slender back so that we all heard the ribs crunch.
The rest of the kitchen slaves cheered and whistled and looked genuinely happy for once. A pile of rabbits awaited their violation to the left.
This was why I chose the hospitality and catering industry after I failed my degree. I had read Marco Pierre White’s memoir White Slave, later more tastefully retitled The Devil in the Kitchen. All that protein and aggression appealed to me—I wanted to experience it for myself.
Now I made an espresso and returned upstairs.
The reception was my domain. I was the reigning door bitch, crowned in the summer, when I had answered William the manager’s ad and made my way to Soho shaking like a horse in a thunderstorm. The aftershocks of finals were intense. I lied about my degree; I said that I’d left school at sixteen. William looked at my legs throughout the interview. He told me that my skirt was too short. I said thanks, it was a dress. William said that he’d give me the job if I gave him a blow job. I said no fucking way and stood up, but he said fine and gave me the job anyway, which undermined his authority forever in my eyes.
I had assumed that William owned the restaurant because it was his name above the door, but later Michel told me that no, William had applied for the job as manager because someone with the same name had owned the restaurant back in the 50s, when Muriel Belcher’s The Colony Room was at its height just around the corner and Soho was a place. William desperately wanted Soho to be a place again. The real owner was a man called Bob who never appeared, but oversaw the accounts. He oversaw the renovation of the upstairs into a private members’ club, complete with a pianist and a team of mixologists, a billiard room, and something called the Snatch, a cushioned cell where everyone was encouraged to lie down. The iPod nailed to the wall only played songs that encouraged sexual healing.
Everything was going downhill in any case. William’s attempt to source reliable foragers in rural areas of the West Country proved bogus; there was a bad write-up in the Guardian that used the word “gimmick” three times. But the single most powerful factor that impeded the restaurant’s success was William’s coke habit, which had soured his soul. He would have been a nice person without it. He was damaged. And damaged people constantly damage everyone else around them, as Madeline the Australian headwaitress had told me often and sadly.
Madeline had left a copy of Eat, Pray, Love in the reception drawer. I read it, checking my phone every thirty seconds, then every twenty seconds, then every ten seconds, in the hope that Vic had texted me.
Nothing.
“He’s just not that into you,” came Madeline’s singsong voice, as she counted the number of covers for the evening. She reeked of a celebrity-endorsed perfume. She was square like a tank but she had a smiley face. She told me about Cirque du Soleil, which she had gone to see the night before with her sister. I told her that I hated musical theater. She said she was amazed that I didn’t want to take advantage of all the wonderful entertainment here in London. I said I didn’t have the time or money or inclination. She laughed and told me that sarcasm was the lowest form of wit. I said that I wasn’t being sarcastic, that I really hated musical theater. I didn’t see anything good about it at all. She went to give the waiters their briefing.
My job was to be nice at all times, to stand up when a guest appeared, to not merely point him or her in the direction of the toilet, but to accompany him or her all the way into the toilet if necessary and even wipe his or her ass for him or her if he or she should so request it because he or she is paying a fuck load of money to be here, and I can get another girl who looks fucking grateful to be working, William had told me. I was paid a lucky seven quid an hour, which was why I took this job as opposed to the door bitch job at Ronnie Scott’s, which paid an unlucky eight quid an hour.
William appeared just before the first guests were due to arrive and informed me that I was going to get slammed hard from all directions tonight so I better fucking enjoy it.
Paparazzi on motorbikes arrived just before the pop star, her tall, bald, much older boyfriend, and his parents. The paps seemed to balance like a circus pyramid. Their flashes dazzled me through the glass. The pop star was going for the Patti Smith look but without the courage to be truly haggard like Patti. Her hair was dyed black with a blunt fringe. She tried to hide behind it, but I could see her drugged eyes. Her movements were languid and paranoid. William ushered her to table twenty.
The first sitting was nearly full and there was a lull at reception. The cloakroom was stuffed with mink. Umbrella tickets were scattered on the floor. I never would be able to figure it out. William emerged from the toilet looking jaundiced and told me to wipe the mirrored surface of the coffee table and straighten the orchids. Instead, I read about Elizabeth Gilbert falling to her knees in the middle of the night while her soon-to-be-ex-husband slept, unaware that his wife was praying to God for a divorce so she could embark on a mystical quest of self-exploration. I put the book down and exited the restaurant through the revolving doors.
I was wearing the pussy bow and pencil skirt that I had bought with Freddie’s money. I stood in front of the paps and posed. I waited for their bulbs to start popping—would they pop?—but there was nothing.
William came outside. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he shouted.
“You said when I started here that it would be a good opportunity to network.”
He hauled me back inside.
He threw me in the cloakroom and shut the door.
Now I was alone.
I waited.
There was a knock on the door. I opened it.
An old man who looked like a toad was standing in reception. He was wearing a cravat. He handed me his cane and camel-hair coat.
“Reservation for Douglas at nine,” he said.
“Certainly, sir.”
The old man was looking at me with shameless hunger. I led him to table twenty-two in the far corner of the restaurant—set for one—and wished him a pleasant evening.
“I hope it will be pleasant,” he said.
I saw a violently pink tongue dart over thin lips. He ordered the house apricot bellini.
The pop star was crying on table twenty.
I checked my phone. There was a text!
Please call. Love Mum X
“Fuck.” I threw the phone at the vase of orchids, but it landed on the leather banquette, and bounced.
A man walked in and shouted: “Taxi!”
All the lights in the restaurant went out.
The taxi driver and I looked at each other in the darkness.
One scented candle flickered.
“Vic?” I said.
There was silence.
Soon the guests started murmuring, and then screaming their complaints. William ordered waiters to get more candles, apologizing, but then he got angry and threw at least three tables out.
“It is my lot in life to search
