After that they were sent back to their own benches to make their own sauce. Thankfully it looked pretty easy and Hannah started following the recipe without too many qualms, feeling quite confident, even though she did have to fish some of the egg shell out of the bowl. For once she managed to separate the eggs without breaking a single yolk. Happy with this positive start, she carefully measured out all the ingredients. As always, she was a good few minutes behind the others when she began to whisk them together but luckily she’d had the foresight to set a pan to boil on the gas ring. When she popped the bowl over the boiling water, she was only a minute after everyone else. She carried on whisking the mix and checked the recipe. What was it? Three to five minutes? She watched hopefully as the golden yolks began to pale. She’d got this. A few minutes later she examined the sauce, realising there were lots of orangey lumps in it that weren’t supposed to be there. It didn’t look anything like the smooth, pale, creamy sauce that Adrienne’s had made. If anything, it looked rather spotty. She pulled a face and poked at one of the slightly rubbery lumps.

What had she done wrong? She’d done exactly what Adrienne had told them to do and followed the recipe. She glanced around the room. The others were all lifting their bowls from the hot water and none of them seemed to be poking at lumps. Maybe she could strain it before Adrienne came this way. Bending down, she pulled out one of the utensil drawers and rooted around for a sieve. She found a fancy stainless steel conical one that looked just the job. Unfortunately, when she strained the sauce through it, most of the lumps stuck in the holes and stopped the sauce dripping through, so then she had to stir it to give it a helping hand which just forced the yellow orange blobs through.

‘You all right there, Hannah?’ called Jason.

‘Yes. Yes. Fine,’ she said, pushing her hair from her sweaty forehead and glancing quickly at Adrienne, hoping she wasn’t heading her way. Of course she was.

‘Oh dear,’ she said.

Hannah gave her a weak smile. ‘I’m not sure what I did wrong.’

Adrienne looked at the pan of water still furiously bubbling because Hannah had forgotten to turn it off. She leaned over and turned the temperature down. ‘It should be barely simmering. What’s happened is the egg has started to cook too quickly – that’s what the little lumps are. The cooked yolk.’

Hannah sighed.

‘Not to worry,’ said Adrienne, patting her arm. ‘You only learn by making mistakes. I always say you have to get it wrong to know what right looks like.’