Read Online Cathy Hopkins - [Mates, Dates 07] by Dates Mates, Pulling Power (Html) - Free Book Online Page B

the oven. Mum and Dad were out of the way
until after their movie finished. My guests would be arriving in half an hour.
(I’d phoned Lucy and begged her to come and join us, so that it wasn’t Luke and
me with Tony sitting in the middle having a right laugh.) All I had left to do
was light the candles. This entertaining lark is easy peasy, I thought as I
lathered my legs with Mum’s Guerlain bath gel.
    ‘Keep it simple,’
Mum’d advised earlier. ‘You don’t want to be in a panic when your guests
arrive, so do something you can prepare beforehand and just warm it up when
people arrive.’
    She’d been fab and
offered to help when I told her of my dilemma. Between the two of us, we’d made
a Jamaican curry, my grandmother’s recipe. I thought Luke’d like something
different from the Italian meals he must get every night.
    ‘All you have to do is
turn on the oven,’ said Mum before she’d left. ‘A hundred and eighty degrees
centigrade for an hour and twenty minutes.’
    After my bath, I got
changed into my black halter-neck top and black jeans, put on my make-up then
lit the candles.
    By the time Luke
arrived, the flat looked warm and inviting.
    ‘Wow, this is nice,’
he said as I gave him a quick guided tour. I have to hand it to Mum, I thought,
as we went from room to room, she really does know how to create a comfortable
atmosphere with her use of warm colours, Moroccan rugs and Eastern artefacts.
Luke particularly liked looking at Dad’s black and white photos that lined the
hall walls. And he spent ages looking at Dad’s film books on the bookshelf in
the sitting room. I made a mental note to have a look at some of them myself as
the doorbell rang and I went to let Lucy in.
    I felt so grown-up.
Like I was playing the part of a hostess at an adult dinner party in a movie.
Lucy was a bit shy when she first arrived, as she’s not used to having proper
dinner here with candles and the big table in the sitting room set and
everything. Usually it’s a slice of pizza on the knees in front of the telly.
She soon relaxed though and I could tell she liked Luke because, when he went
to look at our CDs, she did a fake swoon with her hand on her heart then gave
me the thumbs up.
    I looked at my watch
as Luke put my new chill out CD on. ‘Supper should be ready,’ I said as I
showed everyone where to sit at the table.
    When I went into the
kitchen to get the curry out of the oven, something didn’t feel right. Or
should I say, smell right. Whenever Mum cooked it, you could smell the spices
and garlic wafting out of the oven long before it was ready. I couldn’t smell
anything. I lifted the dish from the oven. Oh
noooooo
. Cold. It was
stone cold. Uncooked. Raw.
    ‘Need a hand?’ asked
Tony coming up behind me.
    ‘More than a hand.
Blooming oven’s not working.’
    Tony bent over, looked
at the oven then laughed. ‘It’s not broken Nesta. You turned the grill on but
not the oven.’
    I looked at the
switches. The grill symbol was just above the oven symbol. ‘Oh
no!
Oh
no!
I
hated things like
this happening. Mum had got this posh new oven last year and using it was
really
complicated. It could do all sorts of things if you knew how to work it. It
probably even turned into a private plane if you knew what knobs to turn, but I
hadn’t got the hang of it. I hate reading all those techno manuals that assume
that the reader is fluent in domestic appliance speak. Why couldn’t it just
have an on/off button then simpletons like me could use it.
    Tony laughed again and
pointed at the dials. ‘You have to turn it on. To oven, not grill, and then you
have to put it to the temperature you want.’
    ‘Oh don’t laugh. What
are we going to do?’
    ‘What do you want to
do?’
    ‘Dunno. Crawl away and
hide. I mean, how’s it going to look? I’ll be a laughing stock. He’ll think,
Nesta. Cook? Why she can’t even turn the cooker on. Pathetic. He’ll think I’m
soooo pathetic.’
    ‘We could heat it