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Authors: Sophie Ranald
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spoiled or bratty or a bridezilla or a control freak. This was Nick’s day as well as mine, and if what he wanted was to get married at Brocklebury Manor, that was what we would do. I owed it to him, after all.
CHAPTER FIVE
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Tonight
Cool – I’ll be in the Grope & Wanker at 8. Hope all is ok. Love you.
N xx
I kissed Nick goodbye and headed for the Tube, trying to force myself to stop thinking about the wedding and my ambivalence towards the whole thing, and focus on the job in hand. Literally. It looked like I had a punishing week ahead. Thatchell’s had finally given the go-ahead to the reduced-everything ostrich lasagne, but it was just one product in the range, and Guido and I needed to give some serious thought to a pumpkin and baobab soup (whatever the hell baobab was – I’d better find a supplier sharpish and figure out what to do with the stuff, or I would find myself deeply regretting including it on a whim in our original proposal). We also had to finalise the spicing for the boerewors burgers and work out how to cut the fat content of those right down without making them like chewing on heavily seasoned MDF.
And I’d be fighting to get a decent amount of time with Guido actually in the kitchen, because as well as flying to Glasgow twice a week to supervise a new restaurant launch, he and Tamar were nailing down recipes for Guido’s African Safari and having loads of meetings with the production company about locations and shooting schedules.
And Erica was due to arrive on Wednesday. I felt my jaw clench just thinking about it. I’d better plan some kind of welcome dinner for her – I made a mental note to check with Nick if she was still following a strict vegan diet. Surely it would be beyond even Erica’s capabilities to buy quinoa and tofu in Monrovia? I’d call in some favours with our suppliers and see if I could get hold of some morels just in case.
I stopped at Kaffee Klatch, which is just around the corner and has been our coffee shop of choice since we moved to the area, long before it became as achingly cool and hipsterish as it is now. (I’m convinced that Kaffee Klatch has survived the influx of competitors with their chai lattes and bubble tea chiefly thanks to the caffeine requirements of the Falconi team.) Clutching a cappuccino for Guido (he always drinks cappuccino before noon and espresso after – “It’s the Italian rules! My pappa would turn in his grave if he saw you drinking espresso with breakfast!”) and a Diet Coke for myself, I buzzed open the door and let myself into the office.
“Morning!” I called, depositing Guido’s coffee on his desk and my bag on mine. Four of the five desks were empty, but Eloise, Guido’s PA, was there.
“Ssssh,” she hissed, and made a series of cryptic hand gestures involving the boardroom door, her watch and what looked like a lethal right hook.
I scooted my chair over to her and whispered: “What’s going on?”
“Don’t know,” she whispered back. “Guido, Tamar and Helen have been shut in there for the past hour. I heard loads of shouting a few minutes ago but it’s all gone quiet now.”
Helen’s the HR manager who looks after staffing across the whole group. She mostly spends her time running recruitment drives for waiters in Manchester or conducting disciplinary hearings for chefs caught snorting coke on the job and consequently her visits to the office are rare and greeted with a mixture of fascination and dread.
“Shit!” I said. Tamar’s great to work with and a fantastic cook but she can be a bit temperamental. When she joined two years ago she was going through a divorce, poor thing, and her meltdowns were absolutely epic, but things seemed to have settled down quite a lot recently, and she’d been looking really glowy and happy, so Eloise and I had been speculating that perhaps there was a new man in her life.
“I
CHAPTER FIVE
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Tonight
Cool – I’ll be in the Grope & Wanker at 8. Hope all is ok. Love you.
N xx
I kissed Nick goodbye and headed for the Tube, trying to force myself to stop thinking about the wedding and my ambivalence towards the whole thing, and focus on the job in hand. Literally. It looked like I had a punishing week ahead. Thatchell’s had finally given the go-ahead to the reduced-everything ostrich lasagne, but it was just one product in the range, and Guido and I needed to give some serious thought to a pumpkin and baobab soup (whatever the hell baobab was – I’d better find a supplier sharpish and figure out what to do with the stuff, or I would find myself deeply regretting including it on a whim in our original proposal). We also had to finalise the spicing for the boerewors burgers and work out how to cut the fat content of those right down without making them like chewing on heavily seasoned MDF.
And I’d be fighting to get a decent amount of time with Guido actually in the kitchen, because as well as flying to Glasgow twice a week to supervise a new restaurant launch, he and Tamar were nailing down recipes for Guido’s African Safari and having loads of meetings with the production company about locations and shooting schedules.
And Erica was due to arrive on Wednesday. I felt my jaw clench just thinking about it. I’d better plan some kind of welcome dinner for her – I made a mental note to check with Nick if she was still following a strict vegan diet. Surely it would be beyond even Erica’s capabilities to buy quinoa and tofu in Monrovia? I’d call in some favours with our suppliers and see if I could get hold of some morels just in case.
I stopped at Kaffee Klatch, which is just around the corner and has been our coffee shop of choice since we moved to the area, long before it became as achingly cool and hipsterish as it is now. (I’m convinced that Kaffee Klatch has survived the influx of competitors with their chai lattes and bubble tea chiefly thanks to the caffeine requirements of the Falconi team.) Clutching a cappuccino for Guido (he always drinks cappuccino before noon and espresso after – “It’s the Italian rules! My pappa would turn in his grave if he saw you drinking espresso with breakfast!”) and a Diet Coke for myself, I buzzed open the door and let myself into the office.
“Morning!” I called, depositing Guido’s coffee on his desk and my bag on mine. Four of the five desks were empty, but Eloise, Guido’s PA, was there.
“Ssssh,” she hissed, and made a series of cryptic hand gestures involving the boardroom door, her watch and what looked like a lethal right hook.
I scooted my chair over to her and whispered: “What’s going on?”
“Don’t know,” she whispered back. “Guido, Tamar and Helen have been shut in there for the past hour. I heard loads of shouting a few minutes ago but it’s all gone quiet now.”
Helen’s the HR manager who looks after staffing across the whole group. She mostly spends her time running recruitment drives for waiters in Manchester or conducting disciplinary hearings for chefs caught snorting coke on the job and consequently her visits to the office are rare and greeted with a mixture of fascination and dread.
“Shit!” I said. Tamar’s great to work with and a fantastic cook but she can be a bit temperamental. When she joined two years ago she was going through a divorce, poor thing, and her meltdowns were absolutely epic, but things seemed to have settled down quite a lot recently, and she’d been looking really glowy and happy, so Eloise and I had been speculating that perhaps there was a new man in her life.
“I
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