Page 73 of Too Busy for Love

‘Hey, don’t pin this on me!’ I retort.

‘Hm. Tell me, is there anyone in your industry that isn’t a crook?’

‘Yes. Me, for starters.’

She sighs. ‘I know. What are we going to do, though? We’ll never get another chef lined up in the time we’ve got.’

‘Push back the opening?’ John suggests.

‘No. We need to get open and trading,’ Abby tells him. ‘We’ve already got advance bookings. It’ll do no end of harm if we start cancelling them.’

‘Open but without the restaurant at first?’ Ella offers.

‘But the whole sodding USP was supposed to be the food!’

‘OK. Let’s step back and try to piece together what we have,’ I tell her. ‘Point one: Emilio has to go, agreed?’

‘Yes.’ She sighs again.

‘But, in losing Emilio, we also lose all the restaurant staff, because they were employed by him.’

‘I’m not sure this is helping my blood pressure,’ she complains.

‘Hang on.’ My brain is starting to recover from the shock, and all sorts of exciting possibilities are opening up. ‘He must have recruited locally, because the pay isn’t good enough for people to commute long distances.’

‘What’s your point?’ Abby asks. ‘If they’re all illegals, we can’t employ them either.’

‘OK, Abby,’ I tell her as inspiration finally strikes. ‘Here’s what I need you to do. Can you get in touch with Emilio’s people and find out who he’s recruited?’

‘What? Are you seriously saying that you want me to call them, tell them we no longer want to be associated with Emilio, but ask if we can use his team anyway? I don’t see that one going well.’

‘It isn’t our fault he got himself arrested. He’s given us no choice. As one of the recruitment agents said to me after the whole Hotel Dufour debacle, reputation is everything in this game. I’d go in hard with how he’s in breach of the contract and, if he doesn’t want us to sue, he needs to give up the team. Something like that. I know you’ll be able to pull it off. Channel aggressive Abby.’

‘I’m not aggressive!’ she protests, causing John and Ella to snort with laughter.

‘Assertive then,’ I offer.

‘Fine. What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to get us a chef.’

My hands are sweaty as I type out a message to Jock.

Hi. I need to talk to you. Are you around?

I watch nervously and, to my immense relief, the ticks go blue and I can see he’s typing.

Hi. Busy at the moment but free at 3. Are you OK?

I’m fine. Talk to you later x.

I try to keep myself busy but time seems to have slowed to a crawl, reminding me of being in the police station waiting for our bail interviews. The biggest problem I have is that I’m going to have to find a way to tell Jock that the project is still going, and come up with a reasonable explanation about why I didn’t tell him, and why he hasn’t heard anything from me for so long. In the end, I decide that I need to tell him the truth. If I fudge this, and he finds out later, it’s going to be much worse than being upfront with him.

‘Hi,’ he says when the video call connects.

‘Hi yourself,’ I reply. My heart is suddenly thudding in my chest and my stomach is a mass of nervous butterflies. I feel much more like a schoolgirl talking to her crush than a hotel director speaking to a potential colleague, and the whole sensation has caught me completely unaware. Meanwhile, the silence is starting to feel oppressive.

‘How are you?’ Jock asks cautiously.

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