From the previous chapter;
 
       ‘I better make something for the hotel guests who might not like Polish food,’ Karen told him when she re-emerged from the dry store. ‘I thought I would make some Penne Carbonara, just in case.’

     Igor doubted it would be necessary because he had picked six of the most popular Polish dishes that catered to the varied tastes of many nationalities. But Karen was the boss. If she wanted to make something else, then fair enough.

     ‘You want me to make?’ He asked over his shoulder as he stirred the huge pan of sausage and cabbage stew he’d made earlier. Karen shook her head. ‘No, it’s alright, Igor. You’ve got enough on your plate, and I’m feeling a bit redundant anyway. I’ve got everything I need right here, so I’ll just get on with it.’
 
     Having tasted the stew, Igor decided to add a pinch more salt before turning around. When he did, the ladle in his hand dropped to the floor, the contents spraying his checked trousers with gravy. There, on the metal work surface in front of Karen, was the tin box Nazdia had given birth in two nights before…
 
   
 
As Karen stared back at Igor and tried to work out why he looked so panic stricken, Nazdia let her presence be known when the sound of her squeaking reverberated around the kitchen.
 
     ‘Is that what I think it is?’ Karen gasped, her fear of mice making her jaw drop as her eyes swept the floor.
 
     Igor saw this as his one and only chance to rescue Nazdia and her babies. ‘Yes!’ he shrieked as he pointed toward the corner beside the bin. ‘I see them!’
 
     ‘THEM!’ Karen echoed, ‘Do you mean there’s more than one?’
 
     Igor grabbed the broom and pretended to be herding the invisible perpetrators into a corner. ‘I get them, Boss!’ he shouted over his shoulder. ‘You no worry!’
 
     Karen wasn’t worried because she’d escaped the kitchen through the swing doors into the dining room as quickly as possible. Igor could still see her white chef’s jacket through the small gap between them, so continued talking to her as he crashed around the kitchen, broom in hand.
 
     ‘They now in Dry store, Boss!’ he shouted out, before he shot in there and grabbed the plastic bag he’d emptied the contents of the pasta tin into on Monday evening.
 
     Karen stood petrified in the dining room with her back to the door. ‘Where are they now?’
 
      Igor ran back into the kitchen and hastily emptied the contents of the plastic bag onto the work surface where Karen had been about to start preparing the Penne Carbonara. ‘They back in kitchen, Boss,’ he shouted back. ‘But I get them!’
 
      He then continued the verbal onslaught berating the fictitious mice while he swung the broom in various directions and brought tins and pots crashing to the floor. ‘You take THAT, you bad mouse! I no want you in my kitchen!’
 
      Satisfied that he'd spent enough time chasing the imaginery mice around the kitchen to be believable, he grabbed a tube of tomato puree from the shelf and, after squirting a small amount on two areas of the tiled floor, dipped the brush into each blob and spread it around so it looked as though there had been at least two bloody fatalities.
 
     ‘I keel them!’ he shouted through to Karen after he grabbed the pasta tin with Nazdia and her babies inside.
 
     Karen stuck her nose around one of the swing doors and followed Igor’s gaze towards the red smears on the floor. ‘What have you done with them?’
 
     Igor pointed at the tin in his right hand before flicking the thumb of his left hand under his chin, then up in the air. ‘They kaput,’ he told her.
 
     ‘You’re sure?’
 
     Igor looked suitably triumphant. ‘If they no dead yet, they be dead soon,’ he announced solemnly as he held up the pasta tin with the air holes facing towards him, the lid firmly in place. ‘I no take chance. Bodies in here.’
 
     ‘Oh, thank God for that…’ Karen groaned. ‘Well done, Igor. Now, get rid of that tin, will you, and…’ Her finger wiggled guiltily towards the rapidly darkening red splodges on the floor, 'and that...’ she added. ‘The restaurant will open in fifteen minutes, and I have pasta to make.’
 
   
 
It had been a very successful night. All the dishes Igor chose to serve on their first Polish evening had been a huge success. The stuffed cabbage leaves and pickled beetroot was the most popular starter, although the compliments abounded for the black pudding and cucumber pickle as well. The orders for his sausage stew with dumplings, something Igor knew his fellow countrymen adored, were matched by the orders for apple-stuffed pork with his homemade sauerkraut and potato pancakes.
 
     'Well done, Igor!’ Karen complimented him when it was time for them to wind down after the last dessert was served at ten fifteen. It was now down to John, the KP, to make sure the kitchen was cleared and ready for breakfast in the morning while Igor, Karen and Michelle took the weight of their feet and had a cold drink at the cleared prep table in the corner.
 
     ‘We do it again, Boss?’ Igor asked, his frosted glass of lager held triumphantly in the air.
 
     ‘Too right!’ Karen declared as her glass chinked up to his. ‘Apart from the mouse incident, this has been one of the easiest nights I’ve had in this kitchen since we opened.’
 
     ‘Mouse incident?’ Michelle asked, her eyebrows raised.
 
     Karen had told Igor not to mention his mouse extermination before Michelle arrived. Being the softy she was, Karen knew she would be appalled at the idea of killing anything, even if it was vermin that could overrun the kitchen.
 
     ‘Eh…yes. Igor saw a mouse when we were getting ready before the restaurant opened, but he managed to shoo it out the back door. Don’t worry, Honey. We’ve got George’s cat coming here for a little holiday in the dry store tomorrow, so if we have got mice, I’m sure that will be the last we’ll see of them.’
 
     Igor downed his ice-cold lager with a satisfied gulp while he thought back to earlier in the evening. After he took the box containing Nazdia and her babies out to the car park, he’d hidden it behind the wheels of the huge refuse bin, after taking the lid off to check she was okay. This being his last night in the dry store before the dreaded Jasper arrived, he didn’t have a clue what he would do tomorrow, but at least Nazdia and her babies were safe for now…