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She flung back the French doors to her tiny balcony and inhaled a lungful of the perfumed morning air. It was Sunday and she had the whole morning to herself before she trotted down the hill to check out the Purple Parrot.
She fixed herself coffee and ran her eyes around the tiny kitchen. There was no mistaking that the studio belonged to a professional chef. Every shelf was crammed with a myriad of cookery books; old and more recent, pristine and well-thumbed, thick, heavy tomes and flimsy pamphlets, a cornucopia of brightly coloured gems waiting to be explored, to be freed from the prison of the shelf and their contents brought to life in the kitchen.
Of course, Millie had devoured all of Claudia’s published cookery books – over twenty in total – each extolling a unique take on British and European cuisine. Her favourite wasThe Baking Blend– a collection of recipes and reminiscences from Claudia’s childhood in Cornwall. She wondered whether Claudia’s next book would be a Caribbean-inspired one, or perhaps one that focused solely on chocolate recipes. To Millie, cookery books, like all books, provided a portal into another world: one in which seemingly disparate ingredients could be moulded into taste bud-zinging perfection. Even now, she still experienced the surge of intense pleasure whenever she peeled back a book’s cover and ingested the scent of a newly printed page.
Growing up, she had dreamed of becoming a cookery writer. She had rushed home from school after food technology classes, her heart ablaze with a plethora of possibilities for new recipes which she recorded on pieces of scrap paper scattered around her bedroom. Her teenage self had no reason to believe that her dream would not come true, that life did not always deliver a positive outcome.
She’d developed her obsession with culinary alchemy at the age of seven when her eyes had landed on her aunt’s wedding cake, resplendent with a froth of sugar-paste flowers that would have been frowned on today. A monument to melodramatic 1980s taste excess, it had reigned on the top table, drawing her gaze to its suggestion of fantasy like a princess’s ballgown more likely to be worn by her sister Jen.
However, intrinsically linked with her enduring desire to emulate the best in the field was the fatal flaw in her plan – her inherent tendency to scatter utensils and ingredients far and wide. Shetriedto be organised, to make lists, to stack jars with the labels facing front, but the hassle just irritated the heck out of her so she ditched the futile attempt and simply reverted to her natural state of dishevelled chaos. She had been born with the clumsy-clutter gene, whilst her sister had been gifted the characteristics of Little Miss Neat and Tidy.
Millie smiled as she recalled the occasion in her teens when she had shoved a bag of caster sugar into her woven raffia shopping basket and left a trail all the way home like Hansel in the forest. But despite the amusement of Jen and her friends, the incident hadn’t swayed her one inch from her ambitions. Unlike most childhood dreams, this one did not trickle away at the introduction of Barbie or Blyton or boys.
She had been encouraged in her ambitions by her food tech teacher, Mrs Dovedale, who promised that, if she insisted on pinning her future on the culinary roulette wheel, then she would support her. An angel lurking beneath a battleaxe exterior, Mrs Dovedale spotted a fellow experimentalist in her midst and nurtured Millie’s blossoming talent. Millie knew she had her to thank for her career success as she had flunked her more academic subjects.
Anyway, what use was being able to quote extensively from Shakespeare or Thomas Hardy if you couldn’t master the skills required to feed yourself and your family?
The piles of discarded tomes grew taller as Millie continued her bibliographic archaeology. Eventually she selected one at random – for how could she choose from the kaleidoscope of options? She smoothed her palm over its glossy cover – the face it presented to the world – and selected the first page, inhaling the faint fragrance loitering within of dried dust and printer’s ink.
Devouring the contents of a recipe book had always been her go-to therapy whenever her demons invaded, but the best medicine of all was plunging her hands into a bowl of flour or whipping up a soufflé by hand. An idea crept into her mind, and she knew immediately how she was going to spend her day. It was what she had been engaged to do anyway.
She extracted her phone and googled information on cocoa production. She found there were several well-known and well-regarded cocoa plantations in the southern area of St Lucia which produced cocoa beans on a commercial scale, unlike Claudia’s five acres. She cast her eyes down the listed articles and selected one from the website of a famous chocolate house whose products Jen adored and always requested for her birthday or Christmas gift.
The commentary told her that the Caribbean provided ideal conditions for the precious pods to grow – fertile volcanic soil, high altitudes, heavy rainfall, both sunshine and shade. The trees produced delicate pink-and-white flowers which matured into the pods she had collected. She learned that one of the reasons cocoa production fell into decline in St Lucia was due to the harvesting being so labour intensive. Each pod had to be carefully selected and cut from the tree so as not to disturb the remaining pods. After they had been split by hand, the beans were removed and allowed to ferment on a bed of banana leaves in wooden boxes, then dried under the Caribbean sun. She was surprised to note that the nibs used to produce the cocoa were inside the bean and not the actual bean itself. It was these nibs that were roasted to a rich, dark brown colour to acquire their chocolatey flavour.
She closed her eyes and was almost able to smell the sweet aroma of her favourite recipes. Further internet searching revealed what she already knew – and something that she repeatedly spouted when challenged over her excessive intake of “the food of the gods” – chocolate makes you happy! It contains flavonoids and antioxidants which some research confirmed have anti-ageing properties. One report even went further to extol the benefits of cocoa in extending brain function and memory.
Her academic research over, she turned to her favourite pastime – researching recipes.
Just flicking through Claudia’s cookbooks for chocolate recipes threw up a myriad of suggestions from the expected to the obscure – from brownies, cookies and cupcakes, to sauces for wild boar and even a mix for a chocolate face mask. Millie could have spent all day subsumed in the pages of cookery advice when real life receded and she could soar away from her problems.
She took a quick inventory of the provisions in the cupboards and the fridge that Claudia had arranged to be delivered before she arrived, and went off in search of her trusty scrap box of recipes. Its contents had been collected over many years from every corner of England and France, jotted on the back of dog-eared theatre programmes, curled-up bus tickets, even napkins and old postcards of St Tropez.
She had intended to create a carefully catalogued filing system but somehow it had never materialised, and anyway, her unique version of a Rolodex was a system of sorts. For instance, she knew that the recipe for her mini lemon-curd roulades was on the back of a grease-stained till receipt from Harrods, the ingredients for the chocolate-ganache torte her grandmother used to make were scribbled on an old French Christmas card, and she had no trouble remembering how to rustle up her famous lime-drizzle-and-Pippa-seed muffins.
She decided on a batch of her mum’s favourite melt-in-the-mouth madeleines, a few mini chocolate-truffle tortes, then maybe some chocolate-and-orange-marmalade cupcakes, taking advantage of the ready availability of the fresh oranges that hung from the trees just outside her window for her home-made marmalade. She also decided it was the perfect opportunity to perform her autopsy on the cocoa pod she had picked the previous night. A curl of excitement wriggled through her chest as she anticipated making a new discovery.
She skipped down the stairs and across the gravelled courtyard to the villa’s rear door.
No way! Was she going crazy?
The two scarred wooden crates were still on the whitewashed steps, but they were empty. Not a wrinkled pod in sight – even the solitary specimen she had picked the night before had disappeared.
Yes, okay, she knew she was famous for her clumsiness, her disorganised approach to all things culinary. She accepted that she was messy and forgetful and kept her beloved recipes scrawled on beer mats and receipts in a scrap box. But there was no way she would have dreamed up an entire episode of harvesting a cocoa pod with a machete. And she hadn’t allowed a sip of alcohol to pass her lips!
She lifted the lid to peer into the depths of the top crate which had been lined with a bed of bedraggled banana leaves. A fetid stench reached her nostrils – but there were no cocoa pods. She tried to think how many of the shrivelled rugby balls would have been in each of the crates – probably at least a dozen.
But not one remained. She chanced a glance over her shoulder, peering into the lush palm trees as if she were expecting someone to leap out and shout, “Surprise!” but of course no one did. She skirted the white-painted veranda to the front of the villa overlooking the serene, undisturbed surface of the pool. She checked the handles of the French doors – locked. There was nothing to indicate anyone had been there. No note, no envelope, no boots by the back door.
She shook her head and rubbed the heels of her palms over her eyes before meandering back to the studio, reasoning that Ella must have dropped by and taken the pods home. But even as she filed the mystery away into her mind’s Rolodex, she knew it was an unlikely conclusion to grasp on to.
For one thing, Ella didn’t drive.
Once back in the kitchen, Millie’s spirits lifted, her hands sped up and she baked, baked, baked as though her life depended on it. She creamed the butter and caster sugar for the cupcakes by hand before adding the eggs, flour and a sprinkle of cocoa and grated orange peel, the smell causing her mouth to water. Finally, she divided up the mixture into five muffin trays and slotting them into the oven.
The scent of warm buttery chocolate cake permeated the kitchen and she inhaled the wonderful aroma. She shoved the mixing bowl and cutlery into the sink and turned on the tap. Water spurted everywhere and her crimson vest top was splattered with a random pattern of droplets. She took a moment to survey the kitchen. Flour and cocoa powder scattered every available work surface, interspersed with splodges of butter, slivers of grated chocolate, and how had a smudge of orange marmalade appeared on the freezer door?
Every available surface was strewn with implements and she knew she should tidy up as she went along, but that had always been her downfall. Unlike most professional chefs, she preferred to be surrounded by the paraphernalia of cooking, with not only the raw ingredients receiving her undivided attention but also her Kenwood mixer, her copper pans, her Jamie Oliver knives.
