Chapter Sixteen
Bella waved a spare baking tray over the set of twenty-four cupcakes cooling on the counter. Only having twenty-four hours to prepare had meant it had taken her until that afternoon to realise that baking cupcakes and cookies and decorating them was far too much to fit in the time. So the new task was making gingerbread, for which Flinty was frantically weighing out individual bowls of ingredients, and then decorating pre-made cupcakes, and then – time permitting – gingerbread decorating.
‘Hello! Anyone here?’ Jill struggled through the door with a plastic crate in front of her. ‘Punch bowl, fruit juices, and a bottle of voddy.’
‘Thank you.’ Again the short planning horizon had meant that offering cocktails had only come to Bella at the last minute, but it was a hen do, wasn’t it? They’d expect something.
‘What are we offering the drivers?’ Flinty asked.
‘Hadn’t thought about that.’
‘Don’t worry.’ Jill pulled out her phone. ‘Googling mocktails already.’
‘Thank you!’
By the time the hens arrived they had alcoholic and non-alcoholic cocktails lined up, gingerbread ingredients ready, and cupcakes (almost) fully cooled. There were six in the group, all in their twenties, all wearing sashes, very helpfully proclaiming their role in the wedding.
Jill was just about to slip out when the bride herself grabbed her arms. ‘Reverend Jill!’
‘Cecily? I didn’t realise this was your do.’
The bride nodded excitedly sipping her mocktail. ‘We were supposed to be doing whisky tasting, but I can’t cos…’ She pressed one hand to her belly and snapped the other to her mouth. ‘Oh, for no reason. Just didn’t fancy it.’
Jill glanced down at the bride’s slightly rounded stomach. ‘Well congratulations… on picking a new activity,’ she smiled.
‘Everybody, this is Reverend Jill. She’s marrying us.’
There was a volley of greetings.
‘I was just dropping off some stuff. I won’t hang around.’
The bride pursed her lips. ‘But you’ve got to. You should stay.’ She turned to Bella. ‘She can stay, can’t she?’
There weren’t enough ingredients for another participant, but another friendly face would be welcome. ‘So long as she doesn’t cut her hand off.’
‘What?’ The hens stared at Jill, who regaled them with the story of the great trial day blood fest.
‘Nothing like that will happen today. No sharp knives involved, I promise.’ She gathered the group, drinks topped up, around the island. There wasn’t really space for this many people to work but this was as much a party as a cookery class, so letting them all squash together felt more sociable than sending people off to their own little corners.
Bella talked them through mixing the wet and dry ingredients together for their gingerbread, letting the group follow along with her rather than doing a separate demonstration, and then she rolled her dough. ‘Ideally we’d leave it in the fridge for an hour before we roll, but we’re tight for time, so just make sure you put plenty of flour on the top to stop it sticking.’ Once her dough was a perfect pound coin thickness she picked a cookie cutter and cut out a perfect love heart. ‘OK. Your go. You can pick whatever shape cutter you like, or…’ Bella picked up a standard dinner knife and scored out the shape of another heart with the blade. ‘You can fashion your own shapes.’
As soon as the rolling out was finished Bella laid a mental bet with herself on who would go for the obvious shape first. And there it was. Maid of honour, giggling furiously at her gingerbread cock and balls.
The bride glanced at Jill. ‘Sorry Reverend. You can’t take her anywhere.’
Jill peered at the shape. ‘He’s got one ball bigger than the other.’
The critique from the vicar delighted the hens. Was that a business idea? Should she invite a member of the clergy to all her cookery nights? Pizza with a parson? Cake baking with a curate?
Ten minutes later the baking trays were covered with a range of cocks, balls, love hearts and one slightly worryingly misshapen pair of boobs. ‘For equality,’ the bride’s sister explained.
Flinty popped all of those into the oven, while Bella got things ready for the cupcake decorating. The hens seemed to be having fun, and Bella was starting to relax. Cake decorating was one of her real pleasures in life. People fell in love with food with their eyes long before their tastebuds got a look in, and dessert and afternoon tea treats in particular ought to be beautiful.
Each hen had three cupcakes to decorate and Bella had made up buttercream and fondant to demonstrate two different techniques. First, she showed them how to pipe a perfect buttercream rose on top of their cake. Next she demonstrated using a dash of food colouring in a ball of fondant to make different colours to create a simple graphic on the cake. Bella made a bright yellow sunshine that she laid across the top of her cupcake. For the third cake, she told them, they could do whatever decoration they wanted.
‘Cock and balls!’ squealed the maid of honour.
‘I’d be disappointed if nobody tried it,’ Bella assured them.
She walked around the group, helping out and suggesting tips, mostly culinary – how to hold the icing bag up vertically, for example – but some more unexpected. ‘Should I try to give it pubes do you think?’
‘Maybe not. I mean you have to eat them later.’
The women nodded sagely. ‘Yeah. Nobody likes it when they get in your mouth do they?’
Bella ignored the sound of Flinty’s sniggers behind her.
By the end of the night the hens were full of sugar and cocktails, carrying boxes full of cupcakes and gingerbread. The maid of honour stopped and hugged Bella before they set off. ‘Thank you so much. I was bricking it when Mandy said she couldn’t drink alcohol cos of the baby.’ She stopped and glanced at Jill.
‘I heard nothing.’
‘Thank you. Cos we were supposed to go to that big McKenzie place and do whisky tasting. This was way better anyway. I did the whisky thing for our work Christmas do. It’s right overpriced if you ask me. This was so much more fun.’
Bella beamed. Her first official paying cookery school event appeared to have been a roaring success.
‘That was great.’ Jill wiped down the island unit as Bella piled pots and pans in the sink. ‘Why don’t you leave those a minute?’ Jill asked. ‘Get yourself a glass of something and take the weight off.’
All of Bella’s professional kitchen instincts told her that she’d regret it if she didn’t finish clearing up now. By the morning the flecks of dough would be dried onto the bowls and there was nothing worse that coming downstairs to a filthy kitchen. On the other hand, Jill had brought a bottle of red along with her as a ‘congratulations’ present for Bella’s first proper cooking lesson, and the evening was dry and still pleasantly warm.
‘OK, but you have to have a glass with me.’
Jill grinned. ‘Half a glass. I’ve got to drive back.’
‘Will you have one, Flinty?’ Bella asked.
‘I’ll just take Veronica her cup of coffee, and then I might just have a wee one.’
‘A wee what?’ Darcy appeared in the doorway.
Jill held up the bottle.
Darcy grinned. ‘Well, I came to help clear up, but a glass of wine sounds much nicer.’
They took the wine out to the courtyard and poured two generous, and one tiny, glasses of wine. Jill raised her glass. ‘To Bella! A good first night?’
It had been a good first night. She’d done her costings in a hurry, but she thought even with the addition of drinks the night had made them a little profit.
For regular weekly classes she needed seven or eight, but five or six would do while she was still getting the hang of the teaching side of things. ‘The first proper course starts next week.’
‘I know,’ Jill nodded. ‘I’m going to be there.’
The first set of six planned classes was aimed at people who already cooked a bit but were stuck in a rut. Cath and Claire from the trial day had both signed up. Reverend Jill was stretching the definition of ‘already cooks a bit’ but she was very keen and after she was so lovely about the accident at the trial day, Bella didn’t really feel she could turn her away. She would be supervising all of her chopping and slicing very closely indeed. Most importantly they had all paid upfront for all six lessons and Cath thought she had two other friends who might want to come along as well.
Bella’s phoned buzzed on the bench beside her. New email from Annette Wetherall Designs. Bella frowned. She didn’t know an Annette Wetherall, did she? The subject line read: Cookery School ideas though, so not random spam. Bella opened the email and was met with a screed of text, verbose and chatty, littered with exclamation marks. Bella skimmed through the first paragraph.
Hi, Sorry to bother you but I was thinking about what Anna said at
Ladies’ Group about you needing a logo and I really want to help out
because we clicked immediately didn’t we? You’re so easy to talk to, and
anyway, this is on the house of course, but there’s a couple of ideas
attached.
Bella scrolled the very long way down to the end of the message, past extensively detailed descriptions of the design process and where the artist had found her inspiration and how very keen she was to help.
Talk soon! Netty xx
‘Netty’s a graphic designer?’
Jill laughed. ‘As if she ever shuts up about it.’
‘She’s sent me some logo ideas for the cookery school.’ Bella opened the attachment. The first image showed a whisk and rolling pin, crossed like swords on a coat of arms. Scrolling down there were three more similar options with different images to connote the idea of cooking and food, each with the banner The Highland Cookery School in elegant letters beneath. Bella held her phone up so the others could see.
‘These are fabulous,’ Darcy cooed.
They really were. Vintage but not fussy. Welcoming but still classic. Exactly what Bella hadn’t known she wanted. She fired back a quick reply thanking Netty profusely for her work and insisting that she would find a way to repay her. A warm, unfamiliar glow came over Bella. Maybe things were starting to fall into place.
‘How are you settling in generally?’ Jill asked.
Bella paused. She hadn’t really thought about it in those terms. She didn’t think of herself as a person who settled in places. It wasn’t in her genes. Her nan was an old school rolling stone, and her mum… well, her mum didn’t have it in her to stick with anything. Deep inside, Bella feared, she was exactly the same. ‘I don’t know.’
‘How did you find it, Darcy?’ Jill asked again. ‘Coming here from somewhere so different?’
Darcy laughed. ‘Different? Lowbridge is so like New York city. You can barely tell them apart.’ She thought for a second. ‘I always loved it. But it wasn’t about the place itself. It was more about finding a place where I fit.’ She swallowed. ‘I fit wherever Alexander was, and he was here.’
Jill nodded. ‘And what about now?’ She asked the question gently.
‘Well now I don’t know. I can’t imagine going anywhere else.’ Darcy brushed a tear from her cheek with an immaculately manicured fingertip. ‘Leaving now would still feel like leaving Alexander. And where would I go?’
‘You don’t have to go anywhere,’ Bella reassured her. ‘This is your home.’
‘Yours too now though,’ Darcy replied.
Was it? ‘I’ve never really had a home.’ That wasn’t quite true. ‘I mean with my nan was home, but we always moved around. Like we were off at festivals or travelling or whatever every school holiday.’ She sipped her wine, letting the rich red liquid warm her throat. ‘And some times that weren’t school holidays too. She would phone and say I was sick when we were actually halfway up some mountain or something. She valued experience over settling down I think.’ Bella thought about Lowbridge. The castle. The village. The loch. The hills. The view over towards Raasay and Skye. ‘I guess if I’d grown up here I might never have needed to move around though. It’s like everything is here.’ The views were so big, and the possibilities for what could grow in this place with these people and with Bella felt so endless that she could imagine deciding not to move on. Perhaps she could decide to put down roots. It was the same feeling of certainty she’d had when Adam had got down on one knee – the knowledge that this was her safe harbour. Perhaps Bella could decide not to be her mother’s daughter. ‘Maybe this is home now,’ she whispered.
While Bella was finishing her class Adam was accepting the inevitable. Just after nine o’clock, he made his way into the laird’s bedroom at the front of the castle. He stopped in the doorway. He hadn’t really been in this room since he was very young. As a child he remembered opening his Christmas stocking sitting on the bed, before going downstairs to show his presents to his grandmother and Flinty.
He forced himself over the threshold. Dipper was curled up on the foot of the bed. His father would never have allowed that when he was younger. Dogs were beloved but they were also working animals. Letting the dog onto the bed would be Darcy’s doing. She’d softened him – she’d softened both of their lives after Adam’s mother left.
Adam scruffed at the back of Dipper’s neck. ‘You miss him, don’t you?’ Adam whispered.
Dipper looked up at him, sniffed warily, hopped off the bed and sloped away.
By half past nine he was sitting on the edge of what he still thought of as his father’s bed, surrounding by his own packed suitcases. His grandmother had emptied his father’s things out of the wardrobe with an efficiency that hadn’t allowed Adam to look through any of Alexander’s personal possessions. He didn’t know if there was anything he wanted to keep. He hoped Darcy had had a chance to take anything that meant something to her.
At half past ten he was still sitting there when his fiancée, apparently slightly tipsy, pushed the door open. She looked at the bags. ‘We don’t have to sleep in here.’
Adam let himself smile. ‘Well I don’t think you’re expected to sleep in here at all. That would be terribly inappropriate.’
‘We were sleeping together in the coach house.’
He shrugged. He wasn’t entirely sure about the precise morality his grandmother applied to the whole laird’s room, lady’s room situation. ‘What happens in the coach house stays in the coach house?’ he suggested.
‘Well your grandmother isn’t going to wander in in the night, so I think we’re fine.’ She stumbled – possibly she was more actually drunk than simply tipsy – towards him. ‘We can both go in the lady room if you prefer.’
‘Me sleeping here seems to be a whole thing.’
‘But if it feels like your dad’s room.’ She pulled a face.
He slumped forward, resting his head in his hands. ‘All the hassle to get Darcy to move and now I can’t even sleep in here anyway.’
Bella slid her fingers through his. ‘It’s not a big deal. It’s just a room. We can sleep in any of the twenty-eight other rooms.’
But it wasn’t just a room. It was where Adam was supposed to be.
‘You look tired.’
He was, but that was unfair. She was the one who had been rushing around. He hadn’t done half of what Bel had. She leaned towards him and lifted his chin with her finger. ‘Come on. A castle full of bedrooms.’ She grinned. ‘Why can’t we christen them all?’
Adam’s breath caught in his throat. She’d done this to him the very first moment they’d met. It had been like standing too close to the sun. ‘That sounds like a plan.’
‘OK.’ She grinned. ‘So we’re not starting in here.’
He shook his head. ‘Definitely not. And we’ve already done one in the coach house.’
‘Two,’ she corrected.
He thought back. The light dawned. ‘The day Flinty was cleaning and would not stop.’
Bella nodded.
Any plans to sneak in a little afternoon delight at Lowbridge had to fit around Flinty’s strict and immovable cleaning schedule.
‘I don’t think she understands what retirement means.’
Adam laughed, and wrapped an arm around Bella’s waist. ‘Where do you want to start then?’
‘Well you still haven’t shown me your actual room, from when you were a kid.’
Adam shook his head. ‘No. There’s no way I hold on to any sort of sex appeal after you’ve seen through that looking glass.’
‘Well now I have to.’ She grabbed his hand. ‘Lead on.’
‘Fine.’ He led her across the hallway and down the west wing corridor. ‘Here you go.’
Most of the trappings of teenage Adam were long gone – his carefully pressed school uniform and Iron Man duvet set were things of the past. Bella, of course, alighted on the things that were left. ‘You have a wall poster about different types of moss.’
‘What can I say? I’m just naturally cool.’
‘I didn’t even know there were different types of moss.’
Adam sat on the end of the single bed. ‘I haven’t been in here since we got back.’
‘Why not?’
He shrugged. He could say that there just hadn’t been any reason to, but that wouldn’t be the whole truth. ‘I think I knew that in here it would feel like my dad was just downstairs or out in the garden or something. Like I’m still fifteen and he’s still around making sure everything’s OK.’
‘Isn’t it nice to feel like that?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s not real though, is it? I can’t just pretend.’ He closed his eyes and forced down the wave of emotion that was threatening to overwhelm him. Bella was trying to cheer him up. The least he could do in return was attempt to be cheered. ‘Anyway,’ he reached for her. ‘I don’t think we should sleep in here. So which of the many other rooms do you want to check out next?’
She moved to him and kissed the top of his head. ‘Well I am going to be a proper lady, you know.’
‘I heard.’
‘So I do think I ought to find out what it feels like to be properly courted in the official lady’s bedroom.’
He shook his head. ‘That is not what courted means.’
‘Really? I thought it was like a euphemism.’
‘No. It means all the stuff before you get married.’
‘Well this is before we’ve got married.’ He opened his mouth to argue, but she shut him up with a kiss, entangling her fingers around his and leading him to the other bedroom. Making love to Bella didn’t make anything better, but at the same time, and for a short time, it made everything that was wrong disappear.
Afterwards, he closed his eyes and hoped to drift away to sleep. He felt the bed shift beside him as Bella sat up and pulled out her phone. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Just had an idea for the cookery school. Like could we get a mixologist in and do cocktail nights?’ She paused. ‘We’d need accommodation, or maybe we could get a minibus and minibus people back to the pub. Or give a designated driver place free?’
Adam listened to her stream of ideas. ‘Yeah. Sure.’
‘Well which?’
‘Whichever you think.’
‘But you think cocktails is a good idea?’
‘I don’t know.’ That was the best he could offer. He didn’t know what was a good idea. He didn’t know what to do for the best.
‘I was just asking.’ There was an edge to her voice that he wasn’t used to hearing.
‘I’m sorry. I’m just tired.’ He rolled towards her and reached a hand to her arm. ‘Can we talk about it in the morning?’
Adam woke early, or at least he would have described himself as having woken early if anyone had asked. In reality, he’d barely slept at all, as he had barely slept each and every night since his father’s death. He’d managed some rest on those precious few days in Edinburgh but as soon as he arrived back at Lowbridge sleep had eluded him once again.
Eventually, tiring of waiting for Bella to wake up and break the silence with her chatter and warmth, he climbed quietly out of bed and dressed before heading down the front stairs and out of the main door as silently as he could manage. Without thinking he walked around the side of the castle and up the path to the top of the cliff. That was the place he felt closest to his father – not in the estate office staring uselessly at rows of figures, not with his grandmother or his stepmother who could have shared stories and reminiscences of their own, not with the fiancée who he never got the chance to introduce to his dad – but outside, where he could touch the land that Alexander had loved so much.
There was nothing in the world that Adam Lowbridge wouldn’t have given for one more conversation with his father. One more talk might be the key to everything. Adam knew he was failing. He was failing the estate. He was failing his family. He was letting down his father’s memory, and now that Bella was throwing so much energy into the life of Lowbridge, he was letting her down as well.
He sat on the ground for what could have been minutes or could have been hours and stared out towards Raasay across the loch, and cried for the uselessness of not being able to ask his dad what to do, and whether he would forgive him for the choice he was considering.
Eventually Adam stood and turned back towards the house. There was a figure standing in front of the locked gate into the walled garden. Adam watched for a second. He hadn’t been near the garden for weeks. His grandmother had suggested that he did numerous times but he’d always found an excuse.
He walked down the hillside towards the stranger. It was a woman, and she was bending down, apparently placing something on the ground next to the wall. As he got closer he saw that it was a loosely tied bunch of wildflowers. As he got closer still the woman turned and he caught a glimpse of the shape of her face.
Adam stopped. The woman turned fully towards him and gasped. ‘Adam,’ she murmured, not quite a statement but not really a question either.
Adam didn’t have the words to say, so instead he ran and closed the space between them, letting her wrap her arms around him for a moment, before his bodied tensed and he stepped back. ‘Mum,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’