16. Edie
EDIE
I put the brown paper bag down on the kitchen table. “Brought you a present,” I say, feeling shy. I don’t know Janey that well. It felt like a nice thing to do when I was in the coffee shop, and now it feels a bit weird. Like I’m trying to buy her friendship with cardamom buns.
“Oh my God, you’re an angel.” She picks up the bag and sniffs it with her eyes closed. “Gregor, come and look at this.”
The stocky Glaswegian appears from the pantry, wiping his hands on a linen dishtowel.
“You know the way to a man’s heart,” he says with a grin. He turns to Janey. “This one’s a keeper, I’d say.”
I gesture vaguely with my hands. “I had no idea these buns were basically currency.”
Janey offers me one and I shake my head. “I had one at the café.”
“Amazing restraint if you can stop at one,” she says, her mouth full. “I swear I’d sell my firstborn for the recipe.”
“You’d sell your firstborn anyway, from the sounds of it.” Gregor grins as he hitches a hip up onto the table and helps himself to one of the pastries.
“Oh, don’t say that.” Janey widens her eyes. “He’s in New Zealand,” she explains to me, picking up Gregor’s towel and folding it in half. “Working in a tattoo parlour.” She smooths the fabric out then folds it again, without thinking.
“I’m only kidding you. He’s a good laddie.”
Janey puts a hand to her chest. “I’m okay when I don’t think about it. Sometimes though it hits me and I’m like, how the hell have I ended up with both my lovely boys on the other side of the world?”
“You’ve got two grown up sons? You don’t look anywhere old enough.”
“Oh, believe me, I am. I’m fifty-two.”
She’s in jeans and a blue and white striped top with red converse sneakers, the universal uniform of women over forty-five or so.
“You don’t look it,” I say truthfully.
“Buns and compliments. Okay,” Janey says, reaching out and putting a hand on my knee for a moment. “We’re keeping you, it’s official.”
I look around the sunny, bright kitchen for a moment.
Light streams through the window, filtering through the spider plants which trail down the side of the shelves.
Colourful cookbooks are stacked neatly alongside heavy Le Creuset pots.
A bright red KitchenAid mixer sits on the side by the Belfast sink.
The whole place looks like something from a home magazine, and I feel a pang of regret that I can’t stay here forever, drinking coffee and feeling oddly at home in the weirdest of circumstances.
“When’s he back?”
Janey pushes the towel away and looks up at Gregor. “ After the holidays. He’s fuming because he’s missing the ball.”
“Missing the free drink, more like. Do you remember the state he was in last year?”
Janey grins. “How could I forget. I was scrubbing red wine off the carpet for weeks.” She turns to me. “You’ll be here for the ball. Did Rory mention it?”
I shake my head. There was definitely nothing about balls in the contract, unless – well, I have to admit I sort of skimmed some bits. Most of them, to be honest. Who reads the small print?
“Every year there’s a ball for the village and the workers here on the estate. We all wondered if it was going to go ahead after – well, with everything.” Janey’s brow wrinkles.
“She means since his nibs popped his clogs.” Gregor, in true Glaswegian manner, doesn’t beat about the bush.
“I’m getting the impression that the late duke wasn’t universally loved.” I look at them both and they exchange a glance.
Gregor chuckles. “Let’s just say we’re glad to have Rory at the helm.”
Talking of which, there’s no sign of him. He’s probably off doing something very busy and important. I’m not going to ask, of course.
“There aren’t that many people here, though?” I’m having visions of a ball with a handful of workers lurking in fancy dress at one side of a room while a band plays in the other.
Janey surveys me with a smile. “Ah, you’ve only seen us. Believe me, this place is like an ant hill.”
“That’s no’ the best analogy.” Gregor shakes his head. “More like a finely oiled machine.”
“I’ll take you for the rest of that tour later,” Janey says, “ show you the staff cottages, introduce you to some of the others.”
“I’d like that.” It might help make some sense of the duke’s memoirs if I know how the place works. “Meanwhile I’d better get back to work.”
Janey pushes her chair away from the table. “Yep, me too. I’ve got some admin to get done. Do you want a coffee to take with you?”
I shake my head. “If I have any more caffeine, I’ll be awake until tomorrow morning.”
There’s no sign of Rory in the library. I get down to work and the hours disappear as I make notes and put things in order, stacking the books into years then decades, trying to get a handle on his spidery handwriting on the countless loose sheets of paper.
I pop into the kitchen to get a drink at five and Gregor’s in there with a lanky boy with flaming red hair so bright it makes mine look subdued, going over some papers.
“Ah, Edie, you were asking about the others. This is Callum. He’s my sous chef.”
The boy looks up and raises a brow in greeting. “Alright?”
“When we’re quiet, like just now, he works out in the kitchen garden. Jake, the head gardener, can’t keep on top of the place without about fifteen minions.” Gregor winks.
“Don’t let him catch you saying that,” Callum says, shaking his head and grinning.
“Och, he can take a joke.”
“You’d think,” Callum snorts. “Anyway, I’m away now. Martin and I are off to the pub later if you want to come,” he adds, looking at Gregor. “Minnie’s girlfriend’s band is playing after the quiz. ”
He shakes his head. “I’ve got a hot date with Reacher on Netflix.”
Callum looks at me for a moment. “Would you like to come?”
“Oh no thanks,” I say automatically.
“You watching Reacher as well?”
I shake my head and laugh. “No, I’ve got some writing to do.”
“You canny work all day and all night,” Gregor chides. “Unless you’re hoping to get this job out of the way so you can get back to London?”
“Oh no, not that.” I feel shy about admitting that something in my brain has come untangled and I’ve got an idea for the second novel. “Just want to finish off a few bits.”
“I’ve made a lasagne for you for later.” Gregor waves an arm in the direction of the Aga. “It’s just you eating, so let me know where you want it. I’m guessing you don’t want to be sitting all on your lonesome in the dining room.”
“Here’s fine. But I can heat it up if you want to get off.” I think I can manage to shove something in the oven.
Gregor visibly brightens, his bright blue eyes twinkling. “Och, I told Janey you were a keeper and now I’m convinced. See what I mean?”
Callum grins. “Never get between a man and the next drop of his favourite Netflix series.”
“So it would seem.” I laugh at the two of them doing a high five. “Honestly, I’m fine. Just tell me which bit of the Aga to put it in.”
Callum leaves for the pub and Gregor gives me a guided tour of the massive cast-iron Aga. There are six different ovens, all with their own heat setting. It’s the most upper-class thing you could ever see .
“Why have one oven with a thermostat when you can have six at different temperatures.”
Gregor chuckles. “Aye, it’s a beast right enough. We’ve got a regular oven through in the catering kitchen, but it always feels too much like work being in there, and when the place is quiet like now, I’d far rather be in and out of this place.”
I look around the huge morning kitchen again. “I can see why.”
“It’s a bonny spot,” Gregor agrees.
I head upstairs to have a shower and wash the dust and ink off. It seems to soak into me somehow, as if the old duke is determined to make his mark from beyond the grave. I resolutely do not think about Rory or wonder where he is. Not one single bit.
It’s dark when I go back downstairs, and despite the fact that everywhere is lit up I can’t help feeling a bit spooked at the idea that I’m in this place all by myself. The place creaks and shifts like it’s breathing. It’s enormous, and ancient, and full of memories I know nothing about.
I head for the kitchen, trying to tell myself that it’s just a house and definitely not haunted by a thousand years of ghosts when I hear a creak as the front door opens and the hair on the back of my neck stands up.
I turn around and for a moment I think the figure silhouetted in the doorway is Rory. My heart thumps against my ribcage and the I realise as he steps inside – it’s Jamie.
“Sorry, did I make you jump?” He grins. “Just coming to get the dogs.”
“Oh no,” I lie. “I was just going to get some dinner.”
He strides across the hall and follows me into the kitchen, where I spot the lasagne sitting on a metal tray under foil. Jamie picks up the note .
“Half an hour in the top oven,” he reads aloud as he lifts a corner of the foil. “Gregor’s catering for six as usual, I see. Are you expecting guests?”
I laugh. “Hardly. I don’t know anyone up here.”
“You know me,” says Jamie, raising a brow in question in the direction of the lasagne. “Shall I stick this in?”
“Yes, please.”
He slides it in, and the door of the Aga closes with an expensive-sounding clonk.
“Now we just have to remember it’s there.
I could tell you a million stories about things I’ve stuck in there when I’m pissed or hungover, forgotten about them and five hours later discovered a blackened piece of charcoal waiting for me. ”
“Wouldn’t you smell it?”
He shakes his head. “The whole thing’s a closed unit, so the smells go up the chimney. Aga casualties are a hazard of country house life. Everyone’s got a tale about them.”
I think back to Grandma Rose’s kitchen in Balerno, near Edinburgh. We had an ancient white belling cooker and Formica worktops which had been fitted about a million years before I was born. “I didn’t grow up with an Aga,” I say, realising that’s probably obvious.