Frank went to pull his apron over his head. Then suddenly he stopped.
Once upon a time, he had cared. Once upon a time, it would never have occurred to him to open a catering-size tin of ratatouille, or use pre-spiced boil-in-the-bag rice. And there were times when he looked at the muck they served up and shuddered. When had he stopped being ashamed and accepted this appallingly low standard? Bruno was right. In the beginning, he had hoped to make a name for himself, like every young chef. But he’d been distracted. He’d lost sight of his original goal. He wasn’t on a career ladder; he was on a downward spiral. The next rung down was the burger van on the beach. And Frank suspected that if he didn’t rise to Bruno’s challenge, that’s probably where he’d end up. He remembered how proud his mum had been of him when he’d come top of his year at catering college. My little Jamie Oliver, she’d called him. But that was laughable. He wouldn’t get a job washing lettuce in one of Jamie’s kitchens, he knew that. And he was ashamed.
Frank looked at his watch. It was twenty past six and there was no one to be seen. That was typical. But tonight it suited him. He had some serious thinking to do. Bruno had given him twenty-four hours. And Frank knew in his gut that was his only chance.
What would you do here if you could? Bruno had asked.
Frank pushed his way through the swing door and into the dining room. The atmosphere was sombre, almost funereal. Dinner was served between seven and eight thirty, a set menu with three choices that varied little and featured cheap cuts of meat disguised by bought-in sauces. He looked at his watch. The first guests would start shuffling in in about half an hour. It would take them less than five minutes to polish off their prawn cocktails. If he got a move on, gave the waiting staff a kick up the arse, he could be out of here by quarter to nine. Usually after service, he’d bolt to the Jolly Roger and get as many pints down his neck as he could. But tonight he couldn’t wait to get back to his room.
Frank smiled to himself. His blood was up. He felt excited for the first time in years. He was going to blow Bruno’s mind.
By nine, he was hurrying back to his room. Many of the live-in staff at the Mariscombe Hotel were accommodated in a sprawling wooden chalet tucked away in the far corner of the grounds, shielded from public view by a high hedge of rhododendrons. There was a central living area and a kitchen, and a dozen small bedrooms. Outside, the washing line was hung with drying wetsuits, bikinis and towels; surfboards were propped up against the wall, along with bicycles and skateboards. It was nirvana; a student doss-house, the bins brimming with empty cans and takeaway cartons, a place where the washing up was never done and the sheets were never changed, because the inmates barely slept. Life was one long party, with a token nod to the work that paid for their lifestyle. With food and accommodation thrown in, the only cash they needed was for drink. Clothes didn’t matter much here. No one needed a car. Music and movies were pirated and pooled.
Frank realized that Bruno had hit the nail right on the head. You could forget the real world existed in Mariscombe: status symbols, responsibility and ambition meant nothing. But could it last for ever? Without some sort of momentum, it would be easy to become totally dysfunctional. The archetypal beach bum. He’d seen them around the Jolly Roger and the Old Boathouse – sad fifty-year-olds with dreadlocks and tobacco-stained fingers, staring longingly at the firm young flesh on display, always eager to be in on a round but suddenly noticeable by their absence when it was their shout. Frank despised them. Yet there was nothing stopping him heading that way at the moment. This, he realized, was his wake-up call and he better get it right.
He pulled a cardboard box out from under his bed. Inside were his bibles. He couldn’t remember how long it was since he had last looked at them; it wasn’t very cool to be seen to take your job seriously at the Mariscombe Hotel. But things were going to change. Frank knew it wouldn’t be long before he was inspired as he started leafing through. Gordon, Jamie, Rick – all the heroes of great English cooking. Just a few minutes reminded him what it was that had made him want to become a chef in the first place. Ideas flooded his mind, overwhelming him. He needed to write it all down, he didn’t even have a pen and paper. Hannah would have some. She was bound to be in. She always was these days. He leaped off the bed, out of the door and ran down the corridor, bursting into Hannah’s room without knocking. She was lying on her bed reading last week’s
Grazia
.
‘Have you got a pen? And any paper?’
She sat up, blushing.
‘Course.’ She burrowed in a drawer and pulled out a ring-bound notebook and a packet of scented gel-pens. Frank took them gratefully.
‘Thanks.’
‘It’s OK. Any time.’ She smiled at him quizzically. ‘How come you’re not out on the razz?’
Frank opened his mouth to tell her, then thought better of it.
‘I’ve got a couple of letters I need to write.’
‘Oh.’
Frank held up the notebook, backing out of the door.
‘Cheers.’
Back in his room, Frank looked at the pens. There was purple, pink, green, yellow or orange. Dubiously he drew out the purple one and sniffed it. Grape, apparently. He wasn’t quite sure of the point. He certainly wasn’t in the habit of sniffing his correspondence, but perhaps some people did. Anyway, he was sure Bruno wouldn’t care. Swiftly, he began to draw, sketching out ideas, the purple pen flying across the page as he drew tables and chairs, labelled boxes with arrows and drew little icons to illustrate his ideas.
In the room down the corridor, Hannah felt hot knowing that she and Frank were the only two people in the building. Everyone else was out drinking; they’d pile back around midnight, and the music would go on. Hannah didn’t mind her self-imposed incarceration. After all, staying in meant saving at least ten pounds. Which was ten pounds nearer her goal. She pulled open her bedside drawer and looked at her latest bank statement. Only two hundred and forty pounds to go. When she lumped it together with all the money she’d got for her eighteenth, she’d have enough.
She’d researched it meticulously. She’d been on the Internet, trawled through all the cosmetic surgery sites. She’d read hundreds of before and after tales, and satisfied herself that the risk was worth it. That the rise in self-esteem was certainly worth a couple of weeks of pain. Or mere discomfort, if you believed some of the more reassuring accounts. Life-changing, they said. To a woman.
For the six million, trillionth time in her life, she looked at her profile. It was not so much the size of her nose, though that was considerable. It was the way it jutted out from between her eyes, far too high up, then bent suddenly in the middle, dropping down at a sharp angle so that the end hovered over her top lip. She stroked her nose thoughtfully, wondering just what size and shape she would end up with. She was realistic enough to know that she would have to have something that was in proportion with the rest of her; not a dinky little Meg Ryan number. She would have to go on the surgeon’s advice. But at least it would be straight. And smaller, if not actually small.
Hannah flopped back down on her bed with her mirror, casting a quick look at the clock. It would be at least another hour before the others came back and she had some company. She loved working at the Mariscombe Hotel. It was like having a huge extended family – a mad, noisy rabble of brothers and sisters. She’d been brought up on a remote farm on Exmoor, the youngest daughter of elderly parents who had increasingly needed her help, meaning that at certain times of the year she had missed large chunks of school. And being so far off the beaten track meant that she’d had no social life to speak of. It had been a lonely existence, and a tough one. Working at the hotel was a holiday in comparison; when you’d stayed up all night lambing for two weeks on end, or broken your back rushing to get the hay in before the rains came, sitting at a hotel reception desk being polite was child’s play.
Her parents had been disappointed when she’d decided to go and study travel and tourism at college. They’d somehow expected her to stay on and help them, but Hannah had found the courage to stand up for herself. She’d done her HND, then got herself a job at the Mariscombe Hotel, which was less than an hour away. That had been her only compromise, that she hadn’t sought gainful employment further afield. She was near enough to get back if her parents really needed her, and she promised to take her leave at the times of year when they needed her most to help on the farm. So Hannah never really had a holiday, but she didn’t mind. This was as close to a holiday as it got.
The only thing Hannah found difficult was being so ungainly. She was five foot ten, with large feet and hands. Growing up on a farm, where appearances didn’t matter, with a mother who didn’t even use face cream, meant that Hannah hadn’t been self-conscious about her appearance for the first eighteen years of her life. In fact, her size and strength had been a positive attribute. But here, where so many of the other girls at the hotel were utterly gorgeous, and had so many opportunities to show off their perfection, her lack of physical beauty had become painfully apparent. Whenever they all went down to the beach, Hannah always stayed fully clothed, while the other girls stripped down to dinky little bikinis, their skin golden and flawless. No one had ever encouraged her to get undressed. It was as if it was obvious that she wouldn’t want to inflict her hideous body on the rest of them.
But they all liked her. Adored her, in fact. Hannah was the mother figure, the one who looked after them all and clucked around them. She was in charge of the barbecue on the beach; she made sure they all put sun cream on; she made sure they picked up all their litter. They came to her with their woes and problems – something she found rather baffling, as what did she know of affairs of the heart? But somehow her advice was always sound. And, anyway, she was a good listener. Auntie Hannah, they called her, and she didn’t mind, even though it was never reciprocated. She hadn’t told anyone else about her unrequited crush. And they didn’t seem to notice that she blushed furiously whenever Frank was near. But why would he look at her, when he had Caragh, lean and groomed, her chestnut hair gleaming, as sleek as a thoroughbred entered for the Derby?
But Hannah wasn’t one to mope and feel sorry for herself. Ever practical, she had decided to take matters into her own hands. No one had to suffer ugliness in this day and age. She peered at herself in her mirror again. She would start with her nose and work her way down. Collagen next, to plump up her lips – they were rather thin, decidedly unkissable. Hardly even worth putting lip gloss on. Then a boob job. Ironically, despite her size, Hannah had rather small bosoms. Implants would do no harm, to plump them up a bit, and a lift to make them high and rounded. Finally, some judicious liposuction – those bloody child-bearing hips of hers that had never born any children, and were quite unlikely to unless she took drastic action—
There was a sudden rap on the door and she dropped the mirror guiltily.
‘Come in.’
Frank poked his head round.
‘I need you to tell me if you think I’m going mad.’
He came in tentatively, waving the notebook she’d lent him earlier.
‘What is it?’
‘My ideas for the new dining room.’ He sat down on the bed next to her carefully. ‘Bruno wanted my input.’
‘Oh.’ Hannah took the notebook off him and sniffed it. ‘Grape.’
Frank nodded, impatient.
‘Yeah. But what do you think? Do you reckon this would work?’
He was sitting right next to her. She could feel his body heat only inches away. The pages in front of her swam. Her heart was pounding. She could hear the blood rushing in her ears. She couldn’t really take in anything he had written, but she had to concentrate. She had to give him a coherent answer. She took a deep breath and steadied the pages.
Intrigued, she leafed through his outlines and his sample menus. Unable to wait for her to read through it, he leaned over and started explaining his thought process.
‘I think we should split the dining room in half. Have a grill on one side – traditional, waitress service with the tables properly laid up. We can just serve steaks or fish or chicken, with a selection of sauces. On the other side, for more casual dining, and for families with kids, we have a wood-burning pizza oven and burger bar. Then a huge salad bar down the centre of the room, dividing one area from the other. I don’t mean pre-packaged coleslaw and slimy potatoes in salad cream. I mean Greek salad. Couscous with roasted vegetables—’
He broke off, realizing he was ranting.
‘Sorry,’ he grinned. ‘I’m just really excited. What do you think? Honestly?’
‘I think . . . wow,’ said Hannah admiringly. ‘And I’m not just saying that. This would be fantastic. It’s just what the hotel needs.’
Frank rubbed his chin.
‘I’m still not sure about desserts. They can be such a fag. And we don’t have a proper pastry chef.’
‘Why don’t you do an American ice-cream parlour type thing? Sundaes and banana splits and milkshakes? And brownies and cheesecake?’
Frank beamed. How easy would that be? They could bake the desserts fresh in the morning and have them available all day.
‘You’re a genius.’
Hannah felt herself go pink with pleasure as he patted her on the shoulder. As he stood up, her heart sank. Now she’d done her bit, given him reassurance and advice, he was going.
At the door, he stopped.
‘Do you fancy a drink?’
He probably just felt sorry for her. Felt he had to offer.
‘No, thanks,’ she said. ‘I’m trying to save money.’
‘We don’t have to go out,’ he replied. ‘I’ve got a few bottles of Beck’s in my room. We can sit outside and chill till the others get back.’
‘OK.’
‘I’ll just put this stuff away. I’ll see you outside in five.’
‘Great.’
He shut the door. Hannah hugged herself excitedly. She’d have at least forty minutes alone with him if she was lucky. She wished fervently she’d put on something more attractive than her old black velour tracksuit – it really had seen better days and it was decidedly saggy round the bottom. But he’d think she was weird if she got changed. At least her hair was clean. She pulled it out of its scrunchie and it fell to her shoulders. Mousy, but shining . . .