A Recipe for Love

Chapter Nine

‘Whyever are you going there?’ Veronica was incredulous at news of Adam and Bella’s plan.

‘Just to see,’ Adam explained.

‘I heard that they charge four pounds for a cup of tea,’ Darcy added in a tone of wonder. ‘Tea. Not even coffee. Hot brown water and milk.’ She shook her head. ‘British people,’ she muttered.

‘I do need you here. There are things that have to be…’ Veronica started.

Adam shook his head. ‘When we get back,’ he insisted.

They headed out to the Land Rover. ‘Can I drive? Like, would I be insured?’ asked Bella.

He nodded. ‘I think so. And what is there for you to crash into except sheep? And they’re our sheep.’

‘I won’t hit a sheep.’

‘You might.’ He shrugged. ‘They can be really stupid sometimes.’

‘Hey. Those sheep love me.’

He grinned. ‘No comment. You can drive if you want to.’

She considered the narrow, practically vertical road up to the bridge and the weird clunking noise the Land Rover made every time Flinty changed gear. ‘You’re all right. So long as you know that I could.’

‘Never doubted it.’ He started the engine at the third attempt. ‘I hate this car.’

Bella was finally getting used enough to the jolting, rocking drive from the castle to the village to be able to look out of the window ‘It’s beautiful here.’

Adam nodded. ‘I know.’ He shrugged as he drove. ‘It’s my normal, though.’

‘Growing up in a castle is not normal.’

‘It’s hardly a castle.’

‘It’s got turrets.’

He grinned. ‘Only quite small ones.’

‘And there’s a… in the arch to the courtyard.’

‘What?’

‘The drop-down iron gatey thing.’

‘Portcullis.’

‘Yeah. My nan’s flat did not have a portcullis.’

‘It’s broken. If you close it down, you can’t open it up again.’

‘Oh well, hardly weird and posh at all.’

He laughed. ‘OK, so it’s not a completely ordinary childhood.’

‘Did you go to boarding school?’ Suddenly the range of differences between them was opening up in front of Bella’s eyes.

‘Not until secondary school.’

‘So eleven? You got sent away at eleven?’

‘Only during the week. And that wasn’t posh. All the kids from round here did that. There isn’t a high school near enough to go in every day.’

‘The nearest secondary school is too far away to drive to in a morning?’

He nodded. ‘Well, it’s about an hour and a half, so you could get back if you had to, but three hours’ driving every day is a lot, so yeah, we stayed in the residence during the week.’

‘Wow. My school was just round the corner and past the shops. If you were running really late you could climb over the fence at the back of the flats into the playing field.’

‘I can’t wait to see where you grew up.’

Something about that thought jarred. Adam was a creature of beautiful places. His hair had the assured flop of someone who’d never needed to get it styled because he was raised with the understanding that whatever he did was the style. He owned chinos. Bella wasn’t sure she’d ever been friends with someone who owned chinos before. She wasn’t quite sure what her nan would make of him.

‘So have you been to this place before?’ Bella changed the subject, she hoped not too abruptly.

‘Not since McKenzie bought it. My dad used to be friends with Mr MacCellan though. I think his parents were my father’s godparents.’

‘What happened to them? The MacCellans?’

‘Not sure. Probably moved to a nice draught-free unhaunted semi-detached in Locharron.’

They drove south from Lowbridge village and along the coast for close to an hour, before turning sharply inland until they reached the entrance to what proudly proclaimed itself to be the McKenzie Estate Visitor Experience Hub.

The car park was lined with densely packed pine forest. Bella caught Adam shaking his head. ‘What’s up?’

‘None of these are native. Fast growing, so they use them in commercial forestry, but the wood’s as soft as shit.’ He pulled her to a stop in front of him, and placed his hands on her shoulders. ‘Listen.’

Bella could hear a babble of chat from other visitors and the rumble of cars arriving and departing. ‘Listen to what?’

‘Exactly. No biodiversity in the planting means fewer insects, means fewer small mammals and fewer birds, means no bird song.’

She listened again. He was right. The forest wasn’t exactly silent, but it didn’t sound alive.

He moved around to face her and waved his hand towards the offending trees. ‘It looks like an ancient forest, if you have no clue what an ancient forest actually looks like, but it’s just a stage set.’

They made their way into the Visitor Experience Hub.

‘Bloody hell,’ muttered Bella. The whole place was festooned in blue and green checks, with lines of bright yellow running through the design. It was a visitor centre that was crying out for a dial to turn the contrast down.

Adam was silent alongside her.

‘That’s a lot of tartan.’

‘Yep.’ He was looking around. ‘MacCellan tartan as well. Bit of a cheek. Take someone’s home, stick your name all over the shop, and then use their clan tartan as window dressing.’

‘Doesn’t McKenzie have a tartan?’

‘Think they have about four.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe they didn’t match the colour scheme?’

‘Good morning. Welcome to the McKenzie Experience Hub!’ The woman in front of them was about the same age as Bella but was groomed and put together in a way Bella didn’t even aspire to be. She was wearing air hostess levels of make-up.

‘Oh, we’re just having a look around.’

‘That’s great.’ The woman smiled in a way that somehow still managed to look bored. ‘We have walking trails around the woodland, or you can hire bikes, or relax in our top-class eatery.’

Cafe, Bella mentally translated.

‘I believe we do also have a very limited number of spaces available on our Silver Whisky Experience at two p.m.’ The welcome-bot looked down at her iPad. ‘Booking is essential though.’

‘We’re fine. We’ll just get a drink and maybe go for a walk.’

‘As you wish. Don’t forget to check out our retail experience area before you leave.’

‘We won’t.’ Bella leaned towards her fiancé. ‘She means gift shop, right?’

‘Wait!’ the woman called after them. Bella turned in time to see her speed walking towards them on her high heels, her smile reaching her eyes for the first time. ‘Adam? Adam Lowbridge?’

Adam nodded, failing utterly to hide the confusion on his face.

‘Fiona! Fiona from school!’

Adam’s mouth had fallen open. ‘Fi? Fi MacCellan?’

The woman nodded.

‘You’re working here?’

Her smiled faltered. ‘Not a lot else available around here. And it would break Dad’s heart if I moved away. I’m the last MacCellan still clinging on.’

‘I know the feeling.’

She dropped her gaze to the floor for a second. ‘I’m sorry. I heard about your dad. I wanted to come yesterday but John was going so I couldn’t get the day off. I’m his right-hand woman. Visitor experience manager.’

‘Right. Well, congratulations.’

‘It is so good to see you.’ She checked her watch. ‘Why don’t I join you for that drink? We’ve got so much to catch up on.’

Bella wasn’t oblivious to the fact that she hadn’t yet been acknowledged by the perfectly mascara’d Fiona, and she definitely wasn’t oblivious to the way that this stranger was making eyes at Adam Lowbridge. Fortunately, she hoped, even Fiona couldn’t be oblivious to the way Adam’s arm snaked around Bella’s waist as he nodded. ‘This is Bella, by the way.’

‘Hi!’ Fiona smiled vaguely. ‘So a drink?’

The top-class eatery, one of the estate’s top-class eateries, actually, Fiona explained, turned out to be one of those frustrating types of cafe you often found at tourist attractions that had notions above their station. Everything, the overly tartaned signage proclaimed, was locally sourced and organic and grown within a gnat’s whisker of where you were standing right now, and despite that there was very little that a person might actually want to eat.

‘Our organic grain bowls are very popular.’ Fiona beamed.

Bella scoured the menu board above the counter. What she really wanted was a massive hot chocolate and a slab of cake she could bury her face in. ‘What cakes do you have?’

Fiona directed her to a display of ‘sweet treats’. Bella appraised them speedily. Everything looked good at first glance, but at second glance the slices were suspiciously neat and regular. ‘Do you bake these on site?’

Fiona’s beaming smile faltered. ‘I think the cakes are bought in. From a local supplier,’ she added briskly.

Bollocks, thought Bella. The only way these were local was if there was a secret supermarket cake factory nestled unsuspected somewhere in the surrounding hills. There was no way anything on this table had been baked by an actual human in anything the average chap on the street would recognise as a kitchen. She selected a brownie, more out of professional curiosity than actual enthusiasm, and ordered a cup of tea.

Fiona waved what looked like a staff ID badge. ‘I’ll get these. Seriously, it’s four quid for a cup of tea without the discount.’ She paused, like a computer programme momentarily glitching. ‘Which reflects the quality of the product produced by our local partners, of course.’

Bella caught the smile pulling at her fiancé’s lips. ‘Local tea growers?’

‘Yeah.’ Fiona paused again. ‘Well no. I’ll get these anyway.’

They found a table next to the full height windows overlooking a pond and a bird feeding station. The bird feeders were a nice idea, at least.

As soon as they were seated, Fiona launched into an enthusiastic reminiscence of the apparently hilarious high jinks Adam had got into at school. Adam nodded politely. Eventually Fiona let out a deep sigh. ‘I can’t believe you and Olivia didn’t go the distance though.’

Olivia? Bella’s ears pricked up.

Adam shook his head. ‘Oh come on. We were teenagers. I haven’t seen her for years.’

‘I know.’ Fiona leaned across the table and rested a hand on Adam’s arm. ‘We were all so jealous of her.’ She laughed, slightly too loud and too high. ‘We all had crushes on you, you know.’

Bella mentally upgraded Fiona from irritant to would-be rival.

Adam moved his arm away. ‘Sorry, I didn’t properly introduce you, did I? Fi, this is Bella Smith, my fiancée.’

Fiona’s hand darted back across the table like it had been stung.

‘You’re engaged?’

Adam nodded.

‘I had no idea.’

‘Clearly,’ Bella muttered.

‘Adam Lowbridge off the market. You wait until I tell everyone.’

Adam took a sip of his coffee. ‘So you’re still in touch with people from school.’

‘Some of them.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Lots of people moved away. You know for work or whatever, but Liv’s in Locharron now. She’ll be gutted to hear you’re getting married.’

Adam frowned. ‘I thought she was living with a woman?’

‘They broke up. She’s seeing someone else though.’

‘Right. So do you think she might be over me?’

Fiona shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

Bella grabbed the opportunity to change the subject back to the point of their visit. ‘So do you like working here, Fiona?’

‘Oh it’s great. John’s vision has really revitalised the estate. We turned over more than eight million last year.’

Bella heard Adam inhale sharply.

‘We employ local people and attract high net worth visitors.’

Something about the way she emphasised ‘high net worth’ gave Bella the ick.

Adam was looking thoughtful. ‘You said you do whisky experiences?’

‘Of course.’

‘So you have a distillery here?’

‘We’re more showcasing the range of whiskies available.’

‘Right.’ He nodded. ‘And you still take shooting and fishing parties?’

‘Absolutely. A shooting weekend in the Highlands is a really superior option for team building or even a stag do.’

‘Bag a stag on your stag?’ suggested Bella.

‘Something like that. I mean, within the rules obviously. There’s a lot of licensing for deer. And you’re not supposed to shoot males when they’re still in velvet.’

Bella nodded like she knew what that meant, although there hadn’t been much need for a close knowledge of game shooting growing up in the housing association flat in Leeds. It was the sort of thing a lady of Lowbridge would be expected to understand, wasn’t it? Like the perfectly manicured Fiona MacCellan, daughter of the neighbouring estate, understood.

‘And we get a lot of day visitors for the walking trails and the mountain biking. Or just enjoying the visitor experience. John wants to add four-wheel driving and quad biking, but you know what the locals can be like.’

Bella nodded politely. In her experience so far the locals were as mad as a box of frogs. The Ladies’ Group would probably be well up for a spot of quad biking.

‘Daddy turned the whole of the top hills over to common grazing before John bought the place.’ She pulled a face. ‘John was a bit cross about that to be honest, but Daddy was within his rights and the solicitors did tell John it would be a bugger, excuse my French, to undo.’ She took a sip of her tea. ‘So no quad biking up there. The crofters wrote a long objection saying it freaks the sheep out.’

Bella stifled her giggle. ‘Can’t be scaring the sheep,’ she muttered. Maybe that was why they were so keen to follow her down to the castle courtyard. They knew they’d be safe from Hooray Henrys bombing across the Highlands in over-powered four by fours.

‘That’s part of why he’s so keen to expand the estate over your way. We’d be nearer the coast so we could do sea fishing trips and wildlife watching. And space for the quad bikes. I mean that’s all ideas. I’m not here to try to change your mind.’ She smiled. ‘Will you change your mind though?’

Would he change his mind? Adam couldn’t answer that question because it assumed he’d made his mind up to start with, when honestly his grandmother had made it up for him. The McKenzie approach was clearly profitable, and it seemed that John McKenzie had the instincts and the drive to make things happen. Presumably he wasn’t a man reduced to a nervous wreck every time he was asked to read a balance sheet.

‘We don’t have any plans to sell at the moment.’ Bella had jumped into the silence that Adam had left. That was a suitable neutral answer. Not a no, but not closing the door either.

Fiona shrugged. ‘Oh well, can’t blame a girl for asking. Imagine the brownie points I’d get if I was the one that talked you round. I guess I should get back to work though. It was lovely to meet you,’ she told Bella.

There was something Adam had to ask before he let her go. ‘What’s it like?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Working here.’ He gestured around the purpose built, entirely characterless visitor centre. ‘With it all like this. I mean, this was your home.’

‘Well it still is.’ Her tone was slightly brittle.

‘But everything’s so different.’

‘We have to move with the times, Adam. That whole thing our dads blathered on about – duty and community and all that nonsense. I mean it’s not very twenty-first century is it?’ She patted his shoulder. ‘So nice to catch up. Can’t wait to tell the old school WhatsApp group you’re engaged.’ She grinned.

Oh no. Oh absolutely no way in hell.

‘I should add you to the group. All the old crowd are there. Liv, obviously, but Tommy and Callum and Briony. Everyone.’

‘Erm…’

‘Go on. What’s your number?’

There was no way out, was there? He typed his number into her phone, wondering too late if he should have ‘accidentally’ mistyped a digit or two.

He waited until she was out of earshot. ‘I hate WhatsApp groups.’

‘You don’t have to stay in it.’

‘But I do, cos it gives everyone that “so and so left the group” message so there’s no way to quietly sidle out.’ He shuddered.

Bella leaned towards him. ‘You can mute it. It’ll be fine.’ She looked around. ‘So what do you think? Is this what we should do with Lowbridge?’

‘Well we do need to generate more income.’ He hadn’t grasped much from his endless sessions with his grandmother trying to talk him through the estate finances, but he had grasped that money was important and Lowbridge did not have enough of it.

‘Well this place certainly seems to do that. Their cake’s bad though.’ Bella looked genuinely affronted by this fact. ‘There’s nothing worse than bad cake. Like bad leeks or something, fair enough. It’s a bit of a palaver to make leeks nice. But cake, you have to really not care to serve bad cake.’

‘What’s wrong with it?’

She broke a piece off her unfinished brownie and handed it to him. She was right. Rather than delivering a rich fudgey hit of chocolate, the mouthful seemed to simply disappear in a second. ‘That’s sort of plasticky.’

‘It’s gross. And brownies are so easy. They were pretty much the first thing I ever made on my own.’ She broke another piece off and rolled it around her mouth. ‘They’re super forgiving. If you undercook them they come out fudgier. If you overcook them they’re more cakey and you get more crunch on top. So it’s still all good. And it’s just butter, sugar, chocolate, a little bit of flour and eggs. There’s nothing to go wrong.’ She pushed her plate away. ‘That has never seen a block of butter though, and the chocolate must have been the cheapest they could get their hands on.’

‘All the jobs they’ve created though.’

‘I know.’ Bella didn’t sound impressed.

‘Lowbridge needs jobs. There’s hardly anyone our age around, is there? Because there’s no work.’ Aside from Pavel and the Reverend Jill, everyone even close to Adam’s age seemed to have moved away a long time ago.

‘And maybe this is the way forward. They’re attracting lots of people.’

Bella shook her head. ‘Yeah but…’

‘What?’

‘It doesn’t feel real does it?’

Adam tapped the table in front of them. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘No. I mean. It’s all window dressing isn’t it? Like all the top-class eatery bollocks she was spouting.’

‘She’s just doing her job. It’s hard.’ He stopped and corrected himself. ‘It must be hard to be born into all this and then have it all shift around you.’

Bella wrinkled her nose. ‘Fine, well, like the trees, then. You said that was a stage set, not a forest. And this…’ She picked up her offending brownie. ‘It looks great but there’s nothing to it. It’s all pretending to be something that they think tourists want, but it’s not real. You know what I mean?’

‘Yeah. I do.’