I thanked James Ward, and saw him to his car and off the premises. Even though he was pleasant and helpful, there is something about health inspectors that gives all chefs the willies, so I was glad to see him depart.
Carl and I spent the next hour removing all the CLOSED FOR DECONTAMINATION stickers, which seemed to be stuck on with Super Glue. Then we tried our best to remove the remaining padlocks without causing too much damage to the structure of the building. At last, it was done, and we sat together in the bar and pulled ourselves a pint each.
“We reopen tomorrow, then?” Carl asked.
“If we have any customers left,” I said.
I showed him the newspaper.
“That’s all right,” he said. “No one who comes here reads that.”
“They will have done so today,” I said. “Like me, they’ll have bought it to read about those killed on Saturday. They’re all bound to have seen it.”
“Nah, don’t you worry, our regulars will trust us more than a newspaper.” But he didn’t sound very convincing.
“Most of our regulars were at the dinner on Friday and will know it’s true,” I said, “because they were throwing up all night.”
“Ahh, I’d forgotten that.”
“How about those you phoned earlier?” I asked him. “You know, to say we would be closed tonight.”
“Well, most said they weren’t going to be coming anyway.”
“Did they give a reason?” I asked.
“If you mean did they say they weren’t coming because we were akin to a poison factory, then, no, they didn’t. Only one person mentioned it, and she said that she and her husband wouldn’t have come only because they hadn’t fully recovered from a bout of food poisoning. Most simply said it would be inappropriate for them to enjoy an evening out while the bodies of those killed had hardly gone cold, or words to that effect.”
We sat in silence and finished our beers. The thought of the bodies getting colder in the commandeered refrigerated truck had been drifting around the periphery of my consciousness for most of the day.
I CALLED MARK WINSOME. I thought it was time my silent business partner knew that we might have a spot of bother ahead. He listened carefully as I told him the whole story about Friday night and also about the bombing on Saturday. He knew, of course, about the bombing but hadn’t realized how close his investment had been to biting the dust.
“I’m so sorry about your waitress,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said. “It’s been very distressing for the other staff. I sent them all home this morning.”
“But you say the restaurant will reopen again tomorrow?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I don’t expect there to be much business, and not only because of the food-poisoning incident but because the whole area is in shock and I don’t think people will be eating out much.”
“So you might have a bit of time this week?” he said.
“Well, I think I should be here for those who do come,” I said. “Why?”
“I just thought it’s time you came to London.”
“What, to see you?”
“No. Well, yes, of course I would love to see you. But what I really meant was that it’s time for you to come to London permanently.”
“What about the restaurant?”
“That’s what I mean,” he said. “I think it’s time you opened a restaurant in London. I’ve been waiting six years for you to be ready and now I think you are.”
I sat in my office and stared at the wall. I had called Mark with considerable trepidation since I feared he might be angry that I had seemingly poisoned a sizable chunk of Newmarket society and damaged his investment. Instead, he was offering me…what? Fame and fortune, or maybe it would be humiliation and disaster. At the very least, Mark was offering me the chance to find out.
“Are you still there?” he said at length.
“Mmm,” I replied.
“Good. Then come see me sometime later this week.” He paused. “How about Friday? Lunch? At the Goring.”
“Fine,” I said.
“Good,” he said again. “One o’clock, in the bar.”
“Fine,” I repeated, and he hung up.
I sat there for a while, thinking about what the future might bring. There was no doubt that the Hay Net was becoming very well known in the area and, at least until Friday night, had been generally well respected. Indeed, so popular had we become that securing a table for dinner was a challenge and needed considerable forward planning, especially weekends. In the past year, I had been featured in a few magazines, and the previous autumn we had entertained a TV crew from the BBC. The Hay Net was busy, comfortable and fun. Maybe it had become rather too easy, but I loved being part of the world of racing, the world in which I had been brought up. I liked racing people and they seemed to like me. I was enjoying life.
Was I ready to give up this provincial coziness to move to the cutthroat world of restaurants in the metropolis? Could I afford to walk away from this success and pit myself against the very best chefs in London? Could I afford not to?
THE NIGHT WAS slightly less disturbed than the previous one, and with a few new variations of the dream. It was mostly MaryLou pushing the gurney, and occasionally she became a legless skeleton as she pushed. More than once, it was Louisa doing the pushing, and she still had her legs. Thankfully, on these occasions the dream ended peacefully rather than with the endless fall and racing heart. Overall, I slept for more hours than I was awake, and I was reasonably refreshed by the time my alarm clock noisily roused me at a quarter to eight.
I lay in bed for a while, thinking about what Mark had said the previous afternoon. The prospect of joining the restaurant big boys was, at once, hugely exciting and incredibly frightening. But what an opportunity!
I was brought back to earth by the ringing of my telephone on the bedside table.
“Hello,” I said.
“Max, is that you?” said a female voice. “It’s Suzanne Miller here.”
Suzanne Miller, the managing director of the racetrack catering company.
“Hi, Suzanne,” I said. “What can I do for you so early?” I looked at my clock. It was twenty-five to nine.
“Yes, sorry to call you at home,” she said, “but I think we might have a problem.”
“How so?”
“It’s to do with last Friday,” she said. I wasn’t surprised. “It seems that some people who were at the gala dinner were ill afterwards.”
“Were they?” I said in a surprised tone. “How about you and Tony?” Tony was her husband, and they had both been at the event.
“No, we were fine,” she said. “It was a lovely evening. But I always find these big evenings nerve-racking. I get so wound up, in case anything goes wrong.”
And it wasn’t even her firm doing the cooking, I thought, although they had been responsible for the guest list and all the other arrangements.
“So what’s the problem?” I asked innocently.
“I’ve had a letter this morning. It says”-I heard paper being rustled-“‘Dear Madam, This letter is to give you advance warning of legal proceedings that will be initiated by our client against your company to recover damages for distress and loss of earnings as a result of the poisoning of our client at a dinner organized by your company at Newmarket racetrack on Friday, May 4.’ ”
“And who is their client?” I asked.
“It says ‘Ref: Miss Caroline Aston,’ at the top.”
“Was she a guest on Friday?” I asked.
“She’s not on the guest list, but so many of them weren’t named. You know what it’s like, Mr. So-and-So and guest. Could be anyone.”