Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 82868 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82868 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Three
Ellie
I dust flour onto the work surface and set down my pastry.
“You really don’t need to go to this much trouble,” Cynthia says from where she’s sitting on the barstool, glass of wine in hand, watching me and my pastry. “We could have had takeaway.”
I roll my eyes. As if I’m going to order takeaway. Not when I can cook. Cheese and onion tart is one hundred percent pure comfort food, and therefore soothing to cook, because it comes with the anticipation of feeling wrapped in a warm blanket when it’s ready. Not just any blanket, either—a blanket made of cheese.
“I want a chance to get used to the kitchen.” Up until a month ago, I’d lived with Shane in a beautiful house in Buckinghamshire, which had a kitchen at least ten times the size of this one.
“Is it much more difficult to cook in a small kitchen?”
Before last month, Cynthia and I hadn’t spoken for a couple of years. She’d been my closest friend since school, but as my relationship with Shane progressed, I seemed to lose touch with everyone in my world. Even my relationship with my parents—which had never fully recovered from me dropping out of university—was relegated to the occasional phone call. But Cynthia hadn’t hesitated when I’d called her to tell her I needed help moving out of Shane’s place and what I’d thought was my home. As fate would have it, her lease had been up just as I needed a place to live. Now I have my first flatmate. It’s a new city and a fresh start after more than ten years with a man I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with. I’m unspeakably grateful to be facing it with a friend by my side.
“No,” I reply, shaping the pastry with my palms. “It’s good practice. At Le Cordon Bleu, you don’t even have this much space. You get about a meter squared to do all your prep.”
“So really it’s a good thing you’ve moved out of that ginormous house.” She smiles the same sympathetic smile I got when people learned I was Shane’s manager.
“Exactly.” I press the floured rolling pin into the pastry and start to flatten it. I’m trying to see all the bright sides of Shane and I splitting. I certainly have more time to cook. Cynthia is back in my life. My parents even dropped by the week Cynthia and I moved into this place. I worked out it was the first time I’d seen them in nearly two years. I gorged myself on crow pie and kept it down. Only a lifetime of hearty portions to go and they might start to forgive me, although my mother would never stop mentioning the career I could have had, if only…
My mother didn’t need to keep reminding me. Like the smell of burnt onions, my terrible decision at eighteen would follow me around for the rest of my life.
“I was kidding,” she says.
“I’m completely serious. It’s not like I could afford to keep the place on my own, even if I had had that option.”
“And he’s not agreed to pay you any kind of settlement, even though you were together all those years?”
“I haven’t asked him. I have some savings.” I hadn’t deliberately kept money from Shane, but I’d quietly been putting a tiny percentage of what we earned away in savings every month. I’d thought it was for us—for a rainy day or our retirement. When it became clear during the split that I was walking away from my job, my house, and any financial settlement, I didn’t say a word about the savings. Shane always refused to pay me a salary—he said there was no point as we shared everything. Which we did. Until we didn’t. Those savings would help with the tuition at Le Cordon Bleu. That, and nineteen months with Dr. Cove.
“But you lost your job, too.”
“Like he said, I could have stayed if I’d wanted to. It was my choice to walk away.”
“After he cheated on you. How could he expect you to stay?”
The short answer is, because he’s a self-centered twat. I was bloody good at my job. He wouldn’t find anyone better, and on some level, he must know it. But there was no way I was going to stay while he paraded his new girlfriend among the friends and fellow riders and WAGs I’d grown close to over the years. I’d lost my boyfriend, my home, my job, and my social circle in one fell swoop.
I focus on my pastry—its perfect consistency and even thickness. It took me a while to master the perfect pastry. But like most things, it just takes practice.
“Sorry,” Cynthia says. “I’m still furious at him.”
“I know,” I reply. “He’s not top of my Christmas card list either. But I’m trying to look at the bright side and not spend any more of my energy on him. I have a great flatmate who likes to drink wine, I get to cook more now, I even have a job.” I couldn’t think about Shane for long. It was still too fresh. Too painful. I was still holding the burn under cold water. I wasn’t ready for the bandage just yet.