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‘How long is it?’ Where was Tennessee anyway? Hopefully not too far from New York. She’d never been a big fan of hanging suspended in a metal box thirty thousand feet above sea level.
‘Nine hours and forty minutes.’
‘Nine …’ So nowhere near New York, then. Bollocks. ‘There isn’t a shorter flight?’
‘I checked. You could get a shorter flight to New York and then transfer for a flight to Atlanta, but there’s a four-hour stopover in Newark.’
‘Oh …’ Shit. The take-offs were always the worst part. Two flights would not be better than one. ‘Fine.’
She jotted down ‘pack Xanax’ on the never-say-die to-do list to keep her calm during take-off.
‘Are Luke and I travelling together?’
‘Yes, he’s hiring a car in Atlanta to do the three-hour drive to the resort. It’s all in the itinerary I sent through from him a week ago.’
‘Right, of course.’ That would be the itinerary sitting on her laptop that she had been avoiding. She added ‘read itinerary and weep’ to the list. Followed by ‘pack extra-strength Xanax’. After sixteen years of avoidance, she was going to be spending close to thirteen hours in a confined space with the man. She might need to get comatose.
‘The car’s booked for six tomorrow to take us to the airport. I spoke to Dave at Crystal PR and he said the publicity junket for the next season of Best of Everything won’t kick into high gear till you get back, so you’re all clear there. Plus, Becky at Random House said there’s nothing more to do on the next book till they get the flats from the printers. Is there anything else you need me to do before tomorrow?’
‘No, I’m good, thanks, Mel.’ Or as good as it was possible to be in her current circumstances. Rearranging her schedule had been easier than expected. And she could certainly do with a break. It would have been nice, though, if this particular break didn’t include a travelling companion she had no desire to see again in this lifetime. ‘I’m going to spend the next couple of hours getting everything up to speed at the studio. Then I thought I’d do the kids a home-cooked meal tonight.’
She popped ‘hit Waitrose’ onto the list.
‘What a nice idea,’ Mel said dutifully. ‘What are you cooking?’
‘Vegetable lasagne and key lime pie.’
Not exactly a menu worthy of Britain’s best-loved baking guru, but Aldo had fixated on key lime pie during their trip to Disney World last summer while Lizzie was with Luke, and vegetable lasagne had once been Lizzie’s favourite dish of hers. Back when Lizzie had been proud of her mum’s career as a master chef.
‘They’ll love that,’ Mel said with a lot more enthusiasm than Halle felt.
‘I hope so,’ Halle replied, not holding out much hope. Her daughter’s sulks weren’t known for their brevity. So she was already braced for the silent treatment over the dinner table after this morning’s bust-up.
After saying goodbye to Mel, Halle unplugged her iPhone from the car’s charger and headed into the studio. Once part of a Victorian wharf used for storing marble imported into the city—back when the Thames was the main thoroughfare for bringing goods in and out of London—the rehabbed brick building was now the bedrock of the Domestic Diva brand.
Halle walked through the tinted glass double doors,
waved to Jonno, their receptionist, then strolled past the luxury meeting rooms used for client consultations and tastings and into the cavernous open-plan kitchen at the back. Glass panelling had been used to replace the old warehouse’s loading doors during the refurbishment, flooding the space with natural light and gifting her dedicated kitchen staff of two food stylists, one master baker and a couple of assistants with a spectacular view of the Thames and the grandiose Harrods Depository on the opposite bank.
Halle loved the way the space made a statement. Of modernity and ambition.
She breathed in the scent of freshly baked sponge and rose water. This was where her career had finally taken flight. Where all those nights spent baking, icing and moulding decorations in the tiny kitchen of her council flat in Hackney while the kids were asleep had been validated. But today, the clean, striking lines of the stainless steel catering ovens and the industrious chatter of her workforce weren’t giving her any more of a lift than the sign outside.
Yet more proof—not that she needed it—that she was not looking forward to tomorrow’s trip.
The two assistants sent her awed looks from their workbenches. She waved back, in too much of a rush today to stop and have a team-building pep talk about the commission they were working on. From the delicate white and pink sugar flowers they were both moulding out of flower paste, she guessed they were busy on the wedding cake she’d designed for a D-list celebrity a couple of weeks ago.
She raced up the steps to the mezzanine level, which looked down over the baking hub, her sensible heels clicking on the steel risers. Arriving at the glass cubicle she used a couple of days a week as her office, she booted up her computer and collapsed into her chair.
She would also need to fit in a quick, confidential chat with Trey Carson at some point. She added the new item to the to-do list from hell as she opened the document marked ‘Consultation Schedule’ on her desktop.
Given her daughter’s not exactly ecstatic reaction to the news that Trey was going to be sleeping over for the next fourteen days, she ought to give the guy a heads-up on some of her daughter’s issues. Figuring out how to do that subtly enough so as not to tread on Lizzie’s already fragile ego, or have it lead to World War Three if she found out Halle had spoken to Trey, would have to be another problem for Future Halle, though.
Because Present Halle was too busy mentally kicking Past Halle’s arse for agreeing to Luke’s stupid stunt in the first place.
Why hadn’t she walked away in the Café Hugo three weeks ago, when Luke had begun talking in tongues about love doctors and Vanity Fair articles? Would stopping Luke’s memoirs—correction, phantom memoirs—be worth getting stranded for two weeks with him in the Tennessee wilderness however luxurious the resort?
As soon as she’d been back on the Eurostar, in the soulless comfort of first class, without Luke’s don’t-be-a-chicken smile daring her to lose her grip on reality, the rational, sensible answer to that question had seemed fairly obvious.
