In the Kitchen by Monica Ali

head away. For God's sake, thought Gabriel, what game is he playing now?
    'We're sorry to barge in on you like this,' Fairweather was saying. 'Aren't we, Rolly?'
    The big man shrugged. 'Not really.'
    'What he means is, we felt we had to. Speak to you immediately that is, and since you always seem to be working ...' Fairweather gestured vaguely around the restaurant. 'The mountain must go to Mohammad, as it were. Jolly good, this food, by the way.'
    Rolly leaned closer to Gabriel. His lips twitched. Gabriel could hear the saliva being squirted through Rolly's front teeth and sucked back into his mouth. 'Heard you mislaid one of your staff,' said Rolly. 'I think you forgot to tell us. Must have slipped your mind.'
    'Read about it in the newspaper, actually.' Fairweather bowed his head and fiddled with his wedding band. 'Very sad,' he said. 'A tragedy.'
    'What's the comeback?' said Rawlins. 'What sticks to you?'
    'I'm clear,' said Gabriel. 'Maybe I should have mentioned it, but there's nothing that should affect our plans.'
    'If there's anything I can do,' said Fairweather, as if Gabe had suffered a personal loss. 'Anything at all.'
    A waitress came to top up the water glasses. She was pretty in an uninspired sort of way, a regularity of features, a sufficient spacing of eyes and nose and mouth. Fairweather fumbled with his hair. 'Now, I'll bet you're not really a waitress. Let me guess. You're between acting jobs.'
    'No,' said the girl, rearranging the cruet. 'I am going to be a nurse.' She lingered a while and Fairweather flirted, teasing her about vampires when he discovered she was from Romania, asking her if she had a nurse's uniform yet.
    The girl affected an urbane tolerance, narrowing her eyes and smiling tightly, but by the time she left the table Gabriel could see something beautiful about her and credited Fairweather with the transformation. Fairweather was possessed of the kind of easy warmth that, from a distance, could seem suspicious and up close was impossible to resist.
    They were an unlikely pair, Fairweather and Rawlins, but a pretty good team.
    Their egos didn't clash because they grew in different directions and Gabriel was grateful for that. Five years ago, when he'd tried to set up a business with a trio of experienced restaurateurs, it was like three chafing boils which finally erupted, leaving nothing but a big infected mess. After that, Gabe had decided he would only go it alone. No bank, it turned out, was prepared to advance the necessary amount of cash. He would have been looking at a greasy spoon north of Watford had he not found alternative private finance. The savings he'd built up, around sixty grand, would go in with Rolly's and Fairweather's contributions and his name would hang, finally, over the door of a fine central London restaurant. Looking at his backers now, Gabriel felt a constriction in his throat. Here, he thought, is my chance.
    Forty-two years old and he needed a break. He'd expected his name above the door before now. But he made the plan when he was, what, fifteen, sixteen, and what did he know then? More than his father anyway, stuck as fast to Rileys as a shuttle caught in the loom. Fifteen he was when he planned his career and hadn't he pushed on through? My God, it made him shiver to think of some of the places he'd worked. That sadist in the brasserie in Lyon who pushed Gabe's face down to the pan of boiling mussels, so close the skin peeled back from his cheeks. The hotel in Scarborough where he'd spent nine months, the saddest place on earth; where the staff and even the guests were prone to sudden fits of weeping and where he shared a room with a deaf mute, a fellow trainee who had a passion for Pelmanism and hard-core porn. Of course he hadn't done the stint at a three-star. Hadn't needed to or wanted to, beyond the age of sixteen. As a kid he'd had a dalliance with patisserie, spinning sugar cages two feet high and entering competitions and, at the least, getting