CHAPTER NINETEEN
‘I just don’t understand what happened.’ I gazed at Ellie. ‘How did the salt get into my puddings?’
‘Maybe you reached for the wrong canister when you were measuring out the sugar?’ she suggested. ‘Don’t worry about it, anyway. We all make mistakes and I think people were pretty pleased in the end, going home with one of your puddings.’
I nodded doubtfully, although my mind was still reeling, trying to work out how I could have made such a terrible mistake. Maybe I was distracted, thinking about Jensen, and as Ellie said, maybe I just wasn’t concentrating and I’d mixed up the containers. But the salt was in a shaker, so that didn’t really make sense.
I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. I made so many puddings, I could probably mix them in my sleep. An error like the one I’d obviously made tonight just didn’t seem likely...
*****
Back home, I put the kettle on to make some tea. Then I sighed and switched it off. Collecting a wine glass from the cupboard, I glugged it full from an opened bottle of white in the fridge.
What a night.
When Jensen had appeared unexpectedly at the café door, a great surge of hope had flared inside me, but then he’d driven away after seeing the poster, leaving me feeling frustrated and full of so many unanswered questions. And then the terrible taste of those puddings! I kept remembering people’s exclamations of disgust... the way they looked at each other in bemusement to confirm it wasn’t just themselves with a dodgy dessert. It really didn’t bear thinking about, how I’d pretty much ruined their night.
The only saving grace had been the sticky toffee pudding, which had turned out perfectly and almost made up for the other two disasters.
Slumping down at the kitchen table, I stared gloomily into my wine glass. I might as well face it: I’d mucked everything up. Who was going to want to come back for another session of the Pudding Club after tonight’s disaster?
But even worse than that was knowing that Jensen didn’t want to see me again.
I kept picturing seeing him through the window, obviously looking at the poster and seeing my face. And then turning and leaving without even stepping inside for a moment. By the time I went outside, he was already getting in his car some way down the lane, so he must have practically sprinted there! Was the thought of having to see me again really so terrible?
My eye caught Millicent’s Book of Puddings peeking out from underneath one of my heavy cookery books. I pulled it over, wanting to be cheered up, and flicked through the pages. I’d been so busy lately I’d forgotten to read on about the lives of the Edgeworth family. I was already invested in their emotional story, having been instantly absorbed in it on the riverbank that time, and I so wanted a happy ending for Millicent, Sidney, Susan and little Peter...
I opened the notebook and found where I’d read to.
But the first words I saw made me go cold.
Sidney is missing in action and I don’t know what to say to the children. Should I tell them? Amelia thinks I should wait until there’s more news. She says this kind of thing often happens, where men are missing, but they usually turn up. I’m worried he might be lying injured in a hospital somewhere and the waiting for more news is the worst agony I’ve ever felt in my life. Another thing on my mind is that Amelia’s leg got infected so she went to get it looked at. Tommy went with her and asked the doctor to look at a mole on her back which had been bleeding. She’s having the mole removed and I know she’s worried it might be something bad, although she’s trying to put a brave face on it. I saw Tommy the other day and he was pale as a ghost, poor man, as he was talking about her.
Sighing, I put the notebook down. Poor Amelia! And poor Millicent, too. Her husband missing in action – and then finding out that her best friend might be seriously ill. My heart was breaking for both of them. But maybe the news would be good. Maybe Sidney would be found, safe and well. And Amelia’s mole would turn out to be nothing, after all...
I found the place and read the next entry.
To my surprise, this one seemed to have been written by Susan this time. I checked and it was the same as the handwriting on the front cover. It was also the last recipe in the book, I realised, looking through the blank pages that followed.
Mummy says that Daddy isn’t coming home ever. She was crying in her bedroom so Peter helped me make her favrit pudding so she will smile agin.
Reading the words of this innocent little child, who’d never see her daddy again, felt so shocking and devastating, I felt tears well up.
Susan had even tried to write out the recipe, the way her mother had always done, and she’d made a damn good job of it, too. There was a huge, painful lump in my throat as I pictured her frowning up at the ceiling, trying to think of the words, and then writing them down slowly and laboriously, concentrating hard, her tongue lodged in the corner of her mouth.
There were no more entries after that and I felt so frustrated, leafing through the empty pages.
I was broken-hearted they’d lost Sidney. He’d sounded like such a lovely man. What had happened to the Edgeworth family after that? Had Millicent ever recovered from being widowed at such a young age? And what about Amelia? Had the mole been something sinister or had she gone on to live a long and happy life with husband Tommy and son Bobby?
It was a mesmerising tale of lives lived during wartime. But it was an incomplete story.
I wanted to know the answer to these questions but I knew I never would. And for some reason, this was the thought that made me finally break down in tears. After everything that had happened that day, it was all too much. I ached for Millicent and her lost love. And for Susan and Peter, who’d had to grow up without their daddy.
Somewhere in there, as I sobbed over my arms on the table, I was thinking of Mum and how I’d lost her... remembering the grief. The same terrible grief that Millicent must have felt when she received that shocking telegram from the War Office... the same grief I’d feel again, if I were to lose Loli...
I’m not sure how long I cried, but it was getting dark by the time I finally stopped. In the end, it had felt almost therapeutic. Over the years, I’d become far too adept at locking away all the sad memories. But they had to be faced at some point.
Feeling a little better, I reached for my handbag and pulled out a tissue to mop myself up. Make-up was stinging my eyes and what I really needed to do was wash my face.
Getting up, I glanced out of the window and closed the blind, and as I was leaving the kitchen, I remembered that I hadn’t put the bin out for collection the next day. The kitchen bin seemed to be full, so I went through the motions of collecting a fresh bin bag from the cupboard and went to take the old one out.
There was something white sticking out of the top, so that the lid wasn’t quite closing. And when I removed the top of the swing-bin, I saw that it was a large container of salt.
I picked it up and gave it a shake. It was completely empty, and yet... I remembered buying that container of salt only the week before. No way would I have finished it already!
My insides shifted uneasily. Where had all that salt gone, if not in the puddings I’d made earlier? But how?
I glanced at the big cardboard box of ingredients and dishes I’d brought back from the evening’s event. It was sitting on the table and I put the black bag down and pulled out the sugar canister, placing it on the table and removing the lid.
Taking a few granules with a spoon, I tasted. There was sugar in there but it was mostly salt! I snorted in disbelief. However mad busy I’d been that week, there was no way I’d have emptied a whole salt container into my sugar canister. Why would I? It just didn’t make sense.
And then dread gripped my insides. If it wasn’t me who emptied that salt in with the sugar, who was it?
It was a terrible thought... that someone could dislike me so much as to want to sabotage my Pudding Club evening.
But I had to face it.
The only person who’d had the opportunity to pour the salt into the sugar canister earlier that day was Marguerite...
*****
Could Marguerite really have done that?
I lay in bed later, going over everything in my mind. Maya and Marguerite calling at the house that morning and Maya offering to help. They’d stayed for a cup of tea, and of course it had been Marguerite who’d offered to make it. So she’d been alone for a while in the kitchen...
But really? Had I annoyed her so much that she would think of doing something like that? I hadn’t warmed to Marguerite but I’d never have imagined she could be capable of behaving so vindictively.
It made perfect sense, though. I’d baked the sticky toffee puddings first thing in the morning, before Maya and Marguerite called in. But the other puddings, the salty ones, had been made later that afternoon, after Marguerite made tea in the kitchen...
Was she angry at my success? Was this her way of getting her own back for – in her eyes – losing a valuable client in Lady Arabella?