Chris frowns. “He didn’t come to me. Not for that, anyway. Just after you fired him, he tried to convince me to hire him as my sous chef, as if I would just replace Calum. But you know a group of us chefs bought a restaurant to offer as a pop-up to up-and-comers?”
Susan nods, recalling the tidbit from Chris’s radio interview.
“Well, he put in an application with the group. And I’ll have you know I voted against giving him our funding and restaurant, but I was overruled by the majority.” He shakes his head. “You really think I’d go into business with him and put him just around the corner from you? That’s daft, that is.” He sounds both hurt and incredulous.
“Is it?” Susan wonders aloud.
He puts his work down and looks right at her. “It is. That’s … mean.”
“Some might say that’s business.”
“Not how I want to do business.” He shakes his head. “You think I don’t know about him? About how he treats staff members and how lazy and uninspired he is? Like you said, it’s a small world, the restaurant one. And did I mention he tried to convince me to fire my best friend?”
“He’s a dick,” Susan agrees with a smirk.
“A right fannybaws, as my sister would say.”
Susan bursts out laughing, and after a moment he joins in.
“She’s got the best insults now, Beth does,” he adds. “What was that one she used when someone cut her off in traffic? Ah, right—a ‘boaby-faced, lavvy-heided bum splatter’!”
Susan laughs herself helpless. Laughs far more than the line actually deserves, but she’s just so relieved this is turning out to be less tense than she was expecting.
“I was tempted to use it on that Arion git at the Festival,” says Chris, dashing away a laughter tear with the palm of his hand. “I hate being played.”
“Who doesn’t? But I have to confess, the competition was sort of fun.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, smiling. “It was, actually. Mostly.” His smile falters and he turns to slide the tray of prepped food into the refrigerator, shutting the door a little harder than is necessary. Susan feels a chill seep in and struggles to banish it.
“Rab did amazing work on Saturday,” she says. “It was a good idea to bring him.”
“Thought it might do him some good,” says Chris, taking his time turning around. “Get him away from the kitchen, maybe build up his confidence a bit.”
“Did it work?”
“I think so. He kept throwing ideas at me all the way home. Most I’ve heard him talk since he started here.”
“How did you find him?”
Chris finally returns to his prep table. There’s still an expanse of stainless steel between them, but at least he’s facing in her direction, which is an improvement. “Beth, actually,” he explains. “Rab’s gran is her neighbor, and when Beth told her I was coming back to Edinburgh to open a restaurant, his gran asked if I’d be willing to take him on as an apprentice. I wasn’t going to say ‘no’ to Beth”—he smirks—“but it turns out it was a good thing. The boy has talent, as you saw.”
“And you’re continuing a grand tradition of nurturing new talent,” says Susan. “My granddad would be proud.”
Chris looks up and smiles at her in a way she hasn’t seen since their days together. It’s the sort of smile that goes right to the core of her and hurts in a deep, longing, achy way.
They stare at each other, and a thick mist of unsaid things rises between them as they both struggle to think of a way to disperse it.
And then the back door flies open and Rab tumbles in, jabbering apologies for being late as he tries to tie on an apron while running toward Susan.
“Easy, lad, take your time—she’s not rushing off,” Chris reassures him. “You all right?”
“Yeah, yeah, just got held up and missed the bus.” Rab is red-faced, wheezing from having run full-tilt from the bus stop. “Dad’s offshore and Mam needed help gettin’ all the bairns fed and dressed and—”
“I only just got here. It’s fine,” Susan chimes in. “Go ahead, catch your breath while I get myself situated.” This thing with Chris will have to wait.
She wanders over to the pastry station, tying on a clean apron, taking a few moments to orient herself and find the tools and ingredients she needs. By the time Rab joins her, still apologizing, ducking his head in an ashamed sort of way, she has butter, flour, sugar, ice water, lemon juice, a bowl, and a pastry cutter laid out before her.
“Before we do anything, here’s the first lesson in dessert making: don’t stint on any of the good stuff. Fill it up with butter, and cream, and sugar, and fruit. All the things we want loads of but really shouldn’t have. It should feel decadent.”
That’s her grandfather talking, of course. “Pudding is an indulgence; it should feel like it,” he used to say. She could recall one day, in the kitchen of their house in London, when she was maybe nine or ten, helping her mother frost a birthday cake for one of her sisters (Meg, surely; Julia had given up cake, by that point). Elliot sat on a stool at the kitchen island, watching them, guiding Susan’s technique: “Take off just enough of the frosting to give a smooth appearance, but don’t scrape it all off. The whole point of cake is the frosting, isn’t it? You don’t want a bare cake.”
“Julia would,” Susan commented with a wry smile.
“Julia doesn’t appreciate things like this” was Elliot’s response.
“Now, now,” Susan’s mother gently remonstrated with a warning look at her father-in-law.
“Well, I worry about Julia,” he said. “If you can’t indulge in a little cake now and again, what sort of joy do you have in your life? Can you indulge in anything? And yes, cake is an indulgence. You don’t need it, but you want it. It should feel celebratory and just a little delightfully naughty when you have it. It’s the same with any dessert.”
“We want it because it’s full of fats and simple carbohydrates,” Mum chimed in, handing Susan a small bowl full of hundreds and thousands and indicating, with a smile, that she should feel free to sprinkle them over the cake. “All the things that trigger pleasure centers in the brain. We want them because, back when we had to be ready to flee from predators or keep from freezing to death in our caves, quick sources of warmth and energy were useful. We haven’t quite evolved past that caveman ideal. Pudding is primal.”
“Rule number two,” Susan now tells Rab, “you don’t need to make it too complicated to make it amazing. Most times, something fairly simple, something that taps into your childhood, will be the winner. Now, ready to get started?” Rab nods. She gestures to the table. “Lesson one: pie crust.”
She guides the boy through her recipe, which she learned in France. It produces a crust so flaky it’s almost like puff pastry. Chris works quietly at his prep, glancing up every now and then to smile at them. While the pastry’s resting in the fridge, they move on to fillings: lemon curd and vanilla custard, both of which make Rab anxious. She can see it on his face as he stirs and stirs, and she knows what he’s thinking: Why isn’t it thickening? What’ve I done wrong? I screwed it up!