foot of worktop, but the payoff would be enormous. Move George’s oven into your main kitchen.
And also...”
Niccolo nudged Roberto and they started chuckling at Teddy’s gobsmacked expression as Sabrina reeled off more of what was
wrong with his restaurant.
“...Plus I don’t like that blue wall. Blue is a color that doesn’t occur naturally in food, and that can put people off.
I’d go for a nice earthy tone, personally.”
“So you’re Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen now?” Teddy was smiling lopsidedly as he said it, though.
“Not quite, but I know what tricks the mind. Weirdly, blue makes customers thirstier, so if this were primarily a bar, I’d
tell you to keep it.”
Teddy tossed her ideas around in his head like pizza dough; then he drained his cup, stood, and said, “I’ll think about it.”
Sabrina didn’t go straight home after her shift.
She finished at six that night, and it was still light, so she walked down to the beach.
It was cool for late June and the sand was deserted, not that it ever got as full in peak season as the livelier seaside destinations such as Whitby or Scarborough or the recently rejuvenated Slattercove.
Shoresend had an air of stepping back in time about it, and as such was a magnet for people who liked a more demure sort of holiday.
It was a hidden gem, with its caves at one end of the shore and its suntrap beach and rock pools at the other, and Sabrina knew that whatever had made her come here had done her a big favor.
She sat on the steps that led down from the promenade to the sand and let the noise of the sea fill her head, swoosh around in it.
There was someone farther down with a metal detector, and she wished she could have the brain version of one of those, to find all the missing valuable pieces in there.
Bits were coming back to her, but they were too small, too banal to be worthy of mention, like the outer frame of a jigsaw,
pieces of grass and sky, a seagull flying in it, but nothing that would hint at what the full picture might be. Whatever had
shut her down would be the key to opening her back up again, she was sure of that. But having to leave this place would be
hard. She knew she couldn’t stay in Shoresend forever, but she liked the people she’d met here; she liked the simplicity of
her present life. She felt privileged that the waiters teased her with their fake Italian and George tested out his magic
tricks on her. She enjoyed talking to Flick, and she wondered if she and her own daughter had discussions the way they did—why
couldn’t she remember if they had? How could she not bring to her mind something that would be so important to her?
As for Teddy Bonetti, she really wanted to help his restaurant because it didn’t deserve what it was getting. But more than
that, she wanted to help him . She liked being near him. She liked being near him a little too much.