Chapter 17
17
Sunday morning, I awoke to find the sun beaming through my window and a rapid tapping on the bedroom door.
‘Emmie,’ Lily pretend-whispered, loud enough for me to hear her clearly through the solid layer of oak. ‘Are you awake?’
I padded over, glancing at the clock to see it was only eight-thirty, and opened the door. ‘Has something happened?’
‘Yes.’ Lily was fizzing with excitement. ‘Logan at the harbour messaged to say the meat’s arrived on the morning ferry. His wife, Jennie, is heading to North Cove to visit her grammie who’s taken a fall, so she’s dropping it off on the way.’
‘Great.’
‘It will be here in approximately seventeen minutes.’ She looked me up and down, bouncing on her swollen toes. ‘Will you be ready? It would be amazing if we can have some pasties baked in time for the beach.’
‘Give me twenty. And maybe time for some breakfast?’
‘Eggs, bacon, pancakes?’
‘Toast is fine.’
She gave a determined nod. ‘I’ll do an egg and throw on a couple of rashers.’
I ate breakfast in the garden. I would have stayed inside, due to an early-morning chill still lingering, but every available clutter-free surface was rapidly filling up with ingredients and cooking equipment. Lily was itching to get started, and I was itching to have a quiet moment to eat my egg and bacon on toast before we embarked on a marathon baking session.
She shooed the children and Malcolm off to Siskin Church – still a regular part of most islanders’ weekends – and sat waiting with such simmering anticipation that I forwent the second cup of coffee I’d been hoping for, and we got to work.
It had been twenty months since I’d stood shoulder to shoulder with another chef, and I’d forgotten how helpful it was to have someone to pass the salt, form a two-woman production line or simply share in the quiet contentment of chopping a mini mountain of vegetables.
Lily was a focused cook, saving any conversation for intelligent, informed questions about flavours or technique. When the pastry was chilling, venison stewing, peas mushing, we stood together at the kitchen table with the vegetarian ingredients and began working out how much of the different cheese to add.
The simple act of tasting, discussing, tweaking a little, before repeating the process until finally agreeing on the perfect quantity, was another new experience. Having someone to share this with made my chest ache with the loneliness of both the past couple of years, and the decade prior to that, where it had taken months of conniving to get any of my suggestions heard. Even then, they’d never been discussed, merely announced as if they had been Mum’s idea all along.
There should have been freedom in running things by myself but, up until creating the new vegan pasties, all I’d done was carry on enforcing the old rules and routines. Nevertheless, I tried not to be too harsh on myself – making changes to a successful business was a lot of responsibility for a twenty-six-year-old whose biggest decision prior to that had been whether to wear blue or black socks on her day off, or which book to check out of the library. Of course I would struggle to find the confidence to make any changes alone.
But having someone else to say, ‘Do you think that’s too salty?’ or, ‘I agree, the third version is the best,’ was a revelation.
I briefly wondered whether Blessing might like to swap her turquoise tunic for a Parsley’s uniform. Then I remembered how she’d manhandled my kitchen contents (pausing in my mixing to send her a reminder to water my herbs) and decided that an unsuitable co-worker would probably be worse than continuing alone.
At two-thirty, I carefully lifted the final tray out of Lily’s huge oven.
‘Wow. They look and smell so much better fresh,’ Lily said, dreamily, gently poking a perfectly golden crust.
‘That’s why I bake most of them once I get to the kiosk, with each batch small enough to sell out within a couple of hours.’
While they were undoubtedly tastier fresh, these looked like the best pasties I’d made without Mum. It turned out teamwork really did make the dream work.
‘Can we have one?’ Jack asked, popping up in between me and his mum, Beanie squeezing in with him.
‘I told you, these are for the beach. By the time we get there, they’ll have cooled down enough to eat.’
‘But I’m too hungry to ride my bike,’ he protested.
‘I’m hungry. I want one too,’ his sister echoed, standing on tiptoes so her huge, round eyes could see what she was missing.
‘Did you not both eat cheese and ham sandwiches, an apple and a giant pretzel an hour ago?’
‘Exactly!’ Jack said. ‘A whole hour ago.’
‘Moles eat half their own body weight in a day,’ Beanie announced.
‘Good job you’re a girl, then, and not a mole. The sooner you both get ready to go, the sooner we can get there and you can try one.’
Less than five minutes later, Lily was loading two cool boxes full of pasties in the car. She was driving to spare her swollen ankles. The children were lined up in the hall, accompanied by several tote bags, a football and two giant stuffed moles. Beanie was clutching a hamster inside one of those plastic balls they run about in.
‘No to Digger and Dirt. Definitely no – make that never – to Mister Whiskers. Hamsters are not allowed at the beach,’ Malcolm said.
‘He’s not a hamster. He’s a hairy-tailed mole so that means he can come,’ Beanie sang happily.
‘Jack, have you got a shirt in there somewhere?’ Malcolm asked, ignoring her.
‘Nope.’
‘Stupid question, I suppose. Have you at least got sun cream on?’
‘Flora did it.’
‘Great. Now once you’ve put on your surf shoes, we can go. Moles can’t come to the beach, either. Put him back in his cage, now.’
‘Cowboys don’t wear shoes.’
‘I think you’ll find they do. Otherwise, what happens when they step in a cowpat, or on a rattlesnake?’
‘Do not. They wear cowboy boots.’
‘You haven’t got any boots, buddy. Surf shoes or nothing.’
Jack marched to the front door. ‘Nothing.’
‘No, I mean you can’t go if you don’t wear shoes. Beanie, put Mister Whiskers in his cage.’
‘Not going, then.’ Jack plonked himself down, arms folded, chin jutting from beneath a miniature Stetson. Beanie put the hamster ball down, the occupant making a break for the kitchen, and tipped herself upside down in her brother’s lap.
‘Well, that’s a shame. I thought you wanted to try one of Emmie’s pasties.’ Malcolm shrugged, picking up one of the larger bags. ‘Auntie Violet has made crackle cakes for the bonfire.’
‘Crackle cakes!’ Beanie flipped upright and grabbed one of the surf shoes that Flora had picked up from the shoe rack, attempting to wrestle it onto Jack’s bare foot. ‘Let’s go!’
While Flora bent to help her sister, Jack’s resolve clearly wavering as he lifted his leg to make it easier, Lily returned, instructing her youngest daughter to return the hamster to his cage in the living room while we loaded up the car.
I was sorely tempted to ask if I could ride in the car along with Beanie, but didn’t want to appear like a feeble mainlander, so it was back on the rental bike.
‘Ew.’ Jack wrinkled his nose as he and Malcolm passed me. ‘Flora, did you fart again?’
Flora overtook me next. ‘Ugh! The only way a fart could smell like that is if someone’s eaten a dead dinosaur first. Unless…’ She gave me a curious glance over her shoulder. ‘Is that what English farts smell like?’
‘No!’ I said, with enough force to sound suspicious. ‘Something gross got on the bike yesterday.’
‘Why didn’t you clean it?’
‘I did.’
Then Malcolm had a go, with bleach, and then I tried again.
‘Here.’ Malcolm had paused so that I could catch up, then he reached across with a plastic bag. ‘It won’t stop the bike stinking, but hopefully means it won’t get absorbed by your dress.’
‘It might be too late for that.’
‘Ah, well. We can always sit you upwind.’