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‘I think people would want to see them being loaded into the pizza oven. Open up your kitchen, as I told you before, let people watch you chatting and laughing and enjoying creating your dishes – it makes everything taste better.’
She was crazy,pazza.
‘How can it make the food taste better?’ asked Teddy.
‘Psychological effect. Trust me, it works. Those cupboards in the corner, they could be shifted next door; they’re only housing pots and pans. You’d lose about a foot of worktop but the pay-off would be enormous. Move George’s oven into your main kitchen. And also…’
Niccolo nudged Roberto and they started chuckling at Teddy’s gobsmacked expression as Sabrina reeled off more of what was wrong with his restaurant.
‘… Plus I don’t like that blue wall. Blue is a colour that doesn’t occur naturally in food and that can put people off. I’d go for a nice earthy tone, personally.’
‘So you’re Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen now?’ Teddy was smiling lopsidedly as he said it though.
‘Not quite, but I know what tricks the mind. Weirdly, blue makes customers thirstier, so if this were primarily a bar, I’d tell you to keep it.’
Teddy tossed her ideas around in his head like pizza dough, then he drained his cup, stood and said, ‘I’ll think about it.’
Sabrina didn’t go straight home after her shift. She finished at six that night and it was still light so she walked down to the beach. It was cool for late June and the sand was deserted, not that it ever got as full in peak season as the livelier seaside destinations such as Whitby or Scarborough or the recently rejuvenated Slattercove. Shoresend had an air of stepping back in time about it, and as such was a magnet for people who liked a more demure sort of holiday. It was a hidden gem, with its caves at one end of the shore and its sun-trap beach and rock pools at the other and Sabrina knew that whatever had made her come here had done her a big favour.
She sat on the steps that led down from the prom to the sand and let the noise of the sea fill her head, swoosh around in it. There was someone further down with a metal detector and she wished she could have the brain version of one of those, to find all the missing valuable pieces in there.
Bits were coming back to her, but they were too small, too banal to be worthy of mention, like the outer frame of a jigsaw, pieces of grass and sky, a seagull flying in it, but nothing that would hint at what the full picture might be. Whatever had shut her down would be the key to opening her back up again, she was sure of that. But having to leave this place would be hard. She knew she couldn’t stay in Shoresend for ever, but she liked the people she’d met here,she liked the simplicity of her present life. She felt privileged that the waiters teased her with their fake Italian and George tested out his magic tricks on her. She enjoyed talking to Flick and she wondered if she and her own daughter had discussions the way they did – why couldn’t she remember if they had? How could she not bring to her mind something that would be so important to her?
As for Teddy Bonetti, she really wanted to help his restaurant because it didn’t deserve what it was getting. But more than that, she wanted to helphim.She liked being near him. She liked being near him a little too much.
Chapter 31
‘Do you think I’m bonkers wanting to go to uni?’ Flick asked Sabrina as they were having their morning break that Thursday. ‘Mum thinks I am, and that a degree is going to be no use at all and is just going to saddle me with a lifetime of debt.’
‘Do you want to go?’ Sabrina answered.
‘Can’t wait,’ said Flick. ‘I want to get back to studying.’
‘Then no, I don’t think you’re mad. You’re bright and keen and you seem pretty sure that’s what you want to do.’
‘Am I that bright though?’ said Flick, scrunching up her nose. ‘The suggestions you made to Uncle Teddy about this place, a lot of them seem so obvious and I can’t believe any of us missed them. Why didn’t I see them?’
‘Because I’m seeing it more objectively, maybe? And with years of experience behind me.’
‘I’d love to be one of those people who goes into somewhere and says, “You need to do this and this and this” and turn them around just when they’re on the brink of bankruptcy like a superhero. You’ve really revved me up, Sabrina. I hadn’t thought that’s what I’d use my degree for but listeningto you, I’m sure that’s the direction I’d like to go in. But I want thatintuition, like you have, and I clearly haven’t got it.’
‘Intuition isn’t magic; it comes from learned experience, Flick. I couldn’t have just walked into a company knowing nothing about how the business ran and started to make suggestions like some sort of psychic, on my first day in the job. You have to build up your knowledge and your expertise and learn how to assess what works and what doesn’t and even then it’s not quite an exact science. But the more you know, the more informed you are, the more accurate your subconscious calculations will be – in time. Be an expert in your field. The more you know, the more of a toolbox you have at your disposal to utilise.’
‘You sound like you had good teachers,’ said Flick.
‘I had the best,’ replied Sabrina. It was out before she’d realised what she’d said. She remembered someone, an older man, a mentor. He entered her brain on a float of warmth. He’d been special to her and he was someone who was gone now, because she felt that she missed him in that way.
Teddy listened to them talking and saw how much his young cousin believed that Sabrina was exactly what she said she was on the tin. He wasn’t far behind her. Why was no one on the planet looking for her? She must be a loss to someone: it was puzzling, but more than that, it was sad. Her early jokey theory that she might have fallen from outer space was becoming more of a believable possibility with every day that passed.
Now they were both talking about where the other Ciaoissimo restaurants were situated.
‘Whitby. And there’s also one in Scarborough,’ Flick was saying. Her eyes widened with an idea. She whipped her head round to Teddy.
‘Why don’t you and Sabrina check out one of them as mystery customers so she can go in and make an assessment.’
Niccolo whistled and Roberto made a lewd but funny in-and-out gesture with his hips.
‘Not on a date, you knobs,’ said Flick.
