Hampstead
Fever
By
Carol
Cooper
It is
high summer in London and trouble is brewing.
Chef Dan should be blissfully happy. He has the woman of his
dreams and a job in a trendy Hampstead bistro. But his over-anxious
partner, engrossed in their baby, has no time for him.
Stressed doctor Geoff finds solace in the arms of a mercurial
actress. Journalist Harriet’s long-term relationship with Sanjay hits the
buffers, leaving each of them with serious questions to answer. Meanwhile
single mother of four Karen lacks the appetite for a suitable relationship.
Passion and panic rise in the heatwave, but who will spot the
danger signs?
***
Extract
from HAMPSTEAD FEVER
"Likely
to be late, is he?" asked Dan as he shuffled dishes in front of the oven.
“I
doubt it,” said Laure.
The
dinner party was all Dan’s fault. "You know what your trouble is?"
he'd told Laure one morning when she was feeding Jack. "You don't see
enough people."
"I
see lots of people."
That
was arrant nonsense. Good word, arrant.
"I'm not counting the health visitor and the mums at toddler group. Which
you hardly ever go to."
"That's
because I don't want Jack to catch all those viruses." By which she meant
every single virus in existence, and then some.
"Let's
have people to dinner. Soon. I'll cook." He wouldn't just cook. He'd take
care of the menu, the shopping, the lot. Didn’t often cook at home. This would
be great. There were dishes that could be served on a big wooden board. Maybe
something topped with thinly sliced roast beef. Or carpaccio of salmon. People
would help themselves. With fingers if necessary. Helped break the ice.
“What
about the cost?” Laure had asked.
“Don’t
worry. I know where to shop.”
"Who
would we invite?" she asked.
"All
your ex-boyfriends of course. Have we got enough chairs?" It was a joke.
Not a very good one, granted. "Sorry. We could invite the
neighbours."
"Oh,
God, not the Freemans. They're odious."
"Not
the Freemans. I was thinking of Eliot, and that flatmate of his, what's her
name." Eliot was gay, so no threat
there. And the lodger was well fit.
Laure
said she wanted to ask Sanjay as well, along with his partner Harriet.
"Who's
Sanjay?"
Laure
explained over a nappy change. Turned out she and Sanjay had been an item years
and years ago. Long before she and Dan had even met, but still. Wasn't a good thing.
"Why?"
Dan asked.
"Why
what?"
"Why
would you want to invite him?"
She
picked up Jack and plopped the nappy sack and contents into the bin before
answering. "Sanjay's a nice guy. And he's funny. You'd like him."
That
sounded pretty unlikely to Dan. The whole idea began to stink like a nappy.
"He
was at speed-dating the night we met, two years ago. And he's only got one
testicle," Laure added. As if that was supposed to make him harmless.
Dan
couldn’t remember him from the Jacaranda bar, and didn't even want to know why
he'd only got one ball. Not his circus, not his monkeys. But Laure told him
anyway. Long story about a misdiagnosis. He’d been treated for cancer with
surgery and everything. Then the doctors figured he’d had TB all along, not
cancer.
Sounded
a bit unlikely. Perhaps she just wanted to make him feel sorry for the guy.
Well,
not going to happen. Arrantly.
While
Dan got dressed for work, she jawed on about Sanjay and his fundraising job
with some wonderful charity for kids, and his girlfriend Harriet who was a
freelance journalist, and how they had meet speed-dating too, and had been an
item about the same length of time he and Laure had been together, and they
were totally loved-up and everything.
It
irritated the crap out of him. It also reminded him that Laure had been a
hot-shot international lawyer, while he, Dan, was an uneducated fella who'd
been in jail and now had a job in a kitchen. A kitchen in Lolo’s Restaurant in
Hampstead Village, no less. But a kitchen all the same.
They
ended up inviting Sanjay to their first dinner since the baby was born. Dan could see that would lead to trouble. He
just didn't know what kind.
About the author
Carol
Cooper is a doctor, journalist, and novelist. She graduated from Cambridge
University where she studied medicine. To support her studies, she worked at
supermarket checkouts, walked dogs, typed manuscripts in Russian, and made
men’s trousers to measure.
After a string of parenting books and an award-winning medical textbook, she turned to fiction with her debut One Night at the Jacaranda. Her novels are all about Londoners looking for love, and they’re laced with inside medical knowledge.