Chapter 34
34
It was when I moved the creaky old bed away from the wall that I found it. A dusty grey cardboard folder, tucked in the inch-high space between the floor and the divan bed base.
Inside were photographs of a baby who must have been me. In a couple of the pictures, I was alone, in my pram and lying on a picnic blanket. In others, Mum was there, cradling me against her chest or sitting me on her knee in front of a cake with one candle on it. The rest featured other people too – women who all looked like older or younger versions of Nell, and a few small children.
This must be the family Nell refused to have anything to do with. Yet she clearly hadn’t decided that until I was past my first birthday. What had happened?
After soaking up the images, I found the answer in an envelope inside the folder. It contained the court papers granting legal guardianship of Emmaline Swan to Nell Brown, dated a month after my first birthday. Fascinated, I read the statement about how Kennedy Swan had requested that the cousin who had already been caring for her daughter should be given parental responsibility. The formal assessment confirmed what Mum had told me, that Kennedy had a lot of problems, as well as two prison sentences behind her, but it was the rest that floored me.
Ms Brown clearly cares deeply for Emmaline. They have formed a strong bond during this first year of Emmaline’s life, and Emmaline sees Ms Brown as her mother. Concerns have been raised about Ms Brown’s ability to raise a child, considering her own family background, but she has worked hard to address these by taking a significant amount of time off work to attend courses and educate herself on healthy parenting. She has also cut back the hours of her business, at considerable financial loss, in order to minimise the need for external childcare. Furthermore, she has abandoned her plans to open a second food outlet, being unwilling to take on the risk when responsible for a child.
Ms Brown has argued vigorously that she is able to protect Emmaline from any safeguarding issues surrounding her family while maintaining those relationships. However, the wider concerns detailed in section 4.2 mean that the guardianship shall only be granted if Emmaline has no ongoing contact with either her maternal grandparents, Ms Brown’s parents, or her aunt and uncle. Ms Brown has therefore agreed to cease all contact with her family in order to preserve the placement’s confidentiality.
And so it went on. There were other questions raised, about how Mum would balance a business and a child as a single parent, what would happen if the kiosk failed. How she would handle any future relationships with men. It was a rigorous grilling, and Mum’s answers were always the same. I was her priority now. Basically, she’d do whatever it took to make it work, and be the best mum that she could be.
Section 4.2 was missing, but that wasn’t what mattered to me. I had always known that Mum made the usual sacrifices that went hand in hand with parenting. Those that, like most children, I’d taken for granted a lot of the time. But reading how she’d chosen to slash her income, abandon her dreams of expansion – to stay single! It also explained why she’d put so much into Parsley’s, into sticking to what worked. She’d sworn to give it her all, so she had.
Above all, only a few years after losing the love of her life, she’d given up her family. For a child who wasn’t even her responsibility.
I felt overcome by the enormity of what she’d done for me. I sobbed as I realised the true reason why she’d struggled so hard with allowing herself to be vulnerable, let alone happy. My heart shattered at the injustice that I’d never be able to tell her how grateful I was.
I decided then that, one day, when I felt strong enough, I would find Nell’s family and show them that her sacrifice was worth it.
When Blessing found me applying the first coat of white paint later that Sunday morning, she took one look at my blotchy face and threw her arms around me, ignoring the roller dripping onto the carpet as I collapsed into a puddle of yet more tears.
Once I’d wrung myself dry and was insistent that I needed to stop thinking about it for now, we decided the best solution was a late brunch in the village café, accompanied by a long conversation about what else we’d like to do with the cottage, before heading back to apply Blessing’s choice of teal feature wall. For some reason, the second coat took longer. Possibly due to my housemate insisting we stop to dance when one of her favourite songs came on, and this being her ‘top tunes’ playlist, so that meant basically every track.
We finished late afternoon, had a break for coffee and cookies and then started sawing furniture into manageable-sized pieces and feeding the bits to the fire pit Blessing picked up at the same time as the loungers.
‘Look at us.’ Blessing sighed once blisters forced us to give up on the saw, and we feasted on cheese and crackers in the warmth of the flames. ‘Two weeks ago, I was climbing out of a bunk bed covered in ancient My Little Pony stickers, kicking my way through Honour’s dirty school uniform to bagsy the shower, and now I’m here, with my bestie housemate, living like an actual adult, without Dad hovering over my shoulder lecturing about sharp blades, forest fires and the correct protocol for cleaning paintbrushes.’
‘I think this is the first time I’ve genuinely relished making my own decisions, without second-guessing what Mum would have thought. Well,’ I corrected myself, ‘apart from the vegan pasties.’
‘It was the pasties that kick-started this whole thing,’ Blessing mused.
‘You know what, it was before then. That day I overslept, something inside me shifted.’
‘What made you sleep through your alarm for the first time ever?’
I added another section of bedpost to the fire, debating whether or not to admit the truth.
‘I was dreaming.’
‘Oh?’
‘About the island,’ I added sheepishly.
‘Girl,’ Blessing said slowly. I didn’t have to look round to know she was raising one eyebrow, mouth curling up. ‘Have you messaged him yet?’ she asked, after a long minute of what I pretended was companionable rather than a loaded silence.
‘Nope.’
‘Still thinking about him?’
I showed her the Instagram picture.
‘Oh, Emmie.’ I did look at her this time. Her voice was so uncharacteristically gentle, it knocked me off guard. ‘You really did fall in love.’
‘It’s only a photo.’ I quickly took the phone back and stuffed it in my jacket pocket.
She said nothing, reaching over and taking hold of my hand, kindly not acknowledging the escaped tear.
Blessing was right. We were doing great. Brimming with plans and possibilities.
I had to figure out how to stop feeling as though a big fat chunk of my heart was missing.
We spent the next few days building flat-pack furniture, adding soft furnishings and other finishing touches before moving so much of Blessing’s stuff into the room, it was virtually impossible to see any of the new décor. We then painted my room in a soft golden yellow that was the exact same shade as the Hawkins Farm winter barley. Meaning it was my own fault when, that first night back in my old bed, I dreamed about blue skies, shimmering meadows and the squawk of gulls swooping over the Irish Sea.
By Friday, we were so full of half-baked, half-bonkers business ideas that a formal meeting couldn’t wait any longer. We set up my laptop, Blessing’s iPad and two pristine notebooks on the largest worktop in the pasty kitchen, perching on our stools with giant lattes and cinnamon whirls from Middlebeck bakery, feeling about as bad-ass businesswomen as we could get.
Blessing kicked things off. ‘Okay, if time, money and talents were completely limitless, what would you do?’
‘I had wondered about seeing if there were any pitches going at local markets.’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘To do what?’
‘Sell pasties.’
‘If time, money and talents were unlimited, basically meaning that you could do absolutely anything you wanted, you’d sell pasties on a market stall? In which case, what was the point of closing Parsley’s?’
‘Because I didn’t want to work inside all day. What would you do with all this unlimited everything?’
She flicked a few braids over her shoulder. ‘Initial thoughts… I’d form a circus troupe. Open a spa-hotel for pets. Set up a cookery school for ex-female prisoners. Become a Hollywood agent.’
‘I have no idea how to do any of those things. I have no interest in doing them.’
‘Neither do I, especially, but the point is we start with nothing off the table, then narrow it down to what sparks your interest, seems worth exploring. It’s called blue-sky thinking.’
‘Blessing, you know I’ve worked at the same place doing the exact same thing forever. I grew up living and breathing one basic food item. You might need to start a little more down to earth.’
‘Fine.’ She straightened her shoulders and took a bite of pastry, undaunted. ‘Let’s try a different angle. What do you like? What does spark joy for Emmaline Brown? Apart from dreamy thoughts about island farmers with great hair.’
It was a cheesy start to the discussion, but soon made it clear that Blessing had been busy while I’d been away, reading, listening to podcasts and even attending a couple of online seminars on setting up a new business.
After winding our way through starting our own organic chicken farm, via cooking vlogs, party planning and a detour into painting and decorating, we ended up near to where I started.
I wanted to keep baking, but was determined to have more flexibility, fresh air and to bring things into the twenty-first century.
And so, Parsley’s Pasties became Sherwood Street Food. My inheritance money was enough to buy a second-hand food truck. A modest loan from Blessing’s parents would cover the remaining initial outlay, which was minimal thanks to Parsley’s. We would keep selling drinks and pasties but also experiment with specials including nachos, mini loaded Yorkshire puddings and, my favourite: individual portions of Siskin pot sausage. I spent hours perfecting new recipes, completing all the legal and health and safety admin and other practical tasks such as finding out how on earth to manage a catering business that moved. Blessing put herself in charge of publicity and marketing, including creating a website and the most important task of finding us places where we could sell the new food.
I’d thought running an established business was hard work. It was nothing compared to setting a new one up. Once we’d completed the first, major task of buying the truck, the rest of the summer was full-on, to say the least. But I had a partner – one who listened, collaborated, was eager to try new ideas and believed in modern technology.
I loved every second of it.
On the first weekend in August, we opened our hatch door at the Robin Hood Festival, Sherwood Forest’s busiest event, which would be held over the next four weekends. One of the organisers had been a regular customer at the airport and snapped up our last-minute request the same day Blessing emailed them.
We spent most of the festivities with a queue weaving in and out of the trees. Robin Hood, Maid Marion and almost all the Merry Men became regular customers. Little John even gave us a shout-out during the big battle with the Sheriff of Nottingham’s soldiers, crediting our pork and mustard Yorkshire pudding with fuelling his winning moves.
‘These are heavenly,’ the woman officially acting as Marion said after biting into a vegetarian pasty – it turned out her real name was also Marion, and she was married to the person playing Robin. ‘Would you be interested in supplying my restaurant? It’s on a campsite, not far from here: Scarlett’s?’
Would I be interested in supplying one of the most popular restaurants in the area? I double-checked that Blessing’s younger brother, Ben, who happened to be as charming a salesman as his sister, and far more skilled in the kitchen, was happy to keep being employed with us for the foreseeable future, and arranged a meeting for the following week.
Blessing also wangled an interview with a reporter, Bea Armstrong, who featured feel-good stories on the local news. As well as sticking to Mum’s commitment to support Nottinghamshire businesses, we’d signed up to provide autumn work-experience placements for pupils at a local alternative provision school, Charis House, that happened to be run by Bea’s parents, and also where her fiancé worked. After someone made a meme of her amusingly enthusiastic response to tasting pot sausage, it caused our website to crash under the number of enquiries.
We hired Blessing’s sister, Honour, who was starting a university course in the autumn, so was delighted to be earning some proper money up until then, and redoubled our efforts on workdays, while ensuring we fiercely protected two days off each week. We said yes to the enquiries we liked the sound of, and no to those that we suspected would be more stress than we cared to take on.
We were living the dream. Spending at least a couple of days every week enjoying the outdoors at festivals, weddings and other events, not an air-conditioning unit or harsh strip light to be seen.
Well, a dream, anyway.
Did I still dream about the Isle of Siskin?
Far too often. Possibly not helped by my occasional – or should that be embarrassingly frequent? – peeks into island goings-on via their social media pages and online newspaper.
Did I miss the barley fields, the quaint harbour cottages, and how naturally the islanders all lived in each other’s pockets?
Did I yearn to have been there for the Sunflower Festival, selling my pasties, dancing an island jig and then strolling back to wherever home was beneath the stars?
Did I ache for Pip, wondering what he was doing, whether he’d found someone else to watch the sunset with, or if he still thought about me?
Absolutely. All of the above, and more.
But I also vowed to appreciate how far I’d come in the past few months, how, after the most unexpected turn, I’d ended up somewhere exhilarating, and been able to take some other brilliant people with me. Most of the time, I kept that vow.