Page 15 of Love in Tune

An hour later, Honey found herself wandering around the supermarket armed with a long list, at the bottom of which she’d grudgingly written, whisky .

If Hal was going to teach her to make bolognese from scratch he was going to need a drink by the end of it.

She was only glad he was allowing her off making the pasta by hand too, a reluctant concession to the fact that she didn’t own a pasta machine.

Eyeing the box of ready-made bolognese in the fridge, she resolutely approached the butcher’s counter to buy minced beef and pancetta.

Just heading for that counter at all was a bit of a first; meat generally came pre-packed into Honey’s shopping basket, most often already prepared or cooked.

And carrots? Who put carrots into bolognese?

Not the man from Dolmio, surely. She’d never spotted carrots in her bolognese, but then she’d never eaten bolognese that wasn’t produced in a mass-market kitchen by people in white hairnets.

Throwing carrots into her basket, she added celery and bay leaves, smiling benignly at another woman as if this was just her regular weekend shop.

Wine was next on the list. Thank God, something she understood.

Hal had insisted she was to buy something decent, which frankly seemed a waste on cooking, but all the same she added a mid-price rioja, and after a moment’s hesitation she went back and added a second bottle.

If she didn’t drink it beforehand, she’d need more wine to recreate the bolognese for Robin on Friday anyway, so it wasn’t an extravagance.

Queuing at the checkout, Honey basked in a small glow of pride as she eyed her items. A wedge of parmesan, a bunch of bay leaves, fresh pasta.

She felt practically cosmopolitan, which made a refreshing change from the mild embarrassment she experienced with her usual ruck of ready meals and tins.

Maybe she should do this cooking lark more often.

She dismissed the thought as fleetingly as it had surfaced; baby steps.

She needed to make this bolognese first without burning the house down or being killed by her irritable neighbour if she failed to follow instructions.

‘Do you have an apron you can wear?’ Hal perched on a stool at her breakfast bar.

‘I don’t need an apron to warm soup up,’ Honey said. ‘But I’ve washed my hands, if that’s any consolation.’

‘Is your hair tied back?’

‘What is this, a military operation?’ she huffed. ‘Yes. It’s in two plaits.’

Hal raised one eyebrow over the top of his sunnies. ‘Like a milk maid?’

The off-hand, suggestive tone of his throwaway comment warmed her cheeks.

He’d been in her flat for a few minutes, and he was turning over the ingredients she’d bought in his hands. He brought the garlic close to his face and inhaled deeply.

‘Will it do?’ she asked, made nervous by his overwhelming presence in her small sanctuary. He looked like an exotic bird who’d landed in a common-or-garden budgie’s cage, out of place and temporary.

He nodded curtly. ‘Frying pan. Olive oil. Chop the onions.’

She bit her lip and grabbed the frying pan out from the drawer beneath the oven.

‘I’m no good at chopping things,’ she murmured, halving the onion and hacking it with inexperienced fingers into thick slices. Hal reached across and felt her handiwork then shook his head and scowled.

‘I said chop them, Honeysuckle. These are the size of fucking house bricks. Smaller.’

‘Have you been taking lessons from Gordon Ramsay?’

He didn’t laugh. ‘Smaller.’ He listened to her efforts for a few seconds. ‘Relax with the knife. Find your rhythm, and keep your fingers behind the blade and out of the way.’

Honey breathed out with relief when he accepted her second attempt with a curled lip, and reached for the garlic when instructed.

‘Break off three cloves and smash them with the blade of a knife,’ Hal said, and Honey turned the bulb over in her hands and stared at it. ‘How do I get to the cloves? It’s sealed up.’

Hal’s mouth opened and then closed, and he rubbed the palms of his hands slowly on his jeans. ‘You’re kidding, right? You just …’ he said, and then shook his head. ‘Give it to me.’

Honey handed him the bulb of garlic and watched as he turned it in his fingers then broke it open easily, feeling the cloves and snapping a few off for her. He offered them to her flat on his palm as if he were feeding a donkey, and she certainly felt like one as she took them from him.

‘Do I need to peel them?’

He sighed. ‘Just smash them with the flat of a large knife. Press down on them until they split.’

Honey reached for her carving knife and tentatively did as he’d suggested, amazed when it actually worked.

‘Well, what do you know,’ she laughed, extracting the raw garlic from the skin. ‘I did it! Do I chop it like the onions now?’

Hal nodded, checking her work with his fingertips when she pushed the chopping board towards him after chopping.

‘Warm the olive oil and add the bacon, then after a minute or so add the onions and garlic too.’ He listened as she sparked the gas beneath the pan. ‘Not that high. Burnt garlic is bitter and will spoil the dish.’

Honey adjusted the flame and tossed in the pancetta.

‘Watch it carefully. We both know you can get in trouble with bacon,’ he muttered, and she rolled her eyes and shook the pan as she’d seen chefs do on the TV.

‘Once, Hal. I’ve only ever burned bacon once in my life, and it just so happened that you were there at the time. I’ll have you know I usually make a killer bacon sandwich.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind if you ever make me breakfast,’ he said, and images of him waking up in her bed assaulted her brain and threatened to make her burn bacon for a second time.

‘Now add the onions and garlic to the pan.’

She scraped the onions and garlic into the pan, excited by the gentle sizzle as they hit the oil.

‘Oh my God, Hal, it smells like an Italian restaurant already in here, doesn’t it?’ She grinned with delight and sniffed the air.

He shook his head, but didn’t disillusion her. ‘How are they looking?’ he asked after a few minutes. ‘Don’t let them brown or overcook.’

‘How will I know when they’re ready?’

‘Use your bloody eyes,’ Hal muttered. ‘And taste them.’

‘What are they supposed to taste like, beside onion and garlic?’

‘Fucking hell, Honey, this is painful. Here, let me taste them.’

She glanced from the pan to the man on the other side of her breakfast bar, and then tentatively forked up some onions.

‘Open your mouth,’ she said, holding the fork out across the bar.

‘You don’t need to spoon feed me,’ he muttered. ‘I can feed myself.’

‘I know that. I just thought it’d be easier from across this side of the bar, that’s all.

I didn’t mean to be patronising,’ she said, aware that it probably seemed like it from his perspective.

He shrugged, and then surprisingly, he opened his mouth and let her slide the fork in.

Watching his mouth, Honey felt the stir of sexual awakenings in her gut that was always close by when he was around.

She slid the fork slowly from between his lips and waited for the verdict.

‘They’re ready,’ he murmured.

So am I, she thought. ‘Ready for what?’ she said, flustered.

‘Turn up the heat and add the beef.’

Oh, the heat was already well and truly turned up.

Honey was breaking into a sweat that had nothing to do with the onions and everything to do with the man opposite her.

She was actually glad he couldn’t see the effect he was having on her right at that moment; she was like a starry-eyed teenager meeting the man who usually lived in posters on her bedroom wall.

It defied all common sense – Hal was thoroughly objectionable and rude, but she couldn’t seem to control the way she reacted to him.

He had her so nervous that she worried she’d slice off her shaking fingers as she chopped the carrots and celery, and when he asked to test the food for a second time she swallowed hard and had to look away as his lips closed around the fork.

‘Hot,’ he breathed, and she could only agree. He was, and she was because of him. Why the hell had she promised that she’d never mention that kiss again? Did he know what he did to her? If he could see her she’d have nowhere to hide, but was it obvious to him anyway?

Stirring in the meat, Honey watched it brown as instructed, taking the couple of minutes to pull herself together.

‘Now we need a couple of glasses of wine.’

Jeez, if she had a drink she’d probably jump his bones. ‘Hal, I don’t think that’s a very good idea right now.’

‘In the bolognese, Honey. Pour the wine into the bolognese and bring it up to boiling.’

Honey passed a hand over her hot face. ‘I knew that,’ she muttered, ignoring the half laugh from across the breakfast bar as she upended a glass of wine into the pan, refilling it as the meat sizzled violently in the alcohol.

She threw the second glass of wine in after the first and screwed the lid resolutely back on the bottle.

‘Now pour out two more glasses of wine,’ Hal said.

Honey didn’t want to get caught out twice. ‘Won’t that be overpowering?’

‘They’re not for the dinner. One’s for me because it’s killing me teaching you to cook, and the other is for you to calm you the fuck down.’

‘I don’t need to calm down,’ Honey lied.

‘The hell you don’t. You’re giving me a headache with all your nervousness, and trust me, you won’t like me when I have a headache.’

‘I don’t like you very much as it is,’ she said, clinging to the safe ground offered by throwing mild insults.

‘Just pour the damn wine, will you?’

Honey deliberated between the lure of a glass of wine or staying sober, because although she did in fact need to calm the fuck down, she feared it might loosen her tongue and her hands in a way that would send him back into hiding again for weeks on end.

In the end, her nerves won out and she unscrewed the wine again and poured them both a drink.