A Twist of the Knife Read Free

boyfriend. And he always paid for every meal in crisp, new banknotes. He never accepted anything free.
    He never tipped.
    He felt fulfilled. As if he had been put on this planet to be the custodian of its restaurants’ standards. He was married to tomorrow’s restaurants. His reviews were his babies.
    Once, early in his career, in a rare interview, he declared, ‘The best number for dinner is two – myself and a good waiter.’
    But not on the thirteenth of any month.
    On the thirteenth of any month, it all changed.
    From as far back in his life as he could remember, N.N. Kettering had been a triskaidekaphobic. He had a morbid fear of the number thirteen. And the worst possible date was a Friday the thirteenth. Because not only was he a triskaidekaphobe, he was also a paraskavedekatriaphobe.
    Someone who has a total fear of the date Friday the thirteenth.
    He knew that the number thirteen was out to get him. It was around him all the time. It was there on car number plates. It lurked in the number of grains in the breakfast cereals he ate. In the number of berries he added to his cereal. In the number of mouthfuls he took to eat his breakfast, and his lunch, and his dinner. In the number of steps he would take from a taxi to the restaurant. In the number of steps from the front door of the restaurant to his table.
    He would never sit at table thirteen. He would never choose the thirteenth item on a menu. Nor on a wine list. Nor anything that was a multiple of thirteen.
    Whenever it was a Friday the thirteenth, he would prepare himself in advance. All kinds of danger lurked out in the world. So it was best not to risk it. Stay home. But home was dangerous, too. He had read that the place where you were most likely to die was in your own home, especially your kitchen. So, on every Friday the thirteenth he stayed in bed, in his small flat in London’s Notting Hill. The night before, he prepared everything he would need up until midnight the following day. He would spend the time reading, and watching television – mostly food programmes – and visiting, anonymously of course, a number of networking sites and online discussion groups about restaurants.
    So it happened, on one such Friday the thirteenth, a cold February day when he was logged on while in bed, that he found by chance a new discussion group on the Web, made up of some of the world’s greatest chefs. He had eaten in every one of their restaurants – a few of them he had praised, but the majority he had trashed. He watched the discussion in fascination, as they were talking about a restaurant he had never heard of. And not just talking about it. Raving about it.
    This demented him! He knew every significant restaurant in the world, surely? He had eaten at all the ones that had any kind of a reputation. Yet here, suddenly, was a reference not just to a restaurant, but to one these particular chefs agreed unanimously was the very best in the world. No restaurant sourced better cuts of meat. No restaurant handled an entire range of offal with such inventiveness. He became hungry just reading the descriptions of the sauces, the tenderness of every bite, the juxtaposition of flavours. He was salivating.
    And the bastards did not give away the name.
    Frustrated, he posted, under his Internet pseudonym,
ChefStalker
, the words: ‘Hi everyone, what’s the name of this place? I thought I knew every restaurant worth eating in on the planet!’
    To his dismay, the discussion ended abruptly, without any reply.
    He realized there was only one thing for it. He would email some of the chefs, selecting only the ones he had praised, revealing who he was, knowing that was almost bound to lead to an invitation.
    To his joy, he was right. Two days later he received an email, although, curiously, anonymous:
    Dear N.N. Kettering,
    Thank you for your interest. This establishment about which you are enquiring is in fact a private dining club. We would be delighted for you to join