Selene didn’t roll her eyes but she was nothing if not a pragmatist. ‘That takes money and connections. You will have to get a job first.’
‘I’m aware,’ sighed Christa. She had worked on enough charity events to know the huge pressure on the organisations to keep everything afloat while trying to get donations and support from wealthy individuals.
‘Someone I know asked if you wanted to cook for a rich family over the Christmas period. The lawyer for the client messaged me, all very cloak and daggers. He said he had eaten at Playfoot’s. It’s obviously someone famous or important. But the money they mentioned was ridiculously high. Out in the country somewhere, at their house.’
Christa’s ears pricked up. She needed more money to support her while she worked out what she wanted to do next in order to realise the dream that had been planted in her mind.
‘Me? They asked for me? Who are they?’ People rarely asked for her. ‘Surely they meant Simon?’
‘No, he said you by name,’ Selene said. ‘I could ask the lawyer who it is, but I doubt they would tell me unless I signed a non-disclosure agreement.’
Christa was tempted. They knew her cooking, they knew her food and they asked for her personally. It was kind of nice to be recognised for once. Especially when Simon was being featured as the best thing to happen to British cooking since Gordon Ramsay.
‘Over Christmas? I could do it. I mean it’s not like I’m going wassailing with my family.’
Selene reached over and gave her arm a rub. ‘You could come to Paris with my family but we will just drink and fight and you will not be paid for it.’
Christa thought of the holidays with Simon’s family at their country house, perfectly chic and very Sloane Ranger with the silver cutlery all lined up on the white damask cloth and Fortnum and Mason Christmas crackers on the table. The first year she had Christmas with Simon’s family she had nervously drunk too much champagne and asked when the photographer was arriving for the catalogue shoot. She knew it was rude but it was true. The perfection of the table had made her wonder about the silliness of Christmas. Simon had been furious with her little dig, which she apologised for but he had said that not everyone could enjoy the bonhomie of the shelter Christmas she had told him about. She remembered the shame then and even now it smarted to think of it.
Of course the food was also perfect. Every year it was the same. Always catered with smoked salmon to start, followed by roast Norfolk bronze turkey with all of the trimmings. Then there was a Christmas pudding with brandy custard and mince pies and a platter of cheese and biscuits to finish. It was all perfectly fine but that’s all it was: fine. There was nothing spontaneous about the day, no bustling about the kitchen or fighting over whether the turkey was done or not. So rehearsed, she felt she could have recited the conversation word for word from Simon’s parents about the cooking of turkey and how nice it was to avoid the line at Waitrose for the smoked salmon.
Christa thought back to the Christmas lunches of her younger years when it was just her and her dad. Simon might have thought it was sad but she remembered there was life, unlike in his family home. It wasn’t what everyone would want to experience for Christmas but there was a sense of being in it together. Everyone would wear the paper hats and share the small gifts as though they were priceless. It wasn’t what some children would think was a wonderful Christmas but for Christa it was generous and filled with hope.
Her dad had died the year she started at Le Cordon Bleu and she started to date Simon in second year. God he was handsome in a sort of posh foppish Hugh Grant way. And he could speak French and he drove a green MG and he said he went to school with one of the members of Coldplay. He was, to Christa, the most wonderful, exciting and different man she had ever known. All the girls wanted to date him but after first year, when she topped the class in everything, he chose her.
‘I’ve always been into talent over looks,’ he had told her the first time they made love and she’d thought it was romantic. Now she wanted to shake herself awake from the spell he had her under back then.
In second year she came first in everything again and Simon became even more serious about her. He was planning a restaurant, he had told her; he had investors, he confided; and he wanted her to be his sous chef.
Instead she went to Paris after she graduated, and lived with Selene’s family and worked at a Michelin-hatted restaurant, returning with a perfect soufflé recipe and a fluency in French.
It was the only time she defied Simon in their relationship but the head of her course told her she had something special. She could cook in a Michelin-starred restaurant if she worked hard enough, because he thought she had the talent. She was the only one to be offered the apprenticeship in France and, looking back, she realised Simon knew he couldn’t outshine her, so instead he would use her talent for his own gain.
Simon had then gone into full wooing mode. He came and saw her as often as he could, and he complimented her constantly on her talent and how clever she was. When she had mentioned the hotel where she worked were thinking of promoting her, he told her he supported it and he couldn’t wait for her to eat at his restaurant he was opening.
And then, just before his restaurant opened, he called her crying, saying his sous chef had pulled out. He would be open in a week. He would lose the money from the investors. What could he do? He was desperate for an idea; he needed Christa’s brilliance. And so she said she would come back to London for a while. Just until he found the right person. And fifteen years later she was still there.
She had been played by the Playfoot, she thought, stuck in the restaurant and spending every Christmas with his family, even though Christmas Eve was her birthday.
Once she had suggested that she and Simon start their own tradition and he responded as though she had suggested he smother his parents in the night with an oven bag.
Instead, Christa always received a birthday present on Christmas Eve from Simon, “but something small, because it’s Christmas tomorrow”. And she had accepted it because she didn’t think she deserved anything more. Christmases and birthdays were small when she was a child because of her dad’s issues and lack of money. So to want something more as an adult made her feel like she was a materialistic, pathetic fool.
And she always received a little present from his parents, given in hushed tones away from the nativity set on the mantelpiece, as though they were worried that Jesus would be cross with them for celebrating someone else’s birthday.
Christa shuddered at the memories.
‘It’s funny how you settle in life,’ she said aloud.
‘Some do – not me,’ said Selene.
Christa smiled at her friend. She would never settle the way Christa had but perhaps it was because Selene hadn’t been through what she had.
‘I’ll do it; tell whoever it is, I will do the gig. I need to get out of London. It’s making me sad. And I want to be busy. I need space to think, you know?’
Selene put down her mug. ‘Really? Staying with strangers, cooking for them?’
‘Why not? I’m not achieving anything here, am I? I need the money. I need the distraction. It’ll be good for me,’ she said. Was she trying to convince Selene or herself? She wasn’t sure.
