Peri Peri Black Bean Soup

It’s 2014. I’m living in London, working as part of a consultancy job for a high-street chain of popular restaurants. The night is frenzied; sixteen or seventeen dishes strewn across the table, on high chairs, the coffee table, cooling on the front doorstep. I scrawl notes on yellow index cards in slopey italics, spattering them with oil and paprika and three kinds of chilli, burning one at the edges in my reckless enthusiasm. It’s my first big job of this nature, and I’m a nameless entity,