Chapter 2
2
I knew exactly how many pasties to prep in order to sell out between three and three-fifteen each day, factoring in airline schedules and fluctuating seasons. Today, on top of my arriving with less stock than usual, the initial queue had more than compensated for my delay, creating a buzz that meant the handful of regulars waiting for the two-forty-five to Amsterdam were gutted to find I’d only got two pasties left.
‘Are these one of each?’ an older woman who always flew out on Sundays and returned on Thursday asked, pointing an immaculate scarlet fingernail at the counter.
‘Yes. One Sherwood, one vegetarian.’
‘I’ll take the veggie, please. And a large cappuccino with extra sprinkles and a shot of caramel.’
I was already placing it into a paper bag. She always had the parsnip and white Stilton pasty, despite the younger man who often travelled with her trying to persuade her to go for the meat option, a venison and minted mushy pea recipe Mum had developed on the basis that it was both local and the most environmentally friendly meat.
‘She’s not a vegetarian,’ he often told me, rolling his eyes. ‘Just refuses to believe that anything else could be as tasty as this one.’
‘I don’t care if the venison is better,’ his colleague once scoffed. ‘I live on salad and grains all week to offset the calorific pleasure of this feast. Why risk it?’
Today, he went as far as to put a hand on her arm as she reached up to take her purchase. ‘Come on, Cathy, you know I’ve gone vegan this month. Are you seriously going to make me hunt down a prepacked plant-based sandwich in here?’
Apart from Parsley’s, the only places to get something to eat were the food court on the other side of the building, which didn’t do takeaway, or the Travel Shop, which by this time of day was probably down to a flabby cheese and tomato wrap and a couple of cheap sausage rolls.
‘And what is a vegan, however superficial they are about it, going to do with a Stilton pasty?’ Cathy asked.
‘Damn.’ The man’s face fell. ‘It’s got cheese in it?’
‘That’s what makes it so delicious.’ She smirked, opening the bag for a deep sniff.
‘You don’t have any other options?’ he asked me, despite already knowing the answer because we only had three flavours on the menu, and, even if the custard in the cinnamon apple pasty had been dairy-free, we now had only one pasty left.
‘Sorry. They do a good soup in the food court, if you’ve time.’
We both glanced at the clock on the display board. He didn’t have time.
Mum had considered it revolutionary to put a vegetarian option on the menu, back in 1990 when she’d opened the kiosk. It had taken years to persuade her to stock soya milk.
‘I don’t suppose you have any gluten-free?’ another man asked as Cathy’s dejected colleague slunk off muttering about finding a packet of crisps.
‘Sorry, this is the only one left. It’s normal pastry,’ I said, as if gluten-free were ever an option.
I was getting asked questions like this more and more often, I mused while cleaning up a few minutes later, simultaneously trying to scrub away the strange numbness I’d woken up with. Mum had been adamant that sticking to three recipes, done well, was key to our success. Broadening the menu would only compromise the quality. And it wasn’t as though I needed to attract more customers. Apart from the horror of the pandemic, business was always enough to keep things ticking over. More recipes meant more work, which I simply didn’t have the time or the energy for.
And yet.
Had any of my reluctance to get up that morning been due to feeling a teensy bit bored with facing the same routine for the squillionth time? Had sleeping through my alarm, not simply doing what I’d always done, been enough to awaken a tiny part of me that wasn’t sure this was actually what I wanted to be doing for the rest of my life?
I couldn’t help wondering if there was another reason I kept putting off signing a new three-year lease.
Every day, I watched up to a thousand strangers jet off to far-off places. And while the short-haul flights from our tiny airport were not that adventurous compared to many, when the most exotic trip you’ve undertaken is a long-weekend in Whitby, getting on a plane to anywhere is a prospect beyond thrilling.
But that was a fantasy, of course. My life was here. Parsley’s was my legacy, and I owed it to Mum to put as much effort in as she had. Most of the travellers at Sherwood Airport were heading off on business, anyway. Probably to boring meetings, trying to fix nightmarish problems or drum up more sales, because they didn’t have the luxury of hundreds of customers walking right past them every day.
Besides, Mum and I were the type of people who valued routine. Just like Cathy. When you’d figured out what works best, why risk changing it?
Nell had told me about her cousin – my birth mother. How she’d spent her short life staggering between trouble and disaster. In and out of prison along with the rest of our sparse family. How when the cousin had turned up high on goodness knew what and handed over a tiny baby and a plastic bag containing three nappies and a tub of formula milk, Nell had known the only decent thing to do was take them.
She’d learned how to be a mother through checking out every parenting book in the library, discarding the new-fangled nonsense, and incorporating the remaining advice into a regime based on common sense and practicality, all while continuing to run the kiosk.
It had worked, as she’d often used to remind me. I’d grown into a sensible young woman with a faultless work ethic, one capable of being entrusted with a thriving business when the time came. Any genetic tendency towards criminality or chaos had been suppressed thanks to cutting off all contact with Negative Influences (by which she meant my aunt and grandparents, my mother having died a year after relinquishing me), and building our new family of two on the foundation of self-discipline and integrity.
Still, I’d grown up with the ghost of my birth mother hovering over my shoulder, especially in those adolescent moments when I’d dared to dream about a life more like the ones that the girls at school had enjoyed. Shopping with friends at the weekend, hobbies in the evening and even going away in the school holidays, rather than forever braising venison or peeling parsnips.
‘Make-up?’ Mum had shaken her head in disgust the one time I’d asked if I could spend my meagre earnings on some eyeliner. ‘That only leads to trouble. Do you want to throw away everything I’ve taught you for a few minutes of frivolity with a boy? It only feels good while it lasts, Emmaline. The consequences are a whole other matter.’
What I’d actually wanted was to see if I could make my eyes look mysterious and cool like the most popular girl in school, Jodie Mayfair.
Now, fourteen years later, I thought about this as I flicked off the kiosk lights, locked the door and headed straight over to the Travel Shop. I was twenty-six. Mum had died almost two years ago. Why was I waiting for her permission to do anything any more?
After my detour to the shop, I found my usual table in the food court. This table was rarely busy, partly because the food-court offerings consisted of an all-day breakfast that looked as if it had been sitting on the lukewarm counter ‘all day’, and a ‘hot special’, rotating five variations of greying, greasy minced beef. There were also a few sandwiches and snacks and the spicy lentil and vegetable soup. Which was delicious.
Six days a week, I treated myself to soup, a warm bread roll and a slice of flapjack with a pot of tea before setting off for home. Today, Blessing, who was working the afternoon shift at the Travel Shop, hurried over to join me.
‘What’s all this, then?’ She eyed the bag of make-up that I’d bought from her only minutes earlier. There’d been a family waiting to pay for a pile of miniature toiletries, so she’d not been able to grill me at the time, but I wasn’t surprised that she’d made use of the back in 5 minutes sign that was highly frowned upon by all levels of airport management, and followed me straight over as soon as the shop was empty.
I shrugged, concentrating on my lunch. ‘I’ve run out of a few bits. Mascara and stuff. I know it’s more expensive here, but I can’t seem to get around to it on my day off.’
‘Emmaline Brown. In what decade did you run out of mascara? Because the only non-natural thing on your face since you started working here is the occasional smear of icing sugar.’
Mum had started me working at Parsley’s on weekends and school holidays the day after my thirteenth birthday. Blessing had been sixteen and a month into her Saturday job, so she’d naturally gravitated towards me as the only other teenager employed at the airport. Since we’d both gone on to work full-time, she’d become the closest person I had to a friend here. Which meant that since Mum died, she’d been the closest person in my life full stop. However, our occasional lunchtime chats about whether Arjun in Security was ever going to confess his love to Helena in Duty Free, or the trials of her ever-expanding family, were still a long way from me sharing a potential existential crisis.
‘Maybe I wear make-up in my free time. When I’m going out somewhere nice.’
‘What, to the wholesalers? Or are you checking out a fit librarian as well as all those holiday books?’ She eyed my bag. I sometimes read a travel guide while I finished my flapjack.
I ate another mouthful of bread. She was right. The library was the highlight of my social calendar.
‘If you’ve got yourself a date, you’d better tell me about it.’
I shook my head, neck prickling with embarrassment at the intimate turn the conversation was taking, while at the same time sharply aware of the shyly smiling, rugged face that had popped into my head.
‘I don’t have a date. Barb told me I looked like crap this morning.’
‘Yeah, well. If you’re taking Barb’s advice then you’ll have to spend way more than forty quid.’
Barb took both her role as unofficial beauty-counter consultant and her staff discount seriously. The rumour around the airport was that she’d once worn so much metallic eyeshadow, the metal detector had gone off when she’d walked through Security. Blessing joked that her manager liked to demonstrate the shop’s full range of make-up – all at the same time. In contrast, the only make-up my friend ever wore was a swipe of electric-blue eyeliner that perfectly matched her uniform. She constantly complained about the cheap tunic she had to wear, but the truth was, the way that she tucked it over her curves made it look effortlessly stylish.
‘Gregory said I didn’t look like myself.’
‘He said that?’ Blessing frowned, peering more closely at me.
I didn’t add that I didn’t feel like myself, either. Not ill. Just odd.
‘Honestly? And I say this as your airport bestie – you look knackered.’
I put down my spoon. How could I be knackered when I’d had an extra two hours of sleep this morning?
‘You’ve looked worn out since losing Nell,’ she said, squinting in apology for the bluntness. ‘Which is understandable, when you’re grieving. But it’s been nearly two years and lately, it’s got worse. I mean, if it’s just your outside that’s tired, then I can recommend some creams and things to help. But is it more than that? Are you as exhausted as you look? When was the last time you had a proper holiday?’
I sat back. Blessing, unlike Barb, was rarely rude. I trusted her opinion more than anyone’s. I closed my eyes for a second, to see if I could tune into my body and figure out if this was what it was trying to tell me.
A good few seconds later, when my eyelids were protesting at the very idea of opening again, I had my answer.
‘Never.’ I moved my bowl to the side and picked up my flapjack. ‘I’ve never had a proper holiday. I spent a week off in January deep-cleaning my kitchen and going for a smear test.’ I took a large bite, acknowledging the irony that realising how tired I was had energised me for the first time all day. ‘I’m so tired I’ve been too tired to even notice. I guess I need to start going to bed earlier. It’s not like I can take any time off when we’re about to hit the high season.’
Blessing gave me a pointed look. ‘You think that’s the answer? Buy some make-up to hide your bags and go to bed even earlier than your current time of, what, nine-thirty?’
‘I didn’t buy the make-up solely to hide my eyebags.’ I tried to hide behind the chunk of flapjack, because this whole conversation was making my skin itch. ‘I just wanted, I don’t know. To try something different. See what it was like to be a bit different.’
‘What, different from mini-Nell?’
That made me smile. Mum had been five-foot eleven and thirteen stone of hard graft. I was eight inches shorter, and at risk of being blown over if I walked too close to the air-conditioning vents. Despite that, we shared strawberry-blonde hair, green eyes and heart-shaped faces.
‘They do say a change is as good as a break,’ Blessing went on. ‘Maybe trying some new things, having more fun, will help.’
I nodded. ‘That’s a good idea. I’ll think about it.’
‘We can start this evening.’ She gripped my hand, dark eyes gleaming. ‘I finish at seven. How about I head over and do you a makeover? I can show you how to put that stuff on without ending up like Barb. We can brainstorm some other things to help you feel less awful.’
I balked at that, still getting used to the idea that I might be feeling at all awful. But while a large part of me wanted to fob Blessing off – I had to prepare a fresh pot of mushy peas, water my plants, read a book, sit about feeling pitifully lonely – the part of me that had woken up with the scent of summer sunshine in her senses wanted to try something reckless.
‘I’ll message you my address.’