Saving Grace Read Free Page B

Flake. Add to cooked rice with eggs, parsley, lemon juice and remaining butter.
    Cover pan and replace on gentle heat for 5 minutes before serving.

Three
     
    T here is nothing Grace loves more than being alone in her kitchen, surrounded by food, inspirational recipes scattered on the counter in front of her as she tries out new dishes. When she is working on a book, she will use assistants, but it is during these moments, when it is just Grace, alone in her kitchen experimenting, that make her happiest of all.
    The process is almost meditative. The vegetables are gathered, washed, placed carefully in a stainless-steel prep bowl to the left of her chopping board, an empty bowl at the top for the scraps to go on the compost heap, a tray with small empty bowls to the right, waiting for Grace to chop the onions, the celery, the carrots, her bay leaf, peppercorns, parsley stalks and thyme already tied up in cheesecloth for the aromatics to bring her braised short ribs with marmalade glaze to the next level.
    The oven is preheated, all the knives, peelers, paring knives she will need by her board. Her apron is on, a cloth tucked into the tie around her waist, another in a bowl of soapy water ready to clean down her board.
    Cooking was always something she loved, but pre-cooking school it inevitably meant chaos. The sink would gradually pile up with dirty bowls and spoons, as Grace raced around the kitchen grabbing things out of the fridge, chopping and sautéing as she went, stopping to pull the canned tomatoes from the pantry or the chicken from the fridge.
    Cooking school taught her how to organize. It taught her how to prepare her
mise-en-place
. It taught her that if she prepares everything first, the very act of preparation becomes a joy, the cooking is made easier and more enjoyable.
    Now, as she lines up her knives, starts to peel the carrots, her mobile phone rings. With a sigh she wipes her hands on the cloth and picks up the phone, squinting to see the name on the screen before deciding to pick up. Ellen.
    ‘Is everything okay?’
    ‘It’s fine,’ says the voice on the end of the phone. ‘I just wanted to let you know the driver will pick you up tonight at five thirty, and Ted’s tuxedo is being returned from the dry cleaner’s this afternoon.’ Ted’s recently ex-assistant is as efficient and organized as ever, even though she no longer works here.
    ‘You don’t have to do this,’ says Grace. ‘I’m handling all of it. Really, Ellen. You need to concentrate on looking after your mother, not on organizing us.’
    ‘Until we find someone to take my place, you know I’m going to keep doing it. If I left it up to you, you’d be hitchhiking.’
    Grace laughs, for it is true. Organization has never been one of her strong points – hence her need for cooking school – and she had meant to organize a driver for tonight, but, as Ellen well knows, it had slipped her mind, and had it not been for their former assistant, Ted would probably have ended up having to drive himself, which would have upset him, because when he is a keynote speaker, he uses that valuable time in the back of his chauffeur-driven car to fully memorize the words.
    ‘How are you, though?’ asks Grace. ‘Really?’
    ‘I’m fine,’ Ellen reassures, although Grace knows this cannot be true. Ellen’s mother is now struggling with Alzheimer’s. Ellen is moving to Florida to take care of her. The strain is enormous, even though Ellen is loathe to let it show.
    Ellen has been part of their lives for fifteen years. She is the kind of assistant you dream about, the kind of assistant people usually only dream about: efficient, kind, thoughtful, discreet and loyal beyond anything Grace had ever known.
    Ellen can handle Ted. However bad his mood, Ellen has a way of calming him down, of making him feel that everything would be fine, and it is the loss of this, more than anything else, that has been so difficult since she stopped working for