Page 88 of A Recipe for Love
Bella darted forward but she was too slow. The castle kitchen was large for a domestic kitchen, but not large for a man the size of Pavel Stone to collapse without a certain amount of collateral damage. The bowl of melted chocolate in front of him was the first casualty. That sent the whisk spinning up into the air, from where it hit Jill’s water glass, which toppled down onto the floor, taking the pepper grinder with it. That distracted Bella from what was happening on Pavel’s other side where his fall had dislodged a tea towel, which flicked towards the still-lighted gas ring. A second later flames danced upwards from the stove top.
For a second everyone was quiet apart from a single mournful, ethereal sneeze.
‘What the—?’ gasped Molly.
‘What on earth is—?’ Veronica appeared in the doorway. ‘Oh my goodness.’
Time slowed and elongated giving Bella a moment to take in every different element of the catastrophe. The blood. The flames. Pavel’s bulk prone on the floor. The broken glass. The spatter pattern of melted chocolate giving the whole room the appearance of an unusually tasty crime scene. Bella was seconds away from screaming.
‘Right,’ Veronica’s tone was suddenly brisk, as she surveyed the room. ‘You!’ She pointed to Bella. ‘Turn that gas off.’
Of course. Bella moved on autopilot and did as she was told while Veronica barked out more instructions. ‘You girls, grab a tea towel and soak it in water and throw it over here.’
Molly and Katy did exactly as they were told.
‘Darcy, help me get this chap flat on the floor and then see if you can hold his feet up.’
By the time Bella had clicked out of her panic, Pavel had his eyes open, Jill’s finger was dressed and being held aloft by Flinty, the flames licking the kitchen wall had been extinguished and Cath and Claire were cleaning up the debris from the floor, and joking cheerfully about how they were happy to lick the chocolate off Pavel’s torso, purely to be helpful, of course. Veronica surveyed the scene and then clapped her hands. ‘All right then. How are you feeling now, young man?’
Pavel pushed himself up on his elbows. ‘I am very well.’ He smiled slightly sheepishly. ‘Apart from feeling a little silly.’
Cath laughed. ‘A big lump like you can’t cope with a bit of blood.’
‘I’ll be bruised in the morning, but right now I’m OK.’ He nodded at Darcy, who was still holding his feet up in the air. ‘I think you can let go now.’
Ten minutes later Jill had been packed off with Flinty in the Land Rover to the clinic in Locharron, shouting reassurances that it was only a scratch and absolutely nobody’s fault but her own, and it seemed as though the only non-recoverable loss was a bowl of half-melted chocolate.
‘OK. Well, what do you want to do?’ Bella found that she was asking Veronica, who seemed to have transformed from reserved lady who was attending under duress to the person in charge. ‘Should we carry on?’
‘I would say so. I’m sure everyone wants to keep going, don’t we?’
Bella was pretty sure that nobody would have dared argue, but the volley of nods seemed to be genuine. ‘What about you, Pavel? You’ve lost your partner.’
‘Let’s keep going. I can take her some cake tomorrow to make sure she’s OK. And I promised my mum I was bringing dinner.’
‘Well we’d better not let Nina down then.’ Bella took a deep breath to try to damp down the surge of adrenalin.
The rest of the afternoon went well. Everyone was very careful indeed every time they had to chop something, and Bella was very aware that she was running on nervous energy and hope, but her remaining students all completed their tasks and left clutching bowls of food and typed instructions for cooking or reheating at home.
Bella slumped into a stool at the island. They still had a mountain of wiping down and washing up to do. The standards of cleaning up as they went along had definitely declined a notch after the excitement of Jill’s injury and Pavel’s spectacular faint. But they had got through the day. Darcy came and sat next to her and slid a pile of papers onto the worktop between them. ‘I got them all to do the feedback forms.’
‘Oh. I completely forgot about that.’
Darcy shrugged. ‘Well I didn’t.’
A second later Veronica came back in, closely followed by Flinty. ‘Jill’s all patched up. I dropped her home. She said she’d ask Pavel to bring her over to pick her car up in the morning.’
‘Was she OK?’ Bella asked. For a second all the thoughts of what might have gone more badly wrong flashed through her head. Jill could have lost the tip of her finger. Pavel could have hit his head.
‘She’s right as rain. Embarrassed more than anything else.’
‘Not as embarrassed as that poor chap,’ Veronica noted, but there was an uncharacteristic smile in her tone. ‘He was fine in the end too though. What do all these forms Darcy made them do tell us?’
Bella couldn’t bear to look.
‘For goodness’ sake.’ Veronica pulled the pile of papers towards her and skimmed the first one. ‘People today really do have the most terrible handwriting.’
‘What do they say though?’ Darcy asked.
