Yes Chef, No Chef - By Susan Willis Page 0,65

with Kate, he thought objectively, he could have boasted proudly to her about his achievements and with more staff he wouldn’t have had to let her down so much.

Jessie gave him her hero-worship smile when he walked through the office door and holding the telephone receiver in her hand she told him it was his dad on the line. After the heart-to-heart with his mum he’d lain in bed thinking through everything she’d said to him and reluctantly he knew she was right. It was time he stopped blaming him, accepted responsibility for his own actions, and basically started to behave like the man he wanted to become.

Taking a deep breath he was determined to be pleasant. “Hey, Dad. How you doing?”

He could hear the surprise in his dad’s voice at the friendly greeting and he told Tim the settlement figure on the cheque he’d sent to Katie. “I think she deserves it for all the hard work she put into the apartment, don’t you?”

Tim smiled at his dad’s kindness and knew he’d liked her as much as his mum had. “Ah, Dad, that’s great. I’m sure she’ll be over the moon. And I’m going to start looking for a smaller place for myself. I mean, I can still just afford the monthly rent on the apartment with my salary but it doesn’t leave much for anything else. So…”

“But you don’t need to do that if you’d rather stay in the apartment,” Graham said quickly, “I can pick the short fall up for a while?”

“No, I’ll be much better with somewhere smaller,” he said knowing it was time he stood on his own two feet. “But, thanks for the offer, Dad.”

Graham cleared his throat with a familiar little grunting sound which Tim knew he had something emotional to say. “Er, Katie sent your mum a lovely thank you card and told her she was leaving her job to start a freelance catering business. She’s said the money would be great because she was looking for a flat with a big kitchen to run the business from.”

“Really?” Tim asked wondering what had happened to make her want to leave the retailers. “I wonder why she’s doing that?”

Silence prevailed down the telephone line and Tim waited for his father to start telling him what to do.

But he didn’t. “No idea but make sure you keep in touch with us and you know you can come home at any time,” he said.

The line went dead and he actually felt disappointed at the end of the conversation. He slumped down at his desk wondering why he had always felt he was living in his dad’s shadow. Academically, he’d never shone at school or university always just scraping through exams and knew he’d never been a great achiever, not until he’d discovered his flair for cooking of course, whereas his father had excelled in everything he’d touched from an early age.

But when and why had he decided he was living in his shadow, none of the family had ever said that to him, therefore it must have been something he’d conjured up over the years. Beginning to recognise how much of an injustice he’d levelled against his father, a creeping feeling of guilt curled its way around his gut. And yes, although it was true his father had never been around much when he was little his mum was right- he had no idea of what it was like to be short of money. He’d never wanted for anything and had always been cosseted with the secure feeling of a safety net underneath him, namely his father.

He looked at Kate in the photograph which was standing up on the desk again, ‘and that was more than you’ve ever had’, he thought lovingly and touched her face with his thumb. He knew Kate had had to fight her way through university on a grant and work hard because her father was dead and her mum only had her pension. Slowly he shook his head feeling as though he’d been plodding through a mire in the dark for the last month and all of a sudden he was aware of a great shining light ahead - his shoulders slumped in shame realising he’d behaved like a spoilt brat and blamed everyone else for his own mistakes.

There was still no word from Kate and he knew now he should have been the first one to hold out the olive branch in peace and furthermore it was because of