Page 18 of Too Busy for Love

‘Yes, you can do the prawn cocktail. The prawns are in the fridge, and you’ll want iceberg lettuce as well. For the sauce, you need mayonnaise, tomato ketchup, a lemon, Worcester sauce and a pinch of paprika. The mayo is your base; just add the others until it tastes right.’

‘Ketchup?’

‘Yup. I’m pretty sure that’s why Madame banned it. She thought ketchup was for tradespeople.’

Twenty minutes later, the steaks are resting and we carry our prawn cocktails into the dining room, where I’ve laid a table for two and lit a candle. I’ve opened the Pinotage and Jock pours us both generous glasses once we’ve sat down.

‘Cheers!’ Jock clinks his glass against mine, and I can’t help noticing the twinkle of his eyes in the candlelight.

The conversation flows easily as we make our way through the food we’ve prepared, no doubt helped by the generous measures of wine. Jock is as good as his word, bringing the crêpes over on the trolley and flambéing them at the table. Every gesture is given added theatre – a flourish here, a flamboyant pour of the Grand Marnier there – and I can’t help but laugh at how over-the-top it all is. I’m surprised to see that we’ve managed to polish off the bottle of wine between us. Although I feel very mellow, I don’t feel tipsy at all so, after we’ve washed up, I accept Jock’s invitation to a nightcap in the bar.

‘Thank you,’ I say as I rest my head on his shoulder.

‘What for?’

‘For today. For cheering me up after the policeman came. For your frankly ludicrous flambé. For all of it.’

‘Ah, you’re more than welcome. It was fun, wasn’t it? And tomorrow, we’ll have another set of adventures. This was a very good idea of yours.’

I yawn. ‘It wasn’t bad, was it?’

I feel pleasantly full and sleepy as we climb the stairs to bed, but that doesn’t stop a niggle of anxiety forming in the pit of my stomach as I contemplate a repeat of last night’s failed attempt to get to sleep.

‘Are you going to be all right?’ Jock asks when we reach our rooms. ‘Or do you want to stay with me again tonight?’

‘I’m sure I’ll be fine. I don’t want to impose.’

‘Hey, it’s no skin off my nose. Who knows, we might get closer to finding out which of us is the phantom spooner.’

It’s not much of a dilemma. ‘Give me ten minutes to change, brush my teeth and grab my pillow,’ I tell him.

He smiles. ‘I’ll be waiting.’

7

It’s Sunday evening and we’re celebrating the end of our sightseeing adventure with a traditional roast dinner. I say traditional, but we’ve had to adapt it slightly to fit with the ingredients we’ve got available. Madame didn’t believe in roast dinners so we haven’t got a joint anywhere, but we do have some poussins, which were on the menu asPoussin à la Provençale, so we’re going to roast a couple of those and have them with all the trimmings. Jock has put me to work on making the bread sauce and preparing the pigs in blankets by cutting sausages in half and wrapping thin strips of bacon round them.

‘Which was your favourite activity this week?’ I ask him.

‘I enjoyed all of them, really. Well, that’s not quite true. I could take or leave the National Gallery, but I liked seeing how much pleasure it gave you. The picnic was fun. Hampstead Heath is such an iconic location, isn’t it? It felt like we were in a romcom, and Hugh Grant was going to appear at any moment. What about you?’

‘How could I not say the picnic, when you went to so much trouble with the food?’

‘It was nothing.’

‘I’m never going to be able to eat a supermarket scotch egg again, having tasted the ones you made.’

‘I can’t believe how much I’ve enjoyed cooking this week. It’s been such a relief to cook the food I love and not be tied to Madame’s stuffy ideas.’

He’s right. After our homage to the seventies on Tuesday night, Jock changed tack and we’ve been eating much lighter, more modern fare on the whole. He managed to offload some of the perishable goods to a homeless charity he found on the internet so, despite the fact that our own consumption has barely made a dent in the mountain of food, we haven’t had to throw very much away.

The police haven’t bothered to check up on us again so, apart from the odd moment when the reality of our situation has caused a knot to form in the pit of my stomach, we’ve been able to more or less pretend that we’re on holiday.

‘If I say something cheesy, will you promise not to laugh?’ I ask as we settle ourselves at the table and Jock pours the wine.

‘What level of cheese are we talking? If it’s a light dusting of parmesan, I reckon I can keep a straight face. If you’re going full-on baked camembert, I can’t promise anything.’

‘It’s probably somewhere in between the two.’

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