Rentokil are just finishing up when I arrive. The kitchen looks immaculate. The floor’s been scrubbed and the steel worktops are cleaner than when the commis normally sluice down at the end of service. The ovens, the least popular job at the end of the night, look more than passable, as do all the white wall tiles; even the grouting doesn’t appear too stained. The smell of bleach and cleaning products hangs heavy in the air, but it is in welcome contrast to the previous stench. Although, if you breathe in deep enough (and I try very hard not to), you can still detect a back note of sewage. But all in all they have done an impressive job. I don’t know how many bodies they’ve thrown at the problem but it is hard to imagine that less than a few hours ago the whole place was swimming, ankle deep, in the finest contents of the capital’s drainage system.
It takes another ten minutes for me to go through all the paperwork, signing off on drain blasting and deep cleaning. A rotund grey-haired bloke in charge tells me, with the relish of a proper obsessive, the actual size of the fatberg they’d managed to retrieve from under the main drain.
‘The size of two dinner plates,’ he enthuses, demonstrating the actual size with his huge thick fingers. How he can type his report into the computer encased in a thick grey plastic suitcase is anyone’s guess. ‘It’s enough to cause a major obstruction,’ he sniffs. I feel like saying ‘no shit’ but that would be the martinis talking and perhaps not the sort of joke he’d enjoy. So instead I thank him and his team profusely for turning out at such an unearthly hour to deal with such an unpleasant problem. ‘It’s part of the service,’ he shrugs, picking up his computer. ‘Could you sign here, here and here and rate the service here.’
A few minutes later and I am entirely alone in Le Restaurant. I lock the back door and walk through the bleach-soaked kitchen, turning off the strip lights. Through the swing doors, it is dark. The tables have been cleared, only the linen cloths remain, and the orange street lamps cast the room in an eerie glow. The silver bar reflects the outside light; it also catches off the rows of spirit bottles lined up on the glass shelves behind. Empty restaurants are weird places; there is something rather haunting about somewhere that is normally so full of life and energy rendered so totally still. To be honest, I have always found them a little scary. And it is usually just as you are closing up that you come across the unexpected.
I remember when I worked in a small restaurant in Kensington, walking around checking all the doors when I heard this terrible moaning sound coming from the courtyard out the back. It was enough to make your blood run cold. I remember my heart beating in my chest and my palms growing clammy. It was a pitiful noise, a low and painful mewing. I slowly opened the back door to find some poor bloke wandering around the enclosed courtyard. He’d gone to the loo only to have gone out through the wrong door and fallen asleep. He’d woken up several hours later, after service had long gone, and had not been able to find the exit. He was wandering around like a caged animal making this weeping noise that didn’t sound human at all.
But then again, coming across one of my chefs passed out, stark naked in the office once, surrounded by the dregs of a cocaine binge, was worse. For a start, I thought he was dead. It looked like the ultimate rock ’n’ roll suicide. His flesh was so white, luminous in the moonlight, the hair on his body was so dark, so saturnine, and he was motionless. He looked like some sort of giant pupating slug, a sheen of sweat all over him. It took me a while to get into the office as his comatose legs were blocking the door. By the time I had managed to force my way in I was ready to call 999 and it was only when I heard him belch that I realized he was simply out for the count on the floor.
I sit down at one of the bar stools and yawn. I catch a glimpse of my dishevelled reflection in the mirror behind; it is not a good look. My hair needs a cut, I have stubble that’s just reaching the George Michael stage and I have bags big enough for the Kardashians to take on holiday. What a day! I am vaguely thinking about helping myself to a vodka and tonic. I have been up for nearly twenty-three hours and I could really do with going to bed. I am absolutely exhausted. Only I am loath to leave Adam and the others with a free rein at Le Bar. I have been in Caz’s company enough times to know that come this time of day/morning she is impossible to stop. She’s one of those girls who says: ‘Oh, just one more. Just one more for the road. One more can’t hurt. How about another tiny one?’ For someone who looks like a cocktail stick she has the stamina of Oliver Reed. There’s no telling how much stock they’ll get through before six, Adam’s cut-off point. He is always out before the cleaning staff. That’s his rule. No matter how many battalions of Bolivia’s finest he’s had up his nose, he’s out of there, for a shower, a shave and a laundered Paul Smith shirt before coming back in at eight, fresh as a proverbial daisy.
I lock up and head back towards Le Bar. The streets are deserted now but for a homeless person curled up in a doorway. Lying horizontal, covered in a cardboard box, I recognize his shoes. He is one of the local old boys who occasionally turns up to go through the bins around eleven at night. I know Barney is always leaving out a few choice things within easy reach, plus the occasional tot of whisky of a cold night. He’s nice like that.
It is still pitch black outside. The sky is a deep, dark granite and a couple of confused birds are belting out some tunes. It really is time to go to bed. Sadly, as I arrive at Le Bar, the level of laughter and banter makes me realize that I’m the only one who thinks that.
‘So I am standing there,’ says Adam, out of his chair, acting. ‘And this thirteen-year-old girl stood up and barfed all down my trousers. I was holding a tray of food, so I couldn’t do anything. All I could think was “I have been here since six this morning and I really don’t need this,” so I walked up to another waiter and said: “You’d better take this,” and I walked very slowly out of the room.’
‘That’s disgusting,’ says Caz.
‘Happens all the time,’ says Adam. ‘We’ve had people throwing up at the table. They eat and drink too much or too quickly. It’s the excitement.’
‘I imagine it’s the drink,’ says Caz, as she pours herself another. They’ve moved on to what looks like Amaretto on the rocks. It’s one of Adam’s favourites, especially when he’s staying up all night. Personally, I think it already tastes of a hangover.
‘There’s nothing I like more than deep-frying someone’s steak when they’re pissed and have sent it back, asking for it to be well done. “That well done enough for you, sir!” It’s like a fucking old boot.’ Andrew sneers and helps himself to another drink.
‘And before you fry it, you’ve wiped your arse with it and kicked it about the floor,’ giggles Adam.
‘No – afterwards,’ grins Andrew. ‘No point in doing it before, totally defeats the point.’
‘Morning,’ I say.
‘Ah! There you are,’ says Adam. He clicks his fingers at me like an oligarch ordering a hit. ‘D’you remember the woman with the plastic leg you had at Le Restaurant?’
‘What? Last year?’
‘That’s the one!’ He starts to laugh. ‘So she turns up a little bit pissed and asks to use the toilets.’ He looks at me to confirm that this true. ‘Anyway, she then passes out in the loo, as you do, only none of us could get in to get her out. Anyway, finally, we poked our heads over the top of the loo and realized that her leg had come off and was blocking the door. So you pulled the leg out, and we got the woman out afterwards. She was out cold and we, you, wanted to close up. What could we do? So we went through her bag and found £500 in cash. So she was minted, but there was no ID. Eventually she mumbled “The Cumberland Hotel”. So we got a cab, popped the leg on the back seat, and we were really laughing because it was so crazy, and we turn up at the Cumberland. We carry her in, holding the leg on, and the doorman is standing by the door. He immediately recognizes her and starts telling us to “Fuck off! I am not having that woman in here! Fuck off now!” It is now, what—?’
‘Two,’ I say, sitting down next to Jason and Andrew and pouring a vodka shot.
‘And we’re stuck. We’ve got a nameless woman and her leg and nowhere to go.’
‘So what did you do?’ asks Jason, his leg still bouncing up and down.
‘We dropped her off at a police station and scarpered!’ splutters Adam, now laughing so hard he has little tiny tears of mirth welling up in his eyes.
‘You did what?’ Jason is taken aback. ‘You dumped her?’
‘Yeah!’ says Adam, nodding and laughing. ‘What else were we supposed to do, mate? Take her home? Check her into a hotel?’
‘It’s tragic,’ says Caz. ‘Almost as tragic as when David Hasselhoff came in, d’you remember? And he left a cash tip and a signed photo of himself that no one had asked him to sign and no one picked it up.’
‘I love the Hoff,’ says Jason.
‘We all love the Hoff, mate,’ agrees Adam. ‘I’m just not sure we need a picture of him on our wall.’
Just as we are about to mull over the pros and cons of the Hoff, my phone goes. It’s Pippa.
‘Hi, Pippa!’
‘Tell her to get her arse down here!’ shouts Adam, beckoning with his hand.
‘What happened? You were supposed to come here for a drink,’ I say, suddenly sounding a little bit worse for wine myself. ‘We missed you. You never called. Nothing.’
‘The alarm’s gone off at La Table,’ she says, ignoring all our overtures.
‘Oh, right.’
‘Now, I’m happy to go and check on my own if you want, but I would rather not.’ I can hear her sounding terribly brave.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll do it, stay at home.’
‘No,’ she says. ‘I don’t need to stay at home, I’d just rather not go in there on my own.’
‘I’ll come and I’ll bring a baseball bat with me.’
‘Good. You just don’t know who’s in there.’
‘It could be anyone.’
‘Anyone,’ she confirms. ‘See you there. Wait for me. You can go in first and, I promise, I’ll be right behind you.’