‘So, Justin McCleish is moving to the village. Exciting times!’ I said.
‘Yep, into the Old Vicarage,’ Strickland replied, raising his eyebrows.
The Old Vicarage was massive and had belonged to a shady businessman who was facing a ruinous divorce and had needed to sell up quickly.
Strickland pulled a face and drank some of his lager. ‘What do you think of him?’
This was an easy one to answer. His name cropped up a lot in conversation. Coincidentally, I had recently mentally listed the main reasons I disliked Justin McCleish – several times.
The case for the prosecution:
His looks – the long, dark hair, the designer stubble, the faux ethnic jewellery, the hippy/surfer dude vibe. He was in his late thirties. This was a look he was too old for, in my opinion.
His causes – Jamie Oliver has his school dinners/sugar tax; Hugh has his sustainable fish thing; Gordon Ramsay, swearing and bad temper; Marco Pierre White, inscrutably weird behaviour. The low-hanging fruit have gone. Justin had his ‘feed the poor’ crusade, meals-on-a-budget ideas.
And last but not least, Aurora McCleish, his skimpily dressed Italian wife, heavily and sexily tattooed and annoyingly beautiful, who floated in and out of shot on his TV programmes.
‘What do you think of him?’ repeated Strickland, insistently.
I paused for thought. I had to confess, I didn’t like him.
I thought I was jealous, but no, that was the wrong word. I was envious. I wanted the freedom from financial worry that Justin had. I bet he didn’t wake up in the morning concerned about his unpaid bills. If I was honest, that was probably why I didn’t like him; he was successful and I resented it. I wished that I could float through life like he did.
I tried to rise above this. A big part of the new post-prison Ben Hunter was tranquillity and that meant not slagging other people off, hard as it might be.
‘I don’t know,’ I said judiciously. ‘I’m sure he’s very nice.’
I didn’t realise I was about to learn a lot more about Justin McCleish than either of us expected.
Speak of the devil and he will come. The very next day, much to my surprise, I met both Justin and his wife.
Jess had announced their presence. Normally, Jess does her job running my restaurant with a mixture of good-natured efficiency and ironic detachment. For her, it’s a well-paid holiday job, a distraction from studying IT, which is where her future lies. She rarely gets excited – why should she? Working in the hospitality business is not her dream. But today was different.
She had come running in to the kitchen an hour earlier.
‘It’s Justin McCleish, and his wife, in our restaurant!!!’
I had never seen her so excited. She was wide-eyed; her hair stood up like she’d been electrocuted. Francis stared at her like a parody of amazement.
‘Gordon Bennett!’ he said. That, for Francis, constitutes great excitement. It was a measure too, of Justin McCleish’s fame, that Francis knew who he was. His knowledge of people is usually confined to cricketers and rugby players.
‘Can everyone just calm down,’ I said, my heart thundering with adrenaline. It’s Justin McCleish, and HIS WIFE, in MY restaurant! ‘They’re just customers.’
But of course they weren’t just customers, and when I got their orders I cooked their food as if it was going out to the Queen.
Justin had lamb fillet with an anchovy and caper dressing garnished with a mint sauce and rosti potatoes, and Aurora, a chicken Caesar salad. I scrutinised every single ingredient on their plates as if I were performing brain surgery.
Jess kept us updated every time she came in to the kitchen.
‘They’ve started, they look happy! They like the sourdough bread. Oh, God, this is so exciting!’
A bit later: ‘They’re halfway through, they still look happy and there are three paparazzi outside on the green! And they’ve parked illegally!’
She was a true child of Hampden Green. If the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse turned up, someone would point to the sign, ‘No Riding On The Common (£100 fine)’.
When the plates came back we all stared at them like doctors looking at a life or death X-ray.
‘Blimey, clean plates!’ said Francis.
I shrugged. They liked it!
‘Don’t sound so surprised, Francis.’ My voice was dismissive. Inside, I was shouting to myself, ‘He ate everything!’
They had dessert.
Cue another update from my waitress: ‘Justin’s having the strawberry bavarois and Aurora’s having the lemon posset with almond shortbread.’ She added, ‘God she’s even more beautiful in real life than on Instagram.’
Then, more clean plates, compliments to the chef and the following bombshell: ‘He wants to meet you!’ Jess looked at me adoringly. Normally she treats me as if I were slightly half-witted, an amiable old fool. Now I was transmuted from lead to gold by the alchemical hand of Justin McCleish, sprinkled with his TV stardust.
The gods came down from Olympus. Justin was here in high resolution and 3D. And so it was that towards the end of service, I found myself shaking Justin McCleish’s hand, wondering what to call him. It was a problem that I would never have thought I would ever have. Justin sounded too presumptuous, Mr McCleish too formal.
I compromised by saying nothing, hoping I didn’t come across as totally idiotic.
He was the first famous person I had ever met. It was a strange sensation. I couldn’t help but scrutinise him as intensely as I had his food when I’d sent it out from the kitchen half an hour earlier. It was hard work not staring at him too obviously.
In the flesh he was smaller than I had expected, and surprisingly slender. TV gives little indication of size unless people are helpfully standing next to something that has a recognisable benchmark height, a postbox for example, or a Labrador. Justin was also more handsome in real life than he was on the screen – he certainly didn’t disappoint there. He was ridiculously good-looking in an Italian way and I remembered hearing that his mother was from Le Marche, near Ancona.
That was the part of Italy that Claudia Ferrante, my ex, was from. If I ever saw her again I could ask her if she had known the family. I felt a sudden lurch of sadness in my otherwise happy day. Claudia was a match for Aurora in looks and formidably bright. Jess thought we should get back together. Fat chance.
I put the thought of my ex to one side and concentrated on Justin. He looked very stylish and had an even bronze tan. Standing next to him, I felt pallid. Chefs rarely get to see the sunshine and I was no exception. I also
