Cook for Me by Smith Alexander McCall

Author:Smith, Alexander McCall [Smith, Alexander McCall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9780593686058
Amazon: B0BSPB76CC
Goodreads: 108402392
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2023-02-14T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

Knife skills

Arrangements were made. The cookery school class was due to begin at six in the evening; David would arrive at the offices of the Perfect Passion Company in Union Street at five-thirty and would walk with William to the cookery school, which was in Broughton Street, a couple of Georgian blocks away. William had already spoken to Julia Macfarlane, who was part owner and deputy-principal of the school—a title that she herself described as too grand by half.

“I am a teacher of cookery skills, pure and simple,” she said. “They think that having a deputy-principal raises the tone. I don’t, but there we are.”

Julia was the instructor to whom William had given the sweater and, as far as she was concerned, he could do no wrong. His results had been disappointing, for some reason, on the evening on which the class had practised the art of making a light and airy soufflé, but she had blamed the oven for his flat and discouraged-looking concoction; then he had burned his onions when he should only have softened them—so easily done, if one’s attention wandered and the heat beneath the pan became too fierce, but she had said that this was due to inferior butter; and as she stood at the top of the class and demonstrated some aspect of the culinary arts, her eye, if it wandered at all, inevitably seemed to wander in his direction. She knew, though, that he was off-limits. The age gap was too wide, and she had a sharp nose for the ridiculous; she was in her early forties and there yawned between them a chasm of eighteen years. May and December romances were tricky—they could work—but then she had heard from one of the other members of the class that he was engaged—“some girl in Australia, such a tragedy”—and so she put all thought of a closer friendship firmly out of her mind.

Not that it was theoretically out of the question, of course; she was a divorcée whose ex-husband, Colin, had been the editor of a classic car magazine—and incapable of talking about anything other than classic cars. She had never worked out why she had married him in the first place—it was, she confessed to friends, in a fit of temporary absent-mindedness, and for reasons she could not recollect. The old adage, Marry in haste, repent at leisure, an ancient piece of folk wisdom, applied without qualification in her case; such truisms irritate us with their well-worn banality, but are so often irritatingly true. And yet, in spite of her realization of her mistake, she was loyal to Colin and, unlike so many who are dissatisfied in their marriage, she did not try to blame him for what went wrong. In her account of the marriage, she was the one at fault for being unable to take a proper interest in classic cars. “I should have tried harder,” she said. “I let Colin down. I should have made more effort.”

In the result, it was Colin who made the first move.

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