The Bakery at Seashell Cove

by Karen Clarke

  ‘Nothing yet,’ I said, breathing deeply to blot out self-pity. ‘It looks like being on the telly has done nothing but get me into trouble.’

  ‘Oh, Meg.’ Getting to her feet, Cassie glanced at her outsized watch. ‘Can I do anything before I head to the café? Make some coffee, or rub your feet?’

  ‘You’ve done enough already.’ I stood to give her a hug, conscious that I hadn’t had a shower since returning from the bakery, and I still had traces of scone mixture beneath my nails.

  ‘Why do you always smell like candyfloss?’

  I laughed. ‘Thanks for coming, Cassie. I’m dreading Mum calling, because I can’t face telling her Sam’s annoyed with me, but I needed to talk to someone.’

  ‘There’s nothing much to tell her.’ Pulling back, Cassie gave my upper arms a squeeze. ‘I’m sure it’ll all blow over, and once Sam’s back you’ll carry on as you were.’ Her eyes swept over my face. ‘I mean, it’s you and Sam we’re talking about. You guys are made for each other.’

  Once Cassie had left for Seashell Cove, my cake boxes stowed safely in Sir Lancelot’s boot, my spirits sagged again, and a long cool shower did nothing to restore my mood.

  Wrapped in a towel, I stood in the bedroom, which was decorated in cream and blue with built-in wardrobes, and a giant oak bed that took up most of the floor. I considered climbing under the duvet, but knew it would smell like Sam, and I’d just lie there staring at the photo on my bedside table of us at Sadie’s eighteenth birthday party in February, holding up moustaches on sticks. He hadn’t wanted to go, I remembered, because he’d just started training and was trying to avoid food temptation, and left early because he’d been up since five thirty and was tired.

  Sighing, I pulled a red, strappy sundress from the wardrobe and, leaving my hair damp, got dressed and wandered downstairs and into the back garden. It was a dazzling display of freshly-mown grass with lavender and geraniums jostling for space in the borders. Neil and Beverley had worked their magic when Sam and I had moved in three years ago. They’d transformed the front garden too, where a row of rose bushes lined the path to the door. I’d have preferred something wilder – maybe lupins, hollyhocks and foxgloves – but had bowed to Beverley’s superior knowledge, and they did look pretty.

  We’d started saving for our own place as soon as Sam landed a job at Randall Surveyors in Kingsbridge, and I’d secured a small pay rise at the bakery. He’d refused to allow his parents or my mum to help out, but agreed to use a windfall his grandfather left him as a deposit on the grey-stone, end-of-terrace we’d fallen in love with. Although the rooms were small and had needed updating – and I’d have preferred a bigger kitchen for baking – there’d been a glimpse of the twinkling estuary from the landing window, and the tiny light-filled room at the back of the house would make a perfect nursery.

  Sighing again, I pulled a garden chair into the shade of the apple tree at the bottom of the garden, remembering for some reason the argument we’d had after our housewarming party, when Sam had been a bit prissy about people removing their shoes so they didn’t trample dirt on our newly-varnished floorboards.

  ‘Isn’t the point of floorboards that they’re easier to clean than carpets?’ I’d said later, embarrassed for Mum, who’d blushingly asked if she could keep hers on because there was a hole in the toe of her tights, only for Sam to insist, in front of his family and some of his cycling friends, that she take them off.

  ‘We know what toes look like, Rose,’ he’d said jokily, but the sight of Mum’s crimson cheeks as she’d slipped off her ‘going-out’ kitten heels, apologising for not having painted her toenails, then chatting too brightly to distract attention, had made me want to cry. I knew it had taken her all day to pluck up courage to come in the first place, and that she wouldn’t be able to stay long.

  ‘If I’d let your mum keep hers on, it wouldn’t have been fair for everyone else to remove theirs,’ Sam had said when we were getting ready for bed, seeming baffled that I was ‘making a fuss over nothing’. ‘She was fine with it, Meg.’

  ‘Well, I bloody well wasn’t.’ I only ever swore when I was angry, or tipsy – neither of which happened often – and Sam had gone all serious, and reminded me that we’d paid a lot for the flooring, and there was nothing wrong with wanting to protect it.

  I’d let it drop because I was still so happy that, not only were we back together, but we finally had our own home, and I didn’t want anything to spoil it.

  Snapping back to the moment, I wondered who would get the house if Sam and I were to break up. My throat balled with tears at the thought of it. Admittedly, Sam had had more input into the décor, but that was because he had better taste than I did. My creativity was limited to baking, and the rooms would have been decked out in shades of brown and custard if I’d been let loose. Tilly, a natural at interiors, and responsible for redesigning Maitland’s Café, had been appalled that during a brainstorming session I’d suggested painting the wood-panelling magnolia to ‘brighten it up a bit’.

  ‘Wow,’ she’d said with a grin. ‘That’s like me suggesting you ring the changes by making a nice plain sponge cake.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with a sponge cake, as long as it’s the lightest, spongiest, tastiest sponge cake ever,’ I’d argued, to no avail.

  A manic shriek next door brought me to my feet. Our neighbours were back from their week in the Cotswolds, and it was only a matter of time before a football or Frisbee sailed into the garden, or one of the seven-year-old twins directed the hosepipe over the hedge at me. The boys suffered from a severe lack of discipline, from parents who believed that children should be allowed to ‘express themselves’.

  It was a shame the old lady who’d lived next door for years had gone to live with her sister, and the Hippy Henshaws, as Sam called them, had moved in. Still, at least he had a week away from everything.

  I jumped horribly with shock when a flop of straw coloured hair and walnut-tanned face popped above the hedge. The boys were on their trampoline again. ‘You look like a tomato!’ yelled Finn – or maybe it was Fenton, they were identical so it was hard to tell – before disappearing, then reappearing with his tongue out.

  Eyes burning with tears (it was surprisingly hurtful being insulted by a child), I returned to the house, in time to hear my phone ringing. I guessed it was Mum, surprised she hadn’t called yet, but instead saw Nathan’s number.

  My heart gave a lurch as I answered. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, Meg, I’m at the bakery.’ His voice was friendly but neutral, and I had the immediate sense he wasn’t alone. ‘Can you come over?’

  Chapter Ten

  I drove to Seashell Cove in record time, and parked my Clio round the back of the bakery, behind the kind of shiny, curvy car that bikini-clad models used to pose with. It wasn’t Nathan’s – he drove an agency BMW – so it must belong to whoever was sizing up the property. Someone with plenty of money, if the personalised number plate was anything to go by. It looked somehow familiar, but I couldn’t imagine where I would have seen it.

  As I opened the car door, I caught sight of myself in the wing mirror and let out a gasp. I’d rushed straight out in my ‘tomato’ red sundress, not realising it looked both creased and limp, or that my hair was clinging to my neck like tentacles. Combined with a shiny face and bloodshot eyes, I looked to be in the throes of a terrible hangover.

  I delved into my bag to look for my lipstick, or at least a band to tie my hair back, but before I’d found either, Nathan appeared in the doorway and beckoned me over with a pantomime wave.

  Regretting my T-bar sandals, which looked a bit primary school, I hurried over and followed him into the kitchen, detecting smells that didn’t belong in a bakery. The scent of spicy perfume was overwhelming – or maybe it was aftershave. Not Nathan’s, which was far more subtle.

  A horrible suspicion took root, as I remembered the only people interested in the bakery so far were Freya and her husband. ‘Where are they?’

&
nbsp; Nathan pressed a finger to his lips. ‘Out the front,’ he stage-whispered, eyes conducting a survey of my appearance. He managed not to look revolted. ‘Having a look around.’

  I detected the low murmur of voices. ‘Is it the Williams’?’ When Nathan nodded, my heart dropped. I’d hoped it might be another couple – even a hipster pair, intent on running the bakery on their own, would have been preferable – but I realised why I’d recognised the car. I’d seen it outside Kath’s house, since Freya had taken to dropping Milo off there nearly every day.

  ‘Meg?’ Nathan had picked a sheaf of paperwork off the counter, and was giving me a concerned look. ‘I’m really sorry,’ he said. ‘I was hoping to get rid of them quickly and call you later, but they specifically wanted to speak to you.’

  ‘Why are you sorry?’ I threw my bag down with a thud, and turned to the sink to wash my hands, trying to calm my thoughts. ‘I asked if I could be here if anyone wanted to look around. You should have called me earlier.’ I dried my hands and pulled my apron on. Not that I was going to start baking, but it would hide my crumpled dress, and add a professional air.

  ‘Shall I go and give them the low-down, or have you gone through everything already? Do they know there’s accommodation upstairs?’ I’d almost forgotten about Mr Moseley’s rooms, filled with years of accumulated junk that Lester had said he would pay somebody to get rid of once the sale had gone through. I’d occasionally sat in the living room on my lunch break – the only one allowed to go up there – on Mr Moseley’s lumpy and faded green velvet sofa. I’d liked the way the light slanted through the sash window, and hearing the sounds that floated up from the bakery, and to imagine what it had been like in Mr Moseley senior’s day, when he’d lived there with his sons. ‘Maybe the state of it will put them off,’ I said. ‘Nathan?’ He looked peculiarly intense, his lips clamped together as if he didn’t want to say whatever it was. ‘What is it?’

  ‘They’re offering over the asking price, and I promised Lester we’d accept the highest bid.’

  ‘We could say there’s been lots of interest since the TV show, and we’re waiting for a better offer.’

  He took a deep breath through his nose. ‘The thing is, even though it’s very early days since you were, ah, on television,’ his eyes dropped, and a flood of heat rushed through me as I wondered if he’d watched, and what he must have thought, ‘there haven’t been any calls so far, and we don’t know that there will be, so… I don’t think we’re in a position to put them off.’ It was kind of him to say ‘we’, considering the decision wasn’t mine to make. ‘Like I said, I’m sorry, Meg.’

  The heat in my body evaporated. Was there such a thing as a cold flush? ‘Can’t you invent a condition of sale?’ I angry-whispered. ‘Tell them Lester will only sell to people who want to resume trading as a bakery?’

  He widened his eyes in mock horror. ‘Lie, you mean?’

  ‘Isn’t that what estate agents do?’

  ‘Ouch.’ He winced. ‘Firstly, I’m not an estate agent and secondly, my brother runs a clean and honest ship. Believe it or not, it’s not in his makeup to manipulate potential clients, even if it loses the company a sale.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘I just can’t believe they’re our only option.’

  ‘Actually, I did tell them that the client was hoping to keep the bakery going in his brother’s memory, but she’s adamant about the ice-cream parlour.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Freya always got her own way. I remembered when our mums were still set on us becoming friends, and I’d suggested we bake some fairy cakes and sell them to our neighbours, and Freya said baking was for babies (how was that even possible?) and demanded we play on her skateboard instead, only to wet herself laughing when I fell off.

  ‘I think the husband might have been interested, because he asked a lot of questions and wanted to see the paperwork from when the bakery was doing well, but she kept on interrupting—’

  ‘That sounds like Freya.’ I pulled a face. ‘Sorry, I just interrupted.’

  A smile touched his lips, and I noticed distractedly he was wearing jeans and a round-necked white T-shirt in place of his usual suit, as if he’d been doing something altogether different when Don Williams had called.

  ‘I was supposed to be taking Charlie, my nephew, to the zoo this afternoon,’ he said, seeing me looking. ‘I didn’t have time to get changed. He’s been a bit full-on over the weekend.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I wondered whether that was why he hadn’t been in touch. ‘This is probably the last thing you want to be doing.’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s fine, we can go to the zoo another day. I just wish the call had been from anyone but…’ He paused, and I turned to see Freya flashing an insincere smile as she sashayed through in a silky off-the-shoulder dress with a blue and white zigzag print, looking boot camp fit, despite giving birth less than two months ago.

  ‘Meg, hiiii,’ she said, stretching her vowels so she sounded like someone from Chelsea, rather than South Devon. ‘S’been aaaaages.’ We were the same height, but her high, block-heeled sandals gave her a couple of extra inches, and she had to stoop to pretend to kiss my cheek, her perfume enveloping me like toxic smog. ‘I haven’t visited Seashell Cove in yeeeears.’

  That didn’t surprise me. She’d barely returned to Salcombe since leaving home at eighteen to work as an au pair for a wealthy couple in Exeter. She’d ended up having an affair with the husband and, although it hadn’t lasted, she’d discovered a taste for the finer things in life. After joining a dating website charmingly called SugarDaddy.com she’d dated a couple of millionaires, and eventually met Don at a charity auction where prizes had included dinner at home, cooked by a celebrity chef, and tickets to the BAFTAs. According to Kath, he’d rescued her from the clutches of an octogenarian, intent on discovering whether Freya was wearing knickers under her side-split gown.

  Kath – who’d naively championed her daughter’s attempts to ‘better herself’ – hadn’t seen much of Freya since her wedding a year ago, but was obviously coming in useful now Freya had a baby she couldn’t be bothered to look after.

  ‘No Milo?’ I said, to make a point, noting she still had a habit of swishing her long hair and running her fingers through it. With her flawless skin and tiny waist, it was hard to believe she’d once been overweight, with a monobrow and crooked teeth.

  ‘The housekeeper’s got him for a couple of hours.’ She swished her hair again. ‘Mum had a dentist’s appointment, and your mum’s apparently quarantined herself. I must say they’ve been maaaaarvellous with Milo, but the sooner I get a nanny sorted out—’

  ‘Quarantined?’

  Freya’s high-arched brows nipped together. ‘She’s apparently got a summer flu thing that’s been going round, and didn’t want to infect the baby.’ She wrinkled her upturned nose. ‘Perhaps she should be taking those vitamins Mum says she’s always going on about.’ Her laugh grated on my nerves. She’d always tried to make out that Kath gossiped about Mum behind her back, but I knew it wasn’t true.

  ‘You know your mum would love to visit you more often,’ I said, remembering Kath’s mortification that the first and last time she’d been invited to the Williams’s mansion, she’d been mistaken for the cleaner.

  Freya’s face reddened. ‘Mum’s welcome to visit any time,’ she said haughtily. ‘I can’t help it if I live an hour’s drive away.’

  ‘Your mum doesn’t drive, and it’s over two hours by train, plus tickets are really expensive.’

  ‘It’s not my fault she doesn’t drive, and I don’t see why I should pay her train fare.’

  Nathan cleared his throat. ‘So what do you think? Of the building, I mean.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s really cute, but definitely needs gutting.’ As Freya started talking about installing new, refrigerated display cabinets, I zoned out, a niggle of worry diffusing my irritation.

  Mum had seemed fine on Friday evening, and although I hadn’t spoken to her di
rectly since, we’d exchanged a few texts about Sam’s reaction to my interview (I’d been a bit creative with the truth) and she hadn’t mentioned feeling unwell. Thinking back, it was odd that she hadn’t called; she usually liked to hear my voice every day.

  ‘You must be the neighbour Freya’s told me about.’

  A man had materialised, tall and trim with silver hair, and politeness dictated that I let him shake my hand. ‘We thought you were wonderful on Hidden Gems.’ He had a rich voice, deep tan, and a strong, handsome face – like a Roman centaur or old-fashioned Rat Pack crooner, and his eyes were dark and kind. I’d expected him to look old and rich, and while it was obvious his gold watch, and well-cut shirt and trousers hadn’t been bought on the high street, he wore them lightly. My immediate thought was that he was too good for Freya.

  ‘Freya thought you’d be perfect to run Two Scoops.’

  ‘Two Scoops?’

  ‘Isn’t it a cute name?’ Our previous exchange apparently forgotten, Freya nestled against her husband, one hand stroking the front of his shirt, and he smiled indulgently. ‘I know it’s not baking cakes, but it’s sort of similar,’ she said. ‘In fact, it’ll be much easier, because it’s just… well, cream and sugar from what I’ve read.’ She gave a dramatic little shudder. ‘Unhealthy as all hell, of course, but people love it.’

  Glancing at Nathan, I saw a pained expression cross his face.

  ‘You won’t be running it yourself then?’ I said. To my knowledge, apart from her stint as an au pair, which had involved more seduction than childcare, she’d never had a proper job.

  ‘God no, I’m a full-time mum, now.’ She gave Don a coy smile. ‘And I’ve a gorgeous husband to attend to.’

  Attend to? Yuk. Catching Nathan’s horrified look, I had to swallow a giggle because this surely couldn’t be happening. It was a game to Freya, who’d always been easily bored. ‘If you’re not going to be working here, why not let it be a bakery?’ Obviously, I’d loathe having Freya as a boss, but as she’d be unlikely to ever set foot in the place, I’d probably never see her.