“Yes, she make best five-spice roast pork belly. The skin is so crispy and fragrant.”
“I mean, like, it must’ve been horrible to lose your husband like that?” Gemma says.
“Oh, right. Yes, that too. That is why I’m here, you know.To learn how to cook and win him back. They say that the way to man’s heart is—”
“Through his stomach, yeah I know that one.”
“I have always thought the way to man’s heart is through his penis, but where has that one got me? So here I am, I try the route of the stomach.”
“God, I never want to hear you say the P-word ever again,” Gemma mutters.
Mebel waves her off. “Don’t be such prude, Gemma. And also, you are not allowed to call me Mebel. I am at least forty years older. Is so disrespectful. You call me Auntie Mebel.”
“No can do, Mebs,” Gemma says cheerfully. “In here, we’re schoolmates. We’re equals.”
Mebel is torn. Gemma is right, in a way. At the Saint Honoré School of Culinary Arts, both she and Gemma are first-year students. But still, a large part of Mebel can’t let go of the fact that she’s Gemma’s elder and should be treated with the deference she deserves. But then again, she’s no longer in Asia, where elders are treated with reverence. As her brain clacks away at this convoluted thought, she watches Gemma roll out the puff pastry. Gemma wraps the soft-boiled egg with a layer of sausage meat, then wraps that up in the puff pastry before sliding it into the oven. It’s impossible to take her eyes off Gemma’s hands as she works. They move so deftly it’s almost like watching a ballet. And it is then that Mebel realizes Gemma is right. Here in the school, they’re classmates. Equals. Just because Mebel is older doesn’t necessarily mean she knows better. In fact, Gemma can cook circles around her. She needs to accept that youth doesn’t mean a lack of wisdom.
“Okay,” she says finally.
Gemma glances up from the second egg she’s wrapping. “Okay what?”
“Okay, you call me by my first name.”
“Cool.”
That’s it?Mebel wants to say. Here she has come to the choice only after having a mental wrestling showdown with herself, and there’s Gemma just calmly cutting out a puff pastry leaf to use as decoration. Mebel sighs. Try as she might, she will never understand these youngsters.
Chapter 10
How curious it is tofind how much your whole life experience can change after just one night. In the morning, Mebel wakes up tired but strangely cheerful. She bounces out of bed and smiles at her reflection. She goes through her morning routine while humming under her breath, tightening the knot of her apron with a determined tug. When she arrives at the kitchen, she notes with satisfaction that for once, she is the first to arrive, and she doesn’t waste any time before prepping her workstation, wiping everything down and sharpening her knives.
Chef Clarke walks in a few minutes later, as Mebel is sharpening her ten-inch, and his eyebrows raise with obvious surprise when he spots her.
“Good morning, Chef,” she says.
“Er, morning, Mebel.” He hesitates, then continues. “Did you have a think about our last conversation?”
“I did, and I just—” Mebel stops herself. She’s starting to realize how many times she says the word “just,” and it sounds silly in her ears. “I want to show you something.”
“Oh?” Chef Clarke watches as Mebel strides to the industrial-sized refrigerator and takes out a big metal bowl.
She marches to him and presents the bowl solemnly. She can’t quite remember the last time she’s felt this proud of herself. Maybe when she was a child, presenting her scrawled childish drawing to her parents? Her heart is thumping somewhere in the vicinity of her throat as Chef Clarke looks dubiously at the contents of the bowl.
“What’s this then?” he says at last, raising his eyebrows at her.
“I cubed some potatoes last night,” she says.
Still holding her gaze, Chef Clarke reaches into the bowl and picks up a piece of potato. He studies it closely, turning it this way and that. Mebel doesn’t dare to draw a single breath, in case doing so somehow makes the potato change proportions.
“It’s perfect cube,” she says helpfully. “They are all. I measured them.”
“How many potatoes did you use?”
“I lose the count. Twenty?”
“I see. We were supposed to julienne them today. To make potato pancakes.”
It feels as though the tips of Mebel’s ears have caught on fire. “I—ah—”
