Chapter 9
Amy wasn’t prepared for the way the round of applause would make her feel.
All she did was stir the tomato sauce and help Tad grill some king prawns – he did everything else – and yet at the conclusion of the meal, Hugh had tinkled a teaspoon against an empty wine glass and had asked everyone to show their appreciation.
She frowned and felt her cheeks burn as she shook her head and tried to explain she’d done very little. She swallowed her embarrassment and waited for the room to settle, struggling to make eye contact with anyone.
When she did look up, it was Tad whom her gaze found first. Leaning against the doorway leading through to the kitchens, arms loosely crossed, a relaxed expression on his face, he nodded, then grinned.
Buoyed by his expression, Amy thanked everyone and stood, reaching to clear the dessert bowls.
‘Surely you’re off the books, now, aren’t you?’ Billie said. ‘This place does have its own staff, you know, and there’ll be cheese in a minute, won’t there?’
‘Aye. I’ll bring the cheese board in shortly,’ Tad said. ‘Amy, you don’t need to worry yourself; we can do this.’
Amy shook her head. ‘I’m happy to help.’
In the kitchen, Tad was piling bowls on the draining board beside the rinsing sink. She added hers to the stack.
‘Don’t tell me, you wanted another slice of semifreddo; that’s why you’re back in the kitchen,’ Tad said.
‘I probably should, while there’s still any left.’ She pointed to the bowls they’d brought through, every one of them scraped clean. ‘It was a great choice – they loved it.’
‘Help yourself if you want a bite more – I put it back in the freezer, but you’ll be able to lop off a bit without any trouble. I’ll be back in a moment,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t being serious—’
Tad was gone before she’d finished her sentence – maybe because she’d been a bit slow to get the words out.
If she was being honest, she’d happily forgo the cheese course for another taste of that chocolate ice cream.
While she was battling with her own lack of self-control, which found her seeking out the deep freeze and peering inside, Tad was back, whisking up the cheese plate and basket of crackers before heading back to the dining room.
Amy was lifting the corner on cling film when he reappeared. She heard him laugh, a hand reaching past her to pull the tin from the freezer.
‘Come on, I think you’ve earned it,’ he said, slicing a delicate piece and lodging it onto a small plate, handing it to her alongside a long-handled teaspoon.
‘I couldn’t resist another taste,’ she said.
‘There isn’t a chef alive who doesn’t find it flattering to have someone ask for seconds of their food. You are more than welcome, Amy.’
‘Well, all right then. Thank you.’
Tad made short work of rinsing the bowls and adding them to the dishwasher tray, then ripped at the poppers of his evening chef jacket, pulling it off and balling it onto a surface.
He looked hot; the kitchen was warm enough to be making the edges of the semifreddo on her plate melt and begin to pool across the white ceramic.
His T-shirt had telltale half-moons of sweat beneath his arms. But that wasn’t Amy’s focus.
Rather, her attention was taken by the flight of grey birds taking to the wing on Tad’s right forearm, launching and twisting and driving upwards to find – what?
Their destination, if there was one, remained hidden under the sleeve of his T-shirt, and Amy was fixated by the intricacy with which the birds were inked, each feather delicate and separate, and yet the series of birds still managed to move as one entity – even though they weren’t moving at all, not under their own power. It only seemed that way.
She swallowed. She’d imagined what the glimpse of tattoo she’d seen earlier in the week might be a part of, and now that she knew, it seemed the combined effect of the wondering and now knowing had made her mouth go dry.
Which was unexpected. She knew plenty of people who had them; there was no reason for a few tattoos to be a big deal.
She’d seen everything from a friend who had a discreet red heart on her wrist, all the way up to her cousin, Ben, who was working on covering every inch of his torso, having already sleeved both arms.
She could appreciate the artistry of them, but there hadn’t ever been anything more to the way she viewed tattoos than that.
Which was why it made no sense at all that she didn’t seem capable of dragging her gaze away from Tad’s birds as they spiralled their way up his smooth, pale forearm and disappeared from view.
‘You’re spilling it.’
Tad’s words jolted Amy from her thoughts as he reached for, and straightened, the plate from which a dribble of melted semifreddo had fallen, splodging onto the glittery non-slip surface of the floor. A perfect brown drip pattern against the silvery glitter of the vinyl.
‘Oh, no. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s no problem,’ he said, spinning to find a cloth.
Doing her best to refocus on the ice cream, stepping back as he dipped onto his haunches to wipe up the mess, she spooned up some of the rapidly warming ice cream to give herself something to do.
‘Still good?’ he asked.
She tried to answer, but managed to stumble over a piece of nougat, almost choking instead of speaking.
This was ridiculous. How had Amy boomeranged back from feeling confusion and irritation for this man to now being unable to speak?
‘May I?’ He reached for another of the long-handled spoons and gestured to the side of the semifreddo closest to him.
Amy nodded. Did her best to chew the nougat as she watched him take a mouthful of the ice cream.
A whisper of chocolate remained on his lip, and she found herself wondering if the bloke was incapable of eating without plastering food all over his face, or whether he was doing it on purpose.
Either way it was adding another dimension to the tumble of her thoughts.
It was in almost the same place as the jam from the peach tart they’d made on the night of her arrival and all she had to do was reach out and she could rub it away for him.
She shook her head, an almost imperceptible movement – she hoped – but one she needed to make in order to recalibrate.
There was no way she was doing this. No way she was going to fall into a headlong crush for this man.
For all the reasons she’d already outlined to herself, the exercise would be ultimately pointless and meaningless, and she had more important things to consider.
Like her career. Keeping Billie happy. Producing useable copy about their experience at Casa del Cibo.
What she didn’t need was to muddy the waters with a messy hook-up, or – even worse – to develop unnecessary feelings about some bloke she’d wave goodbye to in a few days’ time.
But there was something happening to the base of Amy’s stomach that she couldn’t control. Instead of dampening down the feelings, her attempts to brush away the effect he was having on her was achieving the opposite, and heat was spreading through her belly like wildfire.
And when he smiled, took another blob of ice cream, and she watched him suck it off the spoon, Amy didn’t know where to look to quell the images now crowding her thoughts.
* * *
Hugh decided a recce was in order. Everyone was busy cutting slices of cheese or helping themselves to coffee from the machine in the corner. Nobody noticed him slip from the room and head for the kitchens.
His shuffling gait was only partly an affectation. The days when he was able to stride out and cover ground like a mountain goat were well behind him; he’d had to acknowledge that much, but he was still able to move with agency when required.
Slip-on, Velcro-fastened shoes – the type Brian had loathed with a passion, but Hugh had never been so negatively afflicted by – aided his movements and he came upon the door to the professional part of the kitchen almost silently.
Hoping he wouldn’t be rumbled immediately, Hugh peeked around the doorframe. He was far from a peeping Tom, even if it were inescapable that his intentions were to creep up on the two youngsters and see what they were up to.
It wasn’t about catching them ‘in the act’ or anything as daft as that, it was more about his wish for an affirmation of his understanding of human nature. To know he hadn’t been completely off-key with the instant vibe he’d got from the pair of them.
It had been the same with him and Brian.
The moment Hugh had seen that man ordering drinks at the pub reception for a mutual friend’s wedding, it had been as though an invisible string had been pulled taut between the two of them.
The attraction rolled over him with an intensity unlike anything Hugh had ever felt before.
It went against everything he thought he understood about life, and yet it wouldn’t be denied.
And so it was for Hugh and Brian that – having endured a particularly unpleasant phase after which neither the bride nor groom, nor most of the other guests as it turned out, ever spoke to them again – a lifetime of love began, dented but never destroyed by whatever the world threw at them.
Which was plenty – both metaphorical and physical.
Including, at one point, a deeply unpleasant message tied to a brick and thrown through their window.
Hugh shuffled the final few inches to bring his gaze around the edge of the doorway.
If he’d been sixty years younger, Hugh would have probably done one of those high fives, or whatever they were called.
He would have punched the air in celebration, because Tad and Amy were sharing a plate of ice cream – right there in the middle of the kitchen as though nobody else was in the building, with two spoons and their focus unwaveringly on one another.
He’d been sure that old chestnut of preying on people’s good nature would come up trumps. The added variable of the decrepit old man doing the manipulation had worked a treat. Take that one, Marple, and chalk it up as a win.
As he watched, it seemed to all the world as though Amy was about to reach out and brush an unfortunate speck of ice cream from Tad’s face, and Hugh held his breath. Would Tad grab her and pull her to him, would Hugh be there at the birth of a brand-new love affair?
Disappointingly, Amy seemed to be doing nothing more profound than reaching for Tad’s spoon, taking that alongside her own and the now empty plate to the sink. The moment lost in the mundane swilling of cutlery in soapy water…
‘Knock, knock,’ Hugh said, favouring the honest declaration of his existence over trying to creep away, which was bound to end in his shoe squeaking embarrassingly on a polished floorboard, or a knee joint giving way and sending him sprawling to the floor.
‘Hi, Hugh. Can I help?’
Tad still had the smudge of chocolate on his lip, and it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility for Hugh to admit – even if it was solely to himself – that he’d be happy to wipe it away with a thumb.
Hugh issued a silent apology to Brian, but facts were facts.
Tad was a seriously attractive young man.
‘Came in search of sugar crystals, Tad. I prefer them to that granulated stuff for my coffee – that’s all. But it’s no big deal.’
‘Apologies. I’ll find some for you.’
‘Thank you.’ Hugh smiled. ‘Couldn’t help but notice you two sneaking an extra slice of that dessert – don’t blame you. It was absolutely delicious. Just the kind of thing to share with someone special, don’t you agree?’
Hugh’s grin intensified as the two young people glanced at one another and then pretended they hadn’t. As he had suspected. There was more to these two than chef and guest. Or there could be, with a bit of good luck and a fair wind.
He turned to leave. ‘Honestly, don’t worry about the sugar for now. Tomorrow will be completely fine. Far more pressing things for the two of you to be doing, I’m sure. Sorry to disturb.’
Hugh wandered back into the dining room to find Kathleen. He wondered if she might have noticed, as he had, the frisson between Amy and Tad – wondered if she might prove to be a willing confidante…
* * *
Hugh’s Chocolate, Pistachio and Nougat Semifreddo
75g golden caster sugar
4 medium eggs
250g dark chocolate, finely chopped
450ml double cream
140g hard nougat or torrone, chopped into small chunks – Hugh pleads with you to make them small – kindly think of his teeth, will you?
50g pistachios, roughly chopped
Butter, for the tin
Butter and line a 900g/2lb loaf tin with cling film.
Bring a pan of water to a gentle simmer.
Put the sugar and eggs in a heatproof bowl, then place over the simmering water and whisk until pale, thick and doubled in volume.
Remove from the heat, plunge the bowl into cold water and continue whisking until the mixture is cool.
Melt the chocolate in the microwave on low (Tad shuddered when Hugh suggested this, favouring another bowl over simmering water, but he’s got more time remaining in his hourglass than Hugh has…) Stir, then fold in the egg mixture.
Whip the cream to soft peaks and fold into the chocolate egg mixture with the nougat and pistachios.
Pour the mixture into the loaf tin, smooth the surface with a spoon, then cover and freeze until firm.
Basically, that’s it. An elegant and impressive dessert with playful notes that requires minimal effort.
Hugh suggests you can fanny about with turning it out onto a posh dish if you want to serve it to guests (remember to take off the cling film, though – Hugh has a funny story about the time he forgot…) or you can go all Tad and Amy about it, cut a slice straight from the freezer and share it.
No frills, no nonsense… No shenanigans, either… unfortunately.