Page 74 of Christmas Wishes at Pudding Hall
Avian looked unfazed.
‘We’re in a relationships,’ she said.
‘You have dated other men and never even bought them to coffee, let alone Christmas. Did you find out Christa was cooking for us?’
She said nothing.
‘Did you?’ asked Simon, pausing for a moment from the great shovel fest he was having.
‘I heard she was good,’ said Avian. ‘The boys mentioned her and I recognised the name.’
Avian seemed to suddenly be very interested in her cuticles.
‘Simon, did you know?’ Christa asked.
‘Yes,’ he said, wiping his mouth with his napkin. ‘But I didn’t think it would be a problem since you are only the help.’
‘The help?’ Christa heard her voice become louder but she couldn’t stop the fury from exploding inside her. ‘You absolute classist wanker.’
‘Don’t be so pissy Christa, it’s not a class thing.’
Christa looked at Marc. ‘Anytime anyone in Britain says it’s not a class thing, it’s a class thing.’
‘I wanted to find out more about you,’ said Avian suddenly.
‘Why?’
‘Because the boys won’t stop talking about you. Because all Simon does do is talk about you, constantly. I had to see what I was up against.’
Christa looked at Simon who seemed to be nonchalant about the revelation. ‘I do talk about you but not in the way you think,’ he said to her.
Christa shook her head in disbelief.
‘I don’t love you, so don’t worry about that,’ he said to Christa.
‘That’s fine. I don’t love you either,’ she said, speaking truthfully.
Simon kept speaking with his mouth full, shoving in potato.
‘I talk about you because I saw great potential in you but you never met it,’ he said. ‘I tried to push you but you couldn’t do it. That’s why we divorced, because I couldn’t keep investing in potential with no reward. I was tired of carrying you.’
The fury Christa felt was unlike anything she had ever known.
‘Oh. My. God,’ she yelled. ‘Me? You carried me? Are you kidding me? All I did was let you take credit for everything I did. The menu, the desserts, the sommelier we brought on, the soufflé that got us the hat.’
‘That soufflé was my recipe,’ he said to Avian and then turned to Marc and continued to speak. ‘We’re using it in the TV show. The contestants have to recreate it and I’ll blind-taste it and chooses the best one.’
‘It wasn’t your recipe, it was mine, and carefully designed; it was a project to make that as perfect as it was,’ Christa said, trying not to cry from frustration.
‘No, it was my recipe,’ Simon insisted.
‘No, it was mine. My soufflé was always better than yours. That’s why you made me make it for A.A. Gill when he came in once.’
‘I didn’t make you, you wanted to impress him.’
Christa gasped. ‘The way you bend the truth to suit the way you want the wind to blow is astonishing. I made the better soufflé and you can’t admit it.’
Simon laughed meanly. ‘Christa, just admit I was better and then we can let it go.’
