Cook for Me Read online

  Alexander McCall Smith

  Cook for Me

  Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novels and a number of other series and stand-alone books. His works have been translated into more than forty languages and have been bestsellers throughout the world. He lives in Scotland.

  alexandermccallsmith.com

  Books by Alexander McCall Smith

  In the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series

  The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

  Tears of the Giraffe

  Morality for Beautiful Girls

  The Kalahari Typing School for Men

  The Full Cupboard of Life

  In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

  Blue Shoes and Happiness

  The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

  The Miracle at Speedy Motors

  Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

  The Double Comfort Safari Club

  The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party

  The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection

  The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon

  The Handsome Man’s De Luxe Café

  The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine

  Precious and Grace

  The House of Unexpected Sisters

  The Colors of All the Cattle

  To the Land of Long Lost Friends

  How to Raise an Elephant

  The Joy and Light Bus Company

  A Song of Comfortable Chairs

  In the 44 Scotland Street Series

  44 Scotland Street

  Espresso Tales

  Love Over Scotland

  The World According to Bertie

  The Unbearable Lightness of Scones

  The Importance of Being Seven

  Bertie Plays the Blues

  Sunshine on Scotland Street

  Bertie’s Guide to Life and Mothers

  The Revolving Door of Life

  The Bertie Project

  A Time of Love and Tartan

  The Peppermint Tea Chronicles

  A Promise of Ankles

  Love in the Time of Bertie

  For Young Readers

  The Great Cake Mystery

  The Mystery of Meerkat Hill

  The Mystery of the Missing Lion

  In the Isabel Dalhousie Series

  The Sunday Philosophy Club

  Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

  The Right Attitude to Rain

  The Careful Use of Compliments

  The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday

  The Lost Art of Gratitude

  The Charming Quirks of Others

  The Forgotten Affairs of Youth

  The Perils of Morning Coffee (eBook only)

  The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds

  At the Reunion Buffet (eBook only)

  Sweet, Thoughtful Valentine (eBook only)

  The Novel Habits of Happiness

  A Distant View of Everything

  The Quiet Side of Passion

  The Geometry of Holding Hands

  The Sweet Remnants of Summer

  In the Detective Varg Series

  The Department of Sensitive Crimes

  The Talented Mr. Varg

  The Man with the Silver Saab

  In the Paul Stuart Series

  My Italian Bulldozer

  The Second-Worst Restaurant in France

  In the Corduroy Mansions Series

  Corduroy Mansions

  The Dog Who Came in from the Cold

  A Conspiracy of Friends

  In the Portuguese Irregular Verbs Series

  Portuguese Irregular Verbs

  The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs

  At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances

  Unusual Uses for Olive Oil

  Your Inner Hedgehog

  Other Works

  The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from AfricaLa’s Orchestra Saves the World

  Trains and Lovers

  The Forever Girl

  Fatty O’Leary’s Dinner Party

  Emma: A Modern Retelling

  Chance Developments

  The Good Pilot Peter Woodhouse

  Pianos and Flowers

  The Pavilion in the Clouds

  Tiny Tales

  In a Time of Distance

  Cook for Me

  The First Installment of The Perfect Passion

  Company

  Alexander McCall Smith

  A Vintage Short

  Vintage Books

  A Division of Penguin Random House LLC

  New York

  A VINTAGE BOOKS ORIGINAL 2023

  Copyright © 2023 by Alexander McCall Smith

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintag Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Vintage Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The Cataloging-in-Publication Data for Cook for Me is available at the Library of Congress.

  Vintage eShort ISBN: 9780593686058

  Cover design and illustration by Iain McIntosh

  vintagebooks.com

  a_prh_6.0_142545507_c1_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Other Titles

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  _142545507_

  Chapter One

  No. 24 Mouse Lane

  They were two young women, lingering over a cup of coffee in a slightly shabby Edinburgh bistro. Both were thirty, or thereabouts; both were dressed, unintentionally, in matching outfits: well-cut jeans and white linen blouses.

  There were differences, though: Katie had dark hair, with that combination of green eyes and almost translucent skin that sometimes goes with Celtic ancestry; Ell was a blonde, or almost; Katie had a red scarf thrown casually around her shoulders; Ell wore pearl earrings—each a large, single pearl at the end of a delicate gold chain. Both had that particular confidence that suggests that somebody has a right to be there.

  “You said, three husbands? Three?” That was Ell, who was busy wiping a thin line of latte foam from her lips.

  A woman at a nearby table overheard this. A delicious snippet, she thought. Three husbands? She would tell her friends.

  Katie nodded. “She’s my cousin—or second cousin, shall I say—and she’s had three husbands.” She raised three fingers. “Three. Seriatim, of course.”

  Ell smiled. “Seriatim.” She rolled the word around her tongue.

  “My father always called her his colourful cousin—mostly because of the men, you know. She’s fond of them.”

  “Oh well,” said Ell. “It can happen to anyone, I suppose. Mind you, to have had three husbands sounds a bit greedy. Especially to those of us who’ve had none…”

  Katie smiled. “You’ll find him. You’ve got plenty of time.”

  “Not that I’m looking,” said
Ell, adding, “this week.”

  “Ness is now just into her fifties,” Katie went on. “She’s my father’s first cousin. She acquired the first husband when she was twenty-one. Barely out of school. And he was only twenty. A mere boy.”

  “Ness,” mused Ell. “I like that name.”

  “It’s short for Inverness,” Katie explained. “Her father—my grandfather—came from the north of Scotland. He called her Inverness and his son was called Aberdeen. Inverness Macpherson. Quite a name, don’t you think?”

  Ell agreed.

  “Of course, from the start her first marriage had no future,” Katie went on. “They were far too young.”

  “Young lovers,” said Ell. “There are plenty of precedents. Tristan and Isolde.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “And Pyramus and Thisbe. That’s even before we get to Romeo and Juliet.”

  “Yes,” agreed Katie. “But who gets married at twenty these days? He hardly needed to shave.”

  “And Daphnis and Chloe,” Ell added. “Two innocents who were brought up together and who fell in love.”

  “I’ve heard of them vaguely,” said Katie. “Very vaguely.”

  “I actually read the book,” said Ell. “I was on holiday in Cyprus, and I found it beside my bedside. They were young lovers, but eventually were able to marry. I thought it a touching story, in spite of everything that happened to Daphnis. Much of it somewhat unlikely.”

  “Oh?”

  “He was abducted by pirates—standard stuff for the times, perhaps. But do you know a single person who has been abducted by pirates? I don’t. Not one.”

  Katie laughed. “That first husband lasted a few years and then said that he wanted his freedom. Ness told my mother all about it.”

  “He left?” asked Ell.

  “Yes. He went to Dublin, and was never heard of again. Did he find what he was looking for, I wonder? Possibly.”

  “Oh, well.”

  “Ness was resilient. She’s never been put off by minor setbacks, such as discovering one’s husband has gone off to Dublin. Worse things have happened, is what she says in such circumstances. And I suppose she’s right. There’s always something worse happening elsewhere. It’s worth reminding ourselves of that, I suppose.”

  “Possibly.”

  “And then, in her mid-twenties, with her first divorce out of the way, she met Max.”

  “Husband number two?”

  “Yes. He was stunningly good-looking, and that, it turned out, was a problem. He was a complete narcissist.”

  Ell rolled her eyes. “We’ve all met him, haven’t we?”

  “He was a model for men’s clothing catalogues. You’d recognize him: purposeful chin, eyes focused somewhere in the middle-distance. Very discreet designer-stubble. He went off with a photographer called Jenny, eventually.”

  “Oh well. These things happen. As long as they found what they wanted. Narcissists like photographers.”

  “Yes. And photographers like narcissists. It worked for everybody, I think.” Katie took a sip of her coffee. “Jenny published a book—Max in Sepia. You know those old-fashioned photographs. Ness showed me a copy. She was actually quite proud of it. She was pleased that Max was happy. She said: ‘Max used to be mine, you know. Isn’t he beautiful?’ And he was—particularly in sepia.”

  Katie took a sip of her coffee. “Ness’s story gets better. There were plenty of boyfriends, and then eventually she ended up with husband number three. He was a parachutist called Sidney. If I were called Sidney, I’d jump out of a plane, I suppose. Anyway, he did free fall jumps. I actually met that one when I was a student. I rather liked him.”

  Ell’s eyes widened. “But I don’t think I’m going to like the ending.”

  “No, it was one of those worse things she talked about, I’m afraid. He was doing a charity jump—a fundraising event. He did the jump wearing his kilt. His sponsors loved the idea, but unfortunately, the kilt blew up over his head the moment he entered the slipstream, and he couldn’t see what he was doing. He couldn’t find the ripcord. Or that’s what they think happened. It was very sad.” Katie sighed. The lives of others often seemed so susceptible to derailment. “And so, Ness found herself a widowed double-divorcée in her early forties, with nothing much to do. Sid had been heavily insured—a wise move for a parachutist—and, as the icing on the cake, he had owned a dry-cleaning business. He left her the lot. So, that’s how she started her business.”

  “Which was?”

  “The Perfect Passion Company. A sort of dating agency, or introduction bureau, as Ness likes to call it. I suppose she wanted to make the most of her experience with men.”

  “You should play to your strengths.” She frowned. “But isn’t an introduction bureau a bit old-fashioned these days? Anyone can go to one of those apps…”

  Katie interrupted her friend. “No, not everybody wants to meet online. There are people who prefer to be match-made, so to speak. They like the personal approach. They want a bespoke service.”

  “And that’s what she’s giving to you?”

  Katie hesitated. “Not exactly giving outright. She’s been running it for ten years now and she wants a break. She’s keen to take a grown-up gap year. She’s off to Canada.”

  “And asked you to be in charge?”

  “Temporary owner, was how she put it. She said that I can have the business on a trial basis. If I like it, she’ll pass it on to me. She says I need to see if I like bringing people together.”

  Ell shuddered. “Matchmaking? Some of these people will be…” She searched for the word as a series of images of defeated-looking people came to mind—a shuffling line of the unsuccessful in love. The word came to her. “Tragic?”

  “Aren’t we all?” asked Katie. “In our way? Aren’t we all a bit tragic? But…” She thought for a moment. She had already accepted, and it was now too late. She was due to meet her cousin in town the following day to pick up the keys and get her instructions about running the business. It was too late for doubts.

  “Actually,” she said, “I’m looking forward to it. This is charitable work, Ell. It’s like working for some sort of relief agency. It’s a calling.”

  Ell stared at her friend. She had always known that Katie was an idealist, but there were limits. This, she thought, is not a good idea, whichever way one looked at it. “Be careful,” she said. “Dates don’t always work out.”

  Katie nodded. “Of course. But some do.”

  “I’ll worry about you,” said Ell. “Taking over a business you…well, to be frank, a business that you know nothing about.”

  Katie reassured her. “No need for you to worry,” she said. “What can possibly go wrong?”

  “Everything,” said Ell.

  “Defeatist,” said Katie.

  Ell laughed. “We’ll see.”

  The woman at the nearby table finished her coffee and rose to leave. She shot a glance at Katie and Ell, and then looked away. She had managed to hear most of it, and she disapproved.

  “That’s what I like about this city,” whispered Ell. “It can still actually look disapproving. Where else does anybody actually bother?”

  Chapter Two

  Hope becomes conviction

  Katie made her way along the back lane with its neat progression of mews houses. It was not a street that she was familiar with, being tucked away at the edge of Edinburgh’s Georgian New Town, at a point where the city sloped away to the Firth of Forth below. The fortunes of the street would have fluctuated over the one hundred and fifty years of its existence: after providing cheap accommodation for domestic servants attached to larger establishments, the houses had been converted into private flats, and then into premises for architects, studios for commercial artists, offices for accountants. This mix of domestic and business use had continued into the pres
ent, with the result that at night the street still had a certain life to it. And here and there in the neighbourhood, there were bars and restaurants, a delicatessen, shops selling stationery and office supplies, and, at No. 24 Mouse Lane, up a rickety stair entered through a shared front door, THE PERFECT PASSION COMPANY, its name announced in discreet black lettering on a brass plate.

  Katie pressed a small button at the side of the door. A bell sounded inside, and then she heard a voice call out, “One moment.” She smiled: the voice was familiar, a slightly high-pitched voice, the vowels drawn out in the way in which genteel Edinburgh once spoke. Every city had its ancient accents, obscured over time by layers of accretion, but still heard now and then in odd surviving corners.

  Ness stood before her at the door, her arms outstretched, her lips parted in a broad smile.

  “I knew it was you,” she said. “Or rather, I hoped—and there’s a point, isn’t there, where hope becomes conviction.”

  Katie was absorbed in her older cousin’s embrace. Hope becomes conviction: this was typical of Ness, who delighted in such observations.

  “Well, I did say I would arrive round about now.”

  Ness released her younger relative from her embrace. “Let me look at you,” she said. “It’s been…what, a year? Perhaps more. And you’ve only been in London, of all places. London! The horror, the horror, as Conrad put it. Still, you’re back in Scotland now, for which we must all be intensely grateful.”

  Katie laughed. Ness overstated everything. “London’s all right,” she said.

  Ness looked at her reproachfully. “But not for the whole weekend, my dear…”

  Now they both laughed, and Ness led her visitor into the office that lay beyond the small entrance hall. She gestured to a comfortable-looking armchair while she herself returned to the office chair on the other side of an expanse of desk.

  “Your desk is impressively neat, Ness,” Katie remarked.

  “That, I should point out, is immensely important. People judge others by their desks—and their shoes. That’s all you need to know in the first impressions department.”

  Katie smiled, and Ness gave her a discouraging look.