Page 12 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm (Highland Cookery School #2)

‘Something with ragu or something with sprouts?’ Bella asked. ‘Or there’s bread and cheese and salad and stuff.’ She was standing in front of the fridge, having suggested that they take a working lunch break. Jodie had been unable to find a reason to object.

‘Whatever’s easiest.’

‘Bread and cheese is easiest but that doesn’t get any sprouts eaten up.’ Bella pulled a face. ‘What am I going to do with a pantry full of sprouts? Do you like sprouts?’

For the first time since she arrived Jodie decided honesty was the only way forward. She was already stuck dutifully drinking gallons of tea. Never-ending sprout soup would be too much. ‘Not really,’ she admitted apologetically.

‘No. Lots of people don’t.’ She frowned. ‘I can’t just give you a cheese sandwich. I’m a professional.’

‘You don’t have to cook fancy lunches for me,’ Jodie insisted.

Bella shook her head. ‘Not fancy. Just something with a bit more to it than cheese between two slices of bread. How about a sort of Italian-inspired cheese on toast?’

‘OK.’

‘Great. I’ll sort that out. You work out what we’re doing with a massive glut of sprouts.’

Jodie nodded. Sprouts. Right. She could do things with sprouts. She pulled her notebook in front of her and wrote Things To Do With Sprouts at the top of the page. Number 1 was easy. Number 1 they’d already discussed.

1. Massive Christmas dinner

What else could you do with sprouts?

2. Fun With Sprouts TikTok series

3. Sprout-based sports and games. Sprout tennis???

4. Sproutapalooza

5. …

Five was a challenge. She glanced back over her list. Five was blank. Four didn’t technically mean anything. Sprout tennis was insane. So she had two ideas. Two.

Bella put down a plate laden with ciabatta rubbed with garlic and then gently toasted before being topped with pesto, slices of tomato, chicken and cheese and heated under the grill in front of her.

‘This looks incredible.’ Jodie took her first bite.

The flavours danced around her mouth. She hadn’t had food like this since…

well, ever. Her mum had loved to cook but her ingredients were frugal and her time was short.

Gemma, the real Gemma, was a great cook.

Of course she was, but she’d never served anything that tasted half as good as this.

Even though they’d broken up the thought felt disloyal.

Gemma had always tried to encourage Jodie to eat better.

She took a second bite of the happiness sandwich.

‘This is better than Pret,’ she murmured.

‘I should bloody well hope so.’ Bella was smiling. ‘Do I take it you’re not a big cook?’

She’d applied for a job as events manager for a cookery school.

And Gemma cooked. Gemma cooking had been the only way any sort of vegetable had got into Jodie in the last couple of years.

‘I mean, I do like to cook…’ She needed to make this a little more convincing.

She looked around the kitchen for inspiration.

‘Boiling things, you know, frying them.’ What else did you do? ‘Putting them in the oven…’

Bella laughed. ‘It’s fine. Everyone exaggerates a bit at job interviews.’

What had Gemma said? ‘Sorry if I talked myself up a bit.’

‘Only a touch. It’s fine. We didn’t hire you to cook, did we?

’ Bella chewed her very fancy sandwich thoughtfully.

‘Although, you will still have to help with the cookery school. Maybe you could film some stuff for socials?’ She looked up at Jodie.

‘If you think that’s worth doing. I mean you’re the expert. ’

‘Yep. I’ve got that on my list!’ Jodie felt a little surge of pride. ‘We could make an online series of things to do with sprouts. You know, like people think they don’t like them but here are some fun alternative ways to cook them?’ Doubt crept in. ‘Are there fun ways to cook them?’

‘There are fun ways to cook anything.’ Bella paused. ‘I mean you can do them with bacon and chestnuts, or with chilli, or pancetta.’

Jodie wasn’t a food expert but still. ‘Isn’t pancetta just posh bacon?’

Bella pursed her lips. ‘Basically yeah. So I can’t count that as a different thing?’

‘Maybe not.’

‘OK then. Cheesy creamy sprouts. Like cauliflower cheese.’

‘But sprouts?’

‘Exactly.’

‘So that’s three fun things to do with sprouts,’ Jodie confirmed.

‘What else is on your list?’

‘Massive Christmas dinner.’

‘Obviously.’

‘And then…’ She scanned down. ‘It gets a bit thin, to be honest.’

Bella leaned over to read Jodie’s pad. ‘What’s Sproutapalooza?’

‘I have no idea.’ This was her first work task and she had nothing. Gemma would probably have built some sort of sprout empire by now.

But Bella was laughing, not frowning. ‘It’s OK. We didn’t hire you to work for the sprout marketing board. Filming some recipes for socials is a good idea though. We could release them in the run-up to Christmas?’

Jodie nodded. ‘And we can do other clips and stuff before then. Like from the cookery lessons, like you said?’

She could film Bella’s demos. She could even film herself and make a thing of it. ‘We could make a virtue of me not being a great cook,’ she suggested. ‘Sort of compare and contrast what I make with yours, and show the progress over time?’

Bella was nodding.

‘Like if I can learn,’ Jodie continued, ‘then you can too?’

‘Sounds great. You don’t mind being online though?’ Bella asked. ‘I did look at your socials. You’re pretty private.’

Jodie froze. Of course she’d have looked Gemma up online.

That was what everyone did these days, wasn’t it?

Jodie could picture her ex’s profiles. Her privacy was tight, and her profile pics were all cartoony images rather than actual photos – the result, she’d said, of some ex before Jodie’s time who’d got weird when they broke up.

Jodie’s socials, on the other hand, were a catalogue of drunken nights out and hot takes she probably should never have posted. ‘It’s fine,’ Jodie reassured her.

‘Excellent. You can be the public face of the Highland Cookery School then.’

Jodie was an idiot. Her socials might be an open book but that wasn’t her book any more. She couldn’t be the public face of anything. ‘OK.’ She nodded.

Maybe the next session wouldn’t be for ages anyway. Maybe by then this problem would somehow have gone away.

‘OK. Well, tomorrow’s class…’ Bella started.

Tomorrow was not ages away.

‘…is technically supposed to be specifically for blokes. Cooking for useless lads and hopeless dads, sort of thing.’

‘Is that the official name?’ Jodie tried to sound relaxed.

‘I don’t think it ever got an official name. We sort of talked about it at Ladies’ Group and then Jill told some of the women in her congregation and now it’s full. Anyway, we can squeeze you in and we’ll tell them you’re there for work. It’ll be fine. Two until five tomorrow.’

Jodie nodded. On the one hand that was another afternoon that she could pass off as work time without her having to do any of the things Gemma was apparently expert in.

On the other, she had twenty-four hours to work out how she was going to be a social media star without actually appearing on social media.

‘Shall we get on then? Let’s talk Hogmanay.’

Jodie dutifully turned to a new page in her notepad. Making notes was a good worker sort of thing to do, wasn’t it?

‘So from your plan I think the key thing to remember is nothing cheesy. Like Scottish obviously, but authentic. So we can have a piper. It’s traditional and people expect it, but we don’t want pipe music playing in the elevators the whole time, you know?’

‘Do we have elevators?’

‘No.’

‘I don’t think that’ll be a problem then.’

Bella laughed. ‘You know what I mean.’

Jodie neatly wrote Hogmanay Plans at the top of her paper and added No Cheese on the next line. She underlined it twice for good measure.

‘You didn’t have to give us a lift over, darling.’ That wasn’t what Pavel’s mother had said when she’d been setting out for Lowbridge Castle. At that point she’d been quite adamant that, since Pavel’s date was cancelled, he really had nothing better to do.

‘No problem,’ he laughed.

‘Are you coming in?’

He followed Netty and Nina towards the kitchen door, turning at the sound of another vehicle pulling up beside them. Flinty, the castle’s allegedly retired housekeeper, and Anna from the village shop jumped out. ‘Just bringing Bella’s order for tomorrow over,’ Flinty announced.

Pavel helped unload boxes of ingredients from the back of Flinty’s antique Land Rover, and carried them into the castle kitchen.

Bella and the new girl were sitting together, heads bent over a notebook.

The new girl looked up as they came in. Pavel caught her eye.

Something tugged at him. He’d felt it when she’d jumped out of the van in a panic.

He’d even felt it, pricking at his irritation, when he’d caught her trying to do a runner.

He wanted to wrap himself around her and tell her everything was all right.

He helped Bella and Flinty unpack the delivery into the castle pantry, and followed them back into the kitchen.

Gemma was still sitting at the kitchen island.

Now she looked considerably less guarded and significantly more flustered with Pavel’s mum, Netty and Anna opposite her.

He hoped for a fruitless second that they weren’t giving the poor woman the third degree.

‘Where’s Richmond?’ Anna asked.

‘West London,’ Gemma spluttered.

‘North Yorkshire,’ his mum replied at the same time. ‘It’s where that Rishi feller was MP for.’

Anna narrowed her eyes. ‘She can’t be from London and North Yorkshire.’

‘I’m not,’ Gemma offered. ‘I think there’s two places called Richmond.’

Nina shook her head. ‘Well, that’s going to cause confusion.’

Anna nodded. ‘Shouldn’t be allowed.’

‘I was living in Reading though.’

The three women exchanged a look. ‘I went to Reading once,’ Netty offered. ‘For a wedding. Gareth’s cousin married a girl from there. It didn’t last.’

The older women nodded.