The Family Gift Read online

  ‘Gimme a break, Mildred,’ I mutter.

  I get back into the car, take a deep breath and start social media-ing while I’m still parked.

  Testing recipes for fabulous RTÉ Guide today.

  I then try to think of hashtags.

  #Delicious. #YouWillDrool.

  Is that too weird, I wonder? Drooling makes me think of those lovely dogs who drool a lot.

  #Happy. #Cooking.

  Ugh, I think. How vanilla.

  But I can’t think of any more. I need to get Nina to programme a few into my phone. Some of us are born with hashtaggery within us and some need it thrust upon us.

  Finally, I manage to share my thoughts on each platform. Or a happy version of my thoughts.

  My actual thoughts are less ‘wheee, so happy!’ and more ‘I want to go home, get into bed, pull the duvet over my head and ruminate on plans to kill my husband’s first wife.’

  But I have a job and that job entails cheerfulness. Actually, fake cheerfulness.

  Social media done, I lean back against the car seat, find the buzziest music radio on the car stereo and pull out into the traffic.

  6

  You got this

  When I was discovered, which is what the TV production guy, James, likes to call it, I was working a nine-to-five, not very well paid job for a company that made reasonably expensive ready-cooked meals for busy people who could afford to pay someone else to cook boeuf bourguignon or fish pie, package it into little ovenproof dishes, and sell it in delis and upmarket supermarkets. My friend Jocelyn, who’d also trained in the Prue Leith School, and I had tried private catering but the bottom had fallen out of that market pretty quickly, so we were back working for someone else. The Make Life Easier business had leapt to employ us and to be honest, after a few years, I was getting bored.

  In a drive to broaden their market, which was faltering somewhat, one of the bosses had decided that Jocelyn and I should start spreading the word by doing cookery demonstrations around the country at food festivals.

  First up was a prestigious Dublin city-centre weekend food festival and Jocelyn, who hated public speaking, was shaking in her chef’s clogs.

  It was years since I’d done anything like this, so I was a bit anxious myself.

  This had not put off Kieran, boss of the company, who was very alpha male and knew nothing about cooking, but had joined his sister, Peg, in setting up the business, which made him an expert – in his eyes.

  ‘How hard can it be?’ barked Kieran as Jocelyn and I made our fears known.

  Kieran didn’t cook. He was the accounts/business/time and motion end of the company. He thought cooking was like making instant coffee: impossible to get wrong. He had no concept of the food industry shifting and moving all the time.

  His sister and co-owner, Peg, did cook but was very keen on spending weeks in luxury spas to take her mind off work, so she was never there to discuss our concerns.

  ‘Throw a few ingredients in a pot, like you do here – what’s the problem, girls?’ said Kieran.

  Since he thought we were looking for extra money for the day of demos – which we weren’t, but should have been – he sent us out of his office pronto.

  ‘I guess that’s Bozo’s version of saying we’re on our own,’ I said to Jocelyn as we made it back to the kitchen.

  ‘Shush! He might hear you!’ she said.

  ‘I don’t care if he does,’ I said suddenly, beyond irritated by Kieran for any number of reasons, least of all his calling us ‘girls’. We were women, not girls.

  ‘We run this business for him and he doesn’t respect our work at all. We have to get out of here, Joss,’ I added crossly. ‘Set up on our own.’

  ‘That’s so not going to happen, Freya,’ she replied. ‘Our mortgage is murderous. Could we kill Kieran, piece him up in a stew, pretend he’s gone on a cruise and left us in charge?’

  ‘He’d be full of gristle,’ I replied, and then we both laughed at the very idea. ‘Plus,’ I added, ‘you’d need a stake through his heart and a silver bullet – he’s some sort of Teflon werewolf/vampire combo. You’d never be able to kill him.’

  ‘They always find out, anyway,’ Jocelyn added. She loved to watch forensic crime series like CSI on TV. ‘It’s the hair transfer, the teeniest smudge of a fingerprint, a piece of car carpet: you’ve no idea what they can find and analyse. We’d be caught.’

  And then we collapsed into hysterics in the tiny office kitchen and had to have some of my home-made protein balls and a quick coffee to recover from the madness.

  On the morning of the demonstrations, we set off early. All the way into the city in the Make Life Easier jeep, we talked about how excited and terrified we were about the whole thing.

  ‘What if nobody comes near us?’ said Jocelyn, applying her lipstick again as she kept chewing it off.

  I hadn’t even bothered with lipstick yet. Jocelyn, who was good with make-up, was going to make me presentable when we’d done everything else.

  ‘It’s not our job to attract people,’ I said. ‘That’s Kieran’s area. He’s paying for the slot. My worry is what if the hobs are terrible and we burn everything in front of paying customers,’ I said. ‘That’s when a crowd will gather, they’ll see it all falling apart, put it up on Facebook and then, if we don’t inadvertently give someone food poisoning from trying to heat it up in a dodgy oven, we’ll break the internet with how hopeless we’ll appear to be.’

  People can die from food poisoning, Mildred helpfully reminded me.

  ‘We’ve got the back-ups in the freezer bags,’ said Jocelyn, in a voice that said she was trying to convince herself.

  Stopped at traffic lights, we looked at each other.

  ‘We’re trained chefs. How bad can it be?’ I said.

  We were thrilled when we found our tent to discover that it had a gas and induction hob, an oven, a sink with running (cold) water and a small fridge.

  ‘Luxury,’ I said, delighted, as we examined our fiefdom.

  After we’d dragged our supplies in, refrigerated everything and set up, Jocelyn went off to get us both huge coffees and I re-checked our schedule.

  As newbies in the food festival world, the Make Life Easier kitchen had three demo slots that day, a Friday. One at ten, when we figured there’d be few people around, one at eleven-thirty, and one at four. None of these were hot slots: those were reserved for big chefs. People who’d already made it in the cooking world and who would draw huge crowds had weekend lunchtime slots when the crowds would be eight-deep and screens would broadcast whatever the brilliant chef was doing.

  The ten o’clock demo was performed to an audience of three, which was good given that Jocelyn almost instantly burned her hand on the gas hob because it was temperamental and the front burner reared up into a fiery jet with only the slightest twist of the knob and scorched her hand badly.

  ‘Keep going,’ she hissed at me, clutching her injury.

  Calmly, I ripped open the First Aid box, applied a gel-like burn bandage, hugged her and said:

  ‘Get to the First Aid tent. Now.’

  So in front of my audience of three, including one tall guy who was holding a coffee, hiding behind sunnies and looked just grey enough to be hungover, I whisked up a cream-filled chicken dish in record time, chatting away to hide my worry over Jocelyn and felt a surge of relief that at least, this mini audience wasn’t expecting too much.

  Mr Hangover stood well back. Probably asleep standing up.

  The other two, a mother and daughter combo who told me they’d been in since nine, had already got at least half a bag of merchandise from other stands.

  If they stayed all day, they’d need a wheelbarrow to carry it all around.

  ‘Why’s this recipe got so much cream in it?’ asked one of the two women who made up my triad of spectat
ors.

  Kieran wasn’t there so I could say what I really thought.

  ‘In my opinion, this doesn’t need that much cream or indeed, any at all,’ I said chattily, deciding at the last minute that I would toast the pine nuts for the spinach side dish even though it was tricky to keep chatting, and my eye on all parts of the meal. ‘Personally, I like to add a little spoonful of cream cheese if I need a creamy hint to a dish or natural yogurt if it’s not going to split, as we could do with this. But cream is part of the luxury experience.’

  That was Kieran’s favourite expression. Add cream to everything, even though I’d told him that more and more people were experimenting with dairy-free.

  ‘Smell the pine nuts,’ I added, holding the pan carefully forward. ‘I love that scent: a woody tang. Roasting them makes all the difference and lets the flavour out. No oil, no mess, just a plain frying pan and two to three minutes. Great in salads, too. Full of protein and magnesium. If you don’t have enough magnesium, you’re exhausted. And who needs that, right?’

  We all laughed.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying but I’ve always wanted to make pizza dough,’ said the daughter, ‘except it looks hard.’

  ‘Not a bit,’ I said, giving my pine nuts an extra flourish by shaking them in the pan and decanting them expertly into a little bowl. ‘We can do that afterwards, if you’d like. I’m not busy and I am telling you, it’s the easiest thing to do. We get scared of things we’ve never tried. There.’

  I presented the finished dish to them all, handed out cutlery and stood back. ‘Now, while you’re trying that, which is available in our Make Life Easier range, I’ll make pizza dough and if you come back at half eleven, when I’m making a lovely Guinness Pie, one of our best-selling dishes, I’ll show you afterwards how easy it is to get your pizza ready for the oven. ’

  The dough took a moment to make, and both women were delighted to be so up close and personal to it. ‘See?’

  I would have loved to have indulged in a bit of cheffy showing off by twirling some of the dough but I was aware that I had to tidy up and get ready for half eleven, and I needed to visit First Aid to check on Jocelyn. She could not help with an injured hand. She was going home in a taxi, I decided firmly. Kieran, skinflint, could pay.

  ‘Hope you can come back at half eleven,’ I said cheerfully to the women when they collected their belongings to leave.

  Mr Hungover remained as the pair moved off, waving goodbye and saying they’d be back.

  I couldn’t tell if he was watching me or not. Was he still drunk? Someone coming home from a night out, perhaps?

  I thought I’d better send him on his way.

  ‘I’d offer you a seat but I can’t,’ I told him cheerily. ‘You might burn yourself too and the people who insure us would go into meltdown at two burns in the one tent on one day. But there are seats further in, in the centre of the festival area. They’re set up for the bigger demos.’

  He took off his sunglasses and he looked fine, if a bit red-eyed.

  ‘I don’t need a seat,’ he said.

  ‘You looked like you did,’ I pointed out. ‘I thought I detected a bit of a sway there and I was afraid I’d be onto the First Aid tent again when you face-planted in front of my stand.’

  ‘I’m light sensitive,’ he said.

  ‘Right.’ I began tidying up.

  I knew a lot of people who were light sensitive after bank holiday barbecues, weddings and other festive events where booze was involved.

  ‘You’re very good at this,’ he said suddenly.

  I whirled around.

  ‘Cooking? I’d want to be,’ I said with a wry laugh.

  ‘No, I meant cooking and explaining it to people in a way they grasp. You don’t talk down to the audience, either, which is vital. You take them along with you. It’s a hard trick to learn but you have it instinctively.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said in my fake I-am-being-charming voice. ‘Now you have to go. Watch someone else cook. Shoo.’

  He roared laughing. ‘Shoo. I love it. Have you done any television work before?’

  He was beginning to weird me out.

  ‘Only on CCTV footage on the bank robbery jobs, but I keep the mask over my face at all times.’

  He laughed again, as if I was the funniest thing ever.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Rhianna,’ I said, beaming. ‘Now, go away.’

  I hissed this last bit because I felt sure that trying to get rid of customers at food festivals wasn’t part of the deal but still. Who was this guy?

  ‘James Kirk,’ he said, holding out a hand.

  ‘As in Captain Kirk?’ I asked drily. ‘You missed out the T. James T. Kirk, the T stands for Tiberius.’

  ‘It really is my name,’ he said sadly, as if he was entirely fed up with explaining this.

  ‘My father’s Scottish, which is where the Kirk comes from and the James – well, they’re total Trekkies, my parents.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘Are you Freya or Jocelyn?’ he asked.

  I gave him the sort of stare I reserved for Kieran in work when he asked me to stay late.

  The words ‘what’s it to you?’ hovered in my mind.

  ‘I’m a TV producer for Slate Productions,’ he said, suddenly moving forward with his hand held out. ‘We film, among other things, cookery shows. I think you’ve got real promise in terms of television work. Real promise.’

  He proffered a card and there it was on a misty grey background:

  James Kirk

  Producer

  Slate Productions Ltd

  And that was it.

  Slate made a pilot for a TV show based on recipes I’d come up with, which is a lot harder than people think it is. We got the green light to film three weeks later, I suddenly had a contract as a TV chef and I was able to tell Kieran that he ought to promote Jocelyn and stop bullying staff or else he’d have no business in a year.

  I’d got Dan to run the numbers and sweetly explained that the fat-heavy recipes we’d been making up till then were no longer the way forward.

  ‘I’m doing this for Jocelyn and not for you,’ I told Kieran, who had turned puce and then white once he saw Dan’s financial projections.

  ‘You could help . . .’ Kieran stammered.

  ‘I’d consult,’ I said, having been heavily coached by both Dan and Maura. ‘For a fat fee.’

  *

  This morning, I drive home to load up the car with dishes, pans, knives, you name it, and then head off into the traffic again to my minuscule base, which is situated in a soulless building and where Lorraine Ryan, my part-time home economics advisor, and I share an office.

  Neither of us could afford one on our own. Nor could I afford an assistant just for me but Lorraine, who works a lot for me although also for other chefs, is a mistress of all trades and can turn her hand to anything. Including organising my computer/files/you name it. In our tiny office with its own kitchen and coffee machine area, we also have several lockable cupboards, storage for the things we both use during filming, demos, photo shoots.

  There are two desks, one tidy one – Lorraine’s – and one signs-of-a-scuffle one, which is mine.

  Today at twelve, we’re due to start shooting a cook-and- photograph for the country’s biggest selling magazine, the RTÉ Guide, so no pressure. Lorraine and I, plus a food stylist, a photographer and her assistant are going to magic the first part of an autumnal series and photograph it so the readers drool when they read it.

  Yes, I did say autumn.

  They work a long time ahead in the magazine business.

  By high summer, I will be knee-deep in speedy Christmas cakes and advice on how to make your own stollen without too much sugar – this is an oxymoron. Stollen’s sheer glory is that it is mainly sugar w
ith dried fruit and filaments of pastry thrown in but at Christmas, many magazine readers are also dieting themselves into frenzies so they can fit into party clothes without the aid of two pairs of Spanx, so we have to do our best for them. If cutting a sliver of almond paste out of the recipe helps (I could exist entirely on marzipan paste, but it migrates straight to my hips without even hitting my digestive system at all), then we will do our best.

  Studios where food photography shoots take place are always average photographic studios – think draughty industrial loft-style rooms – with miniscule kitchens/dressing rooms/make-up counters tacked on. The resulting shots may look glamorous but the locale is not.

  Lorraine and I once made an entire Christmas dinner (with vegan options) in a room not much bigger than your average bathroom. I still have the mark of a burn on my big toe from when the turkey fat went rogue. Chefs wear clogs for this reason but a hole in mine (long story) meant they were finally rendered useless.

  Today would be easier. I had new kitchen clogs so the chance of oil spillage was less. Confession: magazine food shoots are often fun but always hard work.

  Lorraine was meeting me there, where we’d spend probably a frantic fifteen minutes with the stylist setting the scene. But first, I had to pick up a few things from the office. Notably, one copper-bottomed pan that had been inadvertently left behind and which was more valuable to me than everything else.

  Team Freya meant a certain amount of Scandi coolness. In fact I brought in quite a lot of things from home, including half of the pantry because really, you couldn’t leave this stuff in the office no matter how well it was locked up.

  ‘You love those pans more than you love me,’ Dan liked to tease me, when he spotted me carefully cleaning them so that they gleamed a rich copper, with not a hint of verdigris.

  I always teased back by hugging a pan and moaning, until Teddy saw me at it and tried it herself.

  ‘Ooooh, nice yummy pot,’ she said, giving it a lick for added love.

  Dan and I, when we recovered from laughing, could no longer look at my pots and pans the same way again.