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‘I see the kitchen has been delivered,’ said Ella. ‘Did you make sure you ticked off every item as it arrived?’
Millie’s eyes shot open as she realized with a bolt of panic where she was, and also that she had not thought to check off the items on the inventory. Not the best of starts to her supervisory job. Her skin itched from sunburn and she chastised herself for forgetting to lather on sunscreen. She checked her watch – it was nine o’clock.
‘Sorry, Ella, I…’
‘Never mind. It looks like we have a more pressing problem to deal with. I see Fitz and his crew haven’t arrived yet. They should have been here two hours ago to help with the unloading and to tell the delivery men where to put the boxes.’ A splash of annoyance floated across Ella’s face, but it was swiftly chased away by her broad smile. ‘Come on! Let’s investigate! It’s like Christmas has come again!’
Millie leapt up from the sunbed, excitement swirling through her veins. She stepped into the overcrowded kitchen and promptly stood on the head of a discarded broom whose handle whacked her square on the nose. If she hadn’t been fully awake before, she was now.
‘Ouch!’
But Ella hadn’t noticed her clumsiness. She had already launched herself at one of the huge cardboard boxes, tearing away the tape like a child at a birthday party, before moving on to attack the plastic wrapping surrounding the oven.
‘Wow! Just look at this, Millie. It’s magnificent. Oh, I can’t wait to get started with the cooking.’
‘Don’t you think we should maybe leave the unpacking until the kitchen fitters arrive?’ said Millie, itching to pull off a long strip of cardboard to reveal the front of the fridge in all its stainless-steel glory.
‘How can they complain when they should have been here?’
Millie didn’t have to be told twice. Together they ripped the protective jacket from the gigantic fridge-freezer, the sinks, the sparkling silver taps, the state-of-the-art coffee machine. Oohs and aahs followed ‘Look at this!’ and ‘Wow!’ until they slumped down onto the sunloungers on the veranda completely spent.
Cardboard Chaos reigned.
The kitchen looked as though it had entertained a pack of hyenas on the rampage – sheets of plastic, blankets of bubble wrap, dribbles of polystyrene balls and coils of brown tape scattered the length and breadth of the room. Wonky mountains of wooden pallets, cardboard boxes and strips of cornicing reached as high as the ceiling.
Millie giggled. If Zach had been there, he would be rolling his eyes and saying something like, ‘Millie? Yes, she can bring chaos to an empty room.’And he was right. She toyed with the idea of taking a photograph on her phone and emailing it to him, but decided not to furnish him with indisputable evidence with which to support his opinion of her. She suspected he would see it for himself soon enough if the tradesmen didn’t arrive shortly – they were now over three hours late. It didn’t bode well.
With nothing else left to do, Millie made another jug of freshly squeezed lemonade and they relaxed in the shade on the veranda to recover from their exploits and wait for Fitz and his men to arrive.
‘So, what will you be doing when you return to the UK, Millie?’ asked Ella, rearranging her voluminous emerald-and-saffron skirt around her chubby knees and wiggling her toes out of her sandals. That day she had chosen to wear a necklace made from golf-ball-sized beads in green and yellow to match her outfit, with a pair of hand-painted wooden earrings.
‘Back to my job as a lowly pastry chef in a tiny patisserie in London. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s fun. Étienne is a great boss, and he lets me the tiny studio upstairs for a great rent. And I get to work with my best friend Pippa who lives just across the hallway.’
‘Have you always lived in London?’
‘No, actually, I’ve only been there for six months. Before that I ran a restaurant in Oxford.’ Millie decided not to publicise her Cordon Bleu training. She always felt as though she was boasting when she said it, but she wanted to be truthful with her new friend.
‘Did you grow up there? In Oxford?’
‘I spent my early childhood in a village just outside Antibes in the south of France. Mum’s French, Dad’s from Oxford and we moved there when I was seven and my sister was nine. When Dad died two years ago, Mum moved back to France to live with her sister. Jen and I stayed on in Oxford.’
‘And is that where you met your friend Pippa?’
‘Oh, no, I met Pippa when I started work at Café Étienne.’
‘Oh.’ Ella turned her head to scrutinise Millie’s face. ‘I assumed when you said she was your best friend that you had known each other longer.’
How could she explain to kind, sympathetic, wonderful Ella that she had left her life in Oxford behind and that she never wanted to go back? Not even to see her former best friend, Frankie. Of course, Frankie was as mortified about what had happened with Luke as she was, but her loyalties had to lie elsewhere. Millie understood this, but it still hurt tremendously to think about it, so she steered their conversation to the safer ground of her professional life.
‘My dream is to be like Claudia and you, Ella. I want to bake, bake, bake until the larder runs dry. I want to craft new recipes from exotic ingredients sourced from all over the world. I want to learn new skills from local chefs and practise until I’m proficient. I want to write cookery books and run my own culinary courses, work in a patisserie in Paris, barbeque steaks in Argentina, advise on pairing spices with fish, meat, and seafood. I want to slice vegetables, roast fruit, stir-fry salad.’
‘Your mother must be so proud of what you and your sister have achieved.’
‘She understands totally how much we both love to work with food. After all, it was her and Gran who inspired us to cook when we were toddlers. She has always urged us to follow our dreams – which is exactly what she is doing now. You should see her on a Saturday night with her friends at the salsa club at the local village hall. And if you saw some of her outfits. Copacabana has nothing on the Glitzy Girls of Antibes!’
‘Oh, I’d love to meet her. She sounds like my kind of woman.’
Millie smiled at the image of her mother dancing with joyous abandon, squeezing the most out of every moment of her life despite its setbacks. She knew she should strive to emulate her example. After all, her mother had lost her soulmate whilst she and Luke had only been together for a few years.
