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DailyIndependent.co.uk
Celebrity chef loses top job at A’Diva
TV chef Carl Hurst has walked away from his exclusive gig as head chef at celebrity hotspot A’Diva in west London, we can exclusively reveal. While there’s been no official word on why or how it happened, insiders say…Read more…
Two months ago
My heart beating fast, I click on the top link and study the accompanying picture. Carl looks old. It’s been eight years since I saw him, and he must be about forty-five these days, I guess, but examining him now, I wonder if he’d lied about his age back then. He looks much closer to fifty-five. But maybe life in the kitchen used up all his collagen.
I read the full story, stopping several times to remind myself to breathe.
The news story is vague on details, with ‘sources’ reporting that Carl ‘quit before he could be pushed’. There are several anecdotes included about his bullying tactics in kitchens. One unnamed former protégé describes how he once threw him across a countertop and another reveals Carl’s thunderous, explosive temper tantrums where he would swear profusely at his staff.
It is damning and yet… confusing? Because surely everyone already knew all this about Carl Hurst? That was his schtick for eight years at A’Diva, and even longer at the restaurant before. Being vile and difficult just proves you’re a genius, doesn’t it? If you’re a man, at least. When he broke a sous chef’s arm, the ensuing hype is what secured him that weekly column in a celebrity magazine and a spot on morning TV. Plus, er, attacking people? Swearing at them? That’s how Gordon Ramsay became a multi-millionaire, surely.
There is more to this. I can feel it.
I roll over in my bed, clicking back into the search results and reading the next link.
I need to know more.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
There is something oddly comforting in beingthisdisgusting.
And when I say disgusting, I’m not being self-effacing. What I mean is, that it’s Sunday now and I haven’t showered since Thursday morning. And even that was a fairly hasty wash, with the promise to myself of a more formal hose down later. But then later was when… y’know, my best friends fucking betrayed me. Either way, that Thursday rinse certainly wasn’t meant to hold everything together for a long period of time while I had a major friend-mergency.
But, like I say, it’s kinda nice. There’s something a bit familiar and safe in all of this festering in my own stink. Testing my own limits of health and safety. Matching my horrible outsides with my horrible insides. It feels right to be rank.
I briefly lift my duvet to reach for the TV remote and the waft of stank hits me. I wince. It reminds me suddenly of all the other days in my life that I’ve spent like this; unwashedand uncaring. All those miserable, boy-related days and weeks. After every break-up with every single one of those seven exes on the Dickhead Tree, I did this. I lay in my own filth, feeling sorry for myself, eating stale rice cakes out of the back of my bedside table and ignoring my sad, sorry life. Is it really worth it? Islovereally worth it?
And this situation with Bibi feels even worse than a break-up.
I try to picture the world outside, continuing without me. With the curtains shut, it’s hard to imagine. It seems more appropriate that everything will have stopped in solidarity. The PM has likely decreed that the shittiness of my life is worthy of a worldwide pause. The British people have all gone home to hide under their covers and feel sad for me and my situation. Out there is only an unbathed nation in their beds, ignoring calls and emails. A nation lying around, focusing all their sympathy on me and my crappy life.
Except I haven’tfullyignored the world.
I’ve been googling Carl obsessively and thinking about him obsessively. I need to know what happened at A’Diva, I have to.
Maybe he’d just had enough, like me, of the working hours and conditions? Maybe he had an argument with the owner, Hugo? Maybe he was just done with never sleeping and always stinking of food.
I need to see him, or speak to him. I need answers. But I can’t just message him, can I? I can’t just call him up and go,‘Oh hey, Carl, what’s up? How have the last eight years been? Heard you got shitcanned from the restaurant!’
I went to his house once – just once – during our seven-month relationship. I don’t know if he still lives there but I could go. I could see. How would he react to seeing me after all this time? How would he feel? What if he didn’t even recognize me?
I’m not brave enough to do it alone. Not without my back-up. Not without Bibi and Louise and Alex. But I don’t think they’ve had my back for a while now.
I’ve always been pretty good at distracting myself from negative emotions. See, when there’s something bad in your life, all you do is just quickly put all your energy into something or someone else and never think about the bad thing. It’s easy!
Except this time, bits of bad keep slipping through my denial net.
