Free The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs by Irvine Welsh

the nervous group of diners it was as if he didn’t even notice the bottles of white wine on the table.
    Kibby was shocked by Foy’s barely repressed violence.
    What have I done? Bob Foy . . . I thought he was okay. I’m going to have to try and get back into his good books . . .
    Foy was not impressed with Skinner, a state that this challenge had done little to help. When in conference with his own boss, John Cooper, and also in the company of the council’s elected members on the committee, he often had been inclined to undermine the younger man as a ne’er-do-well. These efforts would be intensified from now on.
    As an unrepentant member of the sensualists’ club, I have long held the belief that the only pleasure to rival making love is the eating of good food. The twin arenas of the true sensualist must, by extension, be the bedroom and the kitchen, and such a person must strive to be the master of both those environments. After all, the arts of cookery and lovemaking must mutually involve patience, timing and a certain instinctive knowledge of one’s terrain.
    Danny Skinner threw down the book he had been reading, Alan De Fretais’s
Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs.
He considered that it was the biggest pile of bullshit imaginable, but many of the recipes looked good. He resolved to try some of them out, as he felt the need to attempt to eat healthier.
    Now he was in his kitchen, trying to cook a fried breakfast for Kay. He was soon lamenting that his breakfasts seemed designed for hangovers rather than seduction, as he scraped the burned eggs from the base of the pan, bursting a yolk in the process. Slapping them on to cold plates already congealing with grease of candlewax proportions from the sausage, black pudding, bacon and tomato that sat on them, he could feel hispores beginning to clog from the vapourised animal fat that hung heavily in the air. Kay was in bed, in a deep sleep, dealing with her far more modest hangover in a way he never could. He couldn’t sleep through it; he just writhed, sweated and fidgeted until he was forced to get up.
    It was a raw, but surprisingly sunny Christmas Eve and tomorrow they were going to his mother’s for their Christmas dinner. His mother liked Kay, but Skinner always found Christmases hard going.
    Today, however, Hibs had Rangers at Easter Road. There was sure to be some trouble, and if there wasn’t, he resolved that he’d make some. Noises from the bedroom and then the bathroom had told him that Kay had risen. She was unimpressed by the food he’d prepared, squeezing on to a stool in his galley kitchen and buttering a slice of cold toast, wondering why he couldn’t do them while they were warm. It was like chewing broken glass. — I can’t eat this shit, Danny, I’m a dancer. She screwed up her face. — You don’t live on black pudding and sausage and bacon and expect to get a job on
Cats
.
    Skinner shrugged, scraping some butter on to his own toast. — That Lloyd Webber stuff is a load of shite.
    — It’s what I do, she muttered darkly under her breath, her sharp, clear eyes staring pointedly at him. Having woken up in a testy mood, she was not happy that he was going to the football. — It’s Christmas, Danny. Go to the match if you want but don’t come back here drunk, or I won’t be going with you to your mum’s tomorrow.
    — It’s Christmas Eve for fuck’s sakes, Kay! Entitled to a fucking drink at Christmas! Skinner gasped in outraged appeal, the hangover making him edgy.
    Glancing up coolly from the breakfast bar, Kay made a token effort on his offerings by breaking the skin of the yolk with the edge of her toast. — That’s just it though. You think that you’re entitled to a drink every day.
    — Well, you just go tae your ma’s then, Skinner snapped.
    — Right, said Kay, and quickly rose, calling his bluff by heading into the bedroom and throwing her stuff into her backpack. Skinner felt something tighten in his chest