The Aftermath Of You

Chapter Twelve

Pen found, Toni began writing.

In the taxi home I checked my mobile for messages. One message: "Hello, this is Jack Patterson. I missed a call from you yesterday." His voice stopped doubtfully. "Toni. Were you the uh ... woman ... looking to make designer umbrellas?"

Steeped in nausea and bright lights, it took a long time to recollect who the hell it was leaving a message on my answer phone. When I finally remembered I can't say that I was over the moon. Instead I thanked my lucky stars I hadn't picked up the phone.

I spent the rest of the day with my head down the toilet.

I spent the second day circling ads in the paper.

On day three I applied for the only job which didn't require undressing. Four hours later I found myself surrounded by coffee machines and sweaty domineering men dressed in white coats.

"Toni, are you listening to me?" a fat man screamed at me, brandishing an ultra-sharp knife. "Take these chips to table three before I dice you alive!"

"Yes, chef."

I lurched out through the doors with appalling amounts of chips in hand searching for table three, cursing myself all the while that I'd forgotten the most important decree in life: under no circumstances should I ever work as a waitress.

All chefs are mad. I have never met one yet who had an even temperament or happy attitude towards life. Instead they have an edgy belief that they are on par with surgeons, and while they scream at their wait staff and rush about with a hostile attitude, they are actually imagining that getting food on tables is as important as getting organs in people; strictly Life and Death.

I snorted scornfully and gave my head a vicious shake and it was because my eyeballs were violently moving in my skull that I saw HIM. That's right! Jack Patterson, dressed in a navy polo shirt, with his hair ruffled up – oh, so neatly. Oh, please God, swallow me up right now! What if he remembered my call... and what could my excuse be for calling him at twelve at night? 'I was just running through some calculations and thought I should double check the interest rates ...'

I peeked out of the corner of my eye to see who he was with. Sod that! Up on tippy toes I peered at the top of the head of Jack's companion. Blonde. Well, that didn't really help. Did the crown of that blonde head look like a male or a female? Could I see any dandruff?

If only I had concentrated a little more on carrying my plate of steaming hot chips to table three, then I might have seen it coming. The truck-like woman dressed in a sickly shade of purple was calling out to her friend in a slightly inebriated tone: "Come and listen to what this horrid little man is saying to me! I declare, he's quite taken by my purse." The horrid little man in question (equally saturated) felt that moment might be the last spent with his curvy broad and in over enthusiastic ardour tackled her to the ground, sending her, and a fascinated me and a mass of chips flying towards the floor. If you must take anything from this ... please, be careful what you wish for! The floor had tried to swallow me up but it had failed, and now I looked like an ass.

"Ohhhhhh." The woman cried with laughter, clutching her arms around the horrid man's neck, not caring to straighten her lifeless lilac attire which was doing its very best to display her obscenely orange underwear. "You're a terrible man!"

The terrible man situated his head somewhere below her neck bone and either laughed or covered her with kisses. I couldn't say which because I was crawling back to the kitchen.

The head chef snarled and dunked another lot of chips into the oil, staring down at me with a steely eye, almost urging me to muck up one more time. This brought me to the second reason why I should never be a waitress; I'm extremely uncoordinated. If there is a pin in a metaphorical hay stack I will sit on it. I busied myself wrapping cutlery with napkins (something I had found that I was a natural at), hoping that if I killed a little time before reappearing then everyone, and most importantly, Jack, would have forgotten the saga that had just unfolded. Instead I found myself once again the victim of verbal abuse.

"Don't just stand there like a fucking idiot! These meals need to be taken out to table two! And hurry!" Head Chef began throwing plates of food at me.

Lurching forward, I grabbed a plate of medium rare steak and submerged my finger in the gravy on the side. I noticed all eyes on me. What should I do? I deliberated. Suck gravy off finger, or take a few minutes to fuss around wiping my finger and trying to make the plate look more presentable? Or take a wild chance that no one has noticed my indecision and pretend not to notice my finger and rush it out to the table anyway.

The Head Chef had smoke coming out of his ears. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU WAITING AROUND FOR? WE HAVE MOUTHS TO FEED!"

I chose the third option and rushed out of those horrible swinging doors with my thumb knuckle deep in gravy. I needn't have worried about such a minor detail, because half way across the floor while scrabbling in the back recesses of my brain for what table I was serving and trying to clock Jack's companion and the lifeless lilac truck-like woman, my foot came in contact with a broom which connected to a kitchen hand, who was desperately trying to clean fries and porcelain off the floor, and I plummeted through the sky with steak, rocket salad and crumbed seafood swirling around me like a winter wonderland.