Читать книгу Mr Landen Has No Brain - Stephen Walker - Страница 8

Why did her head hurt like a squashed melon?

Why could she smell cooking?

… And why could she hear a knife being sharpened?

Bleary eyed, Sally pulled her hair away from her face then checked her watch. Slowly, slowly it came into focus.

Two hours?

She’d been out cold for two hours?

And where was she?

She raised her head to look around. She recognized those white walls and that psychotic neatness, those gleaming utensils and polished cupboards. She was in the restaurant kitchen, lying face down on its table. Above the sizzle of simmering liquid a woman’s voice trilled,

‘Some day my prince will come.’

Then Sally noticed; each of her own fingers wore the tiny chef’s hats that self-satisfied people put on chicken legs to make themselves look like real cooks. She looked down. Her shoes were gone and her toes had been decorated like petits fours.

And her face …

Her face had been basted?

She looked up again and winced, the movement making her head hurt even more.

Five feet away, in red PVC boots, a G-string and PVC corset, a woman stood over the cooker. Her back to Sally, she stirred the contents of a deep pot, her black hair hanging down to her waist. Finished stirring, she tapped the ladle three times on the pot’s rim then placed it beside the biggest meat cleaver Sally’d ever seen. She took a box of salt, broke it open and emptied it into the pot. Her velvet voice told Sally, ‘Don’t mind me, naughty girl. I’m just here to cook you.’

That was what she thought.

Before the woman could react, Sally was off the table and out the door.