by Agatha Frost
Julia was surprised to hear that Alfie, Jessie’s once-estranged older brother, and Dot’s current lodger, wasn’t sleeping soundly upstairs.
“Alfie’s at work already?”
“Didn’t come home last night,” Dot said with a roll of her eyes. “Went on a boy’s night out with Billy. He probably slept on Billy’s sofa. I don’t think he likes sneaking back here drunk. I think he thinks I judge him, which I do, but you’re only young once.” She gave Julia another quick hug. “Look after yourself, and don’t work all day. You need to get some sleep.”
Julia promised that she would try to get away at lunch, but with the weather brightening up and it being a Saturday, she wasn’t sure it would be possible. She traversed the alley to the back of her café and let herself in through the kitchen door.
Only one thing could calm her and clear her mind, so, after flicking on the lights and washing her hands, Julia started her own personal form of meditation – baking.
5
Though Julia had planned on telling Jessie the news the moment she arrived at the café, by the time Jessie rushed in ten minutes late, the café had already filled up thanks to news of the burglary – and Julia’s involvement in it – trickling down from the manor via Peridale’s robust gossip channels. By noon, it was clear Julia wouldn’t get to sneak away for a nap.
“I much prefer the raspberry one,” Amy Clark, the church organist, exclaimed, pointing at one of the three plates of cheesecake samples on the counter. “It’s really fresh.”
“I like the lemon one,” countered Shilpa Patil, the owner of the post office. “You want to talk about fresh, this is as fresh as you’re going to get.”
“You’re both wrong,” Jessie called over the top of the coffee machine as she juggled making four lattes, all with different types of milk. “The vanilla one wins hands down.”
Julia had been hearing similar stories all morning. The conversation had revolved around which of the free cheesecake samples was the best; thankfully, nobody appeared to dislike any of them. She had been working on a new cheesecake recipe to add to the menu for a few weeks, and she had baked the latest batch yesterday morning during an hour-long lull before the tourists arrived. She often gave out samples to her customers to get their opinions, but she usually conducted her market research on slightly quieter days to gauge a clearer consensus.
Today, however, the samples were the perfect distraction, redirecting all the conversations focusing on what happened at the manor.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Jessie whispered to Julia. “You look exhausted. Go and have a nap in my flat for an hour or two. I can cope here.”
Julia looked around the full café. Every table had someone at it, and new people were arriving every few minutes for takeaway orders. Jessie was more than capable, but even Julia would struggle alone on such a busy day.
“I’m fine.” Julia pushed forward her brightest smile. “The day will be over before we know it.”
But Julia knew that day was about to pause when she spotted Barker jump out of a taxi in front of the café. From the urgency of his walk, she knew she had been saved the trouble of having to tell him at least some of the story.
“Why didn’t you call me?” were his first words when he burst inside.
The café silenced, and there was a moment of tension as husband and wife stared at each other across the full room, but any worries about Barker being angry vanished when he hurried around the counter. He grabbed her face in his heavy palms, his eyes darting all over as he frantically stroked her cheeks. When his lips met hers, it felt like their first kiss all over again.
A chorus of ‘aww’ swept across the café, and Julia knew they were all eager to listen in on what was about to be said. Not wanting to feed into the gossip grinder, Julia pulled Barker through the beaded curtain into the kitchen. Knowing how easily things could be overheard, she continued to the yard behind the café, making sure to shut the heavy door behind them.
“Why didn’t you call me?” Barker repeated, softer this time as he clung to her. “I would have rushed back.”
“For that exact reason.” Julia closed her eyes and inhaled the musky aftershave clinging to his white shirt. “I knew you were coming home anyway, and I didn’t want to panic you. There was nothing you could have done.”
“I could have been here for you.”
Julia had wanted nothing more, and now that Barker was with her, the underlying yearning melted away.
“You’re here now,” she said as she pulled away. “How did your meetings go?”
The muscles in Barker’s face tensed up, his eyes narrowing to slits. The shadows under his eyes told her she wasn’t the only one who hadn’t had a good night’s sleep.
“It doesn’t matter,” Barker said, shrugging. “This is more important.”
“Barker?” She ducked to meet his wandering gaze. “You’re my husband. It’s us against the world, remember? What happened? Do they not like the book?”
“Oh, they love the book,” Barker said flatly. “Or should I say they loved the book because there isn’t going to be a book.”
“The release is next week.
“Not anymore.”
“You worked so hard to meet their deadlines.” Julia scrambled to imagine an explanation. “Have they pushed it back?”
“They’ve pushed it back,” he said with a slow nod, “indefinitely. They’ve cancelled the thousands of pre-orders. They’re shelving the book.”
“Shelving?”
“Remember Camila Bridges?”
Julia nodded. She remembered Camila Bridges all too well. Julia had been there when Camila’s husband, the local celebrity radio DJ Tony Bridges, died at the village bake-off in February. Initially, Julia had thought Camila, a beautiful Spanish woman in her forties, had been the culprit.
“I remember her,” Julia said.
“Evidently she’s realised that Tony’s murder at the bake-off is an opportunity for her to make money too.” Barker sat on an upturned plastic milk crate. “His murder rocketed his celebrity, which is why the publishers grasped at the idea of me writing the book in the first place. They urged me to make it a true crime novel and not change the names of the people involved. I wrote it exactly as it happened.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Julia pulled up another crate and sat across from him. “It’s a really good book!”
“She’s suing the publishers.”
“Can she do that?”
“She thinks because she’s the wife of the victim, she has exclusive rights to the story.” Barker ran his hands roughly down his cheeks. “She’s working with a ghost-writer as we speak to whip up her own version, and she’s already shopping it around movie studios.”
“But she can’t stop your book from being released.” Julia frowned. “That’s not how it works.”
“I know that, and so do the publishers, but the amount she’s threatening to sue for if we release the book would not only swallow up all the profits, it will throw the company into real financial difficulty. There isn’t as much money in publishing as there used to be. Her threats were enough to scare them, and she’s managed to order a legal block on the book. The publishers will have to go to court and fight it if they want to release it.”
“And they’re not willing to do that?” Julia asked. “Your first book was a huge hit for them.”
“They said I wasn’t worth it.” Barker’s mouth formed a straight line as he smiled tightly. “They’re going to back off the project until things calm down.”
Julia stumbled over her own thoughts as she tried to come up with a way to fix things.
“What about the other book you wrote?” she suggested. “The one they didn’t like as much based on our trip to that B&B in Blackpool run by drag queens? Can’t they just publish that instead? It’s all finished and ready to go.”
Barker heavily shook his head. “They could, but they won’t. They’ve already spent a fortune printing the new
book, and they’re scared to throw any more money at me until they know where we legally stand. They’ve paused my contract, which I didn’t realise they could do until I saw it there in the small print. As of right now, I can’t release anything with them or anyone else, which means I am effectively unemployed. Murder at the Bake-Off by Barker Brown isn’t going to see the light of day.”
“Oh, Barker.”
“I’m sorry.” He sucked the air through his teeth before shaking his head. “After everything you went through last night, this pales in comparison. Forget I said anything. How are you really doing?”
Julia had wanted so badly to tell Barker that she was pregnant right away. She still wanted to, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. Despite his supportive smile, his eyes were swirling with the sadness of his lifelong dream crashing down around him after only one book release.
Barker’s new book had been his baby, and even though the latest version had only taken a month to write, he had spent much of the past year working to get there. Julia wasn’t a naïve woman; she knew the statistics surrounding the early days of pregnancy. She couldn’t give Barker good news right now, and then rip it away like the publishers had if the worst happened.
As much as it pained her to keep the secret a while longer, this wasn’t the right time for Barker to find out he was going to be a father.
“I’m fine,” she said, matching his smile. “I had a nice chat with my gran, and she set me straight. You’ll never guess what her new hobby is.”
“Pole dancing?”
“Meditation.”
“I would have been less surprised if you had said pole dancing.” Barker laughed. “I’m glad she was there for you. Can you keep this book trouble to yourself for now?”
“Of course.”
“People are going to find out eventually, but I’d rather let the news sink in for a few days first.”
Julia nodded that she understood and decided that’s what she was doing with her news. Dot might already know, but Julia had barely had any time to process the change, so taking a few days to let it sink in wasn’t a bad idea.
Barker rested his hands on his knees and pushed himself up. He held out a hand for Julia and helped her to her feet.
“I should get to the library and tell Neil to cancel the book launch party before he wastes another second on it,” Barker said as he pulled open the back door. “Poor guy is going to be crushed. I think he was more excited about the new book than I was.”
Even though Julia wanted to keep Barker close, she let him leave the café with the promise they would meet up at their cottage as soon as she was finished with work. In the meantime, she still had a full café to deal with.
“I much prefer the raspberry one,” she heard Amy Clark say again when she returned. “Julia, this has to be the one that makes it onto the menu.”
Despite telling Jessie the busy day would mean time flew by, the contrary happened. The hours dragged by so slowly that, at one point, Julia made Jessie replace the batteries in the clock because she was sure the hands were ticking backwards.
When she finally flipped the sign to ‘CLOSED’ at 5:30pm, Julia was glad of the silence. She collapsed into one of the seats and closed her eyes, the ringing in her brain making up for the constant all-day noise.
“Please, go home and sleep,” Jessie begged as she swept around her. “I can finish up here.”
“I will do,” Julia said, wafting her hand. “I just need to rest my feet for a second. How are things with you and Billy?”
Jessie’s expression quickly soured at the mention of her ex-boyfriend, letting Julia know the ‘we’re going to stay friends’ tactic wasn’t working out like she had insisted it would.
“I thought things were going great,” Jessie replied, leaning against the broom, “right up until he called me last night at three in the morning, drunk as a skunk. He was crying, begging for me to give things another go.”
Julia’s heart hurt for Jessie and Billy. Billy Matthews was a reformed bad boy teenager from the troubled Fern Moore Estate, and despite his tearaway criminal past, Julia couldn’t help but like him. Since he had turned his life around, helped along by his relationship with Jessie, he had revealed himself to be a sweet, kind-natured, and funny young man.
Billy had doted on Jessie since the beginning of their relationship, which had started when Jessie was seventeen. Now that Jessie was a month away from turning nineteen, Julia understood why she had ended things.
Billy’s foot had been firmly on the accelerator until Jessie slammed hers on the brake. Nobody blamed her for wanting to experience life as a single woman, especially now that she was fully independent in her own flat, but Julia knew that didn’t mean Billy would turn off his feelings for her, no matter how much they both kept repeating the ‘we’re friends now’ line.
“You need to give him time,” Julia said. “It’s still fresh. It probably came out of the blue for him.”
Jessie sighed. “I know. I knew it would break his heart, I just hoped we’d be past this by now.”
“It might be kinder if you don’t pick up the next time he calls at three in the morning.” Julia pulled herself up and stretched out, letting out a long yawn in the process. “Harsh as it might seem, it will only feed into his hope that he can somehow win you back.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Jessie said quickly. “I love him and care about him, but this is the most content I’ve felt in my whole life. I’m too young for all that talk about moving in together, marriage, and babies.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
They reset the café in record time, leaving only a few odd jobs for Monday morning. Julia considered telling Jessie her big news, but she was too exhausted to deal with the excitement it would bring. After Jessie left, Julia checked her phone for the first time all day. She had dozens of text messages, mainly from her friends no doubt wanting to know what had happened, and as many missed calls from her sister, Sue. She decided she would deal with them when she was home, but she had a text message from Barker, which was he had sent two minutes ago.
On a video call with the publishers. Should be done by about half six. If you come home before then, I’m in the dining room, and I’m not ignoring you. Love you xxx.
Julia thought about going home and waiting for Barker in the sitting room, but she wasn’t sure her eyes would stay open if she sat down in silence for any length of time. Instead, she wanted to do something else, and it would only take half an hour.
After packing up the café’s minimal leftovers, she drove back to the scene of the crime. Thanks to the bright blue and almost cloudless sky, it was easy to think of last night as nothing more than an awful nightmare. As Julia pulled into the estate, that illusion shattered, and it wasn’t just the lone police car parked next to Katie’s pink Range Rover. She heard the shouting from inside the manor before she climbed out of her car.
Knowing things were beyond knocking and waiting, Julia hurried inside with the paper bag of cakes. Her father and Katie were stood on opposite sides of the entrance hall, and from the sounds of it, trying to out-shout each other.
“After everything,” Katie screamed, pausing to suck in more air, “you go and do this!”
“I didn’t have a choice!”
“Once again, it wasn’t your choice to make!”
Julia noticed the large duffle bag in Katie’s hands, and her heart sank. She couldn’t bear the thought of something like this being the end for them.
“Guys,” Julia called out. “Why don’t we—”
“Katie, please!” Brian called over Julia, seeming not to notice her sudden presence. “Let’s just talk about this.”
“I’ve heard all I need to hear,” Katie replied, her voice dropping. “I’m going to the hospital, and I don’t know when I’ll be back. Hilary? Are you ready?”
The former housekeeper, already in a coat and hat, appeared at the top of the stairs as though she had been waiting for
the summons. Before Hilary reached the bottom, Katie stormed out of the manor without acknowledging Julia. Hilary gave her a tight smile before leaving.
When it was just the two of them, Brian let out a deep roar, and he looked around the empty entrance hall as though he needed something to destroy or throw. Julia didn’t miss the irony.
“Dad, calm down,” Julia ordered as she walked towards him. “Let’s sit down and talk.”
“The study,” he said, his face bright purple as he struggled to regain his breath. “They kindly left the chairs in there. It’s like they knew I’d sold the real antique ones and replaced them with some mass-market imitations that cost a tenth of their value.”
Julia followed her father into the dark study. The desk with chairs either side remained, but the surface missed its usual ornate green banker’s lamp and antique trinkets. Thick, leather-bound books still lined the walls, but even a large amount of those appeared to have been taken.
“I can’t win,” he said as he collapsed into his chair. “This is all my fault.”
“Don’t say that.” Julia took the seat across from him and placed the bag of cakes on the empty desk. “I brought you leftovers. Wasn’t sure if you’d be taking proper care of yourself.”
“Thanks.” Brian smiled at her without looking at the bag. “You’re right, I haven’t eaten. I haven’t been able to.”
“Where’s Vinnie?”
“Having a sleepover at your sister’s house for a few days.” Brian ran his hands down his face, his expression as glum as Barker’s had been earlier. “I didn’t want him around all this shouting and police probing.”
“Good idea.”
“Really?” Brian scoffed. “Katie seems to think I’ve sent him away as a punishment, as if this whole ordeal has been to punish her.”
“Have you told her about the money?”
“How can I?” He rested his elbows against the table, his hands disappearing up into his thick, grey hair. “She hates me as it is now she knows I cancelled the insurance. How can I tell her the rest of the money is gone too?”
