Dedication

      To my parents, and in loving memory of

       my grandparents.

      Epigraph

      Oh, the tiger will love you. There is no sincerer love than the love of food.

      George Bernard Shaw

      If I can’t have too many truffles, I’ll do without truffles.

      Colette

      Contents

      Title Page

      Dedication

      Epigraph

      Parfait

      Crumble

      Icing

      Epilogue

      Food in the book

      A word on brownies…

      A few of my favourite things…

      Further reading

      Acknowledgements

       Coming Soon

       Leftovers

      About the Author

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

      Parfait

      1. noun – a rich frozen dessert, made with eggs, cream and sugar

      2. noun [from French] perfect

      Two girls walk into a bar. There is no punchline.

      I’m the girl on the left in the wildly inappropriate black and white spotty summer dress. It is the snowiest February in thirty-eight years but I flew back from a month in Buenos Aires three days ago and this tan ain’t going to waste.

      A month in Buenos Aires: sounds glamorous? Ok: a month in a £6 a night hostel in the Boedo barrio – think Kilburn with 98% humidity. No air con, no overhead lighting, shared showers. I’m thirty-three. I earn okay money. I don’t like sharing showers, not least with 18-year-old Austrians proclaiming Wiener Blut the greatest Falco album ever released. Wieners aside, Laura and I have the time of our lives.

      Laura is the girl on the right in the bar. Best friend, tough crowd, northerner. She’s wearing a polo neck and a woolly hat. Together we look ridiculous; we don’t care.

      It is one of those evenings. Whether it’s the outfits, the tans or the sociability that a snowy Friday night in London brings, we end up being the epicentre of it all. One guy, Rob, has been trying to impress me for the last twenty minutes. He’s too pretty for my taste and he’s spouting off about knowing Martin Scorsese’s casting director.

      ‘I can see you playing a gangster’s moll in that dress,’ he says. ‘Those big green eyes. Real curves.’

      I laugh. I’m a size 10, with tits and an arse, and the girl he’s abandoned at the bar talking to his mate is one of those girls you can count the vertebrae of through her silk shirt.

      ‘Are your eyes real?’ he says.

      ‘No, they’re mint imperials, I paint the irises on every morning to match my shoes,’ I say.

      ‘I like your brushwork,’ he says, smirking.

      ‘Your girlfriend’s getting pissed off,’ says Laura.

      ‘She’s with my mate,’ says Rob, fiddling with his watch. ‘Actually, do you girls want a drink? Two more margaritas?’ He heads to the bar. Before he’s even back there, his mate, who is less pretty and far more my type, heads towards us.

      ‘He doesn’t waste his time …’ says Laura.

      I say nothing. I look at Rob’s friend and a rare but familiar feeling grabs me: something big is about to happen.

      ‘Why are you talking to Rob?’ he says to me, grinning. ‘You don’t fancy him.’

      ‘What business is it of yours?’ I say. ‘Do you fancy me?’

      He looks at me for a heartbeat. ‘Yeah.’

      ‘Well, then you talk to me instead. What’s your name?’

      ‘James.’

      ‘James what?’

      ‘James Stephens.’

      ‘Like the poet.’

      ‘Ooh, a clever girl.’

      ‘I’m not,’ I say. ‘My granny has a poem of his she likes to quote.’

      ‘A love poem?’

      ‘Yeah, it’s about a man who throttles his over-attentive wife to death.’ He laughs.

      ‘I can tell you’re smart,’ he says. ‘And warm. It’s in your eyes. Don’t waste your time with Rob, waste it with me.’

      So I did. I talked to him, danced a tango round the bar with him, sank three margaritas with him and at the end of the night gave him my number.

      He calls when he says he will – the next day. Why do I feel so grateful for this? Because the world of dating has deigned this sort of behaviour too keen. ‘I want to see you again,’ he says.

      ‘Good.’

      ‘But I’m going away for a fortnight tomorrow.’

      ‘Oh.’

      ‘It’s work. I travel quite a bit.’

      ‘Where are you going?’

      ‘China.’

      ‘What do you actually do?’ I’d imagined he was a high-end builder or something to do with running a warehouse. He’s very masculine, hefty, a bit rough round the edges, and his shirt last night didn’t quite fit.

      ‘You’ll laugh,’ he says.

      ‘Are you an international clown?’

      ‘No. I sell socks.’

      ‘What, like in a shop?’

      ‘Sort of.’

      ‘Everybody needs socks,’ I say.

      ‘At least two pairs,’ he says. ‘I’m back in a fortnight, I’d like to take you for dinner.’

      ‘Great. I like dinner.’

      ‘But do you like to eat?’

      ‘Are you joking? It’s what I do.’

      ‘You’re not one of those girls who orders salad and just pushes it round the plate? You’re pretty skinny.’

      ‘You’ve got the wrong number.’ I have slender arms and a small waist. You can fool most of the people most of the time with this combo.

      ‘Good. I know the perfect place. I’ll call you in two weeks.’

      I work in a twelve-storey shiny building in Soho. Up until six months ago, I had one of the greatest jobs in the world and one of the greatest bosses. I am a Pudding Developer for Fletchers, one of the biggest supermarkets in the country. I worked for a genius called Maggie Bainbridge. She never compromised on quality and had bigger balls than any of the men here.

      Six months ago she quit after management fired a bunch of our top talent and brought in a grunt of accountants, intent on putting the bottom line above everything else. Even our loo roll has been downgraded to that tracing paper crap from the 80s that you have to