Chapter 10 #3
We lapse into a comfortable silence, and I’m surprised that he hasn’t made any move to leave before I have a chance to ask any more questions, and it makes me think about his comment this morning about being isolated.
He seems lonely. Sequestered away up here, not wanting anyone to gossip about him, but maybe missing a bit of company and community too?
Outside, the sun is setting over the Yorkshire hills, painting everything in a yellow light, and inside this small campervan, for the first time in days, a weight has been lifted.
With Reece’s unexpectedly expert advice, I feel like the police might not be breathing down my neck after all, and as much as I know he doesn’t want to talk about it, it brings me back to the difference between working in law and working as a builder, and what Reece isn’t telling me.
‘How long have you been doing building work?’ I ask, trying to wheedle my way into understanding the vast jump between career paths. Maybe it explains why every time I go up to the pub, I catch him mid-disaster.
He tilts his head to the side and catches my eyes. ‘So what kind of café is a Nostalgia Café?’
I snort at the way he doesn’t even try to be less obvious. ‘You know, Lettie said earlier that you clam up, and I stuck up for you and assured her you were an open book. Now I see why she’s saying that.’
‘I’m not clamming up.’ He gives me a wink. ‘I’m changing the subject. There’s a difference.’
‘I can’t fault your directness,’ I say, even though it intrigues me even more. The fact he’s so determined not to talk about it makes it more obvious that there’s something to talk about, but if I continue pushing, he will get up and go, and I like him being here.
‘It was going to be the kind of café that makes you remember being seven years old and thinking the world was full of magic just waiting to be found. A way of tapping into the feeling I got when I came here on family holidays. Afternoon tea with mismatched vintage china, homemade cakes that taste like the ones your gran used to make, food we used to love when we were little, that sort of thing. Food that reminds you of being safe and happy, when the answer to all of life’s problems could be solved by slices of squidgy malt loaf with lashings of butter. ’
‘And what now? Surely you haven’t given up on the idea?’
I almost laugh at the thought. ‘I couldn’t run an entire café on my own.
I don’t have a head for business like that – Vickie was going to do the businessy side, I was going to do the cooking side.
I wouldn’t know where to start, and apart from that, we’d been saving for months to rent the shop and buy everything we needed to start the business.
I have nothing left to start again, and I’m living in a stolen campervan with no idea what to do about it.
I couldn’t even get a job when my living situation is so temporary. ’
Just thinking about it makes my heart start racing again, and I feel like my great escape has trapped me in a completely different way.
Am I going to stay in Yorkshire or go back to Sevenoaks?
If I can’t even drive the campervan, what do I do?
Call Jared and get him to come all this way and collect it?
And then what? I’ll still have nowhere to live and no income.
‘A conundrum.’ Reece forms a triangle with his hands and taps his fingers together.
‘You make it sound like a good thing.’
‘Anything can be a good thing with the right spin on it.’
‘I fail to see how—’ I was going to say that nothing good could come out of any of this, but the grin on his face makes me stop. Something good has come out of this, and I’m looking at it.
His grin gets impossibly wider and I’m certain that thought was written right across my face, and I follow his lead on changes of subject.
‘We were going to serve modern-day twists on things people remember from childhood. I’ve been trying to perfect a homemade malt loaf.
Coffee kisses, bread and butter pudding.
The simple pleasure of a chocolate cornflake cake.
Cakes made with Angel Delight, which still exists and is available to buy and most people don’t even know that. ’
‘I don’t think it’s that most people don’t know, I think it’s more that the availability of Angel Delight becomes irrelevant after the age of ten.’
I can’t help laughing at his earnestness. ‘But it shouldn’t, right? Why do we ever grow out of things? Because the world tells us they’re for children, but why? Why should we stop enjoying things that once made us happy?’
‘Or maybe it’s because we become adults, we earn a salary, and we can afford more exciting desserts than Angel Delight.’
‘But once upon a time, there was nothing better than that packet of flavoured powder sticking out of the cupboard, and there’s value in remembering that, even if we can afford gold-dusted tiramisu with the finest liqueur.
We wanted to create somewhere that reminded people of simpler times.
I wanted to serve food that people haven’t had for years but, with one bite, can bring memories rushing back and transport you back in time.
Rice pudding. Jam Roly Poly. Spotted dick. ’
He raises an eyebrow. ‘You can’t serve that without a sense of humour and an ability to keep a straight face.’
I choke on a laugh again. He has an uncanny ability to make a joke about everything. ‘School cake with pink custard, or—’
‘Lumpy pink custard?’
‘Naturally. It wouldn’t be old-fashioned custard any other way.
’ I grin at him. ‘How about homemade Battenberg, something that’s gone out of fashion lately, or the humble iced bun, all washed down with chocolate or strawberry milk, or Ribena or orange squash, and a packet of Iced Gems or Rainbow Drops.
Things we feel like we can’t enjoy as adults because they’re too childish. ’
‘I’ve gone from doubting you to desperately wanting to visit.
You’d tell me if I was drooling, right?’ He jokingly swipes a hand over his mouth, making me laugh again.
‘This sounds gorgeous, and you… Your belief in it is inspiring. The one thing the world needs is more joy in it and you want to do something that brings people joy. Don’t give that up because of a setback. ’
It’s slightly more than a setback. A setback is a delivery being late or a dish going wrong, not…
this. At the same time, I don’t think he’s trying to trivialise it, but rather put a positive spin on it, and I appreciate the way he effectively lets me borrow his sunny outlook every time I’m with him.
It would be nice to fully embrace being that positive all the time, and it does make me think about the future.
His reaction has reminded me of how much I loved our plans for The Nostalgia Café and how I’m not ready to give up on that dream yet…
‘What about you?’ I ask. His leg is so near and the material of his neon pyjamas is soft and tempting, and I let the backs of my fingers rub across the partying dinosaurs. ‘What does a man who wears cartoon dino pyjamas miss from childhood?’
‘Ah, I don’t know.’ His eyes are on my fingers on his good leg, but he doesn’t look like he’s complaining.
Instead, he lets his head drop back and sinks even further into the seat, and his eyes drift closed as he thinks about it.
‘My mum’s lemon meringue pie. It was just me and my mum growing up, and she used to make it for every special occasion.
She was terrible at cakes, so for every birthday, I had lemon meringue pie with candles on it.
Every time I got a good school report, every time something nice happened, she’d celebrate it by making the pie.
It was her father’s recipe that he’d passed down to her.
It wasn’t anything fancy – just an old-fashioned lemon meringue pie with pastry that was always burnt around the edges and meringue that was crispy on top and marshmallowy underneath. ’
‘When did you last have it?’
‘Years ago. Decades, probably. My mum’s been gone for over fifteen years, and commercially produced ones aren’t the same. They’re too sweet, or too tart, or the meringue’s too crunchy or wrong in some other way. I gave up on trying to find one that was anything like it long ago.’
I find myself studying his face as he talks. Long-forgotten memories make his blue eyes glint with emotion, the faraway smile softening every feature and making something grow warmer inside my chest. ‘I could make you one.’
‘What?’ His head snaps up and he blinks to clear his vision.
‘Lemon meringue pie. I could make one.’ I look around the small space I’d have to work with. ‘It would take some creative engineering in this tiny kitchen, but I have a hob and an oven and all my baking equipment, and my grandma’s vintage recipe for a lemon meringue pie.’
‘You don’t have—’
‘I want to.’ And I do, I realise. I want to see his face when he tastes something that reminds him of being young and carefree, because I get the feeling that, despite his cheery front, he’s far from carefree in reality.
I pat his leg as a signal to move them so I can squeeze out.
I step past the van’s tiny kitchenette and kneel down in front of the box I’d shoved aside earlier.
I move the bowl of broken teapot pieces and push binbags out of the way until I can open the box of baking equipment.
‘Did I do that?’ Reece lifts a leg to point a toe towards the broken teapot shards. ‘I have a vague memory of hearing something jangling when I fell over your bags the other night.’