17
As the Saturday night meal was in honour of Gina’s recent birthday, Gina chose the menu. She was very enthusiastic about this, taking charge of the cooking. Others were less enthusiastic.
‘Dreading it, if I’m honest,’ Joe had said, a week prior. ‘I’m not being funny, but I’ve seen how much Gina eats, and there’ll be no meat either. I’m hiding Yorkies and a family bag of Walkers salt and vinegar in our room for later.’
‘Joe!’ Roisin had chided. ‘She’s a great cook.’
‘I know. She makes sensational banquets. For a family of MICE.’
‘I’ve been saving Vogue and Tatler photos of dinner parties for inspo,’ Gina had told them. ‘No one cooks any more. Basically, everyone fashionable serves a platter of radishes and shrimps with the tail on, with aioli, and big bowls of cherries.’
‘A radish, a prawn and some cherries. I’ll try not to gorge myself,’ Joe said.
Yet when Gina finally unveiled her full three course concept to Meredith, Anita and Roisin in the kitchen that lunchtime, Roisin did silently ponder that it sounded a trifle on the lean side. Gina must lack the greedy enzyme.
No, wait – you’re being infected by Joe! she told herself. What did Dev teach you? A few things, properly done, is much better than a nervily assembled mish mash of a dozen.
Gina rehearsed the menu, which included ‘dressed red leaves’.
‘Is that a salad, when in Urmston and not Umbria?’ Meredith said.
‘It’s chicory! I suppose leaves means no blue cheese or sweetcorn or ranch dressing.’
‘Ranch dressing, I could snort it,’ Anita said mistily, a woman whose appetite was closer to Meredith or Roisin’s.
There was tiramisu for afters.
‘The genius of it is, it can pretty much all be done in advance,’ Gina said. ‘All there is to do before we sit down is frying the arancini balls, then cooking the spaghetti.’
Hunter starting at nine meant an easy breezy approach to it wasn’t wise. Gina had timings written on a scrap of paper affixed to the towering fridge: they were having a ‘baby’s tea’ starting at six, to avoid jumpy clock watching.
At half five, Roisin lit the taper candles on the long mahogany table in the grand dining room, surveyed the huge window with its view onto the lake beyond, and sighed. You could serve Joe’s old skint writer’s dinner of ‘Prison Ramen’ in here (ramen noodles plus Wotsits) and it’d seem like a feast.
‘Reckon you can get Deliveroo to Benbarrow?’ Matt said, as they sat down, hurriedly adding, ‘Not that I want to!’
Roisin placed the red table plonk at intervals down the runner in the centre. Gina wasn’t present, still putting the finishing touches to their balls.
‘Lol. No, of course not,’ Joe said. ‘Imagine the poor wee fella cranking his bike up the path. Your rider tip would need to be a king’s ransom to make them take the job. Everything would be stone cold.’
‘We’ve found the one drawback of owning this place. No takeaways,’ Matt said. ‘Who knew the super rich can’t get takeaways.’
‘Your private chef probably takes the sting out of it,’ Dev said.
Roisin went back to the kitchen to collect the starter plates and she, Anita, Gina and Meredith entered carrying them, to applause.
‘Porcini arancini,’ Gina said, as they began.
‘Pleasing rhyming,’ Matt said, and she smiled at him before remembering she currently hated him, her face twitching and dropping in a comical manner.
‘Really nice, G,’ Roisin said, after a few mouthfuls. ‘I can say this without self-praising because I was only involved tangentially.’
‘Really good,’ everyone murmured in agreement.
‘Great balls of fire!’ Dev said, having caught an especially molten lava bit of gruyere, grabbing for his water.
It didn’t take very long to consume two of them and Roisin once again regretted not taking an interest in the decisions on scale in the preceding weeks. Her job meant the group WhatsApp often pinged away for an hour before she was able to look at her phone.
‘That’s left me pleasantly peckish for my main,’ Joe said to Roisin, who glowered at him as she cleared the plates.
Meredith and Roisin were thrashing the men at pool, while Anita was off taking ‘mood board’ photos of the house, until Gina appeared in the doorway of the games room, looking agitated.
‘Can I borrow you?’ she said to the women.
She led them back towards the kitchen, wailing, ‘the spaghetti’s not fucking cooking!’
They broke into a trot across the hallway to keep up with her speed.
‘It must be, it’ll be some posh bronze dyed stuff that needs longer, that’s all,’ Meredith said.
‘Try it!’ Gina said, gesturing at the double-handled mega pan on the Aga hob.
Meredith, and Roisin each hook-a-ducked a strand out of the rolling boil and chewed contemplatively, preparing to tell Gina in meltdown mode that it was merely al dente and exactly how the Italians eat it.
Ugh. Roisin had to agree, it was like chewing a chalky shoelace. It tasted raw. Hot and raw.
‘Another fifteen minutes, it’ll be reet,’ said Meredith, looking similarly doubtful. ‘How long’s it had?’
‘Half an hour! More than!’ Gina screeched.
‘Any second now, honestly,’ Meredith said. ‘Let’s have a wine and wait it out.’
She sloshed red into three fresh glasses.
‘If it’s not cooked in half an hour, I don’t see why a bit longer is any guarantee,’ Gina said, and Roisin thought she had a point.
‘Let’s not panic,’ Meredith said, stoutly. ‘Here,’ she looked at the wall clock. ‘Testing again, at dead on half seven. The lads can play another game of pool.’
The alcohol had the required sedative effect as they chatted, and it was closer to quarter to eight when they remembered to try it. They chewed gingerly this time, in foreboding: yep, stubborn ropes of inedible semolina.
‘FOR FUCK’S SAKE!’ Gina said. ‘What are we going to do? Joe’s show is on at NINE! Why have they sold me TWAT SPAGHETTI!’
Roisin looked anxiously at the clock. She did not want an agitated Gina trying to ladle out a dinner of twat spaghetti at a whisker to nine p.m., Joe refusing to stay and eat, and another huge fight. Gina’s mood felt knife edge as it was.
‘OK. I think we have to accept the pasta may not cook, or it may be some strange masochist’s variety that is never going to taste cooked,’ Roisin said. ‘Contingency plan. Meredith, any other options, carbohydrate wise?’ Roisin asked.
‘Bread. Lots of loaves of bread, and two bags of oven chips,’ Meredith said. ‘I think Dev used the potatoes up in his saag aloo.’
‘How about … bruschetta, using the tomato sauce, and a load of chips, and the salad?’ Roisin put her hands up. ‘Call me a goblin, but I’d eat it.’
‘Yes!’ Meredith said. ‘Also, we have butter and garlic? Garlic bread!’
Roisin made a fist pump gesture.
‘What’s everyone going to think at me serving them fucking TOAST?!’ Gina said.
‘Delighted. It’s fashionable simplicity, like the radishes,’ Roisin said. ‘I’ll fetch Anita.’
Roisin, Meredith and Anita worked hard to give Gina a sense of Blitz spirit jollity in the food they put out, but Roisin could see Gina was crushed by the dinner bork.
The less said about the profanities she unleashed when they finally gave up, drained and binned the Magical Never-Cook Spaghetti, the better.
‘I’m sending that deli the mother of all customer complaint emails!’ she stormed. ‘They will gaze into my abyss!’
‘When you’re sober though, yes,’ Meredith said. ‘I don’t want you going domestic terrorist on the only place I can get burrata.’