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The two-up two-down where her mother had lived up until her death five months ago was quite at home in the sea of red brick that made up the old part of the town of Wigan in the north of England. Rosa had mumbled something about the house being low-maintenance and close to the town centre when she’d bought it. Kitty could tell from her tone that she knew full well her daughter wouldn’t like it. Still, it wasn’t her that had to live in it, she’d told herself when she’d come to visit. It was the third house in four years her mother had moved into since Kitty’s father had died. She hadn’t been seeking her daughter’s approval of it, though, and she didn’t get it because Kitty had thought this latest house with its modern renovations, characterless.
It hadn’t felt like a house her mother should be in. It didn’t suit her or her ways. Rosa needed a house that was quirky and full of character. A house like Rose Cottage stuffed with books and treasures that made it a home. Okay, so Kitty got that with her illness, her mother had wanted something low-maintenance and close to the shops. Of course, when she’d been busy passing judgment on Edgewater Lane she hadn’t known how ill her mum was. Sitting here now, though, she couldn’t conjure up any real sense of Rosa ever having lived here. It wasn’t just because her mother, ever mindful of not making Kitty’s life harder, had packed up all her belongings in anticipation of this. She’d sent all her worldly goods except for a box of treasured photographs and her engagement and wedding rings to charity before she’d moved into a local hospice. There, it transpired later, she was on good terms with a woman called Sandy, who was by her side instead of her only child when she slipped away.
Kitty twisted the rings she now wore on the middle finger of her left hand, an understated gold band and the solitaire diamond engagement ring that shone blue in certain lights. She knew Rosa had done things the way she’d done them because she hadn’t wanted to burden her by telling her she was nearing the end. Not when Kitty had been so desperately trying to pick up the pieces of her life and soldier on down in London. Still, it wasn’t fair leaving her like that without giving her the chance to say goodbye and to tell Rosa that she loved her.
Rosa hadn’t even had a funeral service – choosing instead to be cremated like one of those people with no known family or money. Kitty had collected the ashes after the event; stored in a sealed, nondescript urn from the hospice where she had died. She had met with Sandy, who, as much as she hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself, had been very nice. She’d made her a cup of tea and opened a packet of chocolate biscuits. Then, resting her hand on Kitty’s, she told her that her mother’s death had been a good one. She had slipped away peacefully and free of pain.
Kitty had wanted to scream at her that it couldn’t possibly be a good death because her mother was only sixty-five years old. It was an unfair death; that’s what it bloody well was. She hadn’t said a word though because there was something so calming and dignified about Sandy with her soft and soothing voice. She could see why her mother had wanted a woman like her by her bedside.
Sandy informed her that just as she’d promised Rosa she would, she had held her mother’s hand until the end. But it should have been me, Kitty said silently removing her hand from beneath this stranger’s. As if reading her thoughts, the older woman had said in that same calming tone that sometimes people didn’t want their loved ones’ last memory to be of them dying. By not asking her to be with her in her final hours, it didn’t mean her mother loved her any less. Kitty had felt uncomfortable then thinking about her mother confiding in this woman and had put the biscuit back on the plate. She had picked up the urn and clasping it to her chest made her excuses to leave.
It wasn’t fair that her mother kept her impending death from her, not when there was so much unsaid between them, but then she shouldn’t have been surprised. Rosa had spent Kitty’s whole life keeping things from her; she thought, her eyes sweeping the room. It was a soulless space; there was no essence of her mother etched into its walls as there had been at Rose Cottage.
This house lacked the warm, homely feel of the semi-rural property in which she had grown up on the outskirts of Preston. It’s headily-scented rose garden a riot of colour in summertime had given the cottage its name and Kitty had been heartbroken when her mother decided to sell it shortly after her father’s death. She hadn’t sought her daughter’s approval then either. It still rankled, she realized, feeling simultaneously guilty for the anger that surged even now with her mother gone because if Rosa had held onto the cottage, then she wouldn’t feel so alone. Rose Cottage had been her home too. She knew that were she sitting in its cosy, familiar living room instead of this bland space, then she would still feel she had a part of her mother and father with her.
She had just wanted Mr Baintree to call and tell her the deal was done. To her mind once the proceeds of the sale were sitting in her bank account this final phase of winding up her mother’s affairs would be complete. Then she could begin to figure out how she was going to move forward now that she was officially orphaned. She’d heard it said somewhere at some time that when you lost both your parents, you truly knew what it was to feel grown up. Kitty sighed for the umpteenth time that afternoon; she didn’t feel grown up, just awfully alone.
Now she squeezed her eyes shut hoping that when she opened them, she’d find that she had just suffered a bizarre hallucinatory episode. One brought on by her early morning start. She would find that the message was in fact just a nice, normal chatty one from Yasmin.
She had been desperate to know how Yas’s morning had gone at the Broadway Market. Had she sold out of cakes like Kitty did most Saturdays? Had the sweet Justin Bieber look-a-like with the bit of fluff on his chin managed to win his girlfriend back with her favourite Vanilla Kisses Cupcake that he had bought for her last week? He’d promised he would come back and tell her how he had gotten on as she had placed the cake in one of the pretty pink boxes she’d picked up for a steal from the Pound Shop. What about the lovely old dear who always bought two of Kitty’s favourite Chocolate Dream cupcakes? One for her and one for her older sister who was riddled with arthritis. It was their Saturday afternoon treat. How was she doing? She would have liked to have known because the damp weather they’d had these last few mornings wouldn’t be doing the sister’s bones any good. Had she been there she would have given the old dear her cakes on the house this week.
Instead, she had gotten this, a message from someone claiming to be a French photographer called Christian Beauvau. What he was asking of her just didn’t make sense, she thought, reading through his message once more. She ignored the paper clip attachment at the bottom of it tossing her phone to one side as though it had scalded her. She didn’t know how many minutes passed as she sat in the ever increasing murk of the room. There were no sounds other than the rain hitting the glass and the swish of tyres through puddles on the slick road outside.
Oh stop being ridiculous Kitty, she told herself mustering up the courage to read through the message one more time. She picked up her phone and scrolled down not knowing why she was surprised that the words were still the same as they had been the first and second times she’d skimmed over them. It still didn’t make any sense, and she wondered if perhaps it were some elaborate hoax. Was this Christian person a fraudster who, instead of being from Paris as he’d stated in his message, was really from some obscure African country? Perhaps he was trying to wheedle confidential information out of her in a very roundabout way so he could raid her bank account? If that were the case, he’d be best to wait until tomorrow when there’d hopefully be some money in it; she thought chewing her thumbnail.
Tiny flakes of the Coral Sunrise polish she had pinched off Yasmin settled on her tongue, and she thought of how her friend had told her off for this bad habit just the other day. She’d threatened to buy some of that awful smelly stuff to paint her nails like you did to stop children sucking their thumbs. Wiping the orange flakes on the back of her hand she was glad neither of her flatmates was present to tell her off. Mind you Piggy Paula with her unsavoury habits was hardly in a position to judge. Yasmin, however, would know what she should do about this strange request. She’d ring her, she decided, feeling pleased she was taking some affirmative action as she hit speed dial.
“Kitty? I am at the gym, what do you want?” A strained voice yelled upon answering after a few short rings.
In the background, Kitty could hear the fast beat of an old nineties song. She recognized the dance hit, ‘What is Love?’ The lyrics ran through her mind as she shouted, “Yas, you need to stop doing squats or rolling around on a Swiss ball or whatever it is you are doing. Pay attention to what I am going to tell you, okay?” Only Yas would have a pocket for her phone in amongst all her Lycra sports gear she thought. Mind you, only Yasmin was enough of a gym bunny to go and do a workout after the crazy time she’d risen that morning.
“Okay chill out, Kitty.” Her breath was coming in short, rapid bursts. “I know it must be weird being at your mum’s old house for the last time, but do you remember those yoga poses I showed you? Well, you need to go and salute the sun or get into the downward dog pose or something because it will calm you down.”
“There is no bloody sun; it’s drizzling and it’s not that–”
Yasmin was on a roll, though. “Well, you don’t need to stress about things here because the morning sped by and yes, your regulars did miss you. A young lad bought two Vanilla Kisses and said to tell you he’s back on with his girl. He reckons whatever your secret ingredient is it’s better than oysters. He had a right swagger in his step.”
Kitty frowned; she hoped her cakes weren’t encouraging underage shenanigans – he only looked to be sixteen. “Good, that’s great, but Yas listen–”
“And I’d sold out completely by midday, so I packed up and came to the gym. I needed to after all that icing I licked off the spoon this morning. I knew if I went back to the flat I’d go straight to sleep and not wake up until the wee hours of Sunday morning. That’s if Paula didn’t decide to draw her blinds and shut the bedroom door for another of her Saturday afternoon sessions with that slimy little git, Steve, she’s been seeing.” There was a gagging sound down the phone. “Yuck, the thought of it.”
“Yas, would you shut up for a minute and let me talk!”
“Alright, alright hang on, one, two, three, clench and release.”
Kitty rolled her eyes; she didn’t want to know what kind of exercise her friend was doing.
“One, two, three, clench and release – all done, thank God. I won’t be able to walk tomorrow after that last lot. Hang on while I grab a drink.”
Kitty held the phone away from her ear but could still hear the glug, glugging noise that followed.
“That’s better. It’s important to keep hydrated with good old H20 you know. Give me one more sec and I’m all yours.”
When she came back on the phone, Kitty couldn’t hear the pounding beat in the background anymore just the sound of running water.
“I’m in the changing room. So come on then, spill.”
“I have just gotten the most out there Facebook message.”
“Delete it; there’re all sorts of weirdo’s in cyberspace. I once had a complete random, some chicken farmer from Devon sent me a friend request. I mean it’s not as though Facebook is a dating app and more to the point I don’t even like eggs.”
Kitty shook her head.
“No, not weird like that. Just listen, this French photographer called Christian something or other French-sounding says that he took a photograph that became quite famous of my mother with her boyfriend. Who, by the way, was not my dad but some guy called Michael, in a French town back in 1965. He reckons Tres Belle, you know the fashion magazine–”
There was a loud squeal, and Kitty held the phone away from her ear. “Oh, I love Tres Belle! Watch this space because one day my designs are going to be all through its pages.”
“I don’t doubt it, but for now the magazine has commissioned this Christian fella to recreate the same scene in the photo he took back in 1965. It was called Midsummer Lovers which is kind of a gross title for a photograph with my mum in it. He wants me to pose for it along with the nephew of mum’s old boyfriend to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the original being taken.”
“What? Repeat all that and slower this time? Much slower.”
Kitty repeated what she had just said, and there was a moment’s silence as Yasmin processed what she’d been told. “Okay, so firstly I’m thinking how did this French guy find you and secondly, what was your mum doing in France in 1965? I thought she was Irish.”
“She was, though she’d spent the best part of her life here so in a way she was more English than Irish. She never lost her accent, though, and she was always saying these mad Irish things like it’s no use boiling your cabbage twice. I have no idea what she was doing in France or who this Michael was either.” Kitty did a quick mental calculation. “She’d have only been about sixteen in 1965. Christ, if I’d swanned off to the Continent with a boyfriend at that age she would have killed me! She never mentioned anything about having spent time in France; my parents were Majorca package holiday devotees.” Kitty frowned, picking a bit of carpet fluff off the dark denim of her jeans. “I’ve told you how Mum’s life prior to meeting Dad was a closed book. Anything before the age of nineteen was a no-go zone that she refused to talk about, no matter how many times I asked her to. She’d just tell me her childhood was uneventful so therefore it was not worth talking about.”
“Yeah you’ve told me, it’s well weird that.” Yasmin’s voice was muffled, and Kitty pictured her cradling the phone between her chin and shoulder as she undid her laces.
“You didn’t know my mum, she wasn’t weird, just as stubborn as they come and if she made her mind up about something, then that was it, end of story.”
“Still, you don’t believe all that crap about her childhood being uneventful, do you because otherwise why all the secrecy?” Kitty could hear Yasmin unlocking her locker. Probably fishing her bag out of it with her spare hand. Kitty’s mother had been an enigma, unlike Yasmin’s mum with her hard face and dodgy back that got noticeably worse whenever she’d dragged her brood into the local benefits office to sign on for the sickness.
Yasmin’s childhood had been so very different to Kitty’s quiet and civilised upbringing. She’d grown up in a council flat fit to burst with half-brothers and sisters in Hatfield. There hadn’t been much in the way of money, but there was plenty in the way of noise. Their reasons for coming to London were so very different too. Yasmin’s had been to escape that noise for a while. She wanted to make her way in the world far away from the council estate existence she’d always known. Kitty’s had been to put as much distance as she could between herself and her ex, Damien, who lived in a posh Manchester apartment.
Both women had their dreams, though, and this was the common denominator that brought them together and sealed their friendship. Kitty’s was to open her cupcake café, and Yasmin’s was working towards designing her clothing label. One day, she would often say, the High Street stores she loved to browse, fingering the newest fabrics and imagining how she would improve the latest looks, would be stocking her brand. The models would be wearing her signature twist on the rockabilly look as they showed off her designs at London Fashion Week. They would strut their stuff down the catwalk to the tune of her all-time favourite performer, Elvis, after which they would spend their morning tea breaks at Kitty’s gorgeous little café. Slamming the locker door shut before sitting down on the bench, Yasmin asked, “Have you seen it, this photograph I mean?”
“No.”
“Didn’t he attach it?”
“He did, I just haven’t opened it yet.”
“Why the hell not?”
Kitty cringed. “Don’t shout, Yas and I haven’t opened it because I am scared. This is the first real clue to my mother’s past I have ever had.”
“All the more reason you need to open it!”
“I know, I want to, I just can’t seem to make myself do it. I wish you were here with me, and I wish I could bake. Baking always calms me down.”
“Right, Kitty Sorenson, listen to me! Now is not the time to be thinking about cakes.” Yasmin adopted the tone she used with her little brothers and sisters when they were awkward little toads. “You, my girl, are going to hang up this call, and then you are going to count to three, and when you get to number three you are going to open that attachment. Got it?”
“But–”
“No buts. I said got it?”
“Got it.”
“And then when you have done that you are going to forward the picture to me for a sticky beak. Right?”
“Right.”
“Right then, hit the red button.”
Kitty disconnected the call and counted to three.
Chapter 3 (#u9e0a06d1-1075-5c39-8a91-0074a5ecd53a)
A Turkey never voted for an early Christmas – Irish Proverb
Kitty chewed her bottom lip as she stared at the black and white photograph filling the small screen. Her eyes alighted instantly on the young girl pictured, and she barely registered the man next to her. It was like looking at a picture of herself as a teenager and at a stranger both at the same time. The difference being that her go-to outfit at sixteen had been a black T-shirt, denim mini and leggings, her hair had been straightened with almost religious regularity to resemble Jennifer Aniston’s do of the day. This girl in the photo, her mother, albeit a much younger and softer version than any she’d ever known, was dressed in a demure, feminine style.
Her look was that of Audrey Hepburn. Rosa was wearing a white, boat necked dress with puffed sleeves, cinched waist and a full skirt; her shoes were flat sandals. Her blonde hair was pulled up into a high ponytail, and she was sporting a blunt fringe that was sitting just above startlingly thick and dark eyebrows at odds with her fair hair. They were Kitty’s eyebrows, except her mother’s were obviously unfamiliar with tweezers back then, and as for that fringe, she cringed. It suited the times, but the length was one that would have seen her suing Tamsin at ‘Your Style’ who cut her hair whenever it got to the driving her bonkers length.
She continued to soak in the photograph absorbing not the background scene with its hazy stone archway and buildings but rather the look on her mother’s face. She was gazing up at the man next to her with a broad smile on her face obviously laughing at something he had just said. It was the naked longing in her eyes that shocked Kitty, though. His brooding, good looks were half hidden beneath a head full of thick, slightly too long dark curls as he looked down at Rosa. He was dressed in a plain shirt, half tucked into a pair of loose fitting, dark trousers. His sleeves were rolled up and on his feet he had a pair of boots that looked like they had seen better days. Strong worker’s hands gripped the wide, handlebars of an old-fashioned bike, its big wheels denoting its era.
The light surrounding the couple in the picture was dappled by sunshine peeping through the leafy arbour they were wandering beneath. This, their obviously private moment had been captured forever in a photograph that had the title Midsummer Lovers scrawled across the bottom left-hand corner of it. Her mother’s face was positively luminous Kitty realized, unable to tear her eyes away from the picture. “Oh, Mum,” she whispered aloud to the empty room for the second time that afternoon. It struck her then that she had never seen her mother look at her father the way she was looking at this stranger in the photo. Was that kind of blatant adoration the sole domain of the very young, she wondered, knowing that nobody who had ever been hurt or let down would ever be able to love with such an obvious unguardedness. It had been a long time since she had looked at anyone with that kind of heart on your sleeve openness and after Damien, she doubted she ever would again.
“What’s your story, Rosa?” Kitty closed her eyes. It was too much to take in. All these years of not knowing and now this photograph. It was a clue to her mother’s past, and yet at the same time, it told her absolutely nothing. All she knew now, was that at sixteen, she had been so bold as to be in some small town in France with a bloke with whom she was clearly besotted. Did she even want to know the story behind this picture? Her mother obviously had her reasons for never talking about the first nineteen years of her life.
As a child, Kitty had been curious but not bothered about what her mother had done before she’d married and before she had entered her life. For one thing, she simply could not imagine any other existence of importance for Rosa than that of being her mother and her father’s wife. That had changed though when the hormones had come home to roost, and she had begun to resent the secrecy behind Rosa’s past. As a teenager, she’d desperately wanted to know her maternal history. She’d imagined the worst, no matter how many times her mother assured her there were no skeletons hidden away in her closet. Mean Nuns hadn’t reared her in a cold stone convent or anything like that; it was just a past that was not worth revisiting. This vague, hand sweeping reply had not satisfied Kitty in the slightest, but her mother would not be swayed to confide in her nor would her father whom she could normally twist around her little finger. Eventually, she ran out of steam and had to let it go, exhausted from her years of pent-up teenage frustration.
Now as a woman in her early thirties, Kitty’s romantic notions of where her mother had come from had faded to give way to thoughts that perhaps she had been abused as a child. For all Rosa’s vague hand sweeping and bravado when the topic of her childhood was raised, she couldn’t help but think perhaps she had been the daughter of a poor Magdalene girl. Despite what she said, maybe she’d spent her early years slaving in the laundry of an Irish convent. It had happened to others after all. Perhaps this was why she wouldn’t speak of her childhood. She simply did not know, and so she had come to nurture a quiet acceptance that her mother hadn’t just been her mother, she had been a person with a right to privacy. She couldn’t help but think, though, that with Rosa having passed away the rules must now have changed.
A conversation she’d held with Rosa as a child began to run through her head as though she had just pushed play on an old video recorder. The image of them both in the kitchen of Rose Cottage was vivid. She could see in her mind’s eye that the bay window, a focal point of the room, was fogged up with steam from the sink full of dishes before which her mother stood. It blocked her view out to their sprawling garden that as a child had seemed to go on forever. This illusion she knew was due to the low stone wall that encased the bottom of their garden. On the other side of the wall were fields that in summer glowed gold with rapeseed and in winter wore a snowy eiderdown. For the most part, their home with its front garden full of vibrant blooms in the summer and twiggy branches that would tap at the window in winter had been a happy one.
“Tracey at school said that her mum was an air hostess before she met Mr Hennessy. Her plane used to stop in places like Disneyland,” Kitty said this from where she was sitting up at the table; school bag abandoned at her feet while she waited for the toaster to pop. Her mother was dressed casually; her glasses pushed up on the top of her head which meant she had been studying, again. She was always doing some course; textbooks would be strewn across the kitchen table and swept away as Kitty flung the back door open home from school.
“It’s a gift to be able to learn, Kitty,” she’d say, stacking the thick tomes on the sideboard.
Kitty thought that was a dumb thing to say because the last thing she would do when she was finally old enough to leave school was more homework. And besides, her mum never actually did anything with all that stuff she was learning about.
“That’s nice for Mrs Hennessy I bet she enjoyed meeting Mickey and Minnie.” Rosa’s tongue in cheek reply came as she plunged her hands into the hot water and began to scrub at the dishes left over from breakfast and lunch. She had meant to tackle them well before Kitty got home. She’d gotten side-tracked again by picking up the book she was in the middle of and before she’d known it she’d heard the familiar sound of the front door banging shut. It announced her daughter’s arrival home for the day. Her answer sailed right over the top of nine-year-old Kitty’s head. She was intent on retrieving the freshly browned bread from the toaster and slathering it in butter. “You know madam if you ate properly at lunchtime you wouldn’t be so hungry when you get home. It’s no wonder you pick at your dinner when you’re stuffing yourself full of toast at this time of the day.”
“But I’m hungry after school not at school.” Kitty had replied perfectly logically in her opinion, her chest puffing up self-righteously as she added, “And Tracey doesn’t have to sit at the table until she’s cleaned her plate up. If she doesn’t like something, her mummy says she can give it to the dog. I’d rather play with my friends than eat a yucky old school dinner any day.” Her bottom lip jutted out; the conversation was not going the way she’d planned. She had thought that by telling her mother what Mrs Hennessy used to do her mum might have decided to tell her what it was she had done before she married her dad. She did not want to be reminded of the stinky stuff that had been plopped on her plate at lunch time. Or the unfair way in which she was never allowed to leave anything on her dinner plate, not even peas, and she hated peas, thank you very much.
Sitting there staring at her mother’s back as she bit into her toast, butter dribbling down her chin, her eyes widened as a thought popped into her head. Maybe she had been a princess once upon a time. She was pretty enough to have been one when she took her glasses off and brushed her hair properly.
Maybe, her evil stepmother the Queen had been mean to her, but then daddy had rescued her, and the stepmother had been so angry that she waved her wand and cast a spell. Just like in Sleeping Beauty, and if her mother ever spoke of having once been a princess she’d fall asleep for a hundred years! Her mother dried her hands and left the dishes to drain. She sat down at the table with the cup of tea she’d abandoned on hearing her daughter come in. Kitty wondered if it was normal behaviour for princesses to dunk biscuits in their tea.
“Your friends aren’t going anywhere Kitty, and you need to eat the meal provided at school if you’re to be able to pay attention in your afternoon lessons. Sure, how can you expect that poor brain of yours to concentrate on learning when it’s being distracted by your rumbling tummy? As the old cock crows, the young cock learns.”
Kitty frowned; she hated it when her mum spoke in riddles. She looked at the soggy biscuit she was about to pop in her mouth, it was only a plain old digestive, not the chocolate ones she liked. Still, she wondered what her chances of both toast and a biscuit before dinner were. “It was only boring old maths this afternoon,” she answered, deciding the odds probably weren’t very good. She wished, as she finished her toast, that next time her mother did the shopping she would buy some of that yummy chocolate spread stuff. Tracey said she got to have that on her toast every single morning. As she chewed, she began to ponder how she could swing the conversation back round to where she wanted it to be when her mother interrupted her plotting.
“It’s not boring old maths and boring is a word that only boring people use. Maths is very interesting when you pay attention because we use it for all sorts of everyday reasons.”
Kitty had raised a sceptical eyebrow at her the way she had seen Tracey do to Mrs Chalmers this morning when the teacher had informed her class that dolphins sleep with one eye open. It had been such a cool thing to do but then that was because Tracey was so cool. She paused in her chewing to send up a silent prayer that she would be invited to the social event of the school year, Tracey’s tenth birthday. She’d given Tracey her best Strawberry Shortcake Rubber, so she was confident that guaranteed her an invite.
“Don’t give me that look, young lady, you’re not a teenager yet, and it’s true you know, you need maths for all sorts of things like telling the time and handling money. A penny gets another penny. Sure, when you work out how much of your pocket money you are going to save and how much you are going to put aside for sweets you’re doing maths.”
Kitty scowled. “I knew you would mention saving.” Her mother was big on drumming the importance of saving into her. It was right up there with the importance of paying attention in class because both, she told her daughter regularly, would allow her to be independent when she was older.
“Alright then here’s another example, you need maths to be able to bake.”
“No you don’t, you just use that measuring thingy for the sugar and an egg. Oh and usually you add some flour too.”
“Okay, Little Miss I Know Everything, when you have finished your toast how about you and I make some of those cupcakes your daddy is so fond of? Then you will see what I am talking about.”
“Can I lick the bowl?”
“I suppose so, though you’ll never eat your dinner.”
“I will if it’s something yummy.”
Having washed her hands, Kitty donned an oversized pinny that her mother wrapped around her waist twice before standing on tiptoes to stare at the open cookbook. That was the afternoon she learnt how to read a recipe as she made her first batch of cupcakes. Her mother oversaw the proceedings watching as she followed the instructions to cream the carefully measured butter, sugar and vanilla until it was light and fluffy before cracking an egg into the mix. She’d turned the handle on the old fashioned beater until her arm felt like it was going to drop off and was relieved when her mother said it was time to measure the flour and baking powder out. Sifting was much easier than beating, she’d decided, tapping the side of the sieve until it was empty and a mountain of white sat on top of the wet mix. Tired of standing on tippy-toes, she’d pulled a chair in from the dining table and kneeled up on it. She’d watched with her chin resting on her clasped hands, elbows on the bench as her mother demonstrated how to fold the dry ingredients into the batter adding a bit of milk as she went.
“See it needs to be a dropping consistency like this.”
Kitty was transfixed as the mixture plopped back into the bowl. She was hoping there would be plenty left in it for her to scrape up with her finger once the cakes were in the oven. It was time her mother said to spoon the mixture into the paper cases lining the patty tin.
“Too much in that one Kitty, three-quarters full. Aha!” she clapped her hands. “There do you see what I mean? That was a fraction right there.”
At nine years of age, Kitty was not too old to concede that her mother was right, and she decided tomorrow she would try not to drift off when Mrs Chalmers made them chant their times tables. Fifteen minutes later when she donned the oven gloves and pulled the plump cakes from the oven, she puffed up with pride. She couldn’t wait until her daddy got home from work so she could tell him she had baked the cakes all by herself. “Can I taste test one, please?”
“I suppose so, sure as a rule of thumb a good cook should always taste what she makes. Food is a good workhorse.”
Kitty couldn’t believe her luck. She peeled the paper off a little hot cake and leaving half the mix stuck to the wrapper, popped it in her mouth. That was the moment that her life-long love of baking had been born.
The thing with baking was that at the fundamental core of a good batch of anything there was the need for a reliable recipe. Despite this, and no matter how measured and precise her ingredients were, now and then something would go wrong with the mix, and her cakes wouldn’t rise. It was the same with life Kitty thought as her eyes refocused on the photograph this Christian Beauvau person had attached to his message. For the most part, each day ticked along much like the one before but now and then something would be tossed into the mix and it would test her ability to rise to the occasion.
She shivered, the house had that unlived in temperature that seeps through to your bones she thought as her phone beeped another text’s arrival. Closing the photograph, a quick glance revealed the message to be from Mr Baintree, her stomach flip-flopped and despite her nerves at what he might have to tell her, she was glad of the distraction. Crossing her fingers and hoping it was good news she scrolled down and breathed a sigh of relief, the auction had closed four thousand pounds above reserve! He finished his message by saying he would meet her back at his office in an hour. Kitty’s face broke into a grin; it had not been a wasted journey. She was buoyed by the news and decided she’d rather wait in the agency’s warm reception area than sitting here freezing.
Quickly flicking back to Christian Beauvau’s message, she forwarded it through to Yasmin adding the good news regarding the house’s sale. Let Yas mull it over, she decided. She’d talk to her later about what she should do. Stuffing her phone back in her bag, she got to her feet. As she picked up her wheelie case and walked down the hallway, she realized she had never managed to swing that long ago conversation with her mother back around to what it was she used to do.
Chapter 4 (#u9e0a06d1-1075-5c39-8a91-0074a5ecd53a)
A trout in the pot is better than a salmon in the sea – Irish Proverb
Kitty shut the front door of the house that no longer belonged to her mother, locking it before stuffing the key in her jacket pocket. She glanced up at the grey sky with a frown. She wished she’d packed a waterproof jacket instead of the lightweight belted one she was wearing. Stealing herself against the steady drizzle, she didn’t look back as she set off down the road toward the offices of Baintree & Co.
