New Cooks
‘So, you’re Ava, the new help.’ Katie didn’t wait for an invitation. She flopped onto the padded vinyl chair in the cook’s cottage and tried to find space to lean an arm on a table crowded with cookbooks.
‘Yes.’ The woman stopped what she was doing and smiled from the small kitchenette at the back of the room. ‘You must be Katie from next door. John mentioned at dinner last night you’d be over to say hello today. So… hello! You’ve just finished school and I hear you got good marks.’
‘Teachers called me a quiet achiever.’
‘Congratulations! My teachers called me trouble.’
Katie didn’t know what to say but thought it rather odd that a new employee would confess to such a reputation and laugh about it as if she was proud. ‘Been a while since you were at school, I guess.’ Katie’s gaze swept the room. She’d been excited when Mrs Tate had mentioned the new chef from the fancy city hotel was female.
‘Quite a while,’ Ava replied. ‘Can I help you with something? I’m still getting myself settled in and I want to practise a batch of scones for afternoon tea.’
Katie bit her grin into submission, not that the new cook was looking at her. She was back to banging pots and pans and cupboard doors. ‘You’re going to practise?’
‘This oven is old, these baking trays too, and not at all what I’m used to working with.’
City girl, Katie concluded. Any country cook would bash out a batch of scones, no worries. Jeez, she’d watched John bake them in a cast-iron camp oven he’d put in the ground and covered with hot coals. Why had Marjorie Tate hired someone who couldn’t bake basic scones? That was plain weird. Had good looks influenced her choice? It happens. The attractive students at school – the ones who sniggered at others behind their backs – had always been picked first. Not that Katie cared, and not that she wasn’t pretty in her own way. Katie O’Brien had been picked first by the only person who mattered: John Tate. Those sniggering schoolgirls could go drown themselves.
Ava was striking with fiery red hair and freckles, but in a girly way, her pierced ears and fancy store-bought hair clips giving away her city status. She was also way too precious about pots and pans, and way, way, way too old to be any kind of threat. Katie would try to get on and be nice. She didn’t have to like her to be friendly, but only an idiot would make an enemy of the cook, and Katie loved food.
‘I hope your scones turn out as good as John’s, although too good would be foolish.’
‘Foolish how?’
‘By showing off or showing up the boss’s son, of course. Marjorie wouldn’t be too happy with that.’ Katie liked the way Marjorie’s first name sounded, not that she’d ever use it within the woman’s earshot.
‘The way John spoke in the car yesterday, I gathered his mother preferred he didn’t cook.’
‘Marjorie can be a bit old-fashioned. She thinks John needs to focus more on the cattle side of the business and maintenance around Ivy-May. Things like cooking and cleaning the accommodation are more women’s work. John is his own man, of course.’
‘I’m sure he is.’ As Ava turned her back to rinse a baking pan in the sink Katie sensed a snigger. ‘Thanks for dropping by. I’d better get back to work.’
‘Okay. Well, I guess I’ll see you around. Happy practising.’
Katie stepped into the sunshine, feeling anything but soothed and convinced the woman thought her quite silly. She’d wanted to like the new cook. Quentin, for all the things she didn’t like about him, had been waggish, laidback and up on all the Ivy-May gossip. Ava oozed maturity and self-control. She was also everything Katie wanted to be: pretty and poised, with graceful, expressive hands that waved around when she spoke, and a scrawny figure that belied a love of food. Then again, the new cook was everything Katie wasn’t used to having around. Aside from her old-fashioned views, John’s mother was the closest thing she had to a role model. Katie’s own mother, a dutiful and loving wife, had been forty-five when she’d accidentally conceived her second child, while Katie’s sister, older by fifteen years, had fled small-town life without so much as a see-ya-’round. Good riddance, Katie still thought eight years later. As long as she doesn’t come swanning back one day to lay claim to the family farm!
From the wooden footbridge that crossed Candlebark Creek, Katie discarded the small stones she’d collected on her walk back from the cook’s cottage. She jettisoned them one by one into the still waters until the woo-whip whistle somewhere behind grabbed her attention. She could tell by the way he sat in the saddle, and the straw hat he reckoned was cooler than leather, that it was John astride the Palomino he called Paddy. He was pushing the small mob of cattle along the fence line and into the yards in preparation for tomorrow’s branding. Katie would set the alarm tonight so she could help: a third person to open and close gates and chutes made the job easier and less stressful for man and beast.
John whistled again. Between them, they had a series of short, sharp riffs and each had a different meaning. The one from John just now had said, Hey, here I am. With two fingers curling her tongue into position Katie opted for her usual wolf-whistle reply, then sprinted to the yards in time to open the wide metal gate on an adjacent paddock.
‘Good timing. Thanks,’ John said, dismounting. ‘Were you looking for me?’
‘Not everything I do revolves around you.’ She watched as he discarded his hat, swiped a sleeve across his forehead, then peeled the shirt fabric from his body to fan himself as he unbuttoned the front. ‘I was talking to the new cook.’
‘Her name’s Ava.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Not sure she’s going to be much good.’
‘What makes you say that? Mum’s not easily impressed, but she seems to think Ava’s capable.’
‘Well, for a start she has to practise making scones. I told her how good yours were and she looked worried.’
John laughed as he walked over and tapped the tip of Katie’s nose. ‘I love my food fan club of one.’
Katie was keen to expand on her opinion of the new cook, but John was already leading his horse away.
‘Gotta keep moving, K-K-K-Katie, in a bit of a hurry. Catch you tomorrow.’
You can try catching me anytime you like, John Tate!