Page 71 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm
The door Jodie had come in through swung open and a tall, slightly older man in a tweed jacket over blue jeans came into the room.
Fiona jumped to her feet. ‘John! This is Jodie Simpson. She’s here about the assistant job.’
Jodie stood and accepted his proffered hand. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being assessed, and not for her professional attributes. This guy was checking her out. She pulled her hand away from his fractionally too tight grip.
‘Lovely to meet you, Jodie. I hope we meet again.’ He nodded at Fiona and marched out of the room.
The rest of the interview was unlike any interview Jodie had ever had before. Fiona barely made a note and chatted apparently randomly, rather than asking her the bland questions from the printed list Jodie could clearly see on the table. ‘Is there anything you wanted to ask me?’ Fiona asked.
Jodie had prepared her question for this part. ‘I guess what would I be working on? Are there any big projects coming up?’
Fiona nodded. ‘Keen to hit the ground running? That’s the attitude John loves. Well, assuming you could start quite soon…’
‘Straight away,’ Jodie assured her.
‘We’re busy getting ready for Christmas in the retail areas and event spaces and then it’s Hogmanay. We’re doing a huge multi-layered event experience.’
A what now?
‘It’s the first event of its kind in the area. I have no idea why nobody else had thought of doing something.’ She beamed. ‘John is such a visionary.’
You say visionary, I say lying, stealing bastard. Tom-ay-to, tom-ah-to.
Fiona stood and smoothed down her heather-purple skirt. ‘Thank you for coming in…’
Jodie texted her lift as soon as she was out of sight of the building and waddled as briskly as she could in ill-fitting shoes back to the road. Adam was already waiting.
‘How did it go?’
Jodie thought back over John McKenzie’s blatant look over her body and shuddered. ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure they were deciding based on suitability for the job.’
Pavel stared at the menu in front of him. Usually he and Jill chatted easily about anything and everything. Crazy stories from across Jill’s parish. Moans and quibbles from whatever job Pavel was working at the moment. TV they’d seen. Books Jill would press on him and he’d forget to read. Normally it was easy.
Today it was anything but. He stared at the menu some more. One of them had to say something. ‘So, they do pies…’ he tried.
‘Yeah. Yeah. And burgers.’
‘Sure. Burgers are good. I think there’s a specials board. I could go and look. Maybe take a picture.’
‘I looked already. When you were at the bar.’
‘Right.’
‘Pork belly. Something with fish. Maybe risotto?’
‘OK. I might try the pork belly.’ Silence threatened to descend once more. ‘Pork belly. Poooork belly. Belly. Belly.’
‘Pavel?’
‘Yeah?’
‘This is horrible.’
It was. But that was OK. He could fix it. When things weren’t right he made them right. ‘I’m sure we can…’
Jill shook her head. ‘Pavel, it’s horrible.’
It was. It made no sense, but it was. ‘Why?’
