What happens in the video
At a table set with a plate of food and glasses, a woman dressed in black speaks to a waiter in a white shirt and apron. They gesture towards the table. A small rectangular item can be seen on the floor beside a chair, and the waiter bends to pick it up. A woman in grey joins them and indicates something on the table. The contents of the item and the outcome are unclear.
Continuation:
Carla saw the plate before she saw the little vase of flowers. Two slices of toast, an egg, and a grilled tomato cut into a wobbly star. Somebody’s lunch was already occupying the table she had reserved for one.
The waiter glanced at her booking. “That’s yours.”
“I haven’t ordered yet.”
He started to explain that the instructions had come through with the reservation. She asked who had given them. Then he asked who had made the reservation, and just like that they were having the sort of conversation where each new question sounded like an accusation.
Carla had made the booking herself. She had chosen this place because her son Ollie used to insist on its all-day breakfast when he was small. He lived overseas now. She’d planned to ring him from her table if the time difference worked out.
“I don’t mind waiting for another seat,” she said. “But whoever’s expecting that egg would probably like to eat it warm.”
The waiter looked beside her plate. He was sure he’d put a folded note against the vase. Something white lay on the floor by the chair, where the breeze from the terrace had carried it. He bent for the slip.
The cook, Nina, came over just as he unfolded it. She pointed to the tomato.
“Look familiar? I was under strict instructions. Six points, if I could manage it.”
Carla counted five and a half. Suddenly she recognised that ridiculous star. When Ollie was eight, he’d served her breakfast in bed and constructed one with the blunt end of a teaspoon. It had taken him so long the toast had gone cold.
The slip contained a message from him. He had phoned the previous evening and paid for breakfast, explaining the family tradition to Nina in embarrassing detail. His last line read, *You always said mine was the best. Let’s see how the professionals do.*
Carla sat down. “He couldn’t cut a tomato to save his life.”
“Neither can I, to his specifications,” Nina said.
She asked the waiter to send her thanks back to the kitchen. Then she took a picture from precisely the angle that made the misshapen point stand out and sent it across the ocean.
Ollie rang before she could take a bite. It was nearly midnight where he lived. He’d been waiting up to hear the verdict.
“Good effort,” she told him. “Yours still holds the record.”
A few minutes later the waiter passed and heard a second voice coming from the phone propped against the vase. Mother and son were deep in an argument about who had burnt the original toast. He left the coffee pot within reach and gave their table for one a little more time.
