‘Wait!’ I yelled, making Marc flinch.
If he was going to propose, I didn’t want to be lying on my back like an invalid. I pushed myself up to a semi-sitting position and rested my arms on top of the duvet.
Oops! Never flatten your arms against your body. It adds at least thirty per cent to the surface area of each limb. I read it in Heat magazine in a feature on how to look good in photos.
I raised my arms off the duvet and smiled brightly.
Marc frowned. Poor love; this sort of thing must be so nerve-racking. Shame really, in this day and age all the stress shouldn’t be loaded onto the man. Still, the woman usually ends up organizing the wedding, so it sort of evens itself out in the long run.
‘Sorry! You were saying?’ I nodded at him encouragingly.
Marc exhaled and gazed at me with his baby-blue eyes. That was the look of love. Right there.
‘There’s no easy way to say this, princess, but …’
What the fudge?
I gasped, but the nerves-induced accumulation of saliva in my throat created a strangled sort of gurgle. My spit went down the wrong hole and I started to choke. Not attractive, nor in the least bit timely.
Marc, determined to finish now he was on a roll, carried on slashing my newly minted dreams of married bliss into ribbons, while simultaneously slapping me on the back. Hard.
By the time I had found the wherewithal to hold my hands up, beseeching him to stop, he had all but finished his ‘Dear Sophie’ monologue.
The message had been clear, but what had he actually said? Straining to hear over my own ear-splitting wheezing, I had only caught one or two words. I must have misheard; I thought he used words like ‘different things’, ‘boring’, ‘freedom’ and ‘nice’.
He backed away from my single bed, from me and from our relationship towards the bedroom door, holding onto my fingers until the last possible second. It was quite a poignant moment: if I hadn’t been puce and completely hoarse, I might have said something profound. But other than to wail ‘Why? Why?’ at him, words completely failed me. So I stayed silent, doomed to for ever hold my peace.
He winked and was gone.
Happy chuffin’ Valentine’s Day.
‘Zombie-like’ was the best way to describe my mood at work over the following ten hours. At my desk in the advertising department for The Herald, Nottingham’s daily newspaper, I barely registered the banter of my colleagues or my overflowing in-tray. My hands simulated typing on my keyboard, but in reality I was simply going through the motions and I avoided the phone all day.
The bus ride home, normally quite an ordeal, was comparatively therapeutic. At least I didn’t have to talk to anyone.
It was shaping up to be the worst Valentine’s Day of my entire life. What was I saying – ‘shaping up’? How could it possibly get any worse? By the time my flatmates had rallied round me this morning, Jess making soothing noises and placing a mug of sweet tea in front of me and Emma threatening to cut off Marc’s balls and feed them to the squirrels, I had already pronounced the day an unprecedented disaster.
I was determined not to cry again. And that was no mean feat seeing as the evening commuter bus I was on appeared to be packed almost entirely with smooching couples and women with huge bouquets of flowers, cruelly serving to ram home my new single status.
Facebook! I was going to have to update my relationship status to ‘single’. But not today; I couldn’t face the humiliation of declaring myself single on the international day of love.
I shook my head, still struggling to comprehend what had happened this morning. I’d been convinced that today was the day that Marc would reveal his true feelings for me. Well he’d certainly done that. Be careful what you wish for, as the saying goes.
All my Valentine’s Day dreams were in tatters. I thought of the little nest egg that I’d been building up for years, waiting for the right time, the right person to settle down with. I’d begun to think that Marc could be that person. Not that we’d ever discussed a joint future, although he did once ask to dip into my savings to get a new business off the ground and we were both in our early thirties, I’d assumed it would just happen one day; it was only a matter of time.
With a sigh, I shifted the dream of having my own home to the back burner, along with my other abandoned dreams; the property market was no place for single, first-time buyers at the moment – far too risky!
At my bus stop, a group of people – in twos, obviously – jostled against me as I tried to disembark. I was barely clear of the last step when the bus trundled off through a puddle, sending a spray of black slush up the back of my tights.
Marvellous.
How could snow – so white, so pure, so beautiful – turn so vile in only a few hours? It was clearly a metaphor for a love gone sour. I huffed up the steps towards home, feeling forlorn and uncomfortably wet.
The Victorian house we lived in had long ago been split into flats. I let myself in and flicked through the mail on the communal post shelf. No scented envelopes, huge bouquets of flowers or small square boxes with ‘To Sophie Stone – love of my life’ on them, then? No? Thought as much.
Tears welled up in my eyes and I brushed them away. Actually, why shouldn’t I have a good cry? I was sad, might be properly sad for weeks, come to think of it. I loved Marc, he was so big and strong and unpredictable. Emma would say that this was a reason not to love him but he was exciting and I was going to miss having that excitement in my life.
For a moment, I considered sliding down the wall to the floor and succumbing to my sorrow. But it looked draughty and very public, far better to get home and let my lovely flatmates cheer me up.
I began the ascent to flat four, sniffing the air hopefully on the off-chance of catching any tantalizing aromas even though it was my turn to cook. Nothing. I waggled the key in the lock and pushed my way into the tiny hall.
‘Oh, babes, are you OK? I’ve been worried about you all day.’ Jess threw her arms round me, crushing me to her bosom.
‘I’m fine.’ I swallowed hard, lying through my teeth, and pulled back to examine my plumptious flatmate.
Jess narrowed her eyes. ‘Sure?’
I nodded. ‘Why are you wearing a toga?’
‘It’s not a toga, it’s a chiton,’ she replied, releasing me to perform a twirl in front of the hall mirror. ‘I’m doing Ancient Greeks with Year Five.’
Despite my crushing melancholy, I managed a smile. Jess was a born teacher and always threw herself wholeheartedly into every topic. And even in an old sheet she looked fabulous.
‘Ah, of course it is, I can tell now.’ I grinned. ‘You look great, Jess.’
‘Thanks, babes!’
Right, food. I left her measuring the circumference of her head with a piece of string and made my way into our uninspiring kitchen.
The fridge revealed nothing much except a pack of Marc’s chicken breasts. I always liked to keep high-protein food in for him in case he popped in for a snack after the gym. They were slightly grey and slimy and was I imagining it, or did they have a stain of abandonment about them? I sighed loudly and dropped them in the bin.
There was nothing else for it; it would have to be ‘three-tin surprise’. Not my favourite; in fact, no one was fond of it. I had gleaned all my culinary talents from my mother; it hadn’t taken long. She was to cooking what Heston Blumenthal was to hairstyling: a total stranger. This particular concoction was like playing Russian roulette with your taste buds and suited my mood perfectly.
‘Come to Auntie Em!’
I turned to see Emma holding her arms out. With her overalls, stripy T-shirt and long red plaits she looked like an over-sized Pippi Longstocking.
I dived into her arms, buried my face in her neck and felt tears prick at my eyes for the umpteenth time.
‘How are you doing, kiddo?’ she murmured.
‘Oh Emma, I’m just … I can’t … you know.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ said Emma, soothin
gly.
I knew her tongue would be bitten to shreds with the effort of not blurting out, ‘I told you so.’
She had never been a huge fan of Marc and I was grateful that she hadn’t started another character assassination tonight; I didn’t have the energy.
Emma had been my best friend since college. She had been doing an art foundation course and I was studying A-levels.
She had been taller, louder and brasher than me at sixteen. I had been hovering timidly on the edge of college life until she plucked me out of the shadows and tucked me under her wing. I had stayed there ever since.
Now she was a self-employed silversmith with a studio in a trendy part of Nottingham. The stuff she designed ranged from contemporary fruit bowls through to intricate one-off pieces of jewellery. Ironically, the only jewellery she wore was a shell she’d found in Cornwall while surfing, threaded onto a piece of leather.
‘I forgot.’ Jess bounded into the room, her auburn bob now adorned with a headdress made from bay leaves stuck to a bra strap. ‘A letter came for you.’ She placed an envelope reverently on the kitchen table. ‘It looks important.’
I abandoned the quest for tins immediately, my heart beating furiously as I grabbed the envelope. Perhaps all was not lost, perhaps …
‘It’s from a firm of solicitors,’ said Emma, reading the franking label over my shoulder.
My heart sank and then immediately leapt up to somewhere just below my throat.
Solicitors?
Why did I automatically feel guilty even though, as far as I could remember, I had done absolutely nothing wrong? It was the same when I passed through the ‘Nothing to Declare’ channel at the airport; I would blush, let out a high-pitched giggle and start making jokes about the two thousand cigarettes in my bag. I don’t even smoke.
‘Hey! You don’t think Marc has done something dodgy, do you, and implicated you in it?’ said Jess, wide-eyed.
Emma gave her a sharp look. ‘Of course not, it’s probably something nice. Go on, open it!’
‘Yes,’ I said, trying to think positive, ‘it could be um …’
Emma nudged Jess and winked. ‘I know. It’s a restraining order from Gary Barlow’s people!’
Jess giggled and they linked arms, started swaying and launched into the chorus of ‘A Million Love Songs’.
Despite my nerves, I couldn’t help smiling. The two girls were more than flatmates; they were sisters, Jess being the elder by two years. I loved them both dearly and they treated me like a third sister, which in practice meant that they both mothered me and teased me mercilessly.
I prodded Emma in the ribs. ‘Hey, leave me alone. I haven’t written to him for ages.’
We shared a smile and I turned my attention back to the letter in my hands.
‘Oh my Lordy,’ I continued. ‘Listen to this: “Dear Miss Stone, Whelan and Partners have been appointed … blah, blah, blah … writing to inform you that you are a beneficiary in the last will and testament of Mrs Jane Kennedy. Please contact this office at your earliest convenience. Yours, blah, blah, blah …’
I plopped down into a chair, dropping the letter onto the table. The sisters picked it up and looked at it.
‘Bloody hell, Sophie!’
‘A mystery benefactor!’ squealed Jess. ‘How exciting!’
‘Well, whoever she is, I think this calls for wine.’ Emma darted to the fridge and poured three large glasses while I reread the solicitor’s letter.
Jess sat down next to me at the kitchen table and patted my hand. ‘There you go, you see. The day might have started badly, but this letter,’ she tapped it with a sharp pink nail, ‘might be the beginning of a whole new adventure.’
‘Exactly,’ said Emma, holding up her glass. ‘Cheers!’
Just then Jess’s stomach gave an almighty rumble. ‘Ooh, excuse me! Who’s cooking dinner?’
I didn’t reply. I was still staring at that letter. More to the point, my brain cried out, who’s Jane Kennedy?
Enjoy as an ebook now or available in paperback November 2015!
Or you could try the fresh, funny and sweetly romantic . . .
Tilly Parker needs a fresh start, fresh air and a fresh attitude if she is ever to leave the past behind and move on with her life. As she seeks out peace and quiet in a new town, taking on a plot at Ivy Lane allotments seems like the perfect solution.
But the friendly Ivy Lane community has other ideas and gradually draw Tilly in to their cosy, comforting world of planting seedlings, organizing bake sales and planning seasonal parties.
As the seasons pass, will Tilly learn to stop hiding amongst the sweetpeas and let people back into her life – and her heart?
Available now!
A new four-part ebook series
Holly Swift has just landed the job of her dreams: events co-ordinator at Wickham Hall, the beautiful manor home that sits proudly at the heart of the village where she grew up. Not only does she get to organise others for a living and work in stunning surroundings, but it will also put a bit of distance between Holly and her problems at home.
As Holly falls in love with the busy world of Wickham Hall – from family weddings to summer festivals, firework displays and Christmas grottos – she also finds a place in her heart for her friendly (if unusual) colleagues.
But life isn’t as easily organised as an event at Wickham Hall (and even those have their complications . . .). Can Holly learn to let go and live in the moment?
After all, that’s when the magic happens . . .
Available now!
Appleby Farm recipes
Cathy’s Afternoon Tea Favourites
Victoria Sponge
Scrumptious Scones
Banana and Chocolate Chip Loaf
Chocolate Brownies
Lemon Drizzle Cake
Agent Fergie’s Stem Ginger Cookies
Chocolate Roulade with Fresh Cream
Courgette and Lime Cake
Florentines
Helen Redfern’s Pistachio Meringues
Bookcamp Biscuit Cake
Harriet Bourton’s Mini Victoria Sponges
Victoria Sponge
For me, a slice of light and fluffy Victoria Sponge, filled with strawberry jam (preferably homemade) and dusted with crunchy caster sugar, simply cannot be beaten. The best one I have ever tasted was made by my daughter, Phoebe, who overheard my Auntie Kath talking about her fail-safe method and then came home and baked the most perfect cake ever. The secret lies in the weight of the eggs . . .
You will need . . .
3 large eggs weighed in their shells (note this down!)
The same weight of caster sugar, self-raising flour and room-temperature butter
1 teaspoon baking powder
A pinch of salt
Strawberry jam
Extra caster sugar for dusting
Grease 2 x 20cm sandwich tins and line the bases with greaseproof paper. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C (350F/gas mark 4). Combine the butter and sugar and beat until really light and fluffy. Whisk the eggs together and then add them to the mixture gradually. Fold in the sifted flour, baking powder and salt (I usually use a spatula to do this part.)
Divide the batter between the two tins, spread the top to smooth it out a little and pop them into the middle of the oven for 25-30 minutes. Don’t open the oven for at least 20 minutes! The sponge is cooked when a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
Allow to cool in the tin completely and then transfer to a wire cooling rack. Choose the nicest one to be the top. Place the other one on a plate and smother it with generously with strawberry jam (avoid big fruity lumps). Add the other sponge cake and sprinkle with caster sugar.
Serve as soon as possible for maximum fluffiness!
Scrumptious Scones
Dried fruit has its place. Christmas cake, for example, and mince pies. But I think scones are better unadulterated, just meltingly soft as soon as they are cool enough to slice and spread with clotted
cream and a dollop of jam! According to Auntie Sue, the secret to perfect scones is in the mixing: over-mix and you’ve got yourself a batch of primitive weapons . . .
You will need . . .
225g self-raising flour
Large pinch of salt
50g of slightly salted butter
25g caster sugar
125ml buttermilk
4 tablespoons of milk
Flour for dusting
Clotted cream and jam to serve
Preheat the oven to 220°C (425F/gas mark 7). Grease a large baking sheet (unless it’s non-stick). Sift the flour into a mixing bowl and add the salt. Chop the butter into small cubes and add to the bowl. Rub the butter into the flour swiftly to make crumbs, lifting the mixture as you go to aerate it. Stir in the sugar.
Add the milk to the buttermilk. Make a well in the centre of the mixing bowl and add nearly all of the milk mixture. Use a palette knife or spatula to gently work the milk into the mixture to form a soft dough. Add the rest of the milk if needed to draw in any dry bits. Don’t over-work the dough or you’ll end up with tough scones.
Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and press it down with the palm of your hand to a thickness of 2.5cm. Dip a 5.5cm fluted cutter into the flour and cut out the scones by pressing firmly into the dough and not twisting. Gather the leftovers, pat them out again and cut out as many scones as you can. Arrange them on the baking sheet and sift a little flour over the tops. Bake for 10-12 minutes until golden.
Allow to cool on a wire rack and serve with jam and clotted cream straight from the fridge. Yum.
Banana and Chocolate Chip Loaf
This recipe comes from my editor – it’s a tasty, sweet loaf cake that her mother has made for years and is a true family favourite. The bananas are best when very ripe, so there’s no need to throw away those forgotten blackened bananas left in your fruit bowl at the end of the week: you can make this delicious treat instead! It goes perfectly with a cup of Earl Grey tea.
Appleby Farm Page 37
