A Bitter Feast(6)

She turned her head towards him and whispered something he didn’t understand.

“Help’s coming,” he said. “You’re going to be fine.”

Now he saw that there was a passenger beside her. A man. And he wasn’t moving.

“I—” Her voice was a thread of sound now. She lifted her hand, reaching towards him, and he took it gently. Her fingers felt small in his, and warm. He thought her short hair was light in color, but he couldn’t tell more in the dim light. She moved, as if to struggle.

“Shh.” He gave her hand a squeeze. “Stay still. Are you in pain?”

She blinked, looking puzzled. “No. I—I don’t know. Will you stay . . . with me?”

“Of course I will. We’ll have you out of there in a tick, don’t you worry.” It was going to take the fire brigade, he thought, and probably the Jaws of Life. How long before they arrived? He caught the coppery scent of blood. “Just hang on,” he said, as reassuringly as he could.

“I—” Her fingers moved in his. “I didn’t mean . . .” Her voice faded and he thought, even in the dim light, that her skin had lost color.

“It’s all right,” he told her. “It was an accident.” He thought he heard sirens in the distance.

“No.” The woman turned her head until she could meet his gaze. “I didn’t . . . He was . . .” Her fingers tightened in his. “Please,” she whispered. “Tell them he—” And then the light went out in her eyes.



Viv knelt on the kitchen floor, chasing down slippery fingers of peeled potato with shaking hands. She’d dropped the pan of hand-cut chips destined for the deep fryer.

“Here, let me help,” said Angelica, squatting beside her and reaching for the pan.

“No.” Viv shook her head. “Can you do more chips? We’ve got to get them on or we’ll fall behind.” The hand-cut chips were one of the pub’s signature dishes and the orders for fish and chips and steak frites would be piling up. It was Angelica, the line cook, who ordinarily prepped them before service.

“Okay. But how about you take a smoke break.” It was a joke; a weak one. Viv didn’t allow anyone who smoked to work in back or front of house, much less smoke out in the yard.

Viv chased down the last potato and stood, dumping the lot in the bin.

Ibby, her sous-chef, gave her a cold look as he squeezed past her with two starters of gravlax and horseradish cream. “We’re already in the weeds. What were you thinking, letting that wanker in the kitchen?”

“I didn’t let—” Viv stopped, pressing her lips together. There was no point in arguing with Ibby—Ibby, whose ever-present sense of grievance kept him from being the chef his cooking skills justified. “Just get on with it,” she said.

His muttered, “Yes, Chef,” as he set the plates on the pass was sullen, and she thought that she might actually, finally, fire him. But he was right. What had she been thinking?

She’d taken a breath and turned back to the pies puffing up in the oven, when Bea came in from the bar, her face flushed.

“What the hell happened in here?” Bea hissed. “Sarah says you had a row and half the restaurant heard it. And the tickets are piling up.”

Viv met Bea’s gaze. “Where is he? Is he still out there?”

“No. But he’s left his coat.”

Panic seized Viv. “Grace. Where’s Grace?”

“She’s watching telly in the cottage. I just checked on her.”

Viv’s hands shook with relief. “Good. I just didn’t want—” She broke off as Jack came through from the bar.

The tiny kitchen was suddenly much too hot and filled with far too many bodies. “What the hell are you playing at, Viv?” Jack snapped his bar towel like a bullfighter throwing down a challenge. “Who the hell was that, swanning about the place all day in his poncey hat?”

They all stared at her. Waiting, for different reasons, to hear what she would say.

Finally, Viv spoke to Jack. “Fergus. Fergus O’Reilly. The chef. He was my chef, a long time ago.”



Kincaid had shaken the driver, gently at first, then more forcefully. When there was no response, he’d shouted for the woman with the mobile phone.

“I think she’s stopped breathing,” he said when she reached him.

She deftly moved him aside. Feeling for the pulse in the driver’s neck, she shook her head. “Bloody hell. I can’t get to her, and I don’t have any equipment.”

The sirens grew louder. “We’ll have to wait for the ambulance.”

“But she—she was just talking to me. And what about him?” He gestured towards the passenger.

The woman shook her head. “He wasn’t belted in. I’d guess his head hit the windscreen.”

Kincaid looked at the driver again, and he knew that she was too still, much too still. A wave of dizziness hit him.

He must have swayed, because the next thing he knew he was sitting on the ground and the woman was steadying him with one hand while shining a torch in his eyes with the other. “You may be concussed,” she said. “You’ve got a lump the size of a goose egg. Don’t move.”

The siren had grown deafening. Headlamps threw the woman’s face into profile. She was about Gemma’s age, with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. Then the siren’s wail stopped. Doors slammed, voices shouted. The woman left him. He stayed where he was, frozen, as the action flowed round him.