Scandalous Secrets

CHAPTER FOUR

THEY LOOKED BEAUTIFUL.

Penny gazed at the table in satisfaction. She had two plates of lamingtons ready to go. She’d rolled her cakes in rich chocolate sauce, coated them in coconut and filled them with cream. She’d thought of the difficulties of plates and spoons over in the yard so she’d gone small, but she’d made two each to compensate.

She’d piled them in beautifully stacked pyramids. They looked exquisite.

But this wasn’t a social event, she reminded herself. Two lamingtons might not be enough, so she made a few rounds of club sandwiches, bite-sized beauties. She cut them into four-point serves and set them on a plate in the lamingtons’ midst. They looked great.

She glanced at the clock and felt a little swell of pride. She had the ovens hot for the frittatas for lunch. They were almost ready to pop in. She had fifteen minutes before smoko and she was totally in control.

Matt would walk in any minute.

And here he was. He looked filthy, his pants and open neck shirt coated in dust, his boots caked in...whatever, she didn’t want to think about it. His face was smeared with dust and his hair plastered down with sweat. ‘Hey. Nearly ready?’

She lifted her lamingtons for inspection. ‘We can take them over now if you like.’

He glanced at the table and his gaze moved on. ‘Where’s the rest?’

‘The rest?’

There was a pregnant pause. And then... ‘This is all there is?’

‘Two lamingtons, two points of sandwiches each. How much more...’

He swore and headed for the pantry, leaving a trail of filthy footsteps over her nice, clean kitchen floor.

Her kitchen. That was how she felt when she worked. This was her domain.

Um...not. Matt had flung open the pantry door and was foraging behind the flour sacks. He emerged with three boxes.

Charity sale Christmas cakes. Big ones.

‘They hate them but they’ll have to do,’ he snapped. ‘Help me chop them up. They’ll stop work in half an hour and if this is all you have...’

‘But there’s plenty,’ she stammered and he gave her a look that resembled—eerily—the one her father gave her all the time. Like: You’ve been an idiot but what else could I expect?

‘This isn’t your society morning tea,’ he snapped, ripping cartons open. ‘It’s fuel. Grab a knife and help me.’

She was having trouble moving. This was supposed to be her domain, the kitchen, her food—and he was treating her like an idiot. She felt sick.

A memory came flooding back of the dinner a month ago. She and her parents in the family home, the mansion overlooking Sydney Harbour. It had been her birthday. She’d like a family dinner, she’d told them. Just her parents, her half-sister and her fiancé.

And she’d cooked, because that was what she loved to do. She’d cooked what Brett loved to eat—stylish, with expensive ingredients, the sort of meal her father would enjoy paying a lot of money for in a society restaurant. She’d worked hard but she thought she’d got it right.

She’d even made time to get her hair done and she was wearing a new dress. Flushed with success, she’d only been a little disconcerted when Brett was late. And Felicity... Well, her sister was always late.

And then they’d walked in, hand in hand. ‘We’re so sorry, Penny, but we have something to tell you...’

Matt was already slicing the first cake but at her silence he glanced up. Maybe the colour had drained from her face. Maybe she looked how she felt—as if she was about to be sick. For whatever reason, he put the knife down.

‘What?’

‘I...’

‘It’s okay,’ he told her, obviously making an effort to sound calm. ‘They’re very nice lamingtons but this isn’t a society fund-raiser where everyone’s spent the last three hours thinking about what to wear. Some of these guys have shorn forty sheep since they last ate, and they intend to do forty more before their next meal. Calories first, niceties second. Help me, Penny.’ And then, as she still didn’t move, he added, ‘Please.’

And finally her stunned brain shifted back into gear. She shoved away the sour taste of failure that followed her everywhere.

Fuel. Hungry workers who’d been head down since dawn.

Cute little lamingtons? She must have been nuts.

What then? Hot. Filling. Fast.

She had it.

‘Ramp the ovens up,’ she snapped and headed for the freezer. ‘All of them. High as you can go. And then wash your hands. I need help and you’re not touching my food with those hands.’

‘We don’t have time...’

‘We’ll be ten minutes late. They have a choice of a late smoko or eating your disgusting cake. You choose.’

* * *

He could order her aside and chop up the fruitcake the team despised—or he could trust her.

He went for the second. He cranked up the ovens and headed for the wash house. Two minutes later he was back, clean at least to the elbows.

By the time he returned, Penny had hauled sheets of frozen pastry from the freezer and was separating them onto baking trays.

‘Three ovens, six trays,’ she muttered. ‘Surely that’ll feed them.’ She indicated jars of pasta sauce on the bench. ‘Open them and start spreading,’ she told him. ‘Not too thick. Go.’

Hang on. He was the boss. This was his house, his kitchen, his shearing team waiting to be fed. The sensible thing was to keep chopping fruitcake but Penny had suddenly transformed from a cute little blonde into a cook with power. With Matt as an underling.

Fascinated, he snagged the first jar and started spreading.

Penny was diving into the coolroom, hauling out mushrooms, salami, mozzarella. She didn’t so much as glance at him. She headed to the sink, dumped the mushrooms under the tap and then started ripping open the salami.

‘Aren’t you supposed to wipe mushrooms?’ he managed. To say he was bemused would be an understatement.

‘In what universe do we have time to wipe mushrooms?’ She hauled out a vast chopping board and, while the tap washed the mushrooms for her, she started on the salami. Her hands were moving so fast the knife was a blur. ‘I could leave them unwashed but I have an aversion to dirt.’ She gave herself half a second to glance with disgust at his boots. ‘Even if you don’t. You finished?’

‘Almost.’ He poured the last jar over the pastry and spread it to the edges. ‘Done.’

‘Then I want this salami all over them. Rough and thick—we have no time for thin and fancy.’ She hauled the mushrooms out of the sink and dumped them on a couple of tea towels, flipping them over with the fabric to get most of the water out. World’s fastest wash. ‘Back in two seconds. I’m getting herbs.’

And she was gone, only to appear a moment later with a vast bunch of basil. ‘Great garden,’ she told him, grabbing another chopping board.

He was too stunned to answer.

They chopped side by side. There was no time, no need to talk.

And suddenly Matt found himself thinking this was just like the shearing shed. When things worked, it was like a well-oiled machine. There was a common purpose. There was urgency.

His knife skills weren’t up to hers. In fact they were about ten per cent of hers. He didn’t mind. This woman had skills he hadn’t even begun to appreciate.

Wow, she was fast.

It was the strangest feeling. To have a woman in his kitchen. To have this woman in his kitchen.

She was a society princess with a pink car and a poodle and knife skills that’d do any master chef proud.

Her body brushed his as she turned to fetch more mushrooms and he felt...

Concentrate on salami, he told himself and it was a hard ask.

But three minutes later they had six trays of ‘pizza’ in the oven.

‘The herbs go on when it comes out,’ she told him.

‘We won’t have time to garnish...’

‘Nothing goes out of my kitchen unless it’s perfect,’ she snapped. She glanced at the clock. ‘Right, it’s nine minutes before ten. This’ll take fifteen minutes to cook so I’ll be exactly ten minutes late. I hope that’s acceptable. Come back at eight minutes past and help me carry it over.’

He almost grinned. He thought of his shearing team. Craig was the expert there, and Matt was wise enough to follow orders. Did he have just such an expert in his kitchen?

‘How can it be ready by then?’ He must have sounded incredulous because she smiled.

‘Are you kidding? I might even have time to powder my nose before I help you take it out there.’

* * *

Taking the food over to the shed was an eye-opener.

A campfire had been lit on the side of the shed. There were a couple of trestle tables and a heap of logs serving as seats. Three billies hung from a rod across the fire.

The fire was surrounded by men and women who looked as filthy as Matt—or worse.

One of the men looked up as Penny and Matt approached and gave a shrill, two-fingers-in-the-mouth whistle. ‘Ducks on the pond,’ he called and everyone stopped what they were doing and stared.

‘Hey.’ It was hard to tell the women from the men but it was a female voice. ‘You idiot, Harry. Ducks on the pond’s a stupid way of saying women are near the shed. What about Marg and me?’

‘You don’t count,’ one of the shearers retorted. ‘You gotta have t... I mean you gotta have boobs and legs to count. You and Margie might have ’em but they’re hidden under sheep dung. Put you in a bikini, we’ll give you the respect you deserve.’

‘Yeah, classifying us as ducks. Very respectful.’ One of the women came forward and took plates from Penny. ‘Take no notice of them, sweetheart. I’m Greta, this is Margie and the rest of this lot don’t matter. If they had one more neuron between them, it’d be lonely.’ She glanced down at the steaming piles of pizza. ‘Wow! Great tucker.’

And then there was no more talk at all.

The food disappeared in moments. Penny stood and watched and thought of the two frittatas she had ready to go in the oven.

How long before the next meal?

But Matt had guessed her thoughts. He’d obviously seen the pathetically small frittatas.

‘There are a couple of massive hams in the cool room,’ he told her. ‘We can use your pretty pies as a side dish for cold ham and peas and potatoes. Penny, you saved my butt and I’m grateful, but from now on it doesn’t matter if it’s not pretty. At this stage we’re in survival mode.’

And she glanced up at him and saw...sympathy!

The team had demolished the food and were heading back to the shed. Matt was clearly needing to head back too, but he’d stopped because he needed to reassure her.

He wanted to tell her it was okay to serve cold ham and peas and potatoes.

She thought again of that dinner with her parents, the joy, the certainty that all was right with her world, and then the crashing deflation.

This morning’s pizza had been a massive effort. To serve quality food for every single meal would see her exhausted beyond belief.

She could serve his horrid cold ham, she thought, but that would be the equivalent of running away, as she’d run away from Sydney. But there was nowhere to run now.

She braced her shoulders and took a deep breath, hauling herself up to her whole five feet three. Where were stilettoes when a girl needed them?

‘I’ll have lun...dinner ready for you at twelve-thirty,’ she told him. ‘And there won’t be a bit of cold ham in sight.’

* * *

He should be back in the shed. These guys were fast—they didn’t have the reputation of being the best shearing team in South Australia for nothing. The mob of sheep waiting in the pens outside was being thinned by the minute. He needed to get more in.

Instead he took a moment to watch her go.

She was stalking back to the house. He could sense indignation in the very way she held her shoulders.

And humiliation.

She’d been proud of her lamingtons.

They were great lamingtons, he conceded. He’d only just managed to snaffle one before they were gone. There was no doubt she could cook.

She’d pulled out a miracle.

He watched as she stopped to greet Donald’s dog. She bent and fondled his ears and said something, and for some reason he wanted badly to know what it was.

She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Her bouncy curls were caught in a ponytail. The media thing he’d read yesterday said she was twenty-seven but she looked about seventeen.

‘Hey, Matt...’ It was Harv, yelling from the shed. ‘You want to get the next mob in or will I?’

He shook himself. It didn’t matter what Penny did or didn’t look like. He needed to get to work. He’d have to knock off early to go and make sure she’d sliced enough ham. Could she guess how many spuds she had to cook?

He glanced at her again. She was heading up the veranda. She looked great in those shorts. Totally inappropriate for this setting but great. She’d squared her shoulders and she was walking with a bounce again. Rufus was following and for a weird moment he wouldn’t mind doing the same.

* * *

Food. Fast. Right.

She stared at her two quiches and three sticks of bread dough doing their final rise in a sunbeam on the window ledge—an entrée for that mob, she thought. A snack.

The reason that pantry was packed... Yeah, she got it.

There were sides of lamb, pork and beef hung on great hooks in the coolroom. Whole sides.

She usually bought lamb boned out and butterflied, pork belly trimmed to perfection.

But she had done a butchering course. Once upon a time a two star chef who’d agreed to have her help in his kitchen had yelled it at her. ‘You want to understand meat, you need to understand the basics.’ He hadn’t made her kill her own cow but she had handled slabs of meat almost as big as this.

But to cut it into roasts, marinade it, get it into an oven she didn’t know...

‘Not going to happen,’ she muttered. ‘But I reckon I could get chops cut and cooked in time. First, let’s get the bread divided and pies baked, and then I’m going to tackle me a sheep.’

* * *

Matt didn’t leave the shed until ten minutes before the team was due to head to the kitchen.

He was running late. With Penny’s knife skills though, and now she knew how much they ate, surely she’d have plated enough?

He opened the kitchen door—and the smell literally stopped him in his tracks. He could smell cooked lamb, rich sauces, apple pies redolent with cinnamon and cloves. Fried onions, fried chicken? His senses couldn’t take it all in.

He gazed around the kitchen in stupefaction. The warming plate and the top of the damped-down firestove were piled high with loaded dishes, keeping warm. There were rounds of crumbed lamb cutlets, fried chicken, slices of some sort of vegetable quiche that looked amazing. Jugs of steaming sauces. Plates of crusty rolls. A vast bowl of tiny potatoes with butter and parsley. Two—no, make that three—casseroles full of mixed vegetables. Was that a ratatouille?

And to the side there were steaming fruit pies, with great bowls of whipped cream.

‘Do you think we still need the ham?’ Penny asked demurely and he blinked.

This wasn’t the same clean Penny. She was almost as filthy as he was, but in a different way. Flour seemed to be smudged everywhere. A great apricot-coloured smear was splashed down her front. The curls from her ponytail had wisped out of their band and were clinging to her face.

And once again came that thought... She looked adorable.

‘I’m a mess,’ she told him when he couldn’t find the words to speak. ‘The team’ll be here in five minutes, right? If you want me to serve, I’ll go get changed. Everything’s ready.’

And it was. The team would think they’d died and gone to heaven.

‘Or do you want me to disappear?’ Penny added. ‘Ducks on the pond, hey?’

‘Ducks is a sexist label,’ he told her. ‘Harry’s old school—Margie and Greta have spent the last couple of hours lecturing him on respect.’ He grinned. ‘But, speaking of respect... You, Penelope Hindmarsh-Firth, are a proper shearer’s cook and there’s no greater accolade. Don’t get changed. What you’re wearing is the uniform of hard work and the team will love you just the way you are.’

CHAPTER FIVE

THE TEAM KNOCKED off at five but Matt didn’t. Matt owned the place. No one gave him a knock-off time. He and Nugget headed out round the paddocks, making sure all was well. Thankfully, the night was warm and still, so even the just-shorn sheep seemed settled. He returned to the homestead, checked the sheep in the pens for the morning and headed for the house.

Then he remembered the chooks; Donald hadn’t fed them for a week now. He went round the back of the house and almost walked into Penny.

‘All present and correct,’ she told him. ‘At least I think so. Fourteen girls, all safely roosted.’

‘How did you know?’

‘I saw you do it last night. I took a plate of leftovers down to Donald and saw they were still out. I don’t know how you’re coping with everything. You must be exhausted.’

‘It’s shearing time,’ he told her simply. ‘Every sheep farmer in the country feels like this. It only lasts two weeks.’

She eyed him sideways in the fading light. He waited for a comment but none came.

She’d changed again, into jeans and a windcheater. She looked extraordinarily young. Vulnerable.

Kind of like she needed protecting?

‘Thank you for thinking of Donald.’

‘He wouldn’t come in with the shearers so I saved some for him. I think he was embarrassed but he took it.’ She hesitated a moment but then decided to forge on. ‘Matt...he told me he had to put Jindalee on the market but it broke his heart. And then you came. You renovated the cottage for him, even extending it so he could fit in everything he loved. And he can stay here for ever. I think that’s lovely, Matt Fraser.’

‘It’s a two-way deal,’ Matt growled, embarrassed. ‘Don knows every inch of this land. I’m still learning from him. And I bet he appreciated the food. How you had the time to make those slices...’

‘For arvo tea?’ She grinned. ‘I even have the jargon right. There’ll be cakes tomorrow, now I’m more organized.’

‘I’ll pay you.’

‘I don’t need...’

‘I’d have paid Pete. A lot. You’ll get what he was contracted for.’

‘You’re giving me board and lodging.’

‘And you’re feeding a small army. I know it’s a mere speck in the ocean compared to the money your family has, but I need to pay you.’

‘Why?’

‘So I can yell at you?’ He grinned. ‘I haven’t yet but you should hear the language in the sheds.’

‘Margie and Greta don’t mind?’

‘They use it themselves. As an official shearers’ cook, you’re entitled as well.’

‘Thank you. I think.’

He chuckled and they walked back to the house together. The night seemed to close in on them.

The moon was rising in the east. An owl was starting its plaintive call in the gums above their heads.

She was so close...

‘There’s a plate of food in the warming oven,’ she said prosaically and he gave himself a mental shake and tried to be prosaic back.

‘There’s no need. I could have cooked myself...’

‘An egg?’ She gave him a cheeky grin. ‘After my lesson last night you might do better, but if you’re hungry check what’s in the oven first.’

‘You’re going to bed now?’

‘If it’s okay with you, I might sit on the veranda and soak up the night until I settle. It’s been a crazy day and here’s pretty nice,’ she said diffidently.

‘It is, isn’t it?’ He hesitated and then decided: Why not? ‘Mind if I join you?’

‘It’s your house.’

‘That’s not what I asked.’

She stopped and looked up at him. Her gaze was suddenly serious. There was a long pause.

‘No,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t mind if you join me. I don’t mind at all.’

* * *

She should go to bed. She shouldn’t be sitting on the edge of the veranda listening to the owls—waiting for Matt.

Why did it seem dangerous?

It wasn’t dangerous. He was her employer. Today had been a baptism of fire into the world of cooking for shearers and she needed downtime. He’d asked to join her—it was his veranda so how could she have said no?

She could change her mind even now and disappear.

So why wasn’t she?

‘Because I’m an idiot with men. The only guys I’ve ever dated have turned out to be focused on my family’s money.’ She said it out loud and Samson, curled up by her side, whined and looked up at her.

‘But I do a great line in choosing dogs,’ she told him, and tucked him onto her knee and fondled his ears. ‘That’s my forte. Dogs and cooking.’

He still looked worried—and, strangely, so was she. Because Matt Fraser was coming to join her on the veranda?

‘He’s my employer,’ she told Samson. ‘Nothing else. He could be a seventy-year-old grandpa with grandchildren at heel for all the difference it makes. I’m over men. Matt’s my boss, and that’s all.’

So why were warning signals flashing neon in her brain?

* * *

Leftovers? He stared at the plate incredulously. These were some leftovers!

The midday meal had been crazy. For the shearers it was a break, a time where they stopped and had a decent rest. They’d come in and seen Penny’s food and basically fallen on it like ravenous wolves. Then they’d settled on the veranda to enjoy it.

Meanwhile, Matt had grabbed a couple of rolls and headed back to the shed. The shearers’ break was his only chance to clear the place and get it ready for the next hard session.

Shearing was exhausting. He’d been supervising it since he was a teenager and he’d never become used to it. Even when Pete was here, the best shearers’ cook in the district, Matt usually ended up kilos lighter by the end of the shear. He’d come in after dark and eat what he could find, which generally wasn’t much. Shearers didn’t leave much.

But Penny must have noticed, for in the warming drawer was a plate with all the best food from midday.

It hadn’t been sitting in the oven all afternoon either. She must have guessed he’d come in at dark, or maybe she’d asked one of the men.

He poured himself a beer, grabbed his plate and headed out to the veranda. He settled himself on one of the big cane settees. Penny was in front of him, on the edge of the veranda, her legs swinging over the garden bed below.

‘Thank you,’ he said simply.

‘You’re welcome.’

Silence. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence though. Matt was concentrating on the truly excellent food and Penny seemed content just to sit and listen to the owl and swing her legs. She was idly petting her dog but Samson seemed deeply asleep.

Samson had spent the day investigating chooks, making friends with the farm dogs and checking out the myriad smells of the place. This afternoon he’d even attempted a bit of herding but some things were never going to work. Matt had plucked him from the mob, hosed him down and locked him in the kitchen with Penny.

There’d be worse places to be locked, Matt thought idly, and then thought whoa, Penny was his shearers’ cook. It was appropriate to think of her only as that.

‘So where did you learn to cook?’ he asked as he finally, regretfully finished his last spoonful of pie.

‘Not at my mother’s knee,’ she said and he thought about stopping there, not probing further. But there was something about the night, about this woman...

‘I’d have guessed that,’ he told her. ‘The article I read... It doesn’t suggest happy families.’

‘You got it.’

‘So...cooking?’

She sighed. ‘My family’s not exactly functional,’ she told him. ‘You read about Felicity? She’s my half-sister. Her mother’s an ex-supermodel, floating in and out of Felicity’s life at whim. My mother was Dad’s reaction to a messy divorce—and, I suspect, to his need for capital. Mum was an heiress, but she’s a doormat and the marriage has been...troubled. To be honest, I don’t think Dad even likes Mum any more but she won’t leave him. And my sister... Even though Mum’s been nothing but kind to Felicity, Felicity barely tolerates Mum, and she hates me. My life’s been overlaid with my mother’s mantras—avoid Felicity’s venom and keep my father happy at all costs. So my childhood wasn’t exactly happy. The kitchen staff were my friends.’

‘So cooking became your career?’

‘It wasn’t my first choice,’ she admitted. ‘I wanted to be a palaeontologist. How cool would that have been?’

‘A...what?’

‘Studier of dinosaurs. But of course my father didn’t see a future in it.’

‘I wonder why not?’

‘Don’t you laugh,’ she said sharply. ‘That’s what he did. I was the dumpy one, the one who hated my mother’s hairdresser spending an hour giving me ringlets, the one who’d rather be climbing trees than sitting in the drawing room being admired by my parents’ friends. And then, of course, I was expelled from school...’

‘Expelled?’ He’d been feeling sleepy, lulled by the night, the great food, the fatigue—and this woman’s presence. Now his eyes widened. ‘Why?’

‘Quite easy in the end,’ she told him. ‘I don’t understand why I didn’t think of it earlier. I didn’t mind being expelled in the least. It was boarding school—of course—the most elite girls’ school my father could find. But I wasn’t very...elite.’

She kicked her legs up and wiggled her bare toes in front of her and he could see how she might not be described as elite.

She wasn’t elite. She was fascinating.

‘I hated it,’ she told him bluntly. ‘I was there to be turned into a young lady. We had a whole afternoon every week of deportment, for heaven’s sake. We learned to climb in and out of a car so no one can catch a sight of knickers.’

‘Really?’

‘It sounds funny,’ she told him. ‘It wasn’t. I learned to wrangle a purse, a cocktail and an oyster at the same time, but it’s a skill that’s overrated.’

‘I guess it could be.’ She had him entranced. ‘So...’

‘So?’

‘Expulsion? Explain.’

‘Oh,’ she said and grinned. ‘That was our annual ball. Very posh. We invited the local Very Elite Boys’ School. Deportment classes gave way to dancing lessons and everyone had Very Expensive new frocks. And hairstyles. It was the culmination of the school year.’

‘So...’

‘So you might have noticed I’m little,’ she told him. ‘And...well endowed?’

‘I hadn’t,’ he told her and she choked.

‘Liar. I’m a size D cup and it’s the bane of my life. But my mother bought me a frock and she was so delighted by it I didn’t have the heart to tell her I hated it. It was crimson and it was low-cut, with an underwire that pushed everything up.’

He had the vision now. He blinked. ‘Wow.’

‘My mother’s willowy,’ she said, with just a trace of sympathy for a woman who’d never understood her daughter’s figure. ‘It would have looked elegant on Mum, but on me? It just made me look like a tart, and it got attention.’ She paused for breath. ‘Rodney Gareth was a horrid little toad, but sadly he was also the son of Malcolm Gareth QC, who’s a horrid big toad. Rodney asked me to dance. He held me so tight my boobs were crushed hard against him. He swaggered all over the dance floor with me and I could feel his...excitement. I could hear the other girls laughing. And then...’

She fell silent for a moment and he thought she was going to stop. ‘And then?’ It’d kill him if he didn’t get any further, he thought, but she relented.

‘We all had these dinky little dance programmes, with pencils attached,’ she said. ‘And, before I could stop him, he pulled mine from my wrist and held it up, pretending to check for my next free dance. And then he deliberately dropped the pencil down my cleavage.’

‘Uh oh,’ he said.

‘Uh oh is right,’ she said bitterly. ‘I was standing in the middle of the dance floor and suddenly he shoved his whole hand down there. And people started laughing...’

‘Oh, Penny.’

‘So I kneed him right where it hurt most,’ she said. ‘I used every bit of power I had. I still remember his scream. It was one of the more satisfying moments of my life but of course it didn’t last. I felt sick and cheap and stained. I walked out of the ball, back to my dorm, ripped my stupid dress off and called a cab to take me home. And don’t you dare laugh.’

‘I never would.’ He hesitated. ‘Penny... Did your parents laugh?’

‘They were appalled. Mum was horrified. She could see how upset I was. But Dad? The first thing he did was ring Rodney’s parents to find out if he was okay. His father told Dad they weren’t sure if I’d interfered with the Gareth family escutcheon. He said they were taking him to hospital to check—I hadn’t, by the way—and they intended to sue. Then the headmistress rang and said I wasn’t welcome back at the school. Dad was furious and Mum’s never had the nerve to stand up to him.’

‘So what happened?’

‘So I was packed off to Switzerland to a finishing school. That pretty much knocked any idea of being a palaeontologist on the head but, on the other hand, they ran cooking classes because that was supposed to be seemly, and if I wanted to do five cooking classes a week that was okay by them. So we had Monsieur Fromichade who I promptly fell in love with, even though I was sixteen and he was sixty. We still exchange recipes.’

‘So happy ever after?’

She grimaced. ‘It worked for a while. I took every cooking course I could and that was okay. Dad approved of what he told his friends were my three star Michelin intentions. Finally I took a job as an apprentice in a London café. It was simple food, nothing epicure about it. But I loved it.’

She paused, seemingly reluctant to expose any more of her family’s dirty linen, but then she shrugged and continued. ‘But then things fell apart at home.’ She sighed. ‘My sister had been overseas for years. There were rumours circulating about her behaviour on the Riviera and somehow Dad made it all Mum’s fault. He’s always favoured Felicity and he blamed Mum for her leaving home. Then Grandma died and Mum...got sick. Depression. She started phoning every day, weeping, begging me to come home. Finally I caved. I came home and Mum was in such a state I was frightened. I even agreed to what my Dad wanted, for me to be a company PR assistant. I thought I’d do it for a while, just until Mum recovered.’