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Have you enjoyed your meal at Teddy’s? If you have, tell the world (well, Tripadvisor). Email us a screenshot and we’ll give you a free dessert or coffee when you come back (please make it soon x).
‘Perfectly pitched, succinct and witty.’ Sabrina nodded with approval.
Flick beamed. ‘Niccolo will be really good at getting women to do this.Come back soon so I can see your beautiful face again,’ she said, putting on an exaggerated accent.
Teddy appeared briefly in the kitchen doorway, dropped a ‘Buon giorno’, and then disappeared again before Sabrina could return the greeting. It was as if yesterday had never happened. She headed for the toilets to begin her routine.
Well, that wasn’t awkward, thought Teddy. Sabrina was backin her customary black cleaning get-up, hair in a ponytail, but he’d dreamt last night that she was in nothing but his sheets and he’d woken up half-convinced that if he rolled over, that’s where he’d find her in reality. He was so out of practice with anything beyond the platonic, it was pathetic.
Something had changed between them yesterday and it unsettled him. Did she sense that he’d been on the brink of leaning over and kissing her cheek as they were about to part and that’s why she’d run off at a rate of knots, which at least had stopped him from making an arse of himself? If he’d done that, and she’d let him, he would have said, ‘Shall we go out for a drink one night?’, because it would have followed as naturally as breathing, but it hadn’t happened and it was probably for the best because this wasn’t a normal situation. She was vulnerable, she was lost, confused. Them being anything other than what they were was a complication she obviously didn’t want and he really didn’t need.
Flick put ‘Operation Review’ into practice that same day and it could be no coincidence that she noticed two fresh big fat five-star reviews had been posted on the internet by the time they’d said goodbye to the last lunch customers.
‘George, Sabrina thinks I should let you out of the kitchen to show your magic to customers,’ said Teddy as they were sitting around eating today’s speciality,polpette di carne.
‘I will have to speak to my agent,’ said George.
‘Yes, yes, do it, Georgy,’ said Niccolo. ‘But wear a mask so you don’t frighten the children.’
‘All Italians want to be Greek,’ said George and presented his profile to the boys. ‘See, from the side we are like Elvis. You can’t compete with your Roman noses. Roamin’ all over your face.’
‘Oh god, it’s kicking off,’ said Flick, but loving the floorshow.
It had been a jolly day so far, which fortified them all for the evening shift. The bookings were few but it had filled up from walk-ins. There had been a party of eight in for a seventieth birthday. The lady had embraced the fuss and the two dishy waiters serenading her and the whole of the restaurant had joined in the singing when it came to ‘Happy Birthday’. The atmosphere had been wonderful.
‘And I think you could splash out on some merchandise. Some souvenir mugs: maybe the wording:I had my birthday at Teddy’s. Or something like that,’ said Sabrina, the thought coming to her as she lifted up her coffee cup when they were all unwinding around the table.
‘Or what aboutI wanna to go to beddy with Teddy,’ said Niccolo, hamming it up. He and his brother were so playful, thought Sabrina. Their mother must be so proud of them. She would have been had they been her sons.
‘Well, I’ll just leave it with you,’ said Sabrina, wondering if she was interfering too much now. The more she suggested, the more she was implying that what he had was lacking.
‘There isn’t one single thing you have said that I haven’t thought would be an improvement,’ said Teddy. He felt comforted that they appeared to be back to normal, any awkwardness gone. ‘I am going to open the kitchen up and move the pizza oven so everyone can see more of the handsome chefs.’
‘And George,’ said Niccolo.
George gave him yet another mouthful of choice Greek and Sabrina thought again what a fantastic set of people they were, the dynamics between them all perfect. She would miss them when the time came to leave them and she bothhoped that would be soon and also not. She’d not outstay her welcome, but she doubted that anything she had in her other life could be this joyful, otherwise why would she have left it?
‘You look tired,’ said Teddy when he dropped Sabrina off at Little Moon that night. That was putting it mildly; she looked shattered actually. ‘Take the day off tomorrow; there’s hardly anything to do.’
She didn’t want to take the day off. It was just the two of them who went in on Sundays. She could only presume that he was trying to gently push her away; maybe he suspected she had misread his intentions and wished to put some distance between them. She took the hint.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
‘Well, isn’t this nice,’ said Cilla.
‘Yes, it is.’
Flick was at her mother’s house for Sunday lunch, some overdue mother and daughter time while Hugo was playing golf, said Cilla when she’d rung to invite her. The house used to be Flick’s home as well but she and her mother butted heads too often and Hugo moving in six months ago gave her the cue to move out. She much preferred having her space in the flat and she would never move back home now. It was better that when she came here, it was just to visit. They were less likely to fall out if they only saw each other in small doses.
Cilla was an excellent cook and the lunch had as many trimmings as a Christmas dinner. Her mother had gone to an awful lot of effort and Flick was touched by that. She really wished she and her mum could get on better, but that would never happen while Cilla thought she knew everything andwas right about everything and emotionally manipulated people. It was lucky that Flick had a strong will and would not be dissuaded from going to university. She had no idea why her mother didn’t want her to go. Sometimes she wondered if her mother was a bit jealous of her. She was an odd woman and her own worst enemy. She didn’t have many friends, which said a lot, and the ones she had were nothing like her Auntie Marielle’s mad cow friends, who were brilliant, down to earth and kind. Marielle would never say things to her like, ‘I think that haircut is a bit short for you, Felicity,’ even if she thought it. Nor was it ‘a mum thing’, as Cilla excused herself, to think she was still five and didn’t have opinions of her own that just might be valid. Cilla rarely gave the respect to others that she automatically expected to receive herself.
‘Is that Vivienne Westwood?’ asked Cilla now, studying her daughter’s top as they were sitting eating.
‘Yep,’ said Flick.
‘I thought you were saving up for university, not buying designer clothes.’
‘I got it from Vinted dirt cheap,’ said Flick, then, when her mother’s face showed puzzlement: ‘Second-hand shop online.’
