‘Any-hoo, enough nostalgia. I don’t do the past,’ Petra said, withdrawing her hand. She banged on the table then raised a hand in the air. ‘Waiter!’ She looked back to Becky. ‘I know I said I was feeling fat but let’s have some more little plates. How about some mussels or something? They don’t make you feel bloated.’
‘Petra, I couldn’t eat another thing,’ Becky told her.
‘Ice cream!’ Petra continued. ‘How do you say “excuse me” again? Everyone always has room for ice cream. Why isn’t “waiter” an international word?’
Petra was suddenly all frenetic energy, waving spaghetti-like arms, as she tried to attract the attention of one of the servers. Gone was the soft, emotional Petra as quickly as that side of her had arrived.
‘You need to say signomi,’ Becky told her. She had been reading the little vocab section at the back of her guidebook. Now the waiter was approaching, another good-looking Greek that Petra had flirted with when he’d taken their order earlier.
‘Hello, yes, we would like some signomi please,’ Petra ordered, seeming a little less than her confident self.
‘Ti?’ the waiter asked, looking confused.
‘No,’ Petra said. ‘Not tea. Signomi.’ She turned to Becky and pulled a face. ‘Are you sure you got the word for “ice cream” right?’
Suddenly, Becky understood. ‘Signomi isn’t the word for “ice cream”. It’s the word for “excuse me” or “sorry”. For you to call the waiter over.’
‘You would like some ice cream?’ the waiter asked.
‘Yes please,’ Petra purred in response. ‘We’re not picky about the flavour. Whatever you recommend.’ She smiled with her eyes as well as her lips. ‘Make it a couple of big, round balls each.’
Becky almost choked on her mouthful of wine as Petra delivered Smut 101. And then her phone began to ring. She checked her watch – habit again – before picking her phone up and seeing it was It’s A Wrap’s number. It would be six o’clock in the UK right now, no one should be in the premises unless they were running behind schedule for pre-prep for the next day, or they had an evening event to prepare for. Or perhaps it was Megan. Maybe this was the phone call from her sister she had been waiting for. Megan would apologise, Becky would apologise – even though she didn’t think she needed to – and all would be well.
‘Hello,’ she greeted.
‘Thank fuck! I don’t know what I would have done if you didn’t pick up! Probably called the emergency services and hoped police, fire or ambulance knew something about pairing honey roasted ham with… marmalade.’
It wasn’t Megan. It was Shelley and she did sound hyped up. More hyped up than Shelley usually sounded.
‘Shelley, what’s wrong?’ Becky asked, standing up from the table and moving to the steps that led down to the beach below. She always hated it when people took phone calls in restaurants. Hopefully when she returned to the table Petra would have eaten all the ice cream…
‘Megan’s getting all hands-on with sandwich-making,’ Shelley hissed. ‘She came in when Hazel was creating Barry’s half-vegan, half-mystical bagel this morning. She asked Hazel what she was doing and Hazel had to say she hadn’t managed to have breakfast and it was for her. So, then Megan goes off on one saying Hazel’s eating her profits and what was this mysterious mixture anyway, and I had to tell Megan it wasn’t made from It’s A Wrap ingredients, it was something the triplets had made at school. To be fair, that shit Barry likes does look like something the triplets would mash up and make a bird feeder out of.’
Becky closed her eyes. This was what she had feared if she went away. Without her there to coordinate the tight ship, hide the detailed contents of some of food orders – or get the suppliers she knew best to call everything ‘cheese’ on their invoices – Megan was going to realise that they were selling far more elaborate products than she knew. And this was entirely Becky’s fault. Not just the not being there now, but the not having the courage to tell her sister that her basic business model and use of traditional sandwich fillings hadn’t been cutting it in the catering arena for a long time and that Becky’s secret ingenuity was what had been tiding the firm over. She had always planned to tell her – maybe – and she was definitely not going to interfere with the army contract. Well, not unless sales slid a bit…
‘Oh, Shelley, I’m so sorry,’ Becky said, looking out to sea. What had she been thinking assuming Shelley and Hazel would be able to keep what they did every day under wraps – literally – while she was away? It wasn’t fair to make them as complicit in deceiving her sister as she was. They didn’t get paid enough to put up with dealing with the stress of it. It was different for Becky, she needed Megan’s business to succeed for so many reasons…
‘It’s OK,’ Shelley breathed. ‘Well, it’s not OK because she’s coming in at 6 a.m. to help with prep, so that’s why I’m still here now. Hazel’s coming back in in a minute, after she’s had her corns done. We’re going to do as much as the preparation for the “other” rolls as we can tonight, but neither of us can find the list for tomorrow and I know you sent them all to me on my phone, but I can’t find it on there either. I’m low on storage and one of the triplets probably deleted it and replaced it with sixty-five selfies of them with their fingers up their nose.’
‘Shelley, it’s fine,’ Becky responded. ‘Right, so, we can do two things here.’ She took a breath. If she was in England right now, she would be melting down over the prospect of Megan finding out what she had been doing this past year. But here in Greece she felt strangely powerful. Yes, she should have told Megan but equally, Megan had always made it very clear Megan was not the bread-butterer. Megan was the business-planner, the networker and face of the company. Becky was at grassroots – well, the roots of a garden of herbs anyway. Becky had taken the decision and she was going to own it. ‘You can both go home now and I will phone Megan and tell her everything about the secret sandwiches which I should have done a long time ago…’
‘What’s the second thing? Because if she finds out – even if you tell her really really nicely like you’re Claudia Winkleman cuddling a crying celebrity because they’ve fucked up the rumba – she’s gonna explode and we’re here and you’re in Corfu.’
‘The second thing is—’
‘Hang on, Hazel’s here and I’m putting you on speakerphone,’ Shelley interrupted.
Becky held her breath. The second thing had been to tell their customers that the bespoke orders were now off the menu. She could easily draft an apologetic flyer and email it to Shelley and Hazel to hand out with one last batch of the good stuff. She could blame Brexit for the lack of availability of certain ingredients or something. It would test the loyalty of their fan base but, the traditional fayre was good too, it just didn’t wow quite like the other fillings. They might lose a few customers to their rivals but was there really a choice? Megan simply wouldn’t get the concept and wouldn’t even try because Becky had pulled the wool over her eyes. The only certainty now, with both courses of proposed action, was Becky’s skill at knowing exactly what their customers liked, needed and craved, would no longer be required. She would just be the girl who buttered bread again…