Chapters (39)
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Epilogue
- Author’s note
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
Anna backed in through the doors, holding them open so that her visitor could follow. She put the crate Liam had given her onto the nearest work surface.
‘Feel free to look around,’ Anna said, as she opened a cupboard and took out one of the tubs she had bought specifically to store seafood. ‘I’m just going to get this fish sorted and into the fridge. My papers are in there.’ She pointed to a plastic ring binder on the bench beneath the stairs.
‘You’re planning to make the meals you want to sell from this kitchen?’ Belinda Turner asked, looking around before she reached for the binder.
‘My idea was to serve lunch on the bench outside a couple of times a week to whomever happens to be passing,’ Anna explained.
‘How many covers?’
‘No more than six. I couldn’t do more than that comfortably in a kitchen this size.’
Turner nodded as she turned the pages of the records Anna had already begun to keep. A lifetime in professional kitchens meant that checking daily fridge temperatures and logging her cleaning routines came as a natural reflex, and Anna had been doing it since she’d first considered the idea of the lunch club.
‘Can I look at the fridge?’ Turner asked.
‘Of course.’ Anna stood aside as the woman sifted through the impeccably clean and perfectly organized shelves.
Belinda Turner took her time. Anna watched as she shifted things here and there, opened drawers and cupboards, examined worktops and the oven. The woman’s demeanour was calm, her face entirely neutral, and yet the more time she spent looking at her kitchen in miniature, the more Anna’s anxiety grew.
‘What about bathroom facilities?’ the inspector asked.
‘I thought it would be better to ask my neighbours, who own the bed and breakfast opposite, to let guests use theirs instead of mine,’ Anna said, intensely glad now that she’d had this idea. ‘It’s inside the door directly on the other side of the path.’
‘That’s a sensible solution. What about the serving area?’
Anna took her outside and showed her the picnic bench. ‘I haven’t dressed it yet,’ she said. ‘But I can show you a photograph of the last time I had friends over for dinner, if you like – I’ll be setting up the same.’