of smoke, squirmed with as the boys tried to convince Jessica there was a ghost knocking on her window at night, sat in darkness with as Eve hid from a pestering one-night stand, exchanged sniggering glances with as Miles took the stage in some grimy club. How could she now tell them all what to do like a teacher?
She looked down at her workbench—at the little bowls of flour and sugar that she’d measured out and prepared like a TV chef. ‘Oh god, now I’m getting hot.’ She pressed her hands to her face.
‘It’s all right, Lib,’ said Dex. ‘It’s only us. Just do it however you like.’
Libby exhaled. ‘You’re making me more nervous than strangers,’ she said, then she laughed.
In her head, in all the planning sessions, Jake had been in the room, maybe leaning against the wooden mantelpiece, a cup of tea in his hand, a cocky smile on his face. He was the chatter. The one who made people feel instantly at ease.
Supper clubs had got much better when he’d stepped in to help. On her own they’d been a complete disaster. The first one she held, her fingers had shaken so much from the pressure that she’d barely been able to prepare anything. Smoke from the sizzling chorizo had set the smoke alarm off. The kitchen had gone from boiling hot to arctic cold when she’d had to throw all the windows open. Then the boys upstairs had thrown an impromptu party—Miles’s decks in situ right above her beautifully laid table, the thumping of feet on bare floorboards, the wine running out, her beef overcooking, her cream over-whipping, and the stem ginger ice cream refusing to set. It had been an all-round disaster. The three couples had sloped out before the coffee had bubbled up on the hob.
The door had closed on her overly effusive goodbyes, and, needing to take it out on someone, she had stormed up the stairs, thrown open the door of the boys’ flat, pulled the plug on the speakers, and shouted, ‘Well, thank you very much. You destroyed that for me. I hope you’re proud of yourselves.’ All the achingly cool party-goers had stared with disdain and she’d wished she hadn’t gone upstairs at all.
And of course Jake had come downstairs after her, because that’s the kind of thing he did. He took control of situations. He smoothed over cracks. He’d leaned in the doorway and said, ‘We’re sorry. We’re thoughtless, pig-headed arseholes.’
She knew he didn’t really mean a word of it but it had made her feel better. It had made her smile when he’d taken a seat and looked down at the plates in front of him with a frown—at the split cream; the burnt, cracked pavlova; the liquid, unset, failed ice cream—and said, with a quirk of his brow, ‘This all looks excellent.’
‘It’s been a disaster,’ she’d said.
‘Nah.’ He’d sat back in his chair, hands behind his head, a grin on his lips. ‘It’s just the beginning. Teething problems,’ he’d said, then he’d taken a swipe of the melted ice cream and popped it in his mouth. ‘Might look like shit but it tastes amazing.’
She’d frowned at the half-compliment. He’d sat forward and tucked her hair behind her ear in the kind of clichéd trademark move that Jake managed to pull off to perfection, and said, ‘You’re going to be amazing, Libby. Because it will never be worse than this,’ and she had felt for the first time that someone completely believed in her. In retrospect she realised it was probably just a line to get her into bed. But from that moment on, she had felt stronger when he was next to her.
And there had been more supper clubs. Hundreds more. They’d built a business out of it. And Jake had taken over as host—greeting the guests, entertaining them over canapés, topping up wines, tipping back in his chair and observing as she put the plates down in front of them, detailing the subtle touches that gave her mini venison wellingtons their hint of caramel, or explaining the origin of a bouillabaisse and how hers also included the often overlooked sea urchin and spider crab. He would subtly nudge her on the thigh if he thought she was going on too much and say something like, ‘We’re here for the food, darling, not the science bit.’ And the guests would chuckle as he winked at her or gave her a quick pat on the bum.
Libby was better when she could do things in her own time. When she could delete and edit. She wasn’t a spontaneous ice breaker or joke cracker.
‘Ready when you are, Libby,’ Jimmy said, snapping her into the present. ‘I can’t actually remember the last time I cooked anything.’
‘What do you eat?’ Jessica asked, glancing up, perplexed. ‘Do you gnaw on raw fish grabbed with your bare hands from the ocean?’
Jimmy did a self-assured chuckle. ‘I grab them, CeeCee cooks them.’
Jessica sighed. ‘Oh god, who the hell’s CeeCee?’
‘She lives with me on the boat.’
Eve reached forward and picked up the laminated recipe sheet Libby had laid out on every bench. She glanced casually over the type as if she wasn’t really listening but gave herself away by saying, ‘As in, she’s your girlfriend?’
Jessica glanced from Eve to Jimmy, a brow raised, a slight smile on her lips. She moved her recipe to the side so she could perch up on the bench.
Jimmy tilted his head to one side. ‘We have no need for formal ownership descriptions.’
Jessica snorted. ‘Oh, Jimmy, you’re not serious?’
‘I am!’ He grinned. ‘We have a boat, we live on it, both of us are free to come and go as we please.’
‘Who owns the boat?’ Dex asked.
Jimmy paused. ‘She owns the boat,’ he said with a shrug.
Jessica laughed. ‘I bet she does.’
Libby found herself anxious to stop the chat, unable to enjoy it because this was meant to be a class. She could see Giulia tapping her fingers on the surface at the back.
‘So if this CeeCee wasn’t there when you got back, you wouldn’t mind?’ Eve asked, putting her recipe sheet down on the bench, unable to hide her interest.
‘Well, technically he’d have to mind because the boat would be gone too,’ said Jessica.
Jimmy shrugged. ‘As I say, free to come and go as we please.’
‘No ties,’ Eve said.
Jimmy shook his head with a smile. ‘None. At the moment we are in each other’s lives. In six months maybe we won’t be. Come on,’ he said, holding his hands out wide, ‘you gotta admit that’s a more interesting way to live?’
Eve’s phone rang. She looked surprised by the interruption and then started to rummage through her bag on the floor. ‘Oh, that’s me. Where is it? God. Hi, Noah! Everything OK?’
As Eve admired another Lego dinosaur on FaceTime, Jessica took the opportunity to get her phone out again, saying, ‘I just need to reply to a couple of emails.’
Jimmy leant back on his stool and started saying something to Dex that made him laugh loudly. Miles turned to see what was being said.
‘Are we going to cook or not?’ snapped Giulia, and they all seemed to remember where they were.
‘Yes! Yes, we are, sorry,’ Libby said, cringing at what it all must seem like to Giulia. She imagined
