“Sorry?” I said.
“If you hadn’t made me so ill on Friday night,” he went on, “I would have been in the box with my Elizabeth on Saturday.”
I couldn’t tell whether he was pleased or not.
6
W ednesday dawned bright and sunny. As a general rule, I slept with my curtains open and tended to wake with the rising sun. However, for a few weeks each side of midsummer I tried to remember to pull them across my east-facing bedroom window to prevent the early brightness from rousing me too soon from my slumbers. I cursed myself for forgetting, as the sun peeped over the horizon at a quarter past five and forced its rays past my closed eyelids and into my sleeping brain. For the first time in nearly a week, I had slept soundly and uninterrupted. That is, until five-fifteen.
As I had feared, Tuesday evening had been a dismal affair at the restaurant. Just five tables had finally appeared, and one of those was from passing street traffic who couldn’t believe their luck that we had space for them. In fact, we had so much space that they had twenty tables to choose from. It felt like the kitchen was working in slow motion. Perhaps I should have been happy to have had a less tiring time after what had happened over the preceding days, but it seemed all wrong, and I could also feel the tension among my staff. They weren’t happy either. They were worried about the security of their jobs and the future. As I was.
Refreshed by a decent sleep and a vigorous shower, I resolved to do something to rectify the position the restaurant found itself in. I decided that it was no good sitting around just waiting for the business to pick up while the Hay Net slowly died. What was needed was positive action. I thought about walking along Newmarket High Street with sandwich boards on my shoulders, stating that Socrates would be safe at the Hay Net, there being no hemlock on the menu. Instead, I looked up the telephone number of the Cambridge Evening News. Use a thief to catch a thief.
I reckoned that an evening paper would start work early, so I sat on the edge of my bed in a bathrobe and called the news desk at a quarter to eight. I waited for some time until Ms. Harding, the paper’s news editor, finally came on the line.
“Yes?” she said. “Can I help you?”
“Would you be interested in an exclusive interview with Max Moreton?” I asked, deciding not to reveal my identity at this stage in case she wanted to do the interview over the telephone. “About both the food-poisoning episode of last week and the bombing of the racetrack on Saturday?”
“What has Max Moreton to do with the bombing?” asked Ms. Harding.
I told her that he was the chef for the lunch in the bombed boxes and that he had been first on the scene immediately after the bomb went off, well before the fire brigade had arrived. She took the bait.
“Wow!” she said. “Then, yes, please, we would love to have an interview with Mr. Moreton.” An exclusive with a witness to the biggest national news stories of the hour was like manna from heaven for a local newspaper.
“Good,” I said. “How about at the Hay Net restaurant, at ten-thirty this morning?”
“Hasn’t that restaurant been closed down?” she said.
“No,” I replied, “it hasn’t.”
“Right.” She sounded a little unsure. “Will it be safe?”
I stifled my irritation and assured her it would.
“And one more thing,” I said. “Don’t forget to bring a photographer.”
“Why do I need a photographer?” she asked.
I thought about saying to her: so she could rephotograph the restaurant sign, this time with OPEN FOR WONDERFUL FOOD stuck across it. Instead, I said, “I am sure that Mr. Moreton would be happy for you to photograph his injuries from the bombing.”
“Oh,” she said. “OK. Tell him someone will be at his restaurant at ten-thirty.”
“But won’t it be you?” I asked.
“No, I doubt it,” she said. “I’ll send one of the reporting staff.”
“I do think that Mr. Moreton would only be interested in speaking with the news editor,” I said. “In fact, I’m pretty sure that he would only speak to the most important person in the newsroom.”
“Oh,” she said again, “do you think so? Well, I might just be able to do this one myself.” Flattery, I thought, could get you everywhere. “OK,” she said decisively. “Tell Mr. Moreton I will be there myself at ten-thirty.”
I promised her that I would do just that, and hung up, smiling.
Next, I called Mark. I knew he was always at his desk by seven-thirty each morning, and sometimes he was still there at eleven at night. To my knowledge, he survived on a maximum of six hours’ sleep a night. All his waking hours he devoted to making money, and I was under no illusions that his plan to bring me to London would include him getting even richer. I was not saying that I wouldn’t get richer too, just that I knew that Mark wouldn’t be contemplating the move out of feelings of altruism or philanthropy. He had pound and dollar signs in his eyes, and he would have already calculated the potential profit in his head.
“No problem,” he said. “Come to dinner instead. You choose where. I’ll pay.”
“OK,” I said. “How about the OXO Tower?” I had always liked their food.
“Fine. I’ll make the reservation. Eight o’clock suit you?”
I mentally calculated train times. “Make it eight-thirty.”
“Fine,” he said again. “Eight-thirty on Friday at the OXO.”
He hung up, and I lay back on the bed, thinking about what the future might bring. How ambitious was I? What did I want from my life?
I would be thirty-two in November. Seven years ago I had been the youngest chef ever to be awarded a Michelin star. But, by now, there were two younger than me, each with two stars. I was no longer seen by the media as the bright young thing of whom much was expected, I was more the established chef who was now thought to be making his fortune. The truth was that I was doing all right, but the Hay Net was both too small and too provincial to be a serious cash generator. Whereas nationally I was only a minor celebrity chef, at the local level I was well known and admired, at least I was before last Friday, and I enjoyed it. Did I want to give that up to seek fame and fortune in London? What else in my life was important?
I had always wanted a family, to have children of my own. In that respect, so far I had been a singular failure, literally. A few relationships with girls had come and gone. Mostly gone. Restaurant work is never very conducive to interactions of a sexual nature. The hours are antisocial by their very design: having dinners out is other people’s social activity. Exhausting evenings and late nights are not ideal preparations for lovemaking, and I could remember more than a few occasions when I had been so tired that I had simply gone to sleep in the middle of the act, something not greatly appreciated by the other party.
But being alone was not something that kept me awake nights, worrying. I was not actively searching for a partner. I never had. But if the opportunity arose, I would take it. If not, then I would go on living alone, working hard and keeping my eyes open so as not to miss the chance if it came along. London, I thought, might well increase the probability of such a chance.
The telephone rang on the bedside table. I sat up and picked up the receiver.
“Hello,” I said.
“Morning, Mr. Moreton,” said Angela Milne. “Lovely day.”
“Yes, lovely,” I said. My heart rate rose a notch. “Do you have any news for me?”
“Yes, indeed I have,” she said. “I’m afraid I have some good news and some bad news. Which do you want first?”
“The good news, I suppose,” I said.
“The swabs taken by James Ward in your kitchen are all clear.”
“Good,” I said. I hadn’t expected otherwise. “So what’s the bad news?”