The Traveller's Daughter

by Michelle Vernal

  “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 had 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. A-ha!” 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 bleeped 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. She knew her friend would be on her way home from the gym now and desperate to hear the ping of the notification as she rode the double decker bus back to their flat. Let Yas mull it over, she decided. She’d talk to her later about what she should do about it, and with that done, she stuffed her phone back in her bag and got to her feet. As she picked up her wheelie case and walked down the hallway, she realised she never had managed to swing that long ago conversation with her mother back round to what it was she used to do.

  Chapter 4

  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.

  Her feet were clad in her usual choice of thoroughly unsuitable heels, and she stepped around the freshly formed puddles. She momentarily wished she had a bit more sense when it came to footwear but ever since she’d had a say in the matter, she’d always opted for pretty over practical. Still, she comforted herself, at least she didn’t have far to walk, and as she tottered down the empty footpath, her mind drifted back over how she’d come to be here.

  The letter had arrived from the firm of solicitors whom her mother had been with for as long as Kitty could remember four weeks ago. In her opinion, Rosa had single-handedly kept them in business these last few years with her conveyancing, not to mention her final bit of business, dying. It held no surprises, apart from what she thought was an odd request on her mother’s part, that Kitty keep her ashes for at least six months before scattering them. Apart from that her affairs had as she’d expected all been in order.

  Rosa’s Will was quite straightforward with no beneficiaries other than Kitty, and so the house at Edgewater Lane was hers to do with what she wished. She hadn’t bothered to glance at the statement attached knowing the firm’s bill had been paid from her mother’s bank account. The account was now closed, and the balance was to be transferred to her account. It was the formality and finality of the letter that made her eyes burn with threatened tears. She’d sat there for an age in the dip of the old couch in the London flat she shared with Yasmin and Paula feeling utterly lost.

  She and Yasmin had only let the room to Paula for two reasons. Number one, being that the third bedroom was a box room so small that no one else had been keen to take it upon viewing it. The second reason was the smell; not everybody could stomach the permanent smell of curry that hovered in the air thanks to the flat’s upstairs location over a Bangladeshi takeaway.

  Their flat was located in the East End near the old Spitalfields Market and Brick Lane, which was known these days as London’s Curry Capital and had long been nicknamed Bangla Town. Kitty loved the little pocket of East London she had run away to just on a year ago, determined to put as much distance between herself and Damien as she could manage. You could almost smell the history seeping from the bricks, that’s if you manage
d to block the smell of curry!

  She liked to imagine the drama that had been played out on these streets as she wandered around them, and to know she was now part of that thread work made her feel special. Sometimes she’d pause down bustling Brick Lane and imagine she could hear the call of the Costermongers’ selling their fruit and veg. Once she had gotten herself in a right stew hot footing it home as she conjured up the darker side of the East End’s infamous past - Jack the Ripper. She could sense a shadow lurking behind her and had picked up her pace so that she’d been puffing by the time she burst in through the front door of her flat.

  “What’s up with you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Yasmin had stated as Kitty locked the door behind her before swinging round to face her friend wild-eyed.

  “Nothing, I’ve got an overactive imagination that’s all, my mum always said so, but I think I might need a drink.” She filled Yasmin in on her journey home, deciding not to add that she genuinely had sensed a darkness that had spooked her so. She got these little feelings from time to time, like when things had come to a head with Damien. She had felt something coming. When she sat back night after night over the following weeks torturing herself by examining every tiny detail of their breakup there had been no warning signs though. Nothing apart from the strangest sense of darkness and impending trouble. It had been there during her mother’s final days too, although at the time she hadn’t known she was dying. She’d found out after the event. A fat lot of good it was having a sixth sense when she had no idea what it meant.

  There were other feelings too, such as knowing instinctively who was on the other end of the phone, or sensing who was at the door without answering it. Silly stuff really, and she had asked Rosa about it once. Kitty had thought at the time that her reaction had been most peculiar, but like a lot of things, her mother had chosen not to elaborate.

  As for the encroaching darkness, these days it didn’t frighten her because it had already brought the worst that could happen with it. She had broken up with Damien and lost her mother all within a year. For the here and now she was trying so hard just to focus on the positives. So it was, she often muttered to herself as she flitted down the steps on her way to work how lucky it was that her passion in life was food. Most days the smell of spices wafting up the stairwell was enough to make your eyes water!

  She shared waitressing shifts with Yasmin at Bruno’s, a trendy little Italian Eatery on nearby Ashwin Street. Its main claim to fame was that a café just a few doors up had been tipped by Vogue magazine as the coolest place in Britain to dine. Bruno’s was determined to bask in its glory. Kitty didn’t mind. The busier work was, the better in her opinion because it kept not just her body but her mind busy and she needed all the distraction she could get.

  Of course, she didn’t plan on waitressing forever. Once the money from the sale of Edgewater Lane was in her bank account, there would be nothing stopping her from pursuing her dream of opening her very own cupcake café. Nothing stopping her, except for a chronic fear of failure that was.

  Kitty wasn’t a trained baker or chef nor did she want to be. She had been there and tried that. It had seen her spend a year living on the minimum wage in exchange for being shouted at by a Gordon Ramsey look-a-like. The experience had well and truly put her off the idea. She had packed in her apprenticeship in Edinburgh and hot-footed it down to a secretarial job in Manchester, instead deciding it was high time she had a bit of money in her pockets and fun to boot. The decision to move in with her girlfriends in the North’s big smoke and take a position typing in an architect’s firm had been one that her mother had not approved of. Kitty had told her in no uncertain terms though that it was her life, and she would do with it what she wanted.

  She was the first to hold her hand up and say that she found it hard to follow instructions, especially if they were barked at her. She found it hard to stick at things too because her feet got itchy, and she felt the need to move on, but despite her change of course she had never stopped loving baking. She had known though if she’d seen her apprenticeship through to the end, then bit by bit her love for it would have been snuffed out.

  Now in a round-a-bout way, until she opened her café she had come back to her first love by selling her cakes at the market on Saturday mornings. There was something so intrinsically comforting in the measuring of ingredients, the amounts of which never changed. As for the sweet and tempting result, well that was pure satisfaction. That was why she didn’t mind the early starts on those cold Saturday mornings. Bundled up in her coat with her woolly hat pulled down well over her ears she would sell her cakes at the Broadway Market in Hackney. Her favourite flavour was Chocolate Dream, but Yas loved her Vanilla Kisses, and the Pink Lady, a red velvet cake swirled high with pink buttercream icing was always popular. All of her cakes were made with love, and Kitty liked to think it was this that made them that little bit extra special.

  The unsociable hours she waitressed along with her sparrow’s fart Saturday starts suited her just fine. She had Yas for company and after the disaster that was Damien well the less time she had on her hands for repeating that epic catastrophe, the better. She was quite happy to whip up her sweet treats at the ungodly time of three o’clock in the morning in readiness for sale at her popular stall. Or at least she was after she’d had a strong cup of coffee. It filled her with a certain pride as she bantered with the punters to know that she was standing in the shadow of the East End’s famous Barrow boys. They had plied their trade with their unique salesman patter.

  Her takings supplemented her meagre earnings from Bruno’s enabling her to scrape by, but it certainly wasn’t the money that kept her baking her little cakes. She knew too that the latest fad was to frown upon sugar but hadn’t those sugar free converts ever heard the phrase, ‘everything in moderation’? That was her motto. She’d even heard mutterings that cupcakes were passé and that it was all about the sickly sweet, macaron these days for those that still cared to indulge that was, but Kitty wasn’t swayed. In her opinion there was something so marvelous about the look of pleasure on a customer’s face, when they bit into one of her cakes, swirled high with a piped frosting finish. It reaffirmed her belief. Sugar might be bad for the waistline, but it was oh-so-good for the soul!

  Now, Kitty yawned as she spied the row of shops at the end of the road she had just turned on to. Baintree & Co.’s office sat in the middle of them with a Cancer Research Shop somewhat aptly, given the reason for her selling her mother’s house, on one side of it. There was a travel agents on the other. Her eyes watered, and her body ached with weariness as she tottered along dragging her case behind her. The couple of hours’ sleep, she’d grabbed before her usual ungodly Saturday morning start had been fractured. The temptation to ignore her alarm when it shrilled had been strong. She knew though that if she was going to get her cakes baked and iced as well as catch the first train up to Wigan then she needed to get up and get moving.

  It was a nuisance her having to go all that way just to sign off the last of the paperwork for the house and to hand the key over but needs must. It was simpler than trying to arrange it all by proxy. So, she’d switched the alarm off and grudgingly thrown on the closest thing to hand, a T-shirt and her jeans before padding through to the bathroom. A pair of road mapped blue eyes peered back at her from the mirror, but there’d been no time to lament her sleep deprived appearance. Instead, she’d brushed her teeth before splashing her face with cold water and tying her hair back in a tight ponytail. A stray hair in a Pink Lady cupcake or the like would be a recipe for disaster.

  She had only got as far as cracking the eggs into the kitchen aid, her one splurge since she’d begun selling her wares at the market when Yasmin had appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  “You’re mad Kitty do you know that?” She said rubbing her eyes and moving across the tired old lino floor in a swish of pyjama satin. Her practised hand picked up the cup of flour resting on the bench, and she began to tip it slowly i
nto the mixer as Kitty had demonstrated she do, time and time again.

  “Three teaspoons of baking powder,” Kitty mumbled, measuring out the first and adding it the mix before looking up at her friend; Yasmin was as tall as she was short. “I know, but you don’t need to be too. Go on back to bed, you’re going to have a busy enough day as it is.” Yas would never cope with the pace of the market if she were on anything other than top form she thought turning the speed up on the mixer a fraction.

  The first time Kitty had shared a shift with Yasmin she had thought her like an exotic flower with her penchant for 1950’s style frocks. She was studying fashion design at a local college and used her wages and tips from Bruno’s to supplement her meagre student allowance. She was willowy with olive-hued skin and bobbed ebony hair that played up her flashing brown eyes. For her part Yasmin had confided when they knew each other better, she’d thought Kitty was like a dainty pixie. She had felt gangly and ginormous next to the petite blonde with the dancing blue eyes offset by unusually dark eyebrows and a big smile.

  Opposites attract, though, and once Kitty had gotten used to Yas’s way of going on, it hadn’t taken many snatched coffee breaks for the two women to establish common ground. They were both new arrivals to the city in need of permanent accommodation. Adrift in Britain’s capital they’d been grateful to find one another, and they had been firm friends ever since.

  Yasmin ran her fingers through her dark crop and yawned. “Well if you are sure you can manage -” Her voice trailed off as Kitty flashed her a smile.