‘I’ll get the last crate, then you can move the car,’ said Tess, bustling back out as I stepped inside.
I paused just for a second to breathe in the atmosphere of the shop, feeling the familiar wave of joy I always got in here. It was such a bright and happy place, full of charm and character and bulging with deliciousness.
The interior décor was testament to Naomi’s talents, even though it had been done on a shoestring; a local joiner had been commissioned to knock up some shelving to break up the vast space. Lighting suspended on wire tracks gave the illusion of a lowered ceiling, even though the eye could see right up to the vaulted beams above. Straw bales covered with white cloths gave a quirky rural feel to display areas and each department – fruit and veg, preserves, deli and cheeses, drinks and the baked goods section – had its own particular feel. Today, Naomi’s proud artisan producers had been shoehorned into every spare nook and cranny, giving demonstrations and tasters of their wares.
‘Wow, the shop looks amazing!’ I said, following her into the back office and depositing the pies in the space she waved me towards. ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’
She laughed. ‘Having the ideas is the easy part; it’s making them happen that takes effort. Luckily I’ve got you and your pies to help with that.’
I basked in the glow of her praise for a moment before nipping out to move the car. She made it sound so simple, but in the early days, it had been anything but that …
Chapter 6
When I’d first come to Sunnybank Farm, this traditional Cumbrian stone barn had been derelict, along with the low single-storey buildings adjacent to it. It wasn’t until Naomi had the bright idea of converting it into a shop that it had had a new lease of life. Dan’s father Mike hadn’t agreed, or at least that was what she had thought at the time. However, after he died, Viv admitted that Mike had had a change of heart and had applied for planning permission for Naomi’s plans. Naomi had been stunned by his actions, but it was a bitter-sweet victory as her beloved father would never see her complete her dream.
A lesser woman would have faltered, given herself time to grieve. But not Naomi, she set to work straight away; while building work was going on inside, she set up a stall in the yard selling fruit and vegetables, fresh farm eggs and plants, and did a roaring trade in Christmas trees that first winter. Her boys were still little, only just old enough for school, and Tim had taken a job working away in Scotland, three weeks on, three weeks off. And yet, even with all that going on around her, she’d pulled it off beautifully.
Someone was just pulling out of a narrow space so I quickly nosed my car forward and into it and ran back into the shop. Naomi was deep in conversation with a woman with a mass of red curls. She caught my eye, gave me an apologetic smile and held up her hand signalling that she’d only be five minutes so I went to find Tim instead.
There were so many customers milling about, wielding the traditional wicker baskets that Naomi had sourced locally, that it took me some time to spot my brother-in-law: he was perched on an oak barrel behind a tray of tiny plastic cups of juice.
‘Ah, Hetty!’ He stood, pushing his newspaper aside, and put a moustachioed kiss on my cheek. ‘Can I interest you in a drop of rhubarb juice? You can either use it to strip paint or add it to vodka, which I’m told will result in a rather lively cocktail.’
He pushed one of the sample cups towards me. It reminded me of the little paper cups of pink liquid you get at the dentist.
‘I’ll pass,’ I said, pulling a face.
‘Go on,’ he whispered. ‘Mein Führer says as soon as this lot has gone, I can go home and put my feet up. I’ve already downed ten.’
‘Shush,’ I said with a giggle, checking that no one could hear him. ‘The supplier might be here.’
Not that Tim would be remotely bothered. He always reminded me of Winnie the Pooh and had the figure and temperament to match. He was older than Naomi, shorter than Naomi and considerably stouter than her too. But the two of them were such a perfect couple in every other way that their physical differences were simply brushed aside. He worked in the oil industry, living away from home much of the time, in a little flat in Inverness, but when he was here, he followed her round like the cade lambs – the orphans – followed me. Where she was full of ideas and plans, he was happy to take life as it came, when she went out running, he’d take a stroll down to the river and mess about on his little boat for an hour. They were yin and yang and for them that seemed to be the key to a happy marriage.
‘I wish that were so,’ said Tim, tugging the collar of his shirt, which, now I looked properly at it, looked … different. ‘Because then he or she could flog their own acid, I mean nectar.’
‘Tim, your shirt.’ I tipped my head to one side to study it. ‘It’s rather …’
‘Avant-garde, I think, is the phrase you’re looking for.’ He smoothed down the front of it and then took the points of the collar in his fingertips. One side had a tiny almost non-existent point like a cat’s ear and the other side had a huge flap like a Spaniel’s. ‘From a young British designer going by the name of Otis Willcox.’
‘Ah. All is now clear. It’s fantastic; Paul Smith, eat your heart out.’
Good old Tim for wearing his son’s creation. He straightened his arms to demonstrate the sleeves. The fabric was a sheeny brown colour apart from its extra-deep yellow cuffs, which seemed to flare from his elbows.
Tim chuckled, hoisting himself back up on to his barrel. ‘Twin boys, identical at birth, who’ve received exactly the same parenting and yet Otis and Oscar couldn’t be more polar opposite if they’d planned it. How can that be?’
I shrugged. ‘It’s a mystery. I love those two boys dearly but they are a mystery to me. I’m an only child, so is Poppy. The only experience I have of sibling relationships is of Dan and Naomi—’
‘Who are incredibly alike,’ he put in.
‘Uncannily so,’ I agreed.
‘Nature versus nurture, eh?’ said Tim ponderously, running a hand over his sparse dark hair.
We stared into space for a second, lost in our thoughts. Otis was studying fashion in Leeds. He had a unique sense of style, a severe asymmetric haircut and thought nothing of waxing his eyebrows before a night out. Oscar never noticed what he was wearing; clothes, shoes, personal grooming … none of that featured highly, if at all, on his agenda. His university degree was in ecology and conservation, and he was never as animated as when he was discussing the properties of soil with anyone who’d listen.
‘Gosh, that looks like it might be super-healthy!’
The voice jolted me out of my thoughts. It was the red-haired woman I’d seen chatting to Naomi. She had a stack of leaflets in her hand and strapped to her front was a tiny sleeping infant with soft fluffy orange hair. She was leaning over the tray of samples peering at the pink liquid.
‘Which is usually a cause for concern in my book,’ I said, bending to get a closer look at the baby.
‘True,’ she said with a laugh, her eyes sparkling. She picked up the rhubarb juice bottle and turned it round to read the small print. ‘Oh good! Locally made too!’
‘Hello, little one,’ I whispered, resisting the urge to stroke the baby’s downy cheek. There had been a time when other people’s babies made me tearful with longing for another child of my own. I still had the odd pang of regret, but now that Poppy was almost thirteen, the thought of a sibling for her felt wrong somehow.
‘Try some,’ said Tim eagerly.
‘I’ll swap you for a leaflet,’ she said, holding one out. She gave me one too. ‘I’m Freya Graythwaite, by the way, and this is Baby Tilly.’
‘Cumbria’s Finest,’ I read aloud. ‘Your regional food group, showcasing the very best food and drink from the area to customers both home and away.’
‘I’ve taken over the role of recruiting new members for the group.’ Freya’s eyes widened as she knocked back the juice Tim had given her. ‘I heard about the open day and t
hought I’d pop over while my husband is with our eldest at ballet.’
‘Ah, a ballerina in the family,’ said Tim. ‘How old is she?’
‘He. Artie, and he’s three. Named after his great-uncle, not that he’s a dancer,’ she giggled, ‘he’s a retired farmer.’
‘So they do retire then?’ I said with amusement. ‘I’m married to a farmer and I can’t imagine him ever leaving Sunnybank.’
Freya’s eyes lit up. ‘Ditto! We run two farms, which is a bit full-on. Although my main role is the tea rooms at Appleby Farm; oh, and the wedding business and the vintage holidays. But I know what you mean: I can’t imagine Harry leaving the farm; it’s bad enough trying to get him to take a holiday.’
‘A holiday,’ I joked, ‘what’s that?’
Another Wonder Woman. I was smiling but inside my stomach was in knots. On top of running those businesses she looked after two children and had just taken on a recruitment role for Cumbria’s Finest. All I did was bake a few pies and help Dan out on the farm and I wasn’t even very good at that: I was useless when a sheep got flystrike, I wasn’t strong enough to shear and I still shed a tear when a lamb died. Pathetic.
‘Retirement,’ said Tim wistfully, ‘can’t wait. Although when you’re married to a Greengrass like Hetty and I are, you’re pretty much married to Sunnybank Farm too.’
‘Oh, you’re Hetty Greengrass!’ she exclaimed. ‘Silly me; I just realized. You made those fantastic pies. I am in awe of you. Your pastry is to die for.’
I loved her. I totally loved her.
‘Thank you. I am Hetty, yes,’ I said proudly.
Just then her angelic child awoke and let out a squawk to rival our cockerel.
‘Oh crumbs, and I thought I’d get round the whole shop before she needed feeding.’ She pressed her lips tenderly to Tilly’s head. ‘Yes, yes, lunch will be served immediately, darling. I’d better go, but lovely to meet you.’
‘You too,’ Tim and I said in unison.
She gave me a warm smile. ‘And good luck!’
I raised my eyebrows. She dashed off, red curls flying, before I could ask what she meant and the next moment, someone stumbled into me.
‘Crikey! Sorry, darlin’.’ It was a man with a tanned face, sunglasses clamped on top of his bedraggled hair, huge shoulders and a scruffy goatee beard. His appearance, added to his Australian accent, told me he was probably a shearing contractor. It was the start of the British shearing season and the time when Antipodean farmers were having their winter and consequently work in that part of the world dried up. There was one particular caravan park ten miles from the farm which was almost solely inhabited by burly men with amazing biceps for the whole of June. All my girlfriends had tried to get jobs there when we were younger.
‘It’s fine,’ I reassured him with a smile.
‘Is this alcoholic?’ he asked, picking up a taster cup.
‘Only rhubarb juice,’ Tim answered apologetically. ‘But it’s extremely good for,’ he lowered his eyes to his lap for a millisecond, ‘vitality, if you get my meaning.’
The man smirked and nodded. ‘Oh yeah?’ And then proceeded to knock them back like vodka shots, grimacing after each one went down.
Tim and I stared at him. After about his eighth, the man suddenly choked, realizing how it looked. ‘Christ. Not that I need any help, you know …’
‘Down under?’ Tim finished for him, tongue in cheek.
‘Exactly, mate.’ The Aussie rubbed his nose, dropped his sunglasses down and swaggered off.
Tim rubbed his hands together with glee. ‘Okay, four left. That’s two each and then I can slip away unobtrusively.’
‘Unobtrusively? In that shirt?’ I said. ‘You’ll be lucky.’
Nonetheless, we both picked up a plastic taster cup and knocked them together.
‘Down the hatch,’ said Tim.
‘Excellent!’ boomed a deep voice at my shoulder. ‘The famous rhubarb juice.’
I turned to see six or seven smartly dressed people with earnest faces and all wearing bright yellow name badges.
‘This is what Naomi was suggesting we served at the next meeting,’ said a lady with silver hair pinned up in a bun. Her badge proclaimed her to be Janet. She looked disappointedly at the tray. ‘Oh, have you run out?’
Tim sighed, reached under the counter and pulled out a new bottle and some more plastic cups. ‘Not at all,’ he said in a jolly voice, winking at me. ‘Plenty more where that came from.’
He began pouring out samples and Janet handed them round.
‘So, you’re the Sunrise Breakfast Club, then?’ I said to the nearest man, remembering that Naomi had expressly said she wanted me to meet them. ‘I’ve heard about you from Naomi. I’m Hetty, her sister-in-law, and this is her husband, Tim.’
We shook hands and he introduced himself as Matthew. He’d clearly already sampled some pie; he had crumbs in his beard and a telltale splodge of sheep’s cheese and spinach on his suit lapel.
‘We’re the leading business group for local entrepreneurs,’ Matthew exclaimed smugly.
‘I’d love to hear more,’ I said, arranging my features into my most interested gaze.
He rocked back on his heels as if preparing to give a lecture and my heart sank.
‘We’re a networking group, we meet, share business leads, motivate each other and help hone each other’s personal mission statements.’
‘Gosh, sounds …’ absolutely hideous, I wanted to say. I caught Tim’s eye and he waggled an eyebrow, clearly thinking along the same lines. ‘Riveting.’
‘I like the fact that I can grow my business before the office even opens, and of course we also have breakfast,’ added Janet.
‘I’m with you on the eating,’ said Tim. ‘But I struggle to motivate myself out of my pyjamas in the morning, let alone motivate someone else to greatness.’
Just then Tess walked up with a tray of biscuits spread with some sort of pâté.
‘Local smoked duck and port terrine on oat crackers,’ she said, plunging the tray into the middle of the group. Hands dived in to help themselves. ‘Available on our deli counter.’
‘What’s your mission statement, Paul?’ I said, turning to a grey-faced man with one bushy eyebrow higher than the other, which lent him an expression of extreme suspicion. He wolfed down two crackers and then did a phlegmy cough into a napkin.
‘Glad you asked,’ he said, spraying a mouthful of crumbs in my direction. ‘It’s to use my charisma and talents to breathe life into my new business.’
‘Bravo,’ murmured a lady called Heidi, who seemed to have matched her jacket to her yellow badge.
‘And what is your business?’ Tim enquired, topping everybody up and draining the bottle. He took Tess’s last cracker and popped it in his mouth.
‘An abattoir,’ said Paul without a hint of irony.
Tim began to choke on his cracker and my cheeks were aching with the effort of not laughing when Tess drew me aside.
‘Can you go and see Naomi in the back office?’ she whispered. ‘She wants to check something with you.’
I left Janet banging Tim on the back and Heidi trying to tip rhubarb juice down his throat and made my way to Naomi.
The office still smelled of my warm pies and three of them, I noticed, were still untouched. Naomi had rolled up her sleeves and was standing at her desk behind a pile of cardboard. She looked up shiftily as I entered.
‘Hi,’ she said, slipping a sheet of paper underneath the cardboard. ‘Having fun?’
‘Oh yes. Your Sunrise Breakfast crowd are an entertaining bunch,’ I said diplomatically, trying to see what it was she’d swiftly shoved to one side.
‘Quirky lot, aren’t they?’ She gave me a wry smile. ‘Networking is a necessary evil these days and the shop does get a lot out of it. Besides, it fills an hour after my morning run before the shop opens.’
‘Phew.’ I sat on her revolving office chair and span round. ‘I’d hate to think of you at
a loose end at seven thirty in the morning.’
‘Ha ha. You can mock.’ She poked her tongue out in concentration as she tucked flaps into slots. She appeared to be assembling a box from a flat piece of cardboard. ‘But since the boys left home, conversation in the mornings has been pretty thin on the ground and I like company at breakfast. Especially when Tim’s working away.’
‘Mmm,’ I said vaguely. Me too; until Thursday I’d shared my breakfast with Rusty: a mouthful for me, a titbit for him. On the step if the weather allowed, or huddled in front of the fire in the armchair if it didn’t. Although in his last week his appetite had vanished and not even the fatty bits of my bacon could tempt him. ‘Tess said you wanted to check something with me?’
‘Yes.’ Naomi met my eye. ‘Look, I know this is a bit of a cheek, but what do you think of these?’ She pulled out the thing she’d hidden and passed it across to me; it was a sheet of self-adhesive labels. Each circular sticker was around five centimetres in diameter. In the centre was a tiny illustration of the farmhouse and behind it a simple line drawing of a hill with two little cartoon sheep on it. The words ‘Sunnybank Farm’ arced above the hill like a rainbow.
‘Nice,’ I said, trying to work out why she’d used an illustration of our farmhouse, rather than the shop’s logo.
‘I thought so,’ she said, going a bit pink. ‘Otis ran out of money last month so I agreed to top up his loan if he designed a new logo.’
‘A logo for …?’ I looked at her, confused.
She slid one of my pies into the box she’d assembled, closed the lid and stuck a sticker on it. ‘For Sunnybank Farm Pies.’
She passed me the box. ‘I’ve been toying with the idea of an own brand for the shop; Crinkle Crags Bakery were supposed to be trialling them for me but …’
‘But their baby arrived,’ I supplied, nodding my head. I couldn’t drag my eyes away from the box. My pie, packaged up and labelled like a proper product, like something you’d see in a shop. Just the sight of it made me feel all tingly. ‘You know, I’ve never heard of Crinkle Crags Bakery, where are they?’
Naomi rubbed her nose. ‘You wouldn’t have, they’re specialist, very niche.’
Hetty's Farmhouse Bakery Page 6
