Or maybe he hadn’t even heard the comment, and she was making too much out of the whole situation.
Either way, Fran took a breath and kept walking.
‘I take it you left your sense of humour on the plane,’ Noel said, waving his fork in Johnny’s direction to gain his attention. ‘Not that anyone need worry about it being big enough to be a trip hazard. Not known for the size of your sense of humour, are you, Johnny?’
While Noel waggled his eyebrows like he was having some kind of a seizure, Johnny carefully cut at one of the pieces of cured meat on his plate. There were plenty of things he found funny, however dull his brother liked to paint him as being. He’d been distracted, that was all, by recognising the waitress as being the same person who brought his towels to his room. At his prickly reaction to Noel’s comments about her; his sudden desire to tell Noel to back the hell off. His immediate, and unexpected, reaction to Noel’s well-practised flirtatious behaviour was to protect this woman, even though she looked more than capable of taking Noel’s ridiculous banter in her stride.
Johnny used the seconds he spent carving into a piece of salami to give him time to refocus, to remind himself that he had a perfectly serviceable sense of humour, which usually meant hedidn’tfind Noel’s nonsense amusing. He left that side of things to Ed and Ricky.
He could also read Noel like a book; he could tell they were about to descend into cock joke territory. The mention of size an obvious gateway. And that was the last thing anyone needed to have to listen to.
‘I booked a tour of that winery for eleven tomorrow – I presume that’s not too early for everyone?’ Johnny’s attempts to deflect the conversation seemed to work. ‘Leave here about quarter past ten?’
‘Nowyou want to talk shop?’ Noel shook his head. ‘Never a dull moment with you, is there …’
‘I’m planning to have a sauna early tomorrow morning,’ Ricky chipped in. ‘So that’ll work well. Not going to get too bladdered tonight.’ He grinned at Noel. ‘That’s what I told Belinda, anyway.’
‘Good man. What happens on tour stays on tour.’ Noel lifted his glass and took a mouthful of the excellent Pouilly-Fumé they’d chosen to go with their starters.
‘Cheers to that.’ Ricky lifted his glass, too.
As the conversation moved away from the size of Johnny’s sense of humour, or anything else for that matter, he allowed himself to enjoy the rest of the course. When the main dishes arrived, it became clear the chef had taken Noel’s choice of potato as a personal insult, his plate stacked with some of the biggest, squarest chips Johnny had ever laid eyes on.
The waitress was doing her best to disguise the upturn in her lips as she placed the plate. Whether she was expecting fireworks, she stood her ground and Noel just laughed, fixed her with his trademark ‘get you back onside’ grin as he asked her to pass on his gratitude to the chef.
‘Tell him “touché, Monsieur” from me,’ Noel added, then glanced at his plate. ‘Although … now I come to think of it, any chance you could ask him for some ketchup?’
‘Oh, my God.’ Johnny shook his head at her. ‘I’m sorry. Ignore him.’
‘No, don’t do that,’ Noel said to her with a grin. ‘Being ignored by such an attractive woman? Not sure I could cope with the rejection.’
‘I’m sure you’ll cope,’ Johnny said, before smiling at the waitress. ‘He really doesn’t need any ketchup, thanks anyway.’
As Fran headed for the kitchen, a flick of her wrist to see her watch showed there was still a couple of hours until the end of dinner service. Penny crossed paths with her in the mouth of the service area, her grin still as large as when Fran met her in the laundry store when she’d been at the chateau for a matter of minutes.
‘You OK?’ Penny said, one of the plates balanced on the crook of her arm wobbling and taking her attention as she steadied it. ‘Anyone giving you trouble?’
Fran shook her head and returned the smile. ‘It’s all good.’
It was all good, overall. Fran’s mood might be questionable, and her skills were being tested to their limits in this unfamiliar role, but the couple on table one was delightful and the group of women on table two were enjoying a girls’ trip and hadn’t stopped chatting and laughing since they’d walked in. They hadn’t even noticed when she brought sparkling instead of still water to the table, had poured and sipped and carried on having the time of their lives while barely giving her a second look. Three and four had already finished their meals and left, and the rest of her tables were corporately bland. Bland and preoccupied by business, replying to texts or emails at the table and hardly noticing the food. Or her. It was strange to have become so invisible.
Invisible to everyone except the group on table six. And they hadn’t caused anything like the drama she had been expectingwhen she’d brought out that plate of steak and chips. The drama had been contained in the kitchen. The chef – Louis – had taken the request for chips with an explosive volley of words Fran assumed weren’t used much in polite conversation, his expression hooded as he issued a set of clipped instructions to Harry, his words laced with enough vitriol to flambé the entire room should he accidentally encounter a lit match. Or a gas ring.
The chips were a work of subterfuge, something Fran had the definite impression Louis had done before, at a similar request. Huge oblongs of potato, they were deep-fried to be golden on the outside, fluffy on the inside, but there was no way they were what the guest – Noel – had been expecting to eat.
Louis sent them out with a triumphant glare, and Fran’s heart was in her mouth when she delivered them. The thought of having to return them to the kitchen far more concerning than the guest’s reaction. Which hadn’t been too bad, all things considered.
The jokey request for ketchup had caught her off-guard for a second, Noel’s obvious flirting made her bristle momentarily, but with only dessert and coffee to get through, it was looking as though she would be able to handle the rest of this evening’s service without any further trouble.
About fifteen minutes later and Fran was retracting that statement. The women on table two were now embroiled in an argument about someone called Anna, about why she hadn’t been included on the trip, and two of them had sent their main courses back because they hadn’t liked the way the fish was cooked. Meanwhile, on table six, the bottles were metaphorically piling up at an alarming rate, and a conversation Fran had only caught a part of, in which Noel seemed to be explaining, in slurred speech, how women and wine needed to be treated in the same way, was getting heated. She didn’t catch the details of his philosophy, but she presumed it wascontentious when his brother threw back his chair and dumped his napkin on the table.
‘Enough, Noel. That’s enough.’ Rounding the table, he’d all but pushed Fran to one side as he manhandled Noel to his feet. ‘Let’s go.’
‘That’s the trouble with you, big brother.’ With Noel on his feet, it was clear he was very drunk, and he lurched against Johnny as he continued, ‘You’re way too sensible. Boring. Dull. He’s so very dull. Like, the opposite of fun. We were just having fun, a bit of banter.’ Tapping at the side of his face, Noel grinned at her, then did a poor job of disguising a belch.
‘God Almighty.’ With a quietly spoken apology, Johnny led his brother away from the table.
Chapter 6
