Chapter 27
27
I spent the next few hours baking pasties in batches, keeping them warm in the Aga and a mobile food trolley borrowed from one of the hotels. Lily checked in when she’d arrived at the church. I assured her that the dogs were keeping a watchful eye on every crumb. Rosemary messaged seven times. When I failed to answer the seventh message within ten seconds, because I was busy moving pasties from the oven to the Aga, she phoned.
After a brief explanation, met with thinly veiled suspicion, I ended the call thinking that a private-catering business might not be the best career move after all.
So, I wasn’t surprised when she barrelled into the kitchen as soon as the first cars started pulling up just after three.
‘How’s it going?’
She opened the oven door, followed by the Aga and the warming trolley. I reminded myself how I’d feel having a stranger take over my kitchen, and tried not to let my irritation show.
‘Any issues?’
‘Not since you last phoned fifteen minutes ago, no.’
‘Right. I’m sorry. I just want it all to go well.’
‘How was the ceremony?’
Rosemary pressed a hand to her chest. ‘Perfect. What more could a mother want than for her daughter to marry a fine, island man? No skeletons or last-minute surprises. Two people who understand each other. Understand this way of life and know it’s what they want. When Lily married Malcolm, I was that worried about a stranger in the family, I didn’t sleep for months.’
‘That’s wonderful.’ I almost sounded as if I meant it. Rosemary must know about Gabe’s first wife, and I wondered how much that tainted her view of a suitable partner for her children.
‘Two down, two to go!’ she cried, giving the Labradors a pet before whirling out of the door.
At three-forty-five, I left the sanctuary of the kitchen and went to find Lily. I’d timed everything to perfection, but had forgotten that islanders tended to allow a lot more flexibility in their schedules.
It was a balmy afternoon, and most of the guests were gathered on the outside space by the open Old Barn doors. Richard and his band were playing a gentle folk song, the children were occupied with a game of boules on the grass, and everyone else was chatting in small clusters, drinks in hand and smiles on faces.
Scanning around, I spotted Iris and Hugh posing for a photograph under a large oak tree, Celine beside them, but Lily was inside the barn, supervising the makeshift barman. Her lemon maternity bridesmaid dress contrasted beautifully with her dark hair, pinned up with a silk lily, and sun-kissed skin.
‘The pasties are ready. I’m worried they’ll start cooling down.’
‘Oh?’ She checked her watch. ‘We’ve still got the rest of the photos to do yet. That’s why we said food at four-thirty.’
‘Right. But your mum said Iris moved it to an hour earlier.’
‘What?’ Lily looked confused. ‘No. I showed you the schedule. It’s not changed.’
‘Okay. No problem.’ I started to back away.
‘Are you sure? Are they going to be ruined? Hang on, let me find Ma.’
Lily followed me out of the barn, but Rosemary was nowhere to be seen, and no one else seemed to know where she was either.
‘I can’t believe she got it wrong.’
‘She does seem a bit stressed.’
‘She’s an islander woman, relinquishing control of one of the most important days of her daughter’s life. You bet she’s stressed.’ We wandered around the side of the barn towards the house, Lily suggesting Rosemary might have nipped back for something, but Celine caught up with us on the front yard.
‘Iris wants you for a bridesmaid photo,’ she said, slightly breathless. ‘Hey, Emmie. Looks like you’ve been slaving away, bless you.’
‘Hi.’ I glanced down at my sweaty T-shirt and resisted the urge to redo my ponytail, hoping she couldn’t see me quaking as I forced myself to look at her.
However firmly I told myself that today was about Iris and Hugh, not some preposterous grudge, it didn’t make it any easier to stand in front of the woman who was trying to bully me away from Pip and off the island and pretend I didn’t know that she must know full well I knew it was her.
Celine looked as gorgeous as I’d have expected in a sleeveless, lemon, A-line dress and strappy heels, the top half of her hair twisted into plaits like a laurel wreath, the rest loose waves. Her smile innocent, if a little tense.
Lily briefly explained the timing issue with the pasties as we walked over to where Iris and Hugh were still under the tree with the photographer, Violet waiting to one side with her nieces.
My heart lurched to see Pip, fiddling with the posy in Flora’s hair, in a moss-green suit that fitted perfectly. I couldn’t have felt more like a sweaty, scruffy outsider amongst all this wedding finery.
Then he turned towards us, eyes widening in surprise when he saw me. The expression on his face made none of that matter. He looked as though he didn’t see the messy hair and rumpled clothes, but the actual me, underneath all of that. And as if he thought that person was as lovely as a bride in her wedding dress.
I could have stood there, gawking back at him, until the pasties had all gone stale. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do anything else, until Celine stalked right up to him and brushed at something that wasn’t there on his lapel, breaking the moment.
‘Emmie got the times wrong, so we need to hurry up with the photos,’ Celine said, once she’d thoroughly wiped off the imaginary whatever it was.
‘Um, no she didn’t,’ Lily corrected. ‘It was Ma who told her three-thirty.’
There was a brief discussion, whereby Iris and Hugh happily agreed to one more posed photo with the bridesmaids while Pip rounded up the waiters and I raced back to the kitchen to start serving.
‘There we go, issue solved, potential disaster averted,’ Lily said, so pointedly that I wondered if she also suspected some sort of interference. As I hurried past the barn, I considered stopping to ask Rosemary if Celine had been the one to tell her the time had changed. No one else had a reason to, and she had the least to lose if the food was lukewarm or dry. However, Rosemary was chatting with a group of people I didn’t know, so I decided not to bother opening that can of worms unless I needed to – which I very much hoped I wouldn’t.
As I started transferring the first batch of pasties – maybe a few minutes past their peak, but thankfully still utterly delectable – onto a platter, I couldn’t shift the sense that something wasn’t quite right. The trolley, which I’d positioned ready by the table, was now a couple of feet away. While I wanted to believe that someone probably nudged it as they moved past to get to the bathroom, I would have been na?ve not to consider that it might have been moved for more sinister reasons.
With dread pounding in my chest, I broke open a random pasty and checked through the contents, including a good sniff and a quick taste.
‘Quality checking, or unable to resist the best pasties in the universe?’ Pip asked, appearing in the doorway.
‘I don’t normally, but timings are never the same in a different oven. And, well, it is a special occasion.’
‘You really need an independent opinion, then,’ he said, walking over and breaking off a piece, then waving it underneath his nose. ‘Hmmm. I’m getting hints of mole, maybe a smidgen of cowboy hat, classic literature, and chicken feathers. Do I detect overtones of interference from my bossy big sister?’
‘If you want to be useful,’ I said, unable to help laughing, ‘you can unload all the veggie pasties from the Aga onto that dish.’
For the next few minutes, we worked as quickly as possible to load up the platters as the waiting staff bore them away to the Old Barn. Even with the door and windows open, it was sweltering work, and, despite having ditched his jacket, rolled up his shirtsleeves and undone the top two buttons of his white shirt, Pip looked as hot and bothered as me by the time we’d finished. Hot, bothered and that dichotomy of dishevelled-man-in-formalwear that did nothing to help me cool down.
‘This is genius catering,’ he said, leaning back against the table and wiping his face with his pocket square. ‘Twenty minutes of hard graft, but then it’s all done.’
‘Um, quite a few hours of hard graft over the past few days. And it’s not done; there’s a pile of baking trays to wash, and the cake needs serving.’
‘The cake!’ Pip’s face lit up at the thought. ‘Have you seen it? Mammaw was being all secretive about the design. She finished the icing while we were setting up this morning.’
‘It’s in the fridge.’ Aster had lived up to her reputation as the best cake-maker on the island. The two tiers were decorated with edible sunflowers, a pair of yellowy-green siskins nestled together on the top. The sides were edged with waves of piping to represent the sea, and the overall effect was sweet and yet exquisite. ‘I’m under strict orders to keep it on the middle shelf until the cake-cutting in about half an hour, but I won’t tell anyone if you sneak a peek.’
Pip opened the fridge door a few inches and winked at me before pressing one eye against the gap.
I turned away with a smile and started filling the sink with hot water.
‘Emmie.’
As I flipped back around, it was instantly clear that all trace of jollity had vanished.
‘What?’
Face sombre, Pip stepped back to let me see into the huge, old fridge.
‘Oh, no.’
It was clear why Aster had been so adamant about her storage instructions. I had to bend down to look properly at the cake, both tiers now crammed side by side on the bottom shelf, right above the vegetable rack. The soft icing around the sides had started sagging, the waves blurring together into a squishy mess. Several of the sunflowers looked as though they were wilting, and the male siskin’s beak and eyes had slumped into the melting mass, while the female’s head had slipped off entirely.
‘Help me move it.’
We shooed the dogs into another room to prevent their inquisitive noses from causing an accident, then, while being careful not to cause any more damage, we slid each tier out and returned them to the middle shelf – that was, after removing a tray of unbaked pasties that I’d left in the freezer as backup in case I dropped or otherwise spoiled another lot.
We wacked the temperature down a couple of degrees and shut the door.
‘It is fixable?’ Pip asked after a distressed silence.
‘We could remove the worst of the flowers, try sticking the head back on the siskin bride. But the waves are ruined. The best option is probably to smooth them all out.’
‘How long will it take you?’
I looked at him, stricken. ‘I bake pastry, not cakes. We’d have to ask Aster to do it.’
Pip fired off a message to one of his sisters, shaking his head grimly when a reply pinged through a minute later. ‘She’s gone to sleep off the champagne before the band start up again. But asked if we’d take a photo of the cake once it’s assembled.’
I shouldn’t have been surprised when Rosemary appeared, just as we were working out where to position the bird’s beak.
‘Pip, what are you doing skulking about in here? This is your sister’s wedding,’ she scolded as we spun around, hiding the cake behind our backs. ‘Did you even eat one of the pasties you’ve been going on about for two years? Everyone’s wondering where you are.’
‘By everyone, do you mean Celine?’ Pip asked, grimacing.
‘She was one of them, yes.’
‘Then there’s your answer,’ he shot back. ‘Her refusal to accept that I’m not interested in rekindling anything between us is hard enough under normal circumstances. Wedding Celine – Chief Bridesmaid Celine – is too much. I’d rather deal with the cows on heat. Besides, Emmie needed some help.’
‘Hmph. I thought that was why we were paying those students from Port Cathan: to help Emmie.’
‘Yeah. This was something else.’
‘Oh?’ She lowered her eyebrows. ‘Emmie was supposed to call me if anything came up. Is everything under control, Emmie, as you assured me it would be?’
Pip and I exchanged a glance, and in silent agreement, moved apart so that Rosemary could see the cake on the worktop behind us. She immediately bustled over.
‘What is this? What did you do?’ she squawked, hands flapping over the top tier.
‘Someone moved it to the bottom of the fridge,’ I said, apologetically. ‘We found it like this.’
‘Why would they do that?’ Rosemary was nearly shrieking.
‘I have no idea. There was no reason for anybody to be in the kitchen.’
‘Except you. Why weren’t you in the kitchen?’
‘You told me the wrong time for the pasties. I was trying to sort it out with Lily.’
‘Oh, so it’s my fault that you left the kitchen unattended, putting the cake at risk?’
‘At risk of what?’ Pip interjected. ‘Someone sneaking in and moving it to a different shelf on the fridge? As you said, why on earth would they do that?’
‘I don’t know. You tell me why someone would want to destroy Iris and Hugh’s wedding cake.’
‘I have no idea.’ Pip took hold of his mother’s hand, trying to calm her down. ‘Who apart from family even knows about the dodgy bottom of the fridge?’
‘No one! That’s my whole point. Is it more plausible that someone deliberately crept into my kitchen and spoiled your mammaw’s wedding cake, or that someone – Emmie – forgot about the fridge and moved the cake so that she could, I don’t know, fit something else in?’
‘No.’ I shook my head.
Rosemary looked at me for a long moment, taking a deep breath as her initial consternation readjusted into a semblance of sympathy.
‘You have been very busy. I’m sure it was an easy mistake to make in all the confusion and clamour. We shouldn’t have left you alone to manage everything, given how different things are here compared to what you’re used to.’
‘No.’ I tried to keep calm, but it was difficult due to the adrenaline stampeding through my arteries. From the moment I’d seen the cake, the possibility that this had been deliberate had been cramping in my guts. ‘This is my business. I’ve baked and served pasties non-stop for over ten years, in a far more demanding environment than this. There was no confusion or clamour. And I didn’t open the fridge once. I had no reason to. Let alone move the cake. I would never have dared try by myself.’
‘I’m sorry, Emmie, but lying about it isn’t going to make things better,’ Rosemary bristled. ‘We can forgive a serious mistake like this, even if it has wrecked Aster’s painstaking work. After all, it’s only a cake. But not owning up to it is a whole different matter. It’s… shameful. We don’t do things like that here.’
‘Ma—’ Pip protested, but Rosemary cut him off.
‘No, Philip. I’m going to tell Lily, then send someone in to slice that up and serve it in pieces. We’ll have to explain to Iris and Hugh why they can’t cut the cake. And lie to Aster about why there’s no picture of what will probably be the last wedding cake she ever makes.’ She sniffed, striding back to the outside door. ‘As for you, thank you for the pasties, but I think it’s time you left us to celebrate with our family and friends.’
‘No, Ma,’ Pip called, but she’d already gone. Instead, he turned to me. ‘Don’t go yet. At least, not like this. I’ll talk to Lily and make sure no one thinks it was you.’
I must have looked distraught, because he took hold of my hand and clenched it against his chest. ‘Promise me you won’t go. It’ll be easy to work out who moved the cake. Probably one of the waiting staff. Or Violet.’
‘Or Celine,’ I mumbled.
‘Celine? Why would she be in here messing about with the fridge?’
I shrugged, unable to face answering that.
‘Do you really believe me?’ I asked instead, voice trembling. The whole situation was horrendous.
Pip lifted my hand, kissed it gently, then looked me right in the eyes. It made everything about a zillion times better.
‘You learned not to forget things,’ he said, softly. ‘Catering instructions, especially.’
My eyes filled with tears. He’d taken seriously what I’d told him about Mum.
‘Besides, I’ve seen you running the kiosk with a queue snaking halfway down the concourse. People bellowing their orders, everyone frazzled, a semi-riot over the last cinnamon apple custard. Working alone, in our vast kitchen, must have been a piece of cake in comparison.’ He winced, dropping my hand. ‘Okay, terrible analogy for now. But yes. I trust you. With this, and just about anything.’
He turned to go. ‘Lily told me Aster’s lent you a dress. Get changed, take a deep breath, and by the time you’re ready, I’ll have solved the great cake mystery.’