‘And you, Joe?’ I asked, finally, cutting my scone in half and dolloping on some jam. ‘Has life treated you well?’
‘Oh yes.’ He shifted in his seat and added more cream to his already mountainous scone. ‘I’ve done all right for myself, been promoted once or twice, moved around to keep things fresh. Then this job with Cumbria’s Finest came along and I decided that the time was right to come home. It’s a three-year contract, and after that …’ He shrugged casually. ‘Well, who knows?’
Blimey, he’d managed to cram his life story into even fewer words than me.
‘Is there a Mrs Appleton?’ I probed. ‘Any little Appletons?’
‘Nope.’ Joe looked down at the front of his jacket, where one lone crumb had stuck to his lapel. He flicked it away. ‘There was briefly a wife, but not long enough to produce kids. My CV looks a bit thin on that score.’ He gave me a resigned smile. ‘Still. More tea?’
He reached for the pot, making it clear that he was uncomfortable talking about his personal life, but I had to know more.
‘And your family bakery in Holmthwaite?’ I continued. ‘Your mum sold up, I heard?’
He set the teapot down carefully, nodding. ‘She had an offer she couldn’t refuse a year or two back and sold the business. Now she lives in Windermere in a complex for the over fifty-fives with a view of the lake, and bistros, galleries and boutiques on her doorstep.’
‘I quite fancy that myself.’
Tension hung in the air between us.
The elephant in this room was so big we were in danger of being crushed beneath it. I studied Joe as he added a drop of milk to his tea and then stirred. Despite what he’d said on the phone earlier about not thinking of his college days any more, we couldn’t ignore his mysterious disappearance from our lives. My insides were completely twisted up with the effort of not demanding answers. I had to say something.
‘Joe, why did you leave without saying goodbye?’ I held his gaze. His expression gave nothing away but a tiny flicker in the muscle under his eye told me how much he didn’t want this conversation. ‘We were so confused.’
He glanced up sharply. ‘Not everyone was confused. What did Dan say about it?’
His words stole my breath; so there was something. Did Dan know more than he was letting on after all? If so, that would explain why he’d pushed Joe’s disappearance under the carpet and scarcely referred to it over the years. But Dan and I didn’t have any secrets. My stomach flip-flopped at the thought and I pushed my cream tea away.
‘He told me nothing.’ I leaned forward, forcing him to look at me. ‘Tell me, please. You cut off all contact from me, Dan and Anna, your friends? Why?’
‘I grew up. We all did.’ He busied himself taking papers from the leather wallet on the table. ‘As I said on the phone, there’s nothing else to say. My A-level grades were better than college had predicted and I was headhunted by Fairbrother’s to their trainee programme.’
‘I get that!’ I said crossly. ‘But your new life needn’t have stopped you keeping in touch with the old.’
‘It was easier that way.’ Joe clamped his mouth shut, his jaw set.
‘Not for us it wasn’t,’ I retorted. ‘Dan could have used a friend after losing his father.’
He rubbed a hand over his beard.
‘Can we stick to business?’ he asked quietly. ‘I’m sure you’re busy and we need to talk about your entry to Britain’s Best Bites. Freya said you’d brought a pie, I’d love to try it.’ He looked over his shoulder, as if trying to attract Freya’s attention.
‘For goodness’ sake, Joe,’ I said sharply. ‘This was a mistake; I’m going. I can’t sit here discussing shortcrust pastry while you pretend that turning your back on your friends and then picking up fifteen years later without an explanation is perfectly normal behaviour.’
My chair screeched across the wooden floor as I pushed it back and stood, preparing to leave.
Joe flung his pen down. ‘All right,’ he barked.
The babble of conversation in the tea rooms stopped. The other customers turned to get a good look at who was arguing and Lizzie and Freya were looking worried too.
He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it standing in tufts.
‘All right,’ he repeated more calmly. ‘But if I tell you, can we then drop it and move on?’
‘Deal.’ I sat back down. My heart was pounding hard and I felt ridiculously close to tears. The onlookers, sensing that the drama was over, returned to their own conversations and gradually the atmosphere lifted again.
Joe leaned his elbows on the table and dug the spoon in the sugar, stirring it round and round.
‘I left because I was in love. Properly in love. It was more than a teenage crush; it was all-consuming. In fact, it over-shadowed and ultimately drove a wedge through my marriage.’
I swallowed. ‘Who were you in love with?’
He lifted his gaze to me and shook his head. ‘Doesn’t matter now. She never knew. I thought … I thought that if I waited long enough, showed her that I cared, eventually I might stand a chance, that she might notice how I felt. And then one day that summer, I realized that I was wasting my time; she’d never love me because she loved someone else.’
I reached a hand out to cover his and realized that mine was trembling. ‘Oh Joe, I wish you’d confided in me, or even Dan.’
He quirked an eyebrow. ‘It wasn’t that simple.’
‘Okay, maybe not Dan,’ I conceded. ‘He’s not great at talking about his feelings, unless it’s about Poppy, he adores her, or if one of the dogs gets injured. Or conversely, if one of his prize tups does a Houdini act, he’s quite verbal with his emotions then.’
‘And does he adore you, Hetty?’ he asked.
He was looking at me so intensely, trying to read my body language, and it suddenly felt very important that he thought well of Dan and me and the life we’d built together. I thought of the champagne bubble bath Dan had run for me recently and the toast cut into heart shapes he’d left by the side of my bed on Saturday morning, before leaving for the sheep sales, and a thousand other little things he did to show he cared.
‘He does,’ I said, my eyes softening. ‘In his own way.’
‘Good.’ Joe gave me a tight smile. ‘Now can we please talk pies?’
We both breathed a sigh of relief when Freya came to join us with baby Tilly, who disappeared straight under Freya’s T-shirt for her lunch. And after Lizzie had cleared the remains of our scones, she brought us fresh tea and left us to talk shop.
‘We’ve got sausages, preserves, cider, gingerbread, chocolates, breakfast cereal, oils … loads of stuff, all from Cumbria, as well as your pies,’ said Freya, beaming proudly. ‘Our stand at the London show is going to be amazing!’
‘Hetty hasn’t confirmed yet that she’s definitely coming,’ Joe corrected her. ‘But I agree, the quality of food from our small businesses has astounded me.’
‘Ah,’ I said, ‘about the “business” bit …’
I explained that Hetty’s Farmhouse Bakery was still, technically, only at the ideas stage and that a lack of funds to make improvements to the kitchen had temporarily halted proceedings.
‘Hmm, I see.’ Joe was trying desperately to be blasé about the top of his sales manager’s boob being visible during a meeting. He scanned through the small print on the Britain’s Best Bites website to check eligibility. ‘Have you registered your company name? Do you have orders? A bank account?’
I nodded and crossed my fingers under the table; I had Naomi’s firm order, if that counted, and a bank account wouldn’t take five minutes.
‘Then you’re in. Simple.’ He shrugged a shoulder. ‘All we need is to find a way round the health and safety issue when you bake your competition entry.’
And find a way around the ‘Dan’ issue to comply with my marriage, I thought with a flicker of worry.
‘You don’t look convinced?’ said Joe, furrowing his brow.
�
��Um, it’s just …’ I couldn’t say my husband had forbidden me to go to London, it made him sound like a Dickens character and made me look like a spineless wimp. And neither was true. But I could see that it might look that way. And I was sure once Dan understood how important it was to me to go, he’d be fine.
‘We’ll organize transport and cover all costs. All you have to do is bring yourself and your Hetty’s Farmhouse Bakery pie.’
Joe’s words sent a volley of shivers down my spine. My pie, in London, competing with proper food companies from around the country. I wasn’t completely sure how I’d got here, but now that I had I liked it. A lot. And I didn’t want the adventure to end yet.
From her seat at the table, Freya was communicating to Lizzie via a series of mimes to keep the tea rooms running smoothly, whilst still keeping an ear on our conversation and feeding Tilly. If she could multi-task so effectively, so could I.
‘You’ve convinced me,’ I said determinedly. ‘I’m in.’
‘Great.’ Joe clapped his hands together and grinned. ‘And you never know, if you come first in Britain’s Best Bites, you could be walking away with the five-thousand-pound prize.’
My eyes stood out on stalks. ‘There’s a prize?’
Freya winced. ‘Didn’t I mention that in my email?’
‘Probably,’ I said, not wanting to get her into trouble. My brain was whirring; imagine what we could do with that sort of money … I probably wouldn’t win, but I had to give it my best shot. Even Dan would see that, wouldn’t he?
Chapter 15
Dan stared at me, hands on hips, his forehead creased in disbelief.
‘You’ve been to see Joe? Behind my—’ He stopped himself just in time. ‘Without me?’
I carried on mashing potato but Viv and Poppy, sitting at the table with their hands in the biscuit tin, stopped their conversation to listen.
‘You’re making it sound underhand and it wasn’t,’ I said, trying not to sound defensive. I hadn’t deliberately gone behind his back, but I hadn’t exactly made an effort to tell him either.
‘Humpf.’ He moved to the kitchen sink, washed his hands and poured himself a glass of water.
‘I would have called you, but there’s no signal on the moors, is there?’ I said reasonably. ‘And I didn’t think I needed your permission to pop out?’
‘Of course not.’ Dan tutted irritably, leaning back against the sink. ‘But this was meeting Joe. That’s way more than just “popping out”. And you’re in a dress. You were in jeans this morning.’
‘Yeah, you look hot, Mum.’ Poppy pinched her thumb and first finger together in approval. ‘You should get your legs out more often.’
Dan raised an eyebrow. Poppy wasn’t exactly helping.
‘Thanks, love.’ I shot my daughter a smile for her support.
I wished I’d got changed when I’d come home. Silly mistake. At least then I could have told Dan about meeting Joe in private. But I’d been away from Sunnybank Farm longer than planned; Joe and Freya had made me fill in all the forms there and then, plus they’d wanted to go through the travel arrangements and show me the artist’s impressions of the Cumbria’s Finest exhibition stand. I’d come back and thrown myself into the rest of the day’s farmyard chores, which had involved changing the straw in the orphan lambs’ pen (not ideal in a dress), checking up on a couple of poorly ewes and their lambs in the paddock, a quick half an hour in the vegetable garden pinching shoots and picking produce, and making two rhubarb pies which Viv had requested to take to the hospital café where she was a volunteer.
‘It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. He wanted to meet to discuss … my winning pie.’ I’d been about to say ‘London’ but stopped myself just in time, I’d lead up gently to that. ‘So we met in Lovedale at the vintage tea rooms at Appleby Farm.’
‘I love that place,’ Viv piped up.
‘So what did he say?’ Dan asked, ignoring his mum.
‘About what?’ I replied, swallowing hard.
He lifted his arms up. ‘Come on, Hetty. About the radio silence for the last fifteen years?’
I held his gaze. ‘He seemed to imply you might know.’
‘What? Of course I didn’t know.’
There was an edge to his voice now and Viv cleared her throat pointedly.
‘Shame you two lost contact.’ She shook her head. ‘And odd in this day and age of the internet when everyone feels the need to share every aspect of their lives from videos of their sleeping dogs to pictures of their dinner.’
‘I don’t,’ Dan grunted.
‘That’s because you don’t have a life, Dad.’ Poppy grinned. ‘Who’s this Joe you’re getting all salty about, anyway?’
‘A friend of Dad’s from a long time ago,’ I explained, wiping a hand across my brow. ‘Can you pass the cheese from the fridge please?’
She hopped up obediently and went to fetch it.
‘Did he ask about me?’ Dan wanted to know.
I spooned the mash on top of the chicken and mushroom pie filling. ‘Of course.’
Sort of. Does he adore you, Hetty?
The thought of Joe’s question made me flush. He’d looked at me so intensely, as if he was looking deep into my soul. Right now I felt more like I was on the business end of the Spanish Inquisition than cherished.
‘But we spoke mostly about business.’
‘Yeah, London, baby!’ Poppy chimed with a fist-punch to the air. I groaned inwardly as Dan’s ears pricked up.
Great. Now I had no chance of introducing the subject gently. I fetched the cheese grater from the cupboard.
Before Dan had arrived back from the moors, the three of us women had been having a lovely time debating dating etiquette. Poppy thought it was ridiculous that most girls waited to be asked out by a boy and had told us of her vow to do the asking when the time came. She also spent about ten minutes listing all the attributes of a boy called Niall. Not the first time she’d done that; he was the boy in her year with one hand, the brilliantly funny football player. Viv had then stunned her by saying that she’d asked Poppy’s granddad out for their first date and the two of them had been married eight months later, which Poppy thought was awesome. I’d let the feminist side down by admitting that Dan had asked me on a date but secretly I was glad it had happened that way round. It had given me a huge ego boost that the gorgeous Dan Greengrass had chosen me when all the other boys fancied Anna.
Then Dan had come in and noticed my dress and the mood had descended from there.
‘London?’ Dan said confused. ‘But I thought we’d agreed you weren’t going.’
‘Dad?’ Poppy flung herself back against her chair aghast. ‘Course she is!’
I glanced up from grating cheddar over the potato topping at my daughter’s indignant face. I couldn’t let her down now.
‘We agreed nothing of the sort,’ I replied calmly. ‘I said I’d like to go and you said I couldn’t. Big difference.’
‘Daniel!’ Viv gasped. ‘I never had you down as a bully.’
‘It’s okay,’ I said swiftly. I could not have my mother-in-law intervening on my behalf; this matter had to be sorted out once and for all, and I had to be the one to do it.
I took a deep breath.
‘Dan, this is important to me. I know we’re busy and I know I’m letting you down when you need help but it’s only for a short time and I need to do this. I’ve agreed to represent Cumbria in London and I’d like to think you’ll support me and be proud.’
‘Hetty?’ Viv whispered, nodding at the pie dish. ‘Easy on the cheese, love.’
I looked down to see a mountain of grated cheese on top of the pie. I patted it down absentmindedly.
Poppy crossed the kitchen and wound her arms round my waist. ‘I’m proud, Mum, definitely. Even if Dad’s not.’ She eyeballed her dad viciously.
‘London.’ Viv rootled in her bag for a tissue and dabbed her eyes. ‘You’ll be representing Sunnybank Farm too. Mike would have bee
n over the moon.’
I stared at dan. He stared at the floor.
Viv got her diary out. ‘When is it, love?’
I told her the dates and she scribbled something down.
‘That’s that sorted.’ She sniffed at Dan. ‘I’ll come over and stay the night, and feed the cade lambs in the morning. Are you at the sheep sales the next day, son?’
Dan nodded warily.
‘Then I’ll help you with the sorting.’ She intercepted Dan’s objections with a stern look. ‘Once a shepherdess, always a shepherdess. Unless you think I’m past it?’
I suppressed a giggle as Dan scratched his head. ‘Course not,’ he muttered.
‘Right then.’ She stuffed her diary back in her bag and winked at me. ‘Come on, Popsicle, show me how this egg business of yours is doing.’
The two of them set off outside, leaving Dan and me in silence, staring at each other across the kitchen table. There seemed to be a gulf opening up between us all of a sudden and my stomach twisted uneasily.
‘Please be happy for me,’ I said softly. I put the pie in the Aga and walked to him. ‘I really want this. It feels like the right time to push myself. Take on a challenge.’
He ran his hands down my arms gently. ‘It feels like the farm’s not enough for you any more.’
‘That’s not the case at all,’ I argued. ‘Loads of farmer’s wives have other jobs. I love being here with you on the farm, and building my own food brand is something I can do without even leaving home, it’s a perfect fit around my other work.’
He lifted his eyes to mine. ‘Your own brand. Not Sunnybank Farm’s. Hetty’s. Clue’s in the name.’
My heart sank.
‘Don’t be like that. The pies will be made here on the farm and I like the name Hetty’s Farmhouse Bakery; I think it sounds more friendly, more home-made.’
‘True.’ He puffed his cheeks out. ‘Sorry.’
He pulled me to him and I threaded my arms around his neck and leaned against him. Outside I could hear Viv telling Poppy diplomatically that she wasn’t ready to go in yet and please would she show her the Soay lambs. Dan pressed a kiss on the top of my head and I felt my body sigh with relief; friends again. ‘And I’m ready for an adventure of my own, I suppose.’
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