Hetty's Farmhouse Bakery

by Cathy Bramley

  He stiffened and lifted his head away. ‘That’s what I’m most bothered about.’

  I frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  He exhaled wearily. ‘If I’m honest, I’m jealous.’

  My eyes widened; I was amazed. ‘Because of Joe? There’s no need. There’s only you for me. There’s only ever been you.’

  I had a flashback then to Gil in Cornwall, with his sun-lightened blond hair, freckly face and wide smile, the boy who’d made it his mission to piece me back together after Dan had finished with me that summer. And after three weeks he’d succeeded. But that time in Cornwall felt like a dream now. This was my reality and I never wanted that to change.

  Dan laughed softly and stroked my cheek. ‘No, not because of Joe. Because you’re doing something different, I suppose.’

  ‘But so are you! Look at your Soay flock doing so well with the new lambs.’

  His mouth twisted. ‘It’s still sheep. It’s still at Sunnybank Farm.’

  ‘Are you saying that the farm is no longer enough for you?’ My eyes scanned his face; I couldn’t imagine us anywhere but here. But if Dan needed an adventure too then I wouldn’t be the one to stop him.

  He pulled a face and shrugged, as if struggling to find the right words. ‘The farm has swallowed me up. I didn’t get the chance to be the man I wanted to be.’

  My heart melted for my lovely man.

  ‘Darling, don’t say that. You’re kind and hardworking, a wonderful dad … Not to mention being a tiny bit gorgeous. I think that’s quite enough achievement for one man.’

  ‘When you put it like that,’ he said gruffly, his lips twitching.

  ‘Do you still sometimes have regrets that you didn’t become a vet?’

  He gave me a wan smile. ‘From time to time, yes. But it’s not just that. The landscape here is wide open, I have all the space I need, all the fresh air I can breathe, but sometimes …’ he paused, rubbing a hand over the stubble on his jaw. ‘Sometimes this life seems a bit small. There’s a whole world out there and I worry that I’m never going to get the chance to see any of it.’

  I nodded fondly. After more than fifteen years together I could guess what he was thinking. Last year, he’d been glued to a TV series about the conservation of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. He’d said if he ever won the lottery, he’d treat himself to a month over there as a volunteer. I’d never been bothered about having money, but seeing the wistful look on Dan’s face made me wish I could afford to book him on the first plane out there.

  ‘Anyway.’ He gave himself a shake. ‘I suppose I’m going to have to let you go to London, aren’t I?’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ I said, cupping his handsome face and kissing his lips. ‘Because I’m not asking for permission. But I’d prefer it if you were on my side. We’re a team. The best team. And you, me and Poppy – that’s all I want.’

  He nodded, shamefaced. ‘Me too. I love you, Hetty.’

  ‘Ditto.’

  His kiss took my breath away, just as it always had.

  ‘But please tell me if you’re going to see Joe again. No more secrets?’

  I smiled at him, my heart full of joy; watch out, Britain’s Best Bites, Hetty Greengrass is coming to get you.

  ‘No more secrets.’

  While I ran a bath later and sat on the side watching it fill up, it occurred to me that Dan and I were open books to each other. We’d never had secrets. And living and working side by side, I guess we were used to sharing everything. That said, there were two things he didn’t know about me. One was that I couldn’t bear to cook our own Sunnybank Farm lamb and the other was the full story about my time in Cornwall.

  He knew that I’d found a cheap attic room to rent at the top of a tall thin cottage overlooking the harbour in Padstow. He knew that I’d got a holiday job in a shop serving traditional Cornish pasties to tourists. But he didn’t know that after hours Gil taught me how to make the pasties that his family bakery was famous for, and how to crimp the pastry edges so that the filling didn’t ooze out. Dan most definitely didn’t know that we sat up long into the night, just talking and sipping beer, and that one night – on my eighteenth birthday – we’d slipped out into the moonlight, when everyone else was sleeping, run along the path to St George’s Cove, dropped our clothes on the soft damp sand and run giggling into the dark freezing water and then later made love on the beach. I’d walked home at dawn, humming happily to myself, and as I walked through Padstow’s narrow streets, I caught sight of my reflection in a shop window. I was smiling and happy and even though my heart wasn’t truly mended, I knew it could be and I’d be forever grateful to Gil for that.

  And why hadn’t I told Dan? Because later that morning, when I turned up for work, Gil couldn’t meet my eye.

  ‘You’ve got a visitor,’ he’d said.

  ‘Who?’ Outside of work, I knew no one in Cornwall except my landlady.

  But he simply jerked his head to the little staff room at the back of the shop and my stomach twisted with a sense of foreboding. I hurried through to the back and found Dan, slumped in a chair, his head forward on the table, his clothes creased and his hair dishevelled.

  ‘Dan?’ I’d gasped from the doorway.

  He sprang up and wrapped his arms around me, burying his head in my neck as his body shook with shuddering sobs.

  ‘I’m sorry, Hetty, I made a mistake. A bad one. Please come back,’ he said when he could finally get his words out. ‘Please come home. I can’t manage without you.’

  His dad Mike, he told me, had died two days before of a heart attack out on the moors. Viv was in a state of shock and Naomi, already a mum by then, was distraught too. The poor boy had driven through the night from Cumbria to find me, while I’d been frolicking on the beach with Gil without a care in the world.

  ‘We might be young,’ he’d said, holding my face close to his, ‘but I know without any doubt that you’re the girl I love, will always love, and if you’ll give me a chance, I never want us to be apart again. Please say you’ll have me back.’

  ‘Yes,’ I’d said, kissing his lips again and again. ‘Yes. Let’s go home.’

  I’d never stopped loving him, not truly, and it didn’t occur to me to make him suffer for the heartache he’d caused me. From that moment on, Dan was my home and I’d never regretted it for a single day.

  I made my apologies to my boss, said a hurried and rather awkward goodbye to Gil in front of Dan, and then I packed up my attic room and drove us both back to Carsdale, the longest drive I’d ever done since passing my driving test, with Dan in an exhausted sleep beside me.

  Back in Cumbria it was all change. Anna, after not getting into uni, had decided to take a gap year and go travelling and Joe too had slipped off the radar. At Viv’s insistence, I’d moved into Sunnybank Farm the day before Mike’s funeral. And from then on I was part of the family. Those days were so emotionally draining that it took us a couple of weeks to realize that Joe hadn’t been in touch. And when Dan took a drive up to Holmthwaite to Appleton’s Bakery, Joe’s mum proudly told him that he was a management trainee at a big company in Lancashire now and was too busy to come back home. I was desperately disappointed on Dan’s behalf; my man was grieving for his dad and could have done with a friend. Dan was more philosophical about it and moved on, but until today I’d never understood it.

  When Viv and Mike’s solicitor called Dan in for a meeting, things became even more complicated. The estate had been split between the siblings, with Dan now owning the farm and Naomi having the buildings she had wanted for the farm shop.

  Dan had only just turned nineteen, yet he was faced with a difficult choice: become a farmer and continue the Greengrass tradition, or follow his own dreams of training to be a vet. If I hadn’t been there to prop Dan up during that gut-wrenching time, he might have crumbled, but we talked and talked, night after night, until together we came to a decision. Both of us would put our plans for university on hold for five years an
d throw ourselves into farming. The rest, as they say, is history.

  The bath had filled while I’d been reminiscing and the bathroom was misty with steam. I stripped off, lowered myself into the water and then, doing the thing I always told Poppy off for, I picked up my phone and sent Anna a text.

  Can you talk?

  A reply came back straight away.

  YAY! Yum face! Just who I need to entertain me. Am in a dry-as-a-bone school governors’ meeting. Some guy from the council is wittering on about illegal parking. But no one can see my hands, so I can text. What’s up?

  I met Joe Appleton today

  WTF? Bear with. Will escape to loo

  I lay back on my little inflatable pillow with my hair in a bun and prayed I wouldn’t drop my phone in the water. Anna called me less than two minutes later.

  ‘Bloody hell! Joe Appleton? Tell me everything,’ she squealed.

  ‘He’s handsome, Anna, and lovely. He’s Joe.’ I shrugged casually, even though she couldn’t see me. ‘The same as ever.’

  ‘But where has he been? And why the disappearing act?’ she demanded. ‘I wish I’d known; I’d have come too!’

  ‘It was a spur-of-the-moment thing,’ I began and then proceeded to tell her all that I knew.

  I’d just got to the bit about his mum retiring to Windermere when there was the sound of a toilet flushing and then a tap running and Anna talking to someone.

  ‘Hetty, I’m going to have to go,’ she hissed. ‘But do you know what made him disappear?’

  ‘Yes. That’s the strange thing,’ I said, feeling my throat tighten. I thought about Joe withdrawing his hand from mine and the way his eyes had searched my face. Does he adore you, Hetty? ‘It was unrequited love. He was so in love with a girl he couldn’t bear to be around her.’

  Anna gasped. ‘Oh, the sweet, sweet boy. Did he say who the girl was?’

  I swallowed. ‘Not exactly. And this might sound daft, but I think it was me.’

  ‘Blimey.’

  ‘I know.’

  The only girls he spent a lot of time with were Anna and me and he’d specifically said that the girl he loved, loved someone else. It had to be me because Anna had been single at the time.

  ‘But that’s not daft,’ she said and I could hear the warmth in her voice. ‘You’re an absolute goddess, I’d fancy you myself if I wasn’t so pro-testosterone. Bloody hell, gotta go, I think they’ve sussed me out. Let’s talk soon; we need to discuss outfits for London. Love you.’

  ‘Love you too.’

  I was laughing as we ended the call and I dropped my phone on to the floor.

  Absolute goddess, that’s me, I thought as I slipped beneath the caress of the bubbles.

  Chapter 16

  In the farm shop, the sound of a heavy wooden table being dragged across the floor made me lean my head out of the work area at the back of the shop to see what was happening.

  ‘Here you go. Now you can put your afternoon tea hamper display at the back by the jams,’ Edwin insisted. ‘You’ve got more space to spread out.’

  ‘No thank you,’ Tess replied hotly. ‘You do your emergency camping provisions idea at the back. Mine needs to go at the front where people will see it.’

  ‘Naomi did say my idea was fantastic,’ Edwin put in.

  ‘Fantastical more like,’ Tess huffed. ‘I’ve already sold one hamper and that was before I’d even had a display. I’m a born saleswoman, me.’

  ‘You don’t need to be at the front, then.’ Edwin folded his arms with a smug smile.

  I went back to rolling my pastry on the stainless-steel worktop, leaving them to their bickering.

  I listened with amusement as the power struggle continued. Tess reminded Edwin that she’d been here the longest, while Edwin pointed out that while that might be so, he had trained at the British Butler Institute and was impeccably well versed in the art of anticipating clients’ every whim.

  ‘Ahem. Customers,’ Edwin warned suddenly as the sound of voices approached.

  The debate was suspended as both members of staff switched into customer-service mode.

  It was Friday and Naomi had left them jointly in charge while she went to Inverness to spend a long weekend with Tim for their wedding anniversary. It was a bit of a busman’s holiday for her as she was doing a tour of delis and farm shops while he was at work, but they would spend quality time together in the evenings. Edwin and Tess had promised her faithfully that things would run like clockwork in her absence.

  I was glad she was having a break, she was usually as reluctant as Dan to leave Sunnybank Farm and I knew Tim would be happy to have his wife to himself for a change. But she hadn’t gone until she had helped me solve the dilemma of how Hetty’s Farmhouse Bakery could possibly satisfy the Britain’s Best Bites rules so that my entry was valid.

  Freya had confirmed via email that I had to make the pies in an inspected and approved facility and be able to demonstrate that I had a viable business. Part one of that was quickly sorted: Naomi had offered me space here using the pristine facilities at the shop. The downside was that there was no oven on site, so once the pies were made, I had to nip home to bake them. Which was probably entirely against the rules, but it was the best we could do at short notice. Part two was to secure some orders. No matter how small, I needed customers. Sunnybank Farm Shop would be placing a regular order, as would Appleby Farm Tea Rooms, but as one was family and the other was connected with Cumbria’s Finest, I needed someone else. So today’s mission, once I’d finished these pies, was to parcel up the pies I’d baked yesterday and take them on a tour of local shops.

  I gave an involuntary shudder; one week today, I’d be on my way to London. I hoped I’d managed to get a promise of some orders by then. I cut a large pastry circle, arranged apple slices over it, crumbled creamy Wensleydale cheese on top and I was fitting the lid when Edwin glided through to put the kettle on.

  ‘Tess’s just sold another afternoon tea hamper for fifty pounds,’ he said, looking put out. ‘So I suppose I’ll have to admit defeat. This time.’

  He straightened his bow tie and peered over my shoulder as I crimped the edges of the pie, pinching and turning as I went. ‘Gosh, where did you learn to do that?’

  ‘Ha. The result of a misspent youth,’ I said proudly. I dipped a brush into a pot of beaten egg just as Tess came to join us.

  ‘Misspent?’ she said, raising a quizzical eyebrow. ‘I spent my youth trying to make potato moonshine in my gran’s shed and tattooing a dolphin on my own thigh.’

  She hoisted up her skirt to show us. Edwin went pale and fanned his face with his hand.

  ‘Hmm.’ I looked at the blurry blue shape wistfully. ‘When you put it like that, it wasn’t really misspent, was it?’

  ‘Perhaps you’re just a late bloomer.’ Tess patted my arm. ‘Edwin, you’d better get out there, there’s a big group of folk on the way in wearing shorts and hiking boots, with huge rucksacks on their backs. The emergency camping provisions might be about to hit the big time. If they spend more than fifty quid, the front display spot is yours.’

  Edwin clapped his hands, air-kissed Tess’s cheek and scurried back to the shop floor, leaving Tess to make the tea and me to ponder over her words. Was I a late bloomer? Was that why I felt so driven to start up my own business now? When I’d agreed to join Dan and Viv at Sunnybank Farm, I’d simply put aside my own plans and set about supporting Dan in the mammoth task of filling his father’s shoes.

  If you were to ask Dan who was the boss at Sunnybank Farm, he’d say we were partners. But that wasn’t strictly true. Dan was far more knowledgeable, more capable than me. I might always know what needed doing, but he decided which animals to take to market, when we should clip, when to move the sheep up to the moors and down again. And it was to him that our suppliers deferred. None of which I had a problem with. But my pie business was different. This was mine and as each day passed I could feel my confidence growing and my desire to make a success of i
t growing with it.

  And the best thing about it was that nothing needed to change, I could fit Hetty’s Farmhouse Bakery around being a mum, wife and shepherdess, at least until I started making money from it. There was no risk, no expensive premises to fund. Even if I didn’t win Britain’s Best Bites (and I didn’t think I could, although I got a tiny frisson of hope every time the thought crossed my mind), at least I’d tried. I could say that I, Hetty Greengrass, had represented Cumbria at the highest level. My status had changed around here from Dan Greengrass’s missus, to Hetty with the pies. And on top of that – the ultimate accolade – Poppy thought I was cool.

  I packaged up yesterday’s pies in cardboard boxes and a smile spread on my face as I carefully laid two of them in my new wide wicker basket. Anna had bought it for me as a present and had painstakingly embroidered Hetty’s Farmhouse Bakery into the corner of the gingham lining. She’d given me hundreds of thoughtful gifts over the years, but this was probably the loveliest.

  I had a good feeling about my new venture; only good could come from this. We’d have more money, I’d have a little independence and Dan would have a happy and fulfilled wife. I honestly couldn’t see a downside.

  A few minutes later I passed through the shop on the way to the Land Rover with my basket over my arm. Edwin was at the front putting the finishing touches to his camping display and Tess was helping a man decide between three types of expensive olive oil by dipping cubes of ciabatta in little tester dishes.

  ‘Do people buy quails’ eggs when they’re camping?’ I asked, looking over the impressive wheel of little jars that Edwin had built. It all seemed very high-end: as well as the tiny eggs, there were anchovies, stuffed olives, artichokes, sundried tomatoes and even minuscule jars of caviar.

  ‘I’m pitching it aspirationally,’ Edwin confided, tapping his nose. ‘Camping needn’t be all baked beans and bacon butties. I’m aiming for the picnic at Glyndebourne sort of market.’