Page 8 of The Missing Ingredient

Although fleeting, the pain crossing Tom’s face was clear. “It’s been tough. I won’t lie. I’ve missed a lot of work and Pete, my partner, has been a star taking up the slack. But he can’t keep doing that forever, and moreover we need more business coming through the door. Otherwise we’re all out of a job. That’s my specialty. Going out, meeting clients, and getting the work in.”

“Who’s helping you? With the girls?”

“Mum, mainly.”

“Anyone else?”

“Our neighbor, Olive, takes them in sometimes after school if I’m running late. And the mother of one of Katie’s friends, Mrs. Kelley. They’ve both been great,” said Tom, looking levelly at Marcus. “I’m doing all I can, I really am, Marcus. But….” Tom faltered, so unlike him.

“But?”

“Oh God, I haven’t even told Mum.” He stood abruptly and went to the small dining table, where, from a pile of papers, he pulled out a brown envelope. When Marcus spotted the Social Services name across the envelope, an involuntary icy shiver ran through him. In silence, he read the carefully worded yet coldly official language about having received a claim indicating that the children might be in danger of neglect and advising him of a visit from a local social worker the following Wednesday.

“I can’t lose them too, Marcus.”

While still reading, Marcus had been unprepared for the sudden eruption of emotions that ripped from inside, part anger at the faceless and nameless threat and part rage at himself for having deserted Tom and the girls when they needed him most. Without thinking, he shot up from the sofa and spat at the letter.

“Over my dead body. Over myfuckingdead body are they taking the girls into care. You’re a good father, Tom. Anybody can see that. Who the fuck do they think they are? And what kind of an arsehole would have reported—”

But as quickly as the emotional tsunami rushed in, as he peered down at Tom, his common sense kicked in. He stopped, sat back down, and took a few steadying breaths before continuing calmly but assertively. Many times in his restaurant kitchen, this tactic in times of crisis had borne dividends.

“Tom, this is not going to happen. I promise you, okay? But we need to stay positive and, more importantly, get organized. This is all fixable. Where’s Raine’s scheduling board? It used to be on the fridge.”

One of Lorraine’s qualities—and she had many—had been her ability to meticulously organize the lives of the people around her. Nothing ever slipped through the net. For the girls, she had used a simple magnetized whiteboard with a crisscross of lines to organize their time; after-school activities; anything they needed to bring to class; weekend parties; and more importantly, which of the adults would be responsible for what. Without ever telling her, Marcus had been so impressed with the way Raine had oiled the wheels of her family’s lives that he had adopted the same method to organize a staff rota in each of his restaurants.

Tom returned with the board—still covered with Lorraine’s colorful handwriting—a handful of pens, and a damp cloth. Marcus understood without asking. How could Tom bear to stare at his late wife’s handwriting on full display every day? Of course he had hidden the board away. Just how much had this poor man suffered alone trying to put on a front of normalcy for his girls?

“Can you get Moira on the phone, on speaker preferably? Let’s work out the girls’ schedule together.”

Moira answered after one ring. Marcus half suspected she had been waiting for the call. With Marcus’s schedule allowing him to be available early in the week, they managed to get the next four weeks plugged in. Between Tom and Moira, they detailed all of the girls’ after-school activities and special events onto the board. One thing Raine had never done, but something Marcus insisted upon, was writing emergency contact numbers for each of them, including the neighbor, Olive, and Mrs. Kelley. Once it was completed and back in pride of place, Marcus took a photo of the board on his smartphone.

After wishing Moira good night, Marcus turned his attention to Tom. His features had visibly relaxed.

“Okay, mate,” said Marcus. “Now you need to domea favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Go have a shower and a shave. You look like the walking dead. And while you’re gone, I’m going to cook up some food.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Who said it was for you?”

Tom snorted and shook his head but headed toward the stairs. Before he hit the first step, though, he turned back to Marcus. “Don’t touch the dishes. I’ll sort the kitchen out when I come down.”

“Go and shower,” ordered Marcus.

Like a sprinter anticipating the starting gun, Marcus waited for the bathroom door to close, his signal to rush to clean up. Cleanliness and cooking went hand in hand, and he would not even open his shopping bag until the dishes were done and the kitchen surfaces were spotless. First off, though, he set about finding the girls’ toy box and clearing all the toys away. Afterward, he got out the carpet sweeper to get rid of the worst of the dirt on the carpet—he wouldn’t vacuum while the girls slept. Finally, once he heard the shower going, he cleaned the kitchen floor before setting out a pan of boiling water for the pasta and cooked the sauce, cleaning everything as he went. On many occasions he had offered to cook for the family, so he knew his way around their kitchen like an old hand.

By the time Tom trod gently onto the bottom stair, Marcus had two plates of carbonara, slices of garlic bread, two small bowls of garden salad with a simple lemon, balsamic, and garlic dressing, and two bottles of chilled beer sitting on the dining table. In between cooking, he had also made simple but healthy pack lunches for the girls and Tom, and left them in the fridge. Clean-shaven and in a simple combination of fresh tee and baggy sweatpants, Tom looked incredible, a lot more like the man Marcus had admired all those years ago. When Tom spoke, he had to rip his gaze away.

“Marcus,” he said, stopping and looking first around the room and then at the table. “I told you I—”

“I cook. You eat. Now shut up and sit down with me. If you can’t eat the food, then just drink the beer.”

For someone who claimed not to be hungry, Tom polished off everything on his plate with enthusiasm. By ten o’clock they leaned back together on the sofa, watching the rerun of a soccer game. Man United versus Liverpool. Neutral territory. Tom even chipped in when Marcus provided a commentary about a certain player’s performance. Somewhere not too far below the surface, the real Tom was still there.

When Raine had been alive, she and Tom had come to an agreement that when there was a football match on the television, she could go out for drinks with her girlfriends. Marcus, classed as one of the girls, had been included in the invite but had always been conflicted because he also wanted to know how the game was going. On one occasion, when Marcus’s team had been playing, and without any prompting from Marcus, Tom had sent him text messages providing updates on the score. This had been a small gesture but one that had always stuck in Marcus’s mind.

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