by Agatha Frost
“Crikey!” said Dot, emerging from around the arch. “Are those the new flats?”
“Apartments,” James immediately corrected. “Luxury apartments. Please, have a look . . . at another time.”
Dot gave the model one quick scan, arched her brow, sniffed, and turned away from James without acknowledging she’d heard him. Julia might have reminded anyone else of her of her manners, but as James only seemed to use his when he was getting something in return – and even then, not so much – she felt no such compunction.
Percy rounded the arch and followed Dot in, slightly more out of breath, accompanied by with their two dogs. Lady, a white-haired Maltese, trotted ahead, modelling a summery pink hairbow. Bruce, the squat smoke-coloured French Bulldog waddled beside Percy.
“You weren’t going to hit that man, were you, Brian South?” Dot asked in a low voice. “Because you might want to unclench your fists. Sends the wrong message.”
Brian looked down, releasing his fingers.
“Like I said,” he called to James, softer this time. “From tomorrow, this place is yours. Katie needs today.”
Julia had believed this as well, but she wasn’t sure the result was worth the wringer the day was shoving Katie through.
James nodded, engrossed in reading something on his phone as Richie packed everything up behind him. She’d experienced the silent treatment enough times to know this one had the same energy as Olivia throwing her toys out of her pram.
“Brian, can we use your study?” Dot asked, tapping Julia’s shoulder and nodding for her to follow. “Is Barker around?”
“He’s coming later.”
“Then it’s just the six of us for now,” she said. “Shilpa’s having lunch with her family, Evelyn has guests checking out, and Amy’s playing the organ at church.”
Dot made no mention of Neil. Knowing her gran, Neil’s tantrum would lead to a brief time out, family or not.
If the dogs counted as two, Johnny completed the six when he joined them in the grand entrance. He’d replaced his usual messenger bag, always worn crossbody so he could whip out his laptop and camera at a moment’s notice, with a fit-to-bursting red post office sack.
“I thought your paperboy days were behind you,” Julia remarked as she and Johnny followed Dot, Percy, and the dogs into the dark study. “What’s in the bag?”
“Letters,” Dot answered for him.
Dot stopped dead in the middle of the room as though she’d expected to find Brian’s old desk still present. Like the rest of the house, the office was empty. The bare built-in bookshelves lining the walls hadn’t been present in the new model. If Julia remembered correctly, the shadow of the rug that once sat under the desk where Dot now stood, would become a partition wall between one of the ground floor apartment’s bedrooms with an en suite.
“Letters from who?” asked Julia.
“Everyone in the village,” said Percy, rocking back on his heels giddily. “Or so we hope.”
“It was Johnny’s idea,” Dot explained, motioning for him to pull one out. “We were up late into the night doing all of this.”
While Julia waited for Johnny to fish a letter from the bag, she didn’t attempt to figure out the riddle they were trying to tell her. She did notice, however, that Dot and Johnny were in much better spirits than when she’d left them at the library in the wake of both the literal and figurative storm.
“My source said they’re signing the contracts tomorrow evening,” he said, handing a white envelope to Julia. “Apparently, the man with the power to give the final sign-off is currently sunning himself on one of the Canary Islands and won’t be back until late afternoon.”
“I wonder which island,” Percy mused.
Julia turned over the letter. A first-class stamp was affixed to the front, along with the address of their local governing body’s headquarters. Julia had visited the building more times in the past few months than in the whole of her life, despite having spent most of it under the same council. At first, she believed the council were taking their concerns seriously. The people in business suits nodded and smiled, with the sale option always glaringly on the table. Julia’s display cakes weren’t the only sugar-coated things in Peridale.
“Why the sudden rush, anyway?” she asked, sliding out the letter. “If the man is on holiday, surely it can wait another day.”
“That’s what I said,” Percy said, clicking his fingers. “Johnny said they were in a hurry to . . . What was it you said?”
“Offload assets.” He nodded at Julia to read the letter. “The budget cuts keep coming from the top down. This is the easiest way to inject some cash into the pot.”
Julia read over the letter, though she hardly needed to. It was a perfect example of the stock letters they’d been encouraging villagers to write back when they still thought their pleas might get through to someone. The bottom had been left blank, waiting for a name and signature.
“And they’re all slightly different,” Percy revealed. “That was my Dorothy’s idea. Makes it seem like everyone really wrote them.”
“You’ve put in a lot of work.” She returned the letter. “I’m not quite following, though.”
“That man said it himself.” Dot cut her eyes in the direction of the sitting room. “Most of the village will be here today. We know what people are like. Katie, this manor, and the library are hot topics right now.”
“Scorching,” Percy added.
“And even if they weren’t,” Dot continued, “people can’t resist a free party, especially when the weather is supposed to be as nice as it is today. We just need their signatures.”
“Shilpa has promised the letters will arrive as early as possible tomorrow morning.” Johnny gave the bag a shake. “We lost count, but there are hundreds in here.”
“More than we’ve sent combined.” Percy wagged his finger. “They’ll have quite the impact when they all turn up at once. Might even make them reconsider.”
“And if not,” Dot said, shrugging, “at least we’ve thrown a final spanner in the works?”
Julia’s gut reaction insisted the plan wouldn’t work, but that didn’t matter much. The spark of hope was back in her gran’s eyes. Considering everything the council were doing in the name of profit, a last-second spanner in the works might be just what they needed.
“Better than going down without a fight.”
“That’s what your gran said!” Percy clapped. “See, I told you Julia would get it.”
Dot’s visible exhale said her gran hadn’t been certain she would approve of the scheme, but Julia had meant what she said. She wasn’t convinced by James’s claims that he didn’t know how Katie would react to seeing her home rendered as a dollhouse-sized asylum. Deep down, she knew there was no way of getting rid of men like James Jacobson when they’d set their eyes on something. They always had too much arrogance and too much money. But James had been throwing spanners of his own since he turned up out of nowhere, and they’d been jamming cogs all over the village.
“Today’s going to be great,” Dot assured Julia on their way out of the study as Richie and James carried the model inside it. “You’ll see.”
By noon, two of Dot’s predictions had come true.
The weather was lovely, and it seemed every villager had, indeed, turned up. The invitations had stated the garden party would begin at noon. As though knowing people would start arriving much earlier, Katie re-emerged two minutes before the first guests walked through the open front doors. Her mask of makeup was back on, the blush brighter than usual. Julia suspected Katie’s bright cheeks and wide smile were trying to prove a point, and she couldn’t blame her. On a day like today, ‘fake it until you make it’ might make all the difference in getting to the end of the party in different, hopefully better, spirits.
Unlike her father and Katie, who were prepared to receive the flood of guests over that first hour, Julia had naively expected people to arrive on time. By noon, she’d just abou
t finished applying the final touches to the cakes she’d left a little too long in the boot of the car during the increasingly warm morning.
Thankfully, Barker had turned up nearer eleven, and he and Sue had kept Olivia and the other kids entertained, allowing her to slip into what Katie had referred to the day before as ‘Julia’s fast mode.’
Jessie called it flow.
Julia called it knowing what she was doing, and she’d been good at it for enough years to know she was good. Most areas of her life required second-guessing, but baking was simple.
While her hands did the work, her mind focused on the man with the goatee. The more she thought about him, the worse his sneer became. Given another hour’s thought, his teeth might very well have turned into the slavering fangs of a wolf about to make a kill.
By the time Julia placed the final touched-up cake in the centre of the kitchen island, guests were already helping to themselves to slices of the others. Unlike the rest of the food on the cloth-covered tables outside, they’d decided to keep the desserts in the kitchen. The marble island was long enough – it was, in fact, wider than Julia’s entire kitchen.
Villagers smiled and complimented Julia with ‘oohs’ and ‘mmms’ as they wandered away with their plates piled high. From late pregnancy until recently, she’d baked much less often – barring the tsunami of scones several months earlier – so she was glad to see she hadn’t lost her touch.
She’d missed it.
The familiar routine of baking was still her therapy, though she’d only been able to process one thought today. Though the goateed man hadn’t actually snarled like a wolf, his eyes had lit up with true anger. The conversation she’d interrupted hadn’t been intended for anyone but Mindy, James’s wife.
“Julia?” Dot called, waving a handful of letters above her head as she weaved into the kitchen. “Should we get started?”
Dot thrust the letters at Julia before making her way to the French doors open to the full garden outside. She pulled them closed and clicked her fingers above her head. Across the kitchen, in the arch leading to the entrance hall, Percy and Johnny stood with their hands clasped together. If rumours began to swirl that Peridale’s Ears had turned into a mob, Julia had just witnessed the seed.
“Listen up, everyone!” Dot called into the crowd as the people picking at the desserts realised they’d been shut in. “Take a pen from Amy and a sheet from Evelyn. I have some letters for you to sign. Your village library needs you.”
Some muttering followed, but as Julia had expected, most people took a pen and a letter. Evelyn ran the B&B and Shilpa the post office, so they were well-known around the village, and Dot had gained some respect in recent months. Though Dot wasn’t the leader (they’d tried that, to mixed results) she was the one shovelling coal onto the fire to keep up the momentum of the neighbourhood watch group. Whether it was finding a lost cat, picking up litter around the cemetery, or saving the library, Dot had shown just how much she cared about the village.
Julia was glad to see her gran’s reputation rise after the muddy period that had preceded it; she only wished it hadn’t come at the same time as Katie’s fall. Only one man didn’t sign a letter, and though he didn’t say it, Julia assumed he was part of the ‘well, what’s wrong with a new restaurant?’ crowd.
“Ignore him,” his wife said as she happily signed. “He should know better. It’s our granddaughter’s favourite place to visit when she has sleepovers with Nana and Pops.”
Julia had heard countless similar stories. After everyone signed, she concluded that if they had become a mob, at least it was for a good cause.
Once finished, she opened the double doors. The flies their brief closure had kept out flew directly inside, rendering their decision to keep the cakes inside a pointless one. With this weather, it was all but impossible to avoid them. Just as Julia started to wonder if she was the only one feeling the humidity, people’s faces took on the familiar glistening. On their white plastic chairs and picnic blankets, they fanned themselves with whatever they had handy.
Katie’s makeup, however, remained perfect, no doubt courtesy of touch-ups before she brought out fresh jugs of her raspberry lemonade. Her smile never faltered; she’d been the perfect host since her reappearance. While Julia convinced those lingering at the drinks table to sign letters – which was turning out to be the easiest mission to date – Katie made her way across the lawn with the large pink and yellow jug.
She stopped and talked to everyone, laughing and smiling like she was having the best day of her life. Some whispered when she was out of sight, not knowing Julia had her eyes on them, but the rest seemed brightened by her presence. Hopefully, by the end of the party, Katie would once again be in most people’s good books. Not that it mattered. Julia didn’t care all that much about what people thought of her when she knew their assumptions were incorrect, but it was obvious Katie struggled with the heat.
“I’m glad I made tonnes of this stuff,” she said cheerily as she swapped her two full jugs for the ones now containing only fruit and melting ice. “Felt wrong to add the raspberries. Old family recipe passed down.”
“I remember,” Julia said. “You made it at the garden party when you almost turned this place into a spa.”
Katie made a brief face. “I put far too much sugar in it then.”
Julia remembered that too, but she didn’t bring it up. Instead, she poured herself a third glass. It really was delicious, and the raspberries added a complementary crispness to the lemon, all bound together by sweetness.
“This might be the perfect remedy for a day like this,” Julia said after an ice-cold sip. “And don’t ever feel wrong for adjusting recipes. A lot of the things we sell in the café are adapted from my mother’s recipe book. I’ve changed almost all of them, but the essence is still there.” She drank again. “Have you thought about putting this on the café’s menu?”
“Really?” Katie’s face lit up. “Oh, I didn’t think I’d be allowed. But if you wanted to?”
Julia’s lips parted to tell Katie that of course she could add things to the menu – she’d been running the place as her own for long enough – but a booming laugh caught her ear. Along with everyone else who had been interrupted by the loudness above the already raucous crowd, she looked in the laugh’s direction.
The source was James Jacobson at Evelyn’s tarot card reading table. She looked as though she was trying her best to get through the reading, but he laughed again. Two of the eight people queuing up for their £1 reading (proceeds of which would go to the SAVE YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY fund) left, and Evelyn threw down her cards and said something that made James get up.
James tugged on his suit jacket as he walked away, continuing to chuckle while Evelyn gathered herself for her next customer. He swaggered through the garden party, checking his watch. Looking up somewhat aimlessly, something – or someone – caught his attention. He greeted a short woman of around sixty, dressed in a palette of sensible beiges. They pressed kisses to each other’s cheeks.
“That’s his mum,” Katie explained, having watched the exchange at Julia’s side. “She came along to a few of our meetings. Never had much to say, but she was always taking notes.”
“Who brings their mother to a business meeting?”
“A mummy’s boy,” said Shilpa, joining them at the table to fill up her drink. “What’s he doing here, anyway? After what happened yesterday, he’s the last person I’d expect to see invited.”
Shilpa walked off with her lemonade without giving Katie a moment to reply. As with Neil’s five-sherry-deep rant, Julia had hoped Shilpa’s moment at the library would remain a solitary event, but clearly Shilpa had let her misplaced frustration bubble over into another day.
“I don’t think she means anything by it,” Julia offered, resting a hand on Katie’s shoulder and wishing her smile, fake or not, hadn’t faded. “I’ll talk to her.”
“No, no.” Katie shook her head. “I should do it. I
’m an adult, aren’t I?”
With that, Katie walked off. Whether she was going to find Shilpa or not, Julia didn’t know. She felt a strange sense of pride. The Katie who’d tried to turn the manor into a spa had spent the garden party leading up to the announcement in a state of self-absorbed hysteria, hiding behind everyone else when confrontation arose. Though today’s Katie was hurt by her mangling through the rumour mill, her backbone was definitely firmer.
When Julia had a signature on every letter, she returned inside. On her way through the kitchen, she retrieved the plate holding the last three slices of the double chocolate fudge cake.
“I could have baked thirty cakes and I still don’t think it would have been enough,” she said as she entered the sitting room. “Where’s Sue?”
“Gone off with Neil,” Barker said, smiling up at her from the floor of the kid’s pen. “Is that what I think it is?”
Julia stepped inside, passing Barker the plate containing his favourite of her cakes. Instead of saving the third slice for Sue, he cut it into smaller chunks for Vinnie, Pearl, and Dottie, who were absorbed in a very detailed tea party game.
“Olivia kept knocking over the cups,” Barker whispered as he handed Julia her slice. “But she seems happier this way.”
As though to prove it, Olivia, ensconced in a contraption that let her do so, ran over. Though she was only hitting her legs against the floor, the grin on her face as she zoomed past nearly convinced Julia she was running – although, according to Katie, the real thing could be just around the corner.
After swallowing her first bite, Julia asked, “Neil’s here?”
“Turned up out of the blue ten minutes ago,” he whispered, glancing at the toddlers in case they were listening; they’d proven to be perfect parrots. “Sue wasn’t happy about it. They’ve gone ‘for a walk.’”
Julia found herself feeling sorry for Neil. As much as she loved her younger sister, Sue wasn’t one to back down from an argument. These days, it didn’t take much. At the moment, more than one pot in the family was threatening to boil over.
