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CONCERTINA (Chapter 1)Work Ethics

It's 11:25 a.m. and I'm sitting on and suffocating Bernie. I'm wearing a black rubber skirt that looks like a ballerina's tutu and in my hands are ten-pence coins with which I'm rapidly flicking his nipples. In thirty-six seconds, by a matter of inches, I will suddenly lift from my sitting position which releases the seal from my rubber-clad crotch, and listen to his fitful gasps for air. Together with Mozart's piano concerto in E flat, these are the sounds that fill the tiny room. And today I can add the maniacal whine of a remote-controlled toy car and the shouting of boys in an otherwise sleepy suburban street. I can see my reflection in a wall of mirrors. There's a pair of scissors by my left and a clock with a seconds hand to my right.

The unknown is an instrument of control full of endless possibilities - which is half the reason I blindfold Bernie. Of course he knows what's coming, but he never knows exactly when it's coming. There's no time for him to prepare, to fill his lungs, when suddenly I shift from a squat position to place my full weight on his mouth and nose. Bernie has never dictated my style, nor has he ever acknowledged its effectiveness. It's me that imagines the unknown makes suffocation more frightening and exciting.

You can't see me, Bernie, but I see you: lying naked on the floor, tightly bound and blindfolded. I know your feet and matching hands, how delicate and elfin they are. I've memorised the patterns of dark hair on your body, the barrel of your chest, and the small, compact frame that is you. I have always admired the curve and definition of your yoga calves. Over the seasons I've watched your tan lines come and go, watched your hair grow, always noticed when it was cut.

Bernie is single, Jewish, and well preserved for his late forties. He has a small, pointed head, beady, scrutinising eyes, and a very stressed brow. He teaches physics, referees football, and practises his yoga. He has a playful, puckish streak, and is extremely keen on winning. From stories he has told me while doing up his trousers, I've gathered that he has never been comfortable in the company of women. And not just women; he seems to resent his colleagues, all but his brightest students, and certain figures of authority. Bernie thinks he's clever, brilliant even. I think he sees himself as a trenchant martyr who's been suffocating his whole life under the weight of fools and mediocres. He always lingers before taking his departure; he never wants to leave. He dresses very slowly and talks with the rapid giddiness of a post-traumatic, post-orgasmic, lonely man.

I'm suffocating Bernie but I'm not a sadist. When it comes to pleasure, I think giving it is the greatest source of power.

Bernie's body is bound with seven ropes. The object is complete immobilisation and reasonable comfort. Rope burn is unpleasant and potentially embarrassing. Although we're about to play a deadly game, tingling toes, numb limbs and alarming shades of purple are dangers that can, and should be, avoided. The foreplay of tying him up is more free form and fun than what's about to follow and, because I know this, I take my time and draw it out. I devote myself to the weaving of a secure and elaborate web. Although I improvise, I use symmetry as my guide. As I proceed, I cast aside my glacial role to ask him if a thigh or a wrist feels too tight. 'Is the rope chafing your ankles? Are you sure that wrist's not too tight? Do tell me if that arm begins to tingle.' After about thirteen minutes, when I feel he's getting impatient, I finish what I'm doing, stand back, and assess my creation. 'Let's see what you can move,' I say. So what does he do? He rocks his torso from side to side, shakes his pointy head and bows one finger, facetiously.

In the case of Bernie, bondage is a preliminary, a physical and psychological set-up for the main event. I know what Bernie wants: he wants me to be effective but as quick as possible. Still, I'm hoping he appreciates the act of attention and the ever-tightening embrace as an end in itself. After all, this is for you, Bernie; it's all about you. And isn't that half the pleasure?

I'm suffocating Bernie, but that's not the only thing I'm thinking about.

I'm thinking of feta cheese broken like shale and stacked like an ivory tower on a dark wooden plate. I'm thinking of a bone-white, porous sculpture glistening with olive oil and speckled green with ripped mint leaves. Pomegranate seeds, crushed and scattered about like jewels stain the white and the wood with their ruby juice. It just came to me and I see it now like I saw it then in a food magazine, years ago. Amazingly, I get the same thrill from imagining as I got when I was looking - and in neither case have I tasted what I've eaten with my eyes. To see is one pleasure, to taste is yet another.

Bondage alters both the body and the mind. First he can't see and then by degrees he can't move. I wonder where his mind is while his ankles are rubbing, while his thighs are squeezed together and his back is pressed against a cold tiled floor. When his veins are crushed and the flow of blood is hindered, does he focus on his breathing? Is he fantasising? How does he prepare? He's vulnerable, exposed, and in danger - is that what he thinks about? Does he think of me? And how does it happen that bondage, nudity, helplessness, anticipation, the music, the setting, and my presence collide and conspire into a sexual experience? I haven't even begun to suffocate Bernie, and he has an erection.

My mind drifts on to the dramatics of food: the shocking effect of orange carrot on a bed of bloody purple beetroot. I'm thinking of unlikely couples, daring threesomes, orgies of texture, taste and tone. I'm thinking of a theatre of food that pushes boundaries and explores the possibilities of contrast. I'm thinking sweet with savoury, watermelon in chilled tomato soup, chocolate and chilli pasta, shellfish and vanilla beans, tea-steamed fish, dates marinated in coffee. Why's there not more lemon and chocolate, chocolate and red wine, red wine and lentils? I once came across a recipe for a sauce that called for tobacco, of all things. At a Paris food show I had the singular experience of tasting dried goat's cheese: it was like a sharp infection in the throat that lingered for an hour. What would it be like to host a dinner party where all the guests were blindfolded? I want to make a meal that mocks size and proportions: infant vegetables, one communal fried ostrich egg with buttered croutons on spikes or forks for dipping into a giant soft yolk, or miniature sandwiches, jumbo shrimp, a sequence of soups, just a spoonful of each.

Today I felt like playing. So, in addition to the ropes, I've used whatever I could find: cling film twisted into twine, stockings, shoestring and dental floss. I've tied individual fingers and toes to various parts of the body and the big toes I've tied to each other. The middle toes of each foot are tied to a rope around the upper thighs, and his index fingers are attached to his upper arms in such a way that his wrists are stretched backwards, bending his elbows in a forty-five degree angle. It looks like he's trying to hold up a wall; it looks comical. I've hooked the rope around his ankles to a pulley hanging from the ceiling so that when I turn the crank, his feet and lower legs are lifted an inch off the ground.

The result is impressive; it's a comedy of excess, an art installation that nobody but me will ever see. No one sees my handiwork. Nobody sees him as I do in these unique yet temporary configurations. Nothing in this red room lasts, and yet it all seems destined to be repeated. What's the lesson? I pick up two ten-pence coins with their milled rims, squat above his head facing his feet, and begin flicking his nipples in time to the music.

I fantasised that cooking school was an arcane and cloistered institute that exposed the secrets of flavours and their harmony, and explored the laws and principles governing taste. I imagined a community of keen students standing around a table sampling different herbs and spices, and avidly discussing the workings of the palate, the tongue, the role of the nose, and the function of the eyes with regards to the taste buds. The reality of cooking school was far less romantic and much more pragmatic: poultry modules, seafood modules, sanitation & safety modules. Thirteen of us learned the mother sauces and the daughter sauces of classic French cuisine. We were taught to identify four dry and three moist-heat cooking methods. We memorised the correct temperature for storing mayonnaise and meat, learned the five signs of a fresh fish, how to rescue a broken sauce, and where to carve the carcass. We baked rolls, we baked potatoes, we baked Alaska. We competed for the clearest consommé, the fluffiest meringues and the tallest, lightest soufflé. Thirteen of us stirred our bouillabaisse in tandem and reproduced five hundred standard recipes over the course of eighteen months.

When we begin, Bernie's nipples are like calluses; they look as if they've been painted in now dried and translucent glue. But after flicking them a couple of hundred times the skin begins to crack and flake and then shed onto the tiled floor. Every now and again for an instant and then gone, I cringe and recoil at the sight of peeling skin and the thought of dead cells blowing around the room. After two hours his nipples are red and raw, and the silver coins look like a blood-stained saw.

Over the years I've spent many hours conducting the manic concerto of these flickflickflickflickflicks and observing their effects - yet I still don't know what's going on. Inevitably I empathise with the cruel shock of the first few flicks. I'm conscious of his pain, and of being the cause of it. It's in those first seconds that I feel I'm committing an act of violence, and crossing a line. But it's humanly impossible to empathise for any length of time. As the music builds momentum, so do I. My focus breaks, my mind drifts, and it's as if pain itself has receded into the background.

But what's it like for Bernie? As his nipples become increasingly raw and tender, does the sensation intensify, or does the repetition dull the pain? Or, has he learned a way to manage the pain? All I know is that sheer repetition and his sanctioning of this game, including the pain, alters my perception and renders me somewhat detached. From a privileged, distant perch, I can afford to appreciate the humour and absurdity of playing a bound man's nipples as if he were a musical instrument.

My first day in London was sweltering and cloudless, nothing like I'd expected. I'd arranged to stay with an acquaintance of mine, a woman I hadn't seen in over a decade, just until I secured a job and found a flat to rent. As it turned out, she and her husband and their two-year-old son would be away the week of my arrival, so it was arranged that her friend, Sabrina, who'd be house-sitting and watering the flowers, would be at the flat to welcome me when I arrived. A black cab took me from Victoria Station to an address off Holland Park Road, a crescent of purpose-built flats in a cul-de-sac behind the Hilton Hotel.

I paid the fare - the equivalent of my weekly grocery bill back in Montreal - and thought: I've got to get a job immediately. I rang the buzzer at number nine. No answer. I knocked. I knocked on the window, rang again, knocked again, and then I sat down on my luggage and looked over my shoulder. Waving from along the crescent at number three was a middle-aged man listening to the radio and sunning himself on a plastic lawn chair outside his paved entrance. After ten or twelve minutes of polite smiles and peripheral stares, he went inside and soon reappeared, approaching me with an offering of digestive biscuits and a cup of tea, which was very kind indeed, and then raved about the splendid weather. At last, pleasantries aside, he saw an opportunity to indulge in a neighbourly gripe.

'Not surprised they aren't here to greet you. Bloody awful, excuse my language. Loud, hippy types with their stinking compost bin and that child. Top it all off, bloke's trying to shame everyone in the street with his roses and prize-winning sunflowers. You came all the way from...Canada? Blimey. And they're not even here to greet you. Disgrace! Least you caught the brilliant weather, that's something. It's been a lousy summer until now. Cheers.'

I didn't bother explaining that it was not the feckless neighbours but their friend who was annoyingly absent. When Frank went back to number three with my emptied cup, I sat down on a full bladder and stared at the tubular chimneys and blackened brick buildings. I remember admiring the contrast between dirty urban and the green lace of leaves of a tall acacia tree. When I closed my eyes I could smell pavement, island mist and pollution in the air. I heard the hum of traffic, the chatter of birds, and felt the London sun reaching my face through a warm haze.

Nearly an hour passed before I began reviewing my options. There was the Hilton Hotel staring me in the face if I could afford it, but that would be a waste. I'd read of a hostel in Holland Park if it came to that. But first I thought to leave my bags with the neighbour, use his toilet, and write a note to Sabrina. I was looking for my pen when a black cab pulled up and out stepped a beautiful blonde waif with opalescent streaks in her hair. Whatever she wore she wore it well, as she skipped my way, unapologetically. By her whimsical jaunt, her nasal and high-pitched squeal and flighty eyes, I could tell that aside from being English, she was capricious, and slightly off her axis.

When she opened the door, we entered the skinniest house I'd ever seen. 'These are council flats,' she explained, 'affordable housing in what happens to be one of London's richest neighbourhoods', and she giggled for no apparent reason. The kitchen was 'barely large enough to swing a cat' - that was the expression she used. The living room/dining room, the only other room on the first of three storeys, was only slightly larger. Then, incessantly and without reserve, Sabrina began to 'educate' me. She talked about London, the mayor, the tube and the buses, the zones and the fares, the best markets, how to shop economically in the neighbourhood, her favourite parks and department stores, the useful A-Z, Loot, Time Out, and did I want some tea?

While I sat drinking a second cup on my first English day, Sabrina lay supine on an old, frayed, red and cream striped sofa, eating half an avocado with soy sauce and a spoon. And then, after having known her for all of an hour I learned that she was my age, twenty-six, and married, but she didn't live with her husband. He was a workaholic who slept in his recording studio and dined on a dream, which she never doubted would be realised. She fluttered about, unemployed, staying with Steve's parents and sometimes friends.

She'd been a pop singer, recorded a single that hit the charts for one brief, effervescent moment, and then shrunk into anonymity in order to nurse the wounds she'd received on her journey to and from fame. 'My father pushed me, wanted fame for me, and I did it to please him.' She was anorexic throughout her teens and early twenties and spent nine years in therapy.

Sabrina and her parents - American, ex-model mother and failed artist/inventor father - had lived as inseparable 'best friends' throughout her childhood and adolescence in London and New York. 'I dropped my first acid with them, and we smoked marijuana together all the time. They were bohemians. Sometimes there was money, lots of money, and granny's wealthy, but I remember times when we were broke. And my father never had real work.'

When she was twenty-one she fell in love with Steve. When she was twenty-three her parents hatched a financial scheme that involved moving to Bali. It had simply been assumed that Sabrina would join them. When she refused to leave London they pretended not to hear. Arrangements were made, months of organising; the boxes began to stack up, and then one day a plane ticket appeared on her bedroom dresser. Again she told them that she wasn't prepared to leave Steve and her life in London. Still they wouldn't listen. She described departure day in tragic detail: the taxi waiting outside to take them to Heathrow, her stoic refusal, the words and tears that ensued, and finally the bitter sight of her parents, her 'best friends' driving away. 'That was three years ago and, until five months ago, I didn't answer their calls, not that there were all that many, or reply to their picture postcards of white sandy beaches, sapphire water, brilliant sunsets and piña coladas.'

Abandoned by her parents, neglected by her workaholic husband, having tasted and rejected fame, she was, she admitted, a woman with issues.

It was too beautiful a day to spend inside tiny, dark interiors, and so I accompanied her on her quest for a 'decent' umbrella. We strolled through the rich, creamy Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, down the wide Holland Park Road lined with pruned trees and stately white embassies, pillars, flags, and iron fences. We walked down cobblestone mews, and lingered in Holland Park itself, where peacocks wandered freely and the stinky rose garden was in full bloom. She said peacocks were cruel birds. She knew the names of native trees and the trendy dogs on leads, and she pointed out where Paul McCartney and Richard Branson lived.

We walked by the playground where she has fond childhood memories, and were almost at Kensington High Street when suddenly she turned her focus on me.

Since meeting Sabrina, I'd been very quiet. My mind's blank page had been busy recording her incessant monologue, and absorbing an onslaught of new impressions. But she was curious to know why a Canadian woman would choose to live and work in London, in an extremely stressful, competitive, testosterone-driven industry that was hierarchical, exploitative, underpaid and all-consuming. Good question. As she saw it, professional cooking was a form of madness, an imbalance like all singular obsessions. Either you thrived in the environment due to some compulsive force of nature, or you were a slave in an oppressive, abusive industry. And she knew, she knew all about it. So why, she pressed, would someone choose that life? Was it my vocation? Was I compelled to become a great chef?

Well, what could I say? I didn't aspire to mediocrity and I was passionate about food, but I couldn't in all honestly admit that becoming a 'great' chef, whatever it means, was my singular aim in life. Where did that leave me, who was pursuing a career, gaining experience, and using my culinary skills as a passport to travel and a way of engaging with the world? London was on the brink of a culinary revival, so I was told, and the gastro pubs were thriving. And London was English speaking (my French wasn't strong enough to keep up in a kitchen in France), and England was so close to so many places. But suddenly a dark cloud of doubt and foreboding began to shadow my mood and muddle my motives. Meanwhile a pale-grey umbrella had caught Sabrina's eye.

Sometimes I surprise Bernie with an extremely sharp flick of the coin, which incites a curdling groan that seems to cling to the walls of the room. I always tense at that instant of contact, but then it's done and I can only watch and wait for his recovery - which is surprisingly quick. He's very resilient and free of resentment. He's not angry with me; on the contrary, he pays and encourages me to establish his helplessness in preparation for his pleasure.

My trial day began in the so-called 'dungeon', the downstairs preparation kitchen of a renowned restaurant. I was paired with a panicky, pimply boy of twenty and invited to watch and assist him for half the day. When the clock struck eleven he was whisking mustard mayonnaise in a frenzy while I picked coriander leaves and squeezed lemons. He was too flustered to talk to me and explain, and he kept muttering, 'There's too much to do, it's impossible, impossible' under his breath. The instant he finished spooning some mayonnaise into a ramekin, he grabbed the tray balancing twelve ramekins and a glass of water, and rushed off in search of the head chef. I put down my knife and followed swiftly behind.

It was 11:07 when we caught up with the chef, who automatically referred to the clock on the wall.

'What time is it, Michael?' he asked with mock curiosity, a threat ringing in his throat.

'11:06, Chef. I'm sorry, Chef, I was trying to - I had to -'

'You're late! You're late. Stop excusing yourself, Michael. So boring. It's always something with you. Or done to you, but it's never you, is it? You're useless and slow. Everyone else meets the tasting time. Today there were two of you and you still couldn't manage yourself. I don't want to hear any excuses. Tomorrow I want to see you ready at ten-thirty on the dot. Understood?'

'Yes, Chef.'

The chef was in his mid-thirties, boyishly handsome, long-lashed and tall. He had brown, clever eyes and a gigantic nose, but I couldn't yet tell if he was an artist, a perfectionist, or just a bully.

He took his time making quite a performance out of sampling the contents of each ramekin. He brought the first spoon under his nose, sniffed it, examined it, glanced at Michael, glanced at me, and then finally put the spoon in his mouth. He smacked his tongue against his palate and masticated slowly. His face was inscrutable until he'd sipped some water and rinsed his mouth, at which point his features contorted into an expression of total disgust as he spat, 'This isn't guacamole. This is revolting! Too much garlic. Fix it. Add another avocado or two...What do you mean there are no more avocados? Idiot! Figure it out.'

And so it went until all twelve ramekins had been sampled and critiqued and we had nineteen minutes left to make a new plum sauce, bribe a porter to go to the shop for avocados, add lemon and zest to the vinaigrette and more cinnamon to the soup, pit olives, rip lettuce, chop parsley, pull the meat off a dozen cooked duck legs for the salad, make a beer batter and set up station in the kitchen upstairs before the lunch hour service. Impossible, impossible, I thought.

At 12:39, upstairs in the service kitchen, there was a thunderous crash, a slap on the tiled wall, and a terrifying roar - the service in full swing and the chef yelling, 'Dunce. Useless girl. Pick up the pace, keep moving, get it out there, eight seconds, Scotty, watch the bloody soup, where's the potato gratin? I need three risotto fucking Neros. Not tomorrow, not next week, I want it now. Now.' Stomp, clap, slap, pound. 'Now, God damn it!'

I was shocked by the belligerence, the bellicosity, and the sheer violence of the scene before me, but the target of this chef's wicked rant was especially confounding. From where I stood, the sinewy Scottish boy behind the hot entrée section was a pantomime of grace and control. He flipped crêpes with the left hand, sautéed broad beans and pine nuts in brown butter with the right, and manned the deep fryer, stirred the soup, checked the oven below and the salamander above with a dancer's coordination. Food orders and insults were flying, the room was hot and heated, speed and concentration were everything, and only a zigzagging blue vein bulging across his temple betrayed his tension.

'Hurry up. Sauce on the side. Fucking moron. Sauce on the side! You've got the memory of a bloody goldfish.'

For two hours, taunting and terrorising, the head chef marshalled the service forward. He pursed his face, beat his brow and howled as if in pain, but when the service was over, as if a curtain had closed, he dropped the act. 'Good work, lads.' He winked, and then made a point of shaking everyone's hand. He poked a waiter in the ribs - a waiter still in the whirl of service - and how we laughed at his strained and frazzled face now that our panic was over. Stations were then cleared, food was wrapped, surfaces wiped, and the porters were ascending from the dungeon to collect the pots and pans, clean the stoves, sweep and wash the floor.

Meanwhile, my gaze and sympathy lingered on the Scot, whistling cheerfully as he wiped his station clean. I wanted to say something to him, give him some of the praise I felt he deserved or console him for the abuse he'd received. I waited until he glided past me on his way downstairs and tapped him on the shoulder. He swung around and faced me, and I asked him if he was all right. He looked confused, then suspicious.

'The way the chef screamed at you. You really don't deserve that sort of treatment.'

They were poorly chosen words, I'll admit, and I can see how they might have been construed as condescending or just odd. First he looked incredulous but that seemed to amend into a sarcastic sneer, finding me naïve, stupid or both, before finally setting me straight.

'You kidding? I deserved every bit of it and more. We all did! I couldn't respect a chef that didn't whip my ass. He's one of the best around, and don't you forget it.'

With that he flung around and disappeared downstairs, while I just stood there, reeling with molten embarrassment. I'd misunderstood the psychology of the game. The fear, the intensity, the strict discipline and verbal abuse actually stimulated the Scot. He was wholly in his element, but I was not. I didn't see why a kitchen had to be run so brutally. What about the delicate rapture of food? And I thought: can I submit to this infernal kitchen and its tyranny? But if the Scot was right, if he was a great chef and there was something to learn, then it would be worth the pain and the thickening of my skin.

When I went back to Holland Park, Sabrina was on the sofa reading a book called Spiritual IQ. She was wearing a winter coat, a wool hat and a scarf, even though it was summertime. 'Sweating out a cold,' she explained without taking her eyes off the page. I was feeling slightly nauseous so I sat down on the chair across from her and recounted the trial of my day. It's possible I exaggerated the sadism of the chef and the submission of his staff in search of sympathy. Perhaps I hoped she'd convince me that I'd made a mistake in taking the job. So when she put down her book and spoke, what she said took me by surprise.

'The thing you've got to do is observe this mad chef and his brute methods so you can learn how not to lead. Treat the kitchen as a psychological study in power and discipline.'

Easy for you to say, I thought. But inspirational all the same. Entering that kitchen battlefield, I planned to wear her words like a plate in my armour.

Bernie invites me to punch him and kick him in the stomach as hard as I can and as often as I want. It's an extreme request on several counts, and yet he behaves as if he's offering me a sweetie, or an occasion for me to act out my violent nature and find my release. I'm sure he wants me to enjoy myself, but the truth is, I never punch him or kick him as hard as I can, thus I never experience that sweet release. This is my profession and Bernie's under my protection. Besides, without serious provocation and a surge of adrenaline, violence is a controlled, concerted effort, a sort of inverted athleticism. But for the sake of fantasy, or authenticity, I'm not sure which, I indulge him by pretending I'm delighted by the workout, while he takes pleasure in his fitness and mental resilience.

Because he's blindfolded, he never knows exactly when the next blow's coming. He hears me stand up, senses me hovering, and knows it's coming. I tease his belly with my stockinged foot as if I'm testing the waters. He can't help but brace himself by clenching his stomach muscles. So I wait for that moment when he inevitably relaxes his hold, and then I stomp on his belly with the heel of my foot. I can only judge my force after impact, and then adjust myself and aim...for what? Balance? That elusive, superlative blow that safely but effectively knocks the wind out of him?

No matter how physically powerless, in attitude Bernie will never submit. The nature of the game is triumph-by-trial, again and again. On the surface, it's harmless bravado, but underneath, I sense desperation and fear. The grin that rushes across Bernie's face just as soon as he recovers from a gasping fit is almost perverse. It seems to say, 'Never mind how I look, drooling, gagging, choking, bleeding. Never mind how contrived, how dangerous, destructive, solitary and expensive; play along with this deception, and share in my bona fide high.'

Which is exactly what I do, and Bernie's penis stays erect for two solid hours.

For nine months the restaurant was my masochism. I was a machine, an assembly-line worker, and a captive. I worked sixteen-hour shifts - we all did in order to get the time-and-a-half that plumped our paltry pay. The anxiety and build-up, the adrenaline rush of the service, the sheer stamina, speed and strength required to survive the day became an exhausting end in itself. There's no time to celebrate the myriad wonders and pleasures of food when fourteen tomato and mozzarella salads need assembling in three minutes, two duck salads, four Caesar salads - not too much dressing, eight croutons each, one with no dressing, six mixed salads, and one beef tartare. So, caper berries chopped, Dijon mustard out of the fridge, ketchup, Worcester sauce, salt, pepper, need to get Tabasco sauce, where's the Tabasco sauce? Can't find the fucking Tabasco sauce! When consistency and volume are the name of the game, there's no room to improvise and be taken by one's mood. We spec-sheeted, weighed, priced and portioned the artichoke salad in Styrofoam cups, thirty, forty at a time, and then tore off the cling film and dropped them on the plate at the very last second.

I found it humiliating to be yelled at in front of, and teased by, my boyish colleagues. It brought me back to my girlhood and the relentless teasing I endured growing up with three brothers. I resented the time I spent picking the flesh off ten lamb shanks at ten at night with heavy eyelids and an empty belly. I wanted time and money to explore the maze of London. I wanted to feed my interests, to visit the food markets and halls, hunt out the best fish and chips, find good sushi, fresh roasted coffee, and helpful health food shops. I wanted to eat curry on Brick Lane, swallow oysters at Selfridges, and drink high tea at Fortnum & Mason's. I wanted to go treasure hunting in Spitalfields Market and meander along the rainbow rows of narrow homes down the Portobello Road. I wanted to walk through the parks, get lost in the city's serpentine streets, visit art galleries and museums, attend ballet classes, host elaborate dinner parties, cook my own breakfast every morning, take photographs, do arts and crafts, write letters and emails, spend afternoons in the Reading Room at the British Museum, and ride the tube to the end of each line.

The restaurant provided staff meals three times daily for the waiters, porters and chefs. If meal duty fell upon you that day it meant preparing breakfast for twelve chefs and three porters, lunch for around thirty staff, and dinner for as many as forty. All but me frowned upon meal duty for it was considered an interruption and additional chore to the day's impossible list. The consequence was baked beans from a can, cheap white bread held under the salamander for fifteen seconds, sausages, bacon, and scrambled eggs for breakfast every day of every week for months, even years. Occasionally the eggs were poached or there were sautéed mushrooms, black pudding or grilled tomatoes thrown in for a treat. My colleagues didn't mind. On the contrary, it was the kind of fuel they fancied in the morning. And there I stood alone. I couldn't understand why chefs who cooked beautiful, quality food for strangers all day wouldn't want to take the same care over their own meals.

When it was my turn to cook breakfast I prepared a buffet of roasted vegetables with maple syrup and fresh herbs; porridge with wild berries, raisins, walnuts, and pumpkin seeds; melted cheese, tomatoes, lemon and grainy mustard on toast; pancakes with yoghurt, pinto beans, salsa, or stir-fry. And there was an outcry. The masochistic Scot was most vociferous. 'Roasted vegetables? Berries? Where's the fucking meat! What the hell's happening around here? Cooking's about pain and stamina. What next? No more double shifts? Soymilk options with our coffee?'

I thought he was being ridiculous with his no-pain-no-gain philosophy, and turned to making my own breakfast every morning - breakfast being my favourite meal. I was not one of the guys, but that didn't make me feel any more of a woman. I found it virtually impossible to feel attractive and feminine, or intelligent and confident, while being scolded for burning the butter, while running around in a tizzy with an unflattering cap on my head, a dirty apron tied around my check polyester men's trousers and thick chef's jacket, bits of lettuce and a cherry tomato stuck in between the grids of my shoe - sunless, sweaty-faced, greasy and exhausted.

At half past midnight I'd return home from a double shift and lonely Sabrina would be waiting up to mother me and smother me. We'd rented a two-bedroom flat in North London together as soon as I took the job, but what a dreary, dank place it was, and in such a bland neighbourhood: row after row, street upon deserted street of white stucco flats before any sign of a high street and its fluorescent-lit cafés, kebab shops and curry houses. There was a carpet shop, an off-licence, a sports pub, an internet café, and it all depressed me more than I realised at the time.

Sabrina had found the flat one afternoon while I was at work, and deluded herself into thinking it could be converted into a Zen temple or an artist's loft with some imagination and a couple of hundred quid. I didn't even have that to spare and she didn't have any money, but nonetheless she spent her days ripping out the mouldy carpet, tearing off the wallpaper and linoleum, choosing paint colours, reading self-help books and absorbing home décor magazines. On my time off I was too physically and emotionally pulverised to show much enthusiasm for Nordic grey, bamboo and cappuccino paint chips, Ikea catalogues, feng shui experiments, and make-up sessions (because, said Sabrina, 'everyone looks better in make-up'). It was only a matter of time before my exhaustion was mistaken for rejection and she splashed back at me.

'Look at you. You look terrible. You're a slave. Why are you driving yourself into the ground? You never get out. You never smile. You're afraid to admit it isn't for you. Afraid to quit because you think it makes you a failure...and 'cause you don't know what to do if you weren't cooking. God, think bigger. Start your own business. I could help you. We could sell biscotti to the local cafés or you could cater to parties at Steve's music studio. Steve has connections. Stop limiting yourself. Stop beating yourself up!'

Our final altercation was over a pen. We were at Heal's and she wanted to borrow my fountain pen so she could write a wish list as she came across the objects of her desire. We parted aisles to wander separately, but when we convened at the prohibitively pricey plates, saucers, and mugs, I noticed that she wasn't holding my pen. She sort of giggled and shrugged, and said a bit too casually that it dropped along the way but she didn't know where. 'That's fine, just get me a new one.' That's what I said, and I would say it again.

'It was an accident, you bitch. You don't have to scold me, punish me, and treat me like a child. It's not enough that I'm sorry, you want to slap my hand and make me feel ashamed of myself.'

It had been six months and not a day too soon when I broke free from that North London psychodrama to stay with my friends in Holland Park before moving into a flat-share in Brixton, advertised in Time Out. And after nine months of restaurant labour, I delivered myself from that as well.

11:42 a.m.: Bernie's toes are grey and bloodless and I've been following the chromatic progression of one presently plum-coloured thumb. It's a disturbing sight, but when I ask him about it he assures me it's fine, is even a bit annoyed that I ask. Mozart's 'Serenade for Winds' is in gentle submission and the toy car has finally stopped screeching outside.

I suffocate him and I strike him, yet I never stroke him. I never touch him tenderly or genitally. I never speaks to him seductively. I never draw attention to the fact that my pubis is either pressed against, or hovering just above his face. We never speak about his erection, his masturbation, or the inevitable orgasm - not during the session, and not afterwards. The topic of sex is plainly not up for discussion. He's not here to analyse his sexual penchants but to satisfy them. He wants it to be playful and cheeky. He wants our time together to be spiced with wit and infused with good sportsmanship. I'm not the sexual object. And yet, curiously, when I have tried blocking his nose and mouth with my palms, smothering him with a pillow, and strangling him with my bare hands, he's lost his erection. Thus I have to conclude that his arousal is contingent upon my sitting on his face.

I was searching for alternatives to the restaurant scene when I came across an advertisement for an assistant private chef. Together with the indefatigably cheerful chef Jerome, we prepared dinner five nights a week and brunch on Saturdays for a wiry twenty-eight-year-old millionaire and his thin, anaemic wife. We spent our days creating a single, impeccable, French-inspired masterpiece for him, Mr M, the young epicurean, and a low-salt, low-carbohydrate, sugar-free, organic, wheat-free, dairy-free, red-meatless meal for her. 'If possible,' she implored in a tone of meek defeat, 'something tasty.'

Jerome was an Alsatian who'd been working in French kitchens since he was fifteen, and at twenty-five he was a stalwart of classic French cuisine, thus her dietary restrictions proved an insurmountable barrier for him. That was the real reason I was hired, because, after all, you don't need two trained chefs to do what we did. It was Jerome's impression from looking at my CV, and our subsequent interview, that I was a culinary misfit: I was a woman for starters, and then he could see that I'd never stayed in one kitchen for longer than nine months, and that I hadn't worked in a single Michelin-starred restaurant, whereas he had been poached from a three-star Michelin restaurant, Mr M's favourite, in order to come and work for him at the mansion. I'd hopped from Malaysian to fusion, from Cajun to French, to Japanese, to vegan to Mediterranean, to running my own catering business and bakery for a year. I told him I was interested in international, vegetarian and nutritional cuisine. I remember harping on for too long about pickling watermelon rind and caramelising tomatoes for dessert.

'C'est fou, Suzanne. There's nothing new in cooking. Rien. Nothing that hasn't been done before. What works is what's always worked. There's no innovation in flavour combination. These things, they're what you call gimmicks.'

His outlook and life experience were somewhat limited but he was young, handsome, full of energy, and extremely kind hearted. He hired me because he thought I had nowhere else to go, and he thought the job would suit me, and I think he warmed to me, found me oddly amusing, and felt I'd be good company.

In addition to preparing dinner for the couple, we made lunch for a staff of nine, which included a gardener, a maid, an elderly housekeeper, two bodyguards, a chauffeur, a butler and ourselves. The staff, the house and the business had been recently bequeathed to Mr M. Mr M Senior had died the previous winter, and it would be the young couple's year to grieve, inherit, adapt and fine-dine at home.

There was not a single adrenaline rush in the mansion. I was no longer conducting services on a full bladder just to keep me on my toes. I was never punished, never yelled at, and never reduced to frustrated or humiliated tears. We worked nine, ten-hour days, got paid above the restaurant standard, and considered ourselves fortunate. There was time to dry the tomatoes in the oven at ninety degrees Celsius for ten hours overnight. We cooked game stocks on the back burner for two days, reduced our sauces for hours until what precious little remained from the initial litres was intensely flavoured and poured like honey into a couple of ice-trays that were then frozen.

We baked a brioche and a cake twice a week, browsed through cookbooks that we bought on an unlimited and chauffeured shopping spree, and practised various cooking techniques. Since Mrs M was my exclusive concern, I tested vegetable juices, played with potions, elixirs, ancient grains and algae, while Jerome obsessed over foie gras pâté. He poached a new log every third day until he got the texture, the bain-marie temperature, the colour and saltpetre exactly right. Never mind that most of the buttery, diabetic livers of force-fed geese were then thrown away or force-fed to the staff, their families and the freezer. Jerome soon ordered a second freezer to accommodate the accumulation of experiments. He concentrated on cassoulets, home-made pasta and pastry, sugar design, and ice creams. He treated his year at the mansion as a dress rehearsal for the running of his own bed and breakfast in France, intended for the following year.

We had no budget to my knowledge, which meant we could stock the larder and the cupboards with an excess of the finest ingredients: first-press olive oil from a small Spanish grove that tasted like lemons and meadows; French Valhrona chocolate, £10 a bar, just for baking; balsamic vinegar aged thirty years that poured like molasses. When it was white truffle season the expensive tubers were flown over in a wooden crate and we stored the dozen of them in containers of dry Arborio rice. For ten days, the shelf life of those unearthed treasures, the kitchen smelled like a petrol station, and it was truffles with scrambled eggs, truffle mashed and baked and sautéed potatoes, truffle ice cream, truffle risotto, truffle dumplings, foie gras and truffle paté. Even so, six of the pricey gems (maybe a thousand pounds worth) went mouldy before they could be consumed.

One day a bottle of wine was delivered, which Jerome signed for, and he told me it was a hundred years old (probably undrinkable) and cost £18,000. We plucked the feathers off the birds that Mr M had shot, figs were flown in from Turkey, the fish was rare and endangered, the Spanish pig had been fed exclusively on acorns, the cheese came from a friend's dairy farm in France. Even the French sea salt was sublime.

It certainly was a privilege to be surrounded by the best that money could buy, as well as a bit comical and fantastical at first. But after a month I felt restless and trapped by my limited role, the removed surroundings, and too much time on my hands. The rest of the mansion was tacitly off limits. But once, only once on that rare occasion when the fey Mrs M left her nest, the ailing Portuguese housekeeper who had known Mr M since he was a boy and had been very fond of the late, great Mr M, gave me a whirlwind tour. How I would have loved to explore for hours. I wanted to look at their books, their photograph albums, see what sheets they slept in, what their shower-head looked like, what pictures hung on the walls. What toys did they hide in their drawers, what soap did she use, how did he organise his suits and shoes? Unfortunately, the house was under video surveillance but I surveyed a gold and burgundy lounge, embossed wallpaper, Turkish carpets, and a descent into a lavishly decorated salon with a white baby grand piano. I remember the wainscoting, a black lacquered vase on a marble podium, and a gilded portrait of the late Mr M: stern eyes, a sharp nose and sagging jowls. There was a pink crystal chandelier, an indoor swimming pool and sauna, skylights, and stretches of shimmering turquoise tiles.

Weekday evenings, after her yoga instructor and his personal trainer had gone, the couple showered and dressed and seated themselves in the lower dining room next to the kitchen. Then the hirsute butler sprang into action for the first time that day. The young couple always sat side by side, dwarfed at one far end of a long mahogany table, a telephone beside his plate. After our day's creations had been served, it was only a matter of minutes before the telephone rang through to the kitchen and Jerome jumped up eagerly to receive the critique.

Six days a week I walked for twenty minutes from the tube at Hampstead through a North London village: exclusive, leafy, evocative and charming. I passed tantalising shops, narrow mews, and then hills and winding roads flanked with only half exposed, grand, picture-book homes. And I inhaled the noticeably lighter, fresher more fragrant air. I dreamt of grandeur, of things rich and exquisite - and felt simultaneously taunted. A certain quality of life was resonating with me, and yet eluding me. I wanted time and money to prepare beautiful food, host elaborate dinner parties, collect books, eat off nice dishes, learn more about wine, and decorate my home with wood and velvet, rich colours, found treasure, plants and fresh flowers. Instead I was a servant in a millionaire's home. I made some depressing calculations, counting the sacrifices I'd made and would continue to make for a career that wasn't nourishing all of me. By the time I reached the gate and waved to the man in the tiny box, whose job it was to guard the private street for nine-hour shifts, my heart had hit the fancy pavement.

To this day I hear Jerome yelling after me, 'So what you doing now, eh, Suzanne? Qu'est ce que tu fait maintenant?' He's asking out of concern. He cares for me. He wants the best for me, but he just can't see what that might be. He'd always known what his life would be. I felt guilty because he'd tried to help me, tried to get me enthusiastic about bone-marrow sandwiches and sweetly buttered organs, and I'd let him down. But the insinuation that I was lost was something I resented; there were so many things to do. Anything could happen. Something must happen. Life is both long and short. It expands and contracts. It breathes. It's an implosion of possibility. I remember turning away from Jerome. I remember consciously tuning him out. I remember waving behind me, as if I were wiping away my profession. And then, without any warning, a sort of convulsion, and tears sprang to my eyes and flooded my mind. It was foolish, reckless, impulsive and unwise: I leapt without knowing my ground. And the sensation wouldn't last - I'd have to land - but for that suspended moment, I was bathing in bright light, a gentle breeze in my hair, and I felt gushingly, buoyantly free.

I began today like I've always begun with Bernie - with good intentions. I'm intent on achieving a state of mind that will transcend boredom and make good use of the time. It's the challenge of Bernie: avoid dwelling on the time, relax, reflect, enjoy the weirdness and appreciate the music. I try, but I've never wholly succeeded. The activity's too repetitious to be fully engaging, and yet too dangerous for me to indulge in a leisurely daydream. And then this up and down, these flickflickflicks: the truth is, sometimes I feel like a punching, flicking, suffocating machine.

CONCERTINA Copyright © 2007 by Susan Winemaker.