And then she made the mistake of glancing at her wristwatch.
Brilliant. Now Luca had made her late too.
Although he was not totally responsible.
It had felt as though every customer who walked into the deli that afternoon had some urgent and important question about the provenance of the salami they were buying, or the secret ingredients that made her patisserie and ready meals so special.
She loved every one of the regulars who had been coming to Brannigans week in, week out, for weeks, months or years.
It was such a thrill to join in the busy chatter of the customers who gathered to taste and talk in appreciation of her food and she wouldn’t want it any other way. Busy, busy, busy.
But on the not so plus side, she was working every hour of the day to make the deli a success and it was well after five before she had escaped with her precious cargo.
She’d allowed just enough time to catch the bus before the six o’clock deadline. Okay, yes, it was rather unusual for a chef to deliver catering-sized packs of gnocchi and fresh wild mushroom sauce by public transport, but this was London on a cold wet January evening. She could either walk it, or catch the bus. Taxis were a luxury she could ill afford, and with this rush-hour traffic?
She had missed her bus. And was now officially and undeniably late for her delivery to Patrick at the Dog and Duck.
Patrick served a lot of food between six and seven in the evening and she could still make it before he sent out a search party. It wasn’t her fault that the customers at the hippest gastro pub in town adored her food. Or what they believed was Patrick’s food. He had tripled his order, and she needed that business. Especially now.
Dragging her gaze away from the bookshop window, Bunty dodged and dived along the busy pavements, trying to make up for lost time. The grey January drizzle had turned into sleet and beneath her padded jacket her T-shirt had begun to stick to her skin. She tried not to think about what was happening to her hair.
Had she ever looked like those glossy girls? And where had the last ten years gone?
Apart from the years spent at catering school, training as a restaurant chef, and then looking after her sick mother while running a deli, of course.
Apart from that.
She was still trying to come up with some explanation for her current state of grunginess when a cab cut her off as she tried to cross the street. Both of her hands were occupied with food containers, and the sauce almost ended up on the road as she swerved to avoid splattering the contents.
Luckily for her, Patrick was standing at the door chalking up the menu on a blackboard, and ran forward to take the bags from her. Homemade gnocchi was the first item on the board.
‘You’re cutting it a bit fine, sweetheart. Ten minutes later, and my little Italian treat would have been off the menu.’
‘Ten yards later, and you would have been scraping your treats and me off the front of that taxi.’ She leant forward, stood on tiptoe and kissed her old boyfriend lightly on the cheek and smiled. ‘You know you love me.’
The tall, handsome, stubbly Irishman nodded a couple of times. ‘True, but I’d love you more if you came back to work for me. A couple of nights a week? One night? I need you, babe. And you must have missed me!’ His eyebrows lifted a couple of times above the smile.
‘Tempting. But I think you only want me for my food.’
He swiped his hand across his thigh. ‘Drat. You saw through my evil plan. In that case I need to double up the ravioli and all the antipasti for the lunch crew. I’ll send one of the lads around tomorrow and pick it up.’
‘No problem. And since you love me, you get first look at some new meals I’ve been working on.’
Her mobile phone rang and cut short her stab at optimism. Bunty flipped open the cover. ‘Pronto?’
‘It’s me,’ Alex said. ‘We have a problem.’
‘Really,’ Bunty said, pulling a printed menu from her pocket, telephone lodged between her neck and shoulder. ‘Surely not. I thought you’d be out partying by now. Let me guess, you picked up a hunky date at the airport and have decided to bail on me?’
‘You should be back by now. At this rate you are going to be late for your own birthday party,’ Alex said with a high-pitched laugh and Bunty stopped, taken aback by the tone in her best friend’s voice. Alex McGee was an industrial chemist who travelled the world auditing production plants. She did stress for a living.
Bunty could hear the urgency in her friend’s voice as she turned to pass the menu across to Patrick.
‘I am on my way right now,’ she said into the phone.
‘Something wrong?’ Patrick asked, sounding concerned, from behind her.
‘Not a bit,’ Bunty said to him. ‘Alex is worried that I won’t have time for a serious makeover before my birthday party.’
‘Makeover? Not from what I can see.’ Patrick grinned, looking into her face. ‘Sorry I can’t be there. Mad busy. But I’ll be raising a glass later in your direction.’
‘Thanks, sweetie, but it is going to take more than Alex’s make-up bag to change my life,’ Bunty whispered to herself, ‘but it’s worth a try’ before smiling back at Patrick to reassure him.
Ten minutes later, sweaty and slightly out of breath, she was weaving her way along the busy pavements, filled with young people heading out after work to the collection of wine bars, cafés and bistros that had opened along the narrow pedestrian-only area of the London suburb. Her short cut took her past the new office blocks and apartments where there used to be small shops and businesses just like hers. They were good customers, but she still missed the old community that used to be here.
Head back, shoulders down, she strode out in her black trainers, dodging the cycles and scooters, switching from lane to lane down the backstreets, before turning the corner onto the main parade, with its collection of two-storey stone and brick buildings, where she could see Alex standing under the striped navy-blue and white awning of Brannigans.
Her parents’ deli.
Her deli now.
The thought caught in her throat, and Bunty exhaled slowly as Alex waved back and stepped out to greet her.
Her best friend from convent school was wearing the trouser suit Bunty had helped her choose the previous September. It was summer-weight dark navy worsted, faint pink fine stripes, with a cleverly constructed narrow lapel and trouser cuffs – but fitted in at the waist so that there was no mistake that this lady had curves to be proud of..
With that suit Alex had won the promotion she had been begging for, the two-seater sports car parked outside the shop, and six weeks’ paid holiday a year.
The coral silk shirt was an inspiration for a girl who paid a fortune for caramel highlights in her brown hair, and Alex looked great, even under fluorescent streetlight on a grey January evening.
‘Hey, look at you.’ Bunty grinned and gave her a one-armed hug.
‘More to the point, look at you.’ Alex tutted and stepped back to hold Bunty at arm’s length. ‘Is this the new fashion in kitchen grunge couture that I have been hearing about? Because I have to tell you, it is not working for me.’
Then she gave an over-the-top shudder. ‘Sorry, my girl. It’s time for an intervention. You pop inside and sort through your birthday cards with Fran. I need to skip up the street and ask the two hunks who run the gym if they can run door security for us. Because you are going to look so hot tonight I’ll be beating the boys back with a stick.’
Bunty snorted a reply. ‘Security for whom? I know you, Alexandra Caitlin McGee.