‘Him. But there was another fool … He had a job … Bryan with a Y.’
‘Kian the magician showed up one night. Booty call. You didn’t want him to come in. Then Bryan with a Y arrived.’
‘Oh, I remember …’
‘You introduced them to each other, said they had lots in common, that they were both dickheads, then kicked them out. You were boss! Girl power that night, all right!’
TWENTY-ONE
… a ceramic bust of Lenin, a clock with Cyrillic numbers, a collection of military medals, another bust of Lenin … Jessie kept on scrolling through Etsy. She was drawn to the Soviet field telephones, with their old-fashioned black handsets, but she had to try to put herself in Jin Woo Park’s mindset. I am a Korean chef who lives in Geneva and collects Soviet memorabilia. What do I like?
On she scrolled. More military medals, another field telephone – then a vintage rubber chemical-protection suit in a dodgy shade of green. Jessie’s heart jumped. This! It was attractively weird and, if nothing else, would get Jin Woo Park’s attention. She put it into her basket, then narrowed her search to ‘Soviet Memorabilia Cookery’. A paraffin camping stove, stamped with ‘USSR’, popped up. That also went into the basket, along with some ancient-looking serving spoons and a stack of recipe cards in Cyrillic.
Right, that was plenty. She hurried through checkout and the appallingly high delivery charges. She wanted these ASAP.
Jin Woo Park was one of four chefs she was currently researching in the hope of luring them to PiG’s cookery school. He collected Soviet memorabilia, which wasn’t too out there. Certainly not as bad as the one who collected human teeth. You had to aim for these chefs when they were at a certain level: not so successful that they had their own range of sauces in Waitrose, but they couldn’t be so ‘up-and-coming’ that no one else had heard of them. If you shelled out five hundred euro to spend a day cooking with a famous chef, you wanted to boast about it – and how could you boast about a chef who was a complete unknown?
Jin Woo Park, chef and proprietor of Kalgukso, which offered Swiss/Korean cuisine, was in the sweet spot. He’d been passed over by the Michelin-star people in the latest round, to much grumbling on foodie boards, so he’d be feeling raw and amenable to flattery.
Those who couldn’t understand how Jessie persuaded such a chef to come to Ireland were missing the basics. The chefs came because Jessie put the work in. She researched and researched until they felt like her best friends – like, look at her now. It was almost midnight, and she’d been on her iPad for two hours, doing a deep dive on him.
Most nights, she went to bed around ten o’clock, intending to read a prize-winning book for half an hour, then get eight hours of restorative sleep. Instead, she went straight online, looking up amazing resorts or cheerily buying stuff. Or furtively opening the Mail Online – reading it made her feel almost queasy but she was irresistibly drawn to the comments beneath each story. Seeing the criticisms of Hollywood actresses – too thin, not thin enough, saggy neck, too much lip-filler – took some of the sting out of the hatred that came her way.
Tonight, though, she’d been focused on carefully assembling a gift box that would show Jin Woo Park she truly ‘got’ him. Jin Woo’s Swiss wife, Océane, was a long-limbed blonde at least a head taller than him. No kids, which was a shame because the quickest way to snag someone’s heart was to be nice to their children. But she’d work with what she had: she’d love-bomb Océane.
Océane’s Instagram was public, in English, and she posted a lot. Mostly pre-workout selfies or very spensie shoes. So Jessie would send her a pair of fabulous shoes. But she needed to know her size. If handbags had been Océane’s thing, it would have been a lot easier. Taking a chance, she commented on a pair of Océane’s Louboutins. ‘OMG. So beautiful. You have teeny-tiny feet, are you a thirty-six?’ She threw in four heart-eyed emojis and sent it.
Océane had twenty thousand followers – she might not even see Jessie’s post. Or she might think Jessie was a foot-fetishist and block her.
But almost immediately, Océane replied, ‘I wish lol. I’m thirty-nine.’
What a result! Immediately Jessie jumped on Net-a-Porter and set about matching Océane’s taste