Yes Chef, No Chef - By Susan Willis Page 0,52
she asked as Chrissie opened the door wider to let her through.
“Be careful,” she warned while Katie made her way down the hall and into the kitchen diner. “Don’t trip over the bike.”
It was an old Victorian house with large rooms that seemed to be crammed full of toys, piles of clothes, and laundry baskets. She cleared a chair for Katie and beckoned her to sit down. Katie did and looked through into the living room area and saw two babies asleep in the cot and she lowered her voice.
“Thanks for inviting me. You look like you’ve got your hands full?” she whispered.
“It’s OK, they’re down for a couple of hours now so you don’t need to whisper. My mum-in-law has taken little John off to her house to give me a break.”
Chrissie had the oddest miss-match in clothes, colouring and features Katie had ever seen. Her short spikey blonde hair seemed out of place with her large face, bushy eyebrows, almost bulbous nose and very full pouting lips. Black and white striped glasses with a bright blue scarf woven around her neck and a red jumper completed the look where nothing seemed to fit together until she smiled. And then Katie stared in awe at the perfect white California style teeth and wide smile that seemed to light up her whole face.
Chrissie started moving around the kitchen with grace and organisation, switching on the kettle, pouring milk into coffee mugs, picking up toys from the floor and folding clothes from one of the baskets into a pile while they talked.
“And how old is John?” Katie asked jumping slightly when the washing machine behind her rattled its way into a vigorous spin cycle.
Chrissie grinned. “He’s two,” she said. “And although he’s gorgeous and I love him to bits, he’s hard work at the moment…”
Katie sighed with admiration at this girl and knew she’d struggle with one baby never mind three. “God, how do you cope?”
“Oh well, my mum-in-law is one in a million and my husband, John, is a cracker. And the twins through there,” she said nodding towards the cot. “Were a complete surprise. We’d adopted John because I couldn’t fall pregnant and then when he was a year old I found out I was pregnant and there was two for the price of one,” she said laughing.
Katie shook her head and stirred the coffee Chrissie had handed her. “Well it’s no wonder you had to stop the catering business.”
Chrissie smiled again. “I know. It was a shame though because I loved it. And as I said to you on the phone it made me a tidy stack of money, however, it can be hard work,” she said raising an eyebrow. “Mainly I think because you are on your own single-handedly doing all the thinking, advertising, planning, shopping, cooking and selling. But, I catered mainly for single men who basically haven’t a clue when it comes to cooking anything that doesn’t include opening a packet. In fact, that’s how I met my John.”
It was exactly what she’d discussed with Frances and hearing it first-hand was the extra reassurance that she was on the right track. “Great. It’s exactly what I was thinking of starting to do and I’ve only had a brief look on the websites but there doesn’t appear to be many companies catering for small numbers?”
“You’re right there isn’t. And you’ll be fine,” she said reassuringly. “When you hit a dry patch you can always pick up some odd agency jobs like I did. In fact I covered once for a guy who was off sick at Café Nero and I did some hours covering for a junior chef in a hotel for a few weeks when they were really busy.”
Chrissie delved into a drawer in a big wooden French dresser and pulled out a folder. “Yeah, there’s never been many caterers that take on small number bookings and that’s why I was so much in demand,” she said pulling out a sheaf of papers.
From what Katie could see the front page looked to be a list of names and addresses and Chrissie paused. “This is my contact list and although it’s a good few years out of date it might be worthwhile getting in touch with them,” she said looking Katie in the eye and then took a deep breath. “And, if this sounds cheeky then you must say so. But if you do go ahead I would be willing to give you the list as