Recipe for Trouble... Book Two of the Friendship Series

By Gail Luck

Published by CUSTOM BOOK PUBLICATIONS
Noveletta imprint

FRIENDSHIP SERIES
BOOK TWO – RECIPE FOR TROUBLE
I wake to the smell of ginger and garlic and the sizzle of oil. Mmm ...breakfast. I turn my head towards the kitchen sounds. Oww! Ohhh! My head. I try to sit up, to put my head in my hands. No go.
And my bed seems to be rocking up and back, up and back, making me feel dizzy and sick.
Where am I? And how did I get here? My head starts throbbing and my eyes ache, so I close them against the bright sunlight creeping through a crack in the timber wall.
I hear the sound of bare feet slapping on the timber floor. Then a shadow stands over me. It’s a woman, with an oversized T-shirt over her rolled up pants. She smiles at me, showing big gaps in her teeth.
‘You wan’ blekfas?’ she asks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: CUSTOM BOOK PUBLICATIONS
• Release date: Jul 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370610815

Book preview

Chapter One

Hi! I’m Barry. About a year after my brother Evan, and I formed the Motherless Club, things started to get out of hand again.

Evan and I were gradually starting to learn to live without mum. Dad and Cheryl were still seeing each other, but she didn’t stay over – at least when we were around – and I don’t think things were progressing in any direction. They seemed to be good for each other, anyway.

We had begun to accept her, just so long as she didn’t try to mother us! And so long as her relationship with dad stayed on the same footing it had been on for the last year or so.

She’d changed her hairstyle now. She didn’t have the stupid fluffy curls any more. Talk about butch, she looks like she’s been attacked by Edward Scissorhands. Her hair sticks up in tufts – fire engine red tufts! I thought she looked bad with the blond fluffy curls, but this was worse. Red? A red birds nest? It didn’t seem to bother dad, though, so I guess it’s none of my business.

Truong and I were still good mates but he’d made a few more friends since that time, so I only saw him on and off in term time. There seemed to be a kind of unspoken agreement that we’d be mates forever and that we had a lifetime to get to know each other. Besides, I had other fish to fry. I was busy finding out about relationships. Trudy and I saw each other regularly on a Friday, to catch up on our week. On some week nights when she came over, dad fired up the old barbie and we often stopped for a Coke at Huynh’s Hot Bread Shop on our way home.

Truong was usually there, watching over his dad in a protective kind of way. He’d join us if he had time – we paid for our Cokes, now, though.

We didn’t talk much about the past. It was painful, still. Too much water, as they say. What am I talking about? Too much water? Something Mum used to say, I think. Too much water? Too much water where? In the ocean …in the river? River …bridge? Too much water in the river?

Got it! Too much water under the bridge’ Too many problems and misunderstandings. Too much pain.

Anyway, I’d better move ahead. This could take some time.

We’d been staying with gran for a week in the school holidays. Dad was at a conference in Perth.

Gran’s always been a great cook. It was a treat to eat her old-fashioned recipes, filled with cream and eggs and butter. After all, we didn’t have a weight problem and if gran did, she wasn’t telling anybody.

We had pancakes with lemon and sugar for breakfast, toasted cheese dreams for lunch and steak or chops with fries for dinner. Or casseroles with rich sauces. None of your prissy vegetarian dishes for gran. ‘Feed the man meat’ was her motto and she was sticking to it.

We’d just finished a breakfast of bacon and eggs, followed by freshly buttered toast. We were licking the butter off our fingers while we decided what we would do next when gran dropped a bit of a bombshell.

‘Boys’, she said, fixing us with a death stare that pinned us to our chairs. ‘I want you both home by five this afternoon. We’re having a guest for dinner.’

While this seemed reasonable enough, her next words gave us food for thought. ‘He’s a French chef,’ she continued. Food for thought! Where did that come from?

We stared back at gran, not knowing what to say. I’d never met a French chef before and I’m pretty sure Evan hadn’t either.

‘Why is he coming here for dinner, Gran?’ Evan asked. ‘D’you know him?’

‘No, Evan. I’ve never met him but he’s thinking about opening a new restaurant in town and he wants to find out what local people like to eat. Cheryl met him when he catered for a work function and she recommended my cooking as the best in town.’

That seemed odd. About Cheryl and gran, I mean. I didn’t even know that gran knew Cheryl. But then what do I know? Half the time I don’t even know which way is up!

Gran smiled. ‘I want you both to come home and have a shower and get into clean clothes, please. This is important to me and who knows where it could lead?’ I wasn’t sure what gran meant. Where did she want it to lead? I thought being a grandmother was achievement enough, without looking for anything else.

‘What do you mean, Gran?’ I asked.

‘Well,’ gran looked a bit coy. ‘I’ve always wanted to write a cookbook, Barry. And Monsieur Vincent says …’ She stopped because Evan and I both burst out laughing.

‘Come on, Gran. He doesn’t really expect people to call him Monsieur Vincent, does he?’ I asked between hoots of laughter.

‘Monsieur Vincent,’ gran continued, choosing to ignore our outburst, ‘…is talking about offering cooking classes at the restaurant. He wants me to help him out with recipes and work with him to perfect each dish in my repertoire.’ Repertoire? I’d never heard gran use a word like that before. I didn’t even know what it meant. Not a good idea to ask now with gran in full flight. Maybe it means a list of things she can cook or something like that.

Gran never ceases to amaze me. Just when you think you’ve got her pegged, she comes up with something like this. One minute, she’s in the kitchen cooking up a storm, just like all my friends’ grannies, then the next minute, she’s learning Khmer, so she can study in Cambodia; or chiselling statues out of concrete blocks, so she can run an art camp in the bush… or in her backyard …or anywhere. These schemes don’t usually seem to come off. Or maybe she doesn’t really want them to, she just yearns for something a bit different.

She’s dad’s mum, but she and our mum hit it off from the first day they met. I know gran misses mum as much as we do and there’s been a sadness about her since she’s lost her daughter-in-law. So I felt we should help gran with these ideas, even if she didn’t finish up writing a cookbook.

‘Okay, Gran,’ I agreed. ‘We’ll be home in plenty of time. And we won’t disappoint you, Gran. We scrub up pretty good, you know!’ This brought a smile to her face, as she hurried off to write a shopping list.

We decided to ride our bikes to the sand hills. It was a fair hike to the main road and then we freewheeled all the way down to the ocean. A quick but hard push along the narrow road, watching for traffic all the way, and we were there.

As the local paper described it last week in the travel section: ‘The sand hills stretch for miles towards the sea, in rolling yellow waves. They catch up with the sea at the water’s edge, where they turn into wavelets of palest blue, deepening to turquoise and then flat limitless green as the water’s depth increases and the waves rise and fall endlessly towards the horizon.’

A bit too girly for my taste. But I guess it’s true.

We’d brought a couple of flattened boxes to use as toboggan slides. Entertainment didn’t come much cheaper than that. Or much better!

The morning passed in a flash, helped along by the hissing sound of the wind in our ears as we zoomed down the slopes on our home-made ski boards. We packed it in when the sun got so hot we couldn’t bear the heat on our backs any longer.

It was on the way home that we were caught up in a nasty little accident on the narrow road back to the touristy beach town, where we turned for the steep climb up to Gran’s.

The two drivers were locked in confrontation. Road rage was mounting as we watched.

In the middle of the road, two men, unevenly matched in height, faced each other across the bonnet of a car. Traffic was stalled either side of the bingle. The taller guy was pretty pee’d off, by the look on his face. He was white with anger, his face a stony mask with slits for eyes.

He had a new-looking scar running down from his nose to the corner of his mouth. As his anger mounted, the scar seemed to throb with his fury.

His hair was seriously black, long and dragged back into a very sleek ponytail. And his eyes – Asian eyes, I realized – shot sparks across the bonnet of the car.

He was snarling at the other guy, a little guy in a grey cardigan and slacks – giving him a hard time, the Aussie insults flowing thick and fast. ‘You bloody idiot,’ he yelled.

‘Where’re your brains? In your bum? They must be, otherwise you’d have pulled over and let me pass. You shouldn’t be driving, you old fart!’ The broad Australian vowels bounced off the road, loud and flat. It was a bit of a shock, this broad, nasal voice coming out of the thin Asian body.

The other guy was a kind of little grey man, with grey hair and faded grey eyes. Light bounced off the lenses of his charcoal grey glasses, reflecting spots of bright light on his daggy grey cardigan.

I felt sorry for the little guy. He wasn’t young. He’d probably been driving too slowly for Scarface, so to frighten the old guy, he’d tapped the backside of his car. Only it hadn’t frightened him. He’d braked, without bothering to pull over to the side of the road, opened his door and confronted his tormentor in the sports car. Oh, yes. Did I mention that the scar faced one was driving a sports car? The latest style in convertibles, as seriously black and shiny as his hair.

The little grey man was driving a solid old Holden. The bumper bar hadn’t even been scratched by Scarface’s threatening tap. But the sports car! Sick, man! The latest in crumple-proof bumpers had folded like a piece of cardboard. It was sticking out like two wings off the front of the car. It looked as if it would take off any minute, flapping its way into space, shiny and black and new.

Evan and I had stood in the shade of the gums on the side of the road, hidden by the deep shade as the afternoon wore on, watching and listening. We could have left. Although the road was blocked, our bikes would have made it through. But, caught up in the drama, we stood, leaning on our bikes and just whiling away the time. Until, suddenly, I realized we still had to pedal home up the long hill and then get ready for Gran’s guest.

The shadows were deepening as we rode up the drive, past the sweet-smelling hedges and the white flowers that seemed to glow in the dark garden. We’d have to hurry if we were to make it in time for Gran’s deadline.

I was so hungry. We hadn’t taken any food with us, thinking we’d be home much earlier. But the bingle had claimed our attention.

The aromas coming from the kitchen, as we wheeled our bikes into the shed, were mouth-watering.

That was last week, when things seemed normal and life had settled into a kind of monotonous and soothing pattern. Last week, before everything changed.

*****

Chapter Two

When the doorbell rings, Gran hurried to answer it. Her guest, the French chef, is late. I hear the mumble of a male voice. Apologising, I imagine. Then Gran answers.

Her footsteps echo down the tiled hall. I hear the squeak of rubber soles. She comes into the living area, followed by …I don’t get it! You’ll never guess who! French chef? No way!

It’s the Asian bully with the snapping black eyes. The one we saw howling down the old guy on the narrow road running beside the sand dunes. He’s smiling now. Slim and confident, he crosses the room, his rubber soles squealing on the polished floor.

Gran introduces us and he opens his mouth to reply. Then he blinks at us, me and Evan. He blinks at us in surprise. We’re standing by the sliding doors. They’re open to the cool night air. I think for a moment that he’s recognized us. But he was so fury-charged, so high on his own self-importance, that I realise that’s not possible. Then what? Why the rapid eye movement, the blink of recognition? Déjà vu? Is that how you say it? It’s something Dad explained to me, once, when something triggered a memory. A memory of some place from our past that seems familiar even though we can’t remember being there before. Or know that we haven’t been there.

Maybe he thought he knew us from some past time. Or maybe he’d registered our faces, even though he’d been so preoccupied with the bingle. Or maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t like kids.

‘Ah!’ he recovers, holds out his hand. ‘Bon soir, mes enfants!’ The French accent hisses from between his smiling lips. ‘’Ow are you, boys? H’are you well, this h’evening?’ It’s our turn to blink. Or mine, anyway. The flat, nasal Aussie voice has completely disappeared. The voice sounds French. It matches the ponytailed image, the sleek black clothes he’s wearing, the fake smile.

I look at Evan. He looks back at me. Blankly. He must have noticed the change of personality. Maybe he hasn’t noticed the change in accent. He’s younger than me. I put it down to that. Or maybe he isn’t interested in people, the way I am. Anyway, I give him a warning look. He knows that look. It’s not a secret code or anything. Just a look. It means: Don’t react.’ We’ve used it since before we could talk. It’s got us out of a lot of trouble in its time, that look.

We both say ‘Hi’, and shake the sweaty