‘What the…?’

Alice, my best friend and, luckily, home-owner and provider of emergency accommodation when I could no longer afford my rent, stands in the doorway with her mouth open and the palms of her hands pressed to her cheeks.

‘I will tidy everything up. I promise… Those pots are just soaking.’

Alice kicks off her work heels and unhooks her bra, sliding it out the sleeve of her blouse and throwing it over the armchair. This is the moment Alice waits for all day long, the moment of freedom as she steps into the privacy of her own flat where she can exhale and get comfy and she doesn’t have to be uptight-Alice-the-meticulous-employment-lawyer anymore.

‘Oh that feels good. And wow, does that smell good.’ She wriggles out of her black pencil skirt and throws on a pair of shorts.

I look away from the steak I’m cooking and around at the kitchen space that I have completely taken over. On every ring of the hob there’s a pan, every inch of counter space is over-run with the contents of the fridge and the cupboards… Ingredients, knives, chopping boards, weighing scales, hand whisks, wine, whisky… For stocks and sauces, obviously.

‘Sorry, Alice, I know it’s like a bomb has hit. I got a bit carried away. Surprise, surprise.’

She sidles over, wrapping one arm around my shoulder. ‘No, I don’t care. You’re cooking again! That’s GREAT!’ She dips her baby finger in to the creamy cognac sauce I’ve just taken off the heat. ‘Holy shit, Katie. This is insane. I need that sauce in my life.’ She grabs the wine bottle and pours herself a glass. ‘Tell me I’m eating that tonight and it will nearly erase the last eight hours from my consciousness.’

I ladle a small bowlful out for her and hand her a chunk of bread. ‘Did you eat today?’

She shakes her head. ‘No time.’ She begins dunking into the sauce.

‘Are you okay?’ Poor Alice, she’s always been the brainy one, and right now, it feels like she’s being punished for it. Every time she feels it’s time to leave, they dangle a new carrot in front of her or guilt her into taking on just one more client and then the cycle starts again with them making promises that they don’t keep.

Alice shrugs. ‘I will be. It’s nothing. Just the same old work stuff. Doesn’t matter now; I’m home and you’re here, and this sauce is making me want to have its babies, so… Forget it, it’s all good now. Everything wrong has now been put right.’ She dunks another warm crusty hunk into her bowl and starts to foodgasm.

Just as well she doesn’t dine out very often.

She shudders and hits a really high note. ‘This is too good, as in The Best Yet. I need it on prescription. Actually, no, I need to step away now. Cut ties, knock it on the head.’

Alice is my best critic. She adores food but has no idea what goes together and has been caught dipping vegetable crudités into Nutella. Poor colour choices drive her mad – wear a lipstick that’s more ketchup than siren red and Alice will disown you – but will she feed herself a dinner of curry Pot Noodle on a bed of blue cheese? Oh yes, she will.

Alice mops up the last of the sauce, kissing it before she throws it back into her mouth. ‘Is there an AA for carbs?’

When she finally stops whimpering and sighing and opens her eyes again, she’s back to being Alice. Her eyes are wide and clear and full of excitement. There’s colour back in her cheeks and her entire body has relaxed. She looks at me. ‘What’s brought this on? Has something happened? I thought you were done with all this.’

I point to the fridge, where Jean-Michel’s intense glare is now staring from the door, the full newspaper page pinned with alphabet magnets.

She squints to read the heading. ‘Do YOU have what it takes to be Jean-Michel’s next Grand Chef?’ Her fingers fly to her mouth, her eyes blinking. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Deadly serious,’ I tell her.

‘But he is psychotic. Haven’t you seen the documentary they made about him? We actually watched part of it as a training course in rights and responsibilities, because the way he treats his staff, the language, the culture of fear and intimidation… It’s illegal! I can’t believe he hasn’t been sued yet. Why would you want to do this to yourself, Katie? You’ve been through enough. Give yourself a break.’ She pulls a face.

I shake my head. ‘I hear you. But I’ve had a break and I’m ready. I know it sounds crazy but I miss it. I miss the crazy.’

At this Alice balls her fists and gently pounds either side of her head. ‘You know that is crazy, right? I put up with a lot at work. I have a sneery boss breathing down my neck and looking down my top. I get to the office in the dark and go home in the dark – I spend no more than the eight minutes a day I take for lunch in the sunlight. I have more conversations with screens than with people. But go work in a high-stress environment with an infamously erratic chef as my boss? Um, even I don’t want that much crazy, thank you very much.’

‘That’s different. You’ve got a proper career, you’ve got a mortgage. Even if nobody likes you at work, at least they respect you.’

Alice flashes me her middle finger. ‘Fine. But actually it’s me who doesn’t like them. And they don’t like each other either. And nobody feels happy and supported. We are all equally miserable.’

I carve up the steak that’s been resting on a plate and hand her a nice juicy strip on a fork. ‘Remember how we thought we were going to take London by storm? Great jobs, great social scene, great friends?’

Alice nods enthusiastically. ‘Yes. Public me: total London baby, doing so much better than all our classmates who settled down in small rural towns. Actual me: I spend most of my waking hours filled with a blind rage at strangers online and if my Facebook Year in Review video were honest, it’d just be quick cuts of me screaming and using the word “fuck” as various parts of speech. Where’d it all go so wrong?’

I nudge her in the elbow. ‘We got the great friends bit right.’

She smiles at this. ‘Yeah. And I’m having a great night: come home to a gourmet meal by your own live-in private chef, what more could you ask for, right? Now all I need is a massage and sixteen million pounds. We’re in a rut, but yeah, as far as ruts go, this ain’t the worst. So, that just leaves the shitty jobs. Crack that and we’ll have it made.’

And then I hold up my secret weapon, my one-hundred-year-old cast-iron skillet pan and place it on the stove top.

Alice understands immediately. She knows what bringing out the pan means. She bites down on her bottom lip and smiles. ‘Right. Well, crack on. Grand chef it is then. So this is the final part of the puzzle! Clearly you have to have someone to act as chief taster. Where do we start?’

I tell her all about the selection process: first an online application, and then a shortlist will be invited to Jean-Michel’s kitchen to prepare their signature dish in less than fifteen minutes in front of a judging panel. After that, a series of tasks will whittle down the final candidates and then they’ll have to fight it out until the Grand chef is chosen.

I fill both our glasses and we raise them in the air.

‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger right?’

Alice tilts her head. ‘You do know it was Nietzsche who said that. While he was dying of syphilis.’

‘Okay then, smart-arse.’ I slosh more wine into the glass I’ve already emptied and break off another chunk of bread. ‘How about whatever doesn’t kill you leaves you with a lot of unhealthy coping mechanisms and a dark sense of humour?’

‘Weirdly biographical.’

We clink glasses again and Alice breaks in to a giggle as she licks her fingers ‘At least there’s this.’ She holds the bread up in front of her. ‘This is literally the only sensory experience left. Sometimes, I just think that I might as well fully embrace a life of celibacy and then go live in a big country house in the middle of somewhere gorgeous, drink wine, eat cheese, stop waxing and just let myself go completely.’

I grin at her. ‘Don’t stop believing.’

She pretends she can’t hear me and changes the subject. ’So when will you find out if you are shortlisted?’ she asks.

‘Closing date for applications is midnight tonight. I sent mine through already, so I guess I’ll hear in the next week or so. But I want to start practising now, just in case I get the call. You can’t over-prepare for Jean-Michel.’

I finish making my signature steak Diane, we drink a bottle of red each, we crack open the crisps cupboard, and we draw cartoons of Alice’s workmates and make up limericks about them. We imagine we are on death row and think of all the amazing things we’d order as our last meal… No issue of cost or calories. Finally, I bid Alice goodnight as she slopes off to her bedroom and I pull up the sleeping bag onto her sofa. This has been my nightly routine for nearly two years now whilst I’ve been repaying my debts and then trying to scrimp and save enough for a deposit of my own.

I know I’ve done the right thing. It’s out of my hands now; I’ve sent my application, all I can do is wait. The waiting will be the hardest part. Not knowing how or when or if I’ll hear back. A flicker of the possibility that I don’t make it, that I don’t get through and I don’t get called flits across my mind. And that makes me feel sick, even more than the huge quantities of cheesy Wotsits Alice and I have munched through.

And in that instant, I understand how important this is to me. How much this means. My last venture was an epic failure so I’ve got an awful lot to prove. To everyone, but especially all the Bernies of the world who think I’m just a jumped-up pain in the arse. I need to show myself that I’m more than a jumped-up pain in the arse wasting time, that I’m pursuing something that’s actually going to lead somewhere, someday. Prove to my dad that moving away from my family in Ireland was worth it all in the first place, prove to my sister, Rachel, that I am happy and getting on despite the failed restaurant, prove to my brothers that I’m a survivor, strong enough to handle whatever comes my way and prove to myself that I made the right choice choosing my career over Ben.

My phone starts to ring. I presume it’s a wrong number or a butt dial. No one would ring me at this time of night, unless it’s family…

It’s an unknown number but, half-drunk and unable to reason, I decide to answer it, just in case.

‘Hello? Who is this?’ I ask, panicked at the thought that it is my dad and something has happened to him.

‘Is this Katie Kelly?’ The voice is low, deep, gravelly. The line is terrible, but this person doesn’t sound English or Irish. I can’t place the accent. My heart starts to pound in my chest as my mind races.

‘Yes, who wants to know?’ I am kneeling up on the sofa now, my hand quivering.

‘I want to know. Jean-Michel Marchand.’

I scramble forward to standing. Is this a prank? I clap my hand over my mouth. I want to scream down the phone that calling at this time has scared the living shit out of me. Who the hell rings at this time of night! I swallow hard. Good God, Jean-Michel, you really are a bastard.

‘You have made the cut. Be at the Rembrandt Hotel, Chelsea tomorrow at 4 p.m., wear chef whites. Bring your own ingredients. You must prepare a dish in less than fifteen minutes for the pre-selection panel.’

‘Are you joking? How did you—?’

‘Instinct. The first mark of any leader is exceptional instinct. Without instinct, you are a follower, not a leader.’

And the line goes dead.

I guess that’s Jean-Michel’s way of saying congratulations.

But to be honest I don’t care how he says it. Everyone in my family is safe and I’ve just got off the phone with Jean-Michel Marchand.

I made the cut. My name has been shortlisted. He knew my name. He called my phone.

And tomorrow has just become the biggest day of my life.

I’ve passed the first stage.

I’m cooking tomorrow.

For Jean-Michel. The crazy, erratic, angry, genius bastard that he is.

I grab my pen and paper and start scribbling down my ingredients list and then I set my alarm for three hours from now.

Because I know exactly where and when the best cuts of steak can be found, and that means being at Smithfield Market at 4 a.m. I’ve been dealing with this particular butcher forever. He always does a little deal for me as a loyal customer, throws in a little something extra: a second fillet, a few chops or stewing steak. So I imagine whatever happens, myself and Alice will be feasting again tonight.

I pull the blankets up to my chin and try to force myself asleep.

Sleep. As if.

Maybe I am crazy.

But I do know that whether I force myself to sleep or not, the alarm will sound and I will throw everything I’ve got at Jean-Michel.

One way or another.