The Sweetest Thing (4 page)

‘Now you tell me it was a joke?’ I say, chuckling. ‘I believed you, Dad.’ Then I sober up again. Part of my reason for moving here was because I remember the area from happy childhood holidays when the sun always shone.

‘We’d better get on,’ Dad says, looking up the hill behind the house where clouds are sweeping across the sun as it sets behind the copse of trees, then back to my lovely cream sofas that sit in the yard like a modern-art installation. ‘It looks like rain.’

A breeze shimmies around my ankles, dives down and lifts a swirl of dust as Adam and my father start dragging bits and pieces out of the barn. I force myself to help them, my body weighed down with worry and exhaustion, my skin gritty with dried sweat. When I told Mum about my plans to move to the country, she said I’d only remembered the good bits. For the briefest moment as I look back at my beautiful new house, my throat tight with mixed emotions, I wonder if perhaps she was right.

The next morning, I open my eyes to cool, pale light that casts faint shadows across the fresh cotton sheets. I can hear the house waking up too: the creak of floorboards as one of the children pads across to the bathroom, the sound of my father’s voice from outside the window and Adam singing. Adam’s up? He’s never up before me. I check my alarm clock. It’s gone eleven. I must have gone back to sleep after the noise and disturbance that began at about three-thirty, before dawn.

I sit up in bed and look around me. My wardrobe is a cupboard built into the eaves to one side of the chimney breast. There’s no central heating yet, but every bedroom has a fireplace. There’s no carpet, just a rug I bought from IKEA. Its bright, geometric design clashes with the dark red, Regency-stripe wallpaper which someone must once have found fashionable. There are boxes, as yet unpacked, stacked in front of the window-seat.

I am, as always in the early days of a love affair,
gradually discovering the flaws, but they don’t matter. To me, the house already feels like home. I breathe a sigh of contentment and calm.

Something has changed. I didn’t have the dream last night, the one where I forget David and I aren’t together any more. I didn’t wake and reach out across the sheets, seeking the warmth of his body, only to find a cold and empty space. I didn’t curl up with my knees as close to my chest as I could get them, unable to suppress the anger and shame which would well up inside me: anger at David for what he did to me, to us, to our family, and at myself for not being able to let go; shame for not being a good wife – or not good enough anyway. I didn’t wake up to find my joints aching with grief, and feel sick to the pit of my stomach.

Smiling to myself, I get up, throw on some jeans and a loose shirt, and wander downstairs to the kitchen, following the smell of cooked bacon. Mum looks up from where she’s putting mugs out on the worktop.

‘You look a bit rough, love,’ she says.

‘I’m fine,’ I say, running my fingers through my bed hair. I’m used to my mother’s occasional lack of tact. She doesn’t mean anything by it, but it can be hurtful. I remember how she responded the day after David left and I told her he’d gone for good. We were in the kitchen then, the one at the old house with its glossy black units and stainless-steel appliances.

‘What makes you think he won’t come back?’ Mum said.

‘Because –’ I started to sob again ‘– he’s “in love”, whatever that means, and I can’t compete with her, not with my love-handles and Buddha belly.’

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Jennie. You’ve got a
marvellous figure.’ Mum paused and then added, ‘For your age.’

‘For my age?’ I repeated. My mother was being straight, brutally honest in fact, and it hurt. ‘You see, that’s just it,’ I exploded. ‘She – the other bloody woman – is fifteen years younger. I didn’t … I don’t stand a chance.’ I paused. ‘Look at me. My body’s been ravaged by pregnancy and childbirth, I’m almost forty and on my own with three kids …’

‘You aren’t alone, darling,’ Mum said, taking me in her arms where I broke down completely.

‘I’m a complete failure …’

‘It isn’t you. It’s him,’ Mum said bitterly. ‘You are a lovely young woman with three beautiful children. You’re smart – you have a degree which is more than I have – and you run a home and cook the most wonderful cakes. You have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.’

I didn’t believe her then either, of course. It was too soon.

‘Coffee?’ she says now, offering me a mug and bringing me back to the present.

‘Thanks, Mum.’

‘Did you hear the cockerel this morning?’

‘You could hardly miss him.’

‘Your dad did – he brought his earplugs with him so he missed everything, the cows trampling along the drive outside
and
the milk tanker.’ Mum grins. ‘Oh, for the peace and tranquillity of the big city.’

‘Don’t say it.’

‘I’m not saying a word.’ She takes a step back, bends down and opens an oven door. ‘I have tamed the beast though. Look at that – full English breakfast for six.’

‘How did you do that?’ I ask, surprised to see a tray of browned sausages and crispy bacon. Last night, it took an inordinately long time for the Aga to warm up. In fact, it didn’t really get going so we ate lukewarm pizzas, the cheese barely melted on the top, sitting at the sleek, glass-topped table which I’d thought looked so cool when I bought it, but now looks completely out of place. We drank lemonade and champagne to toast the house, and cleared the dusty cobwebs from the ceilings above our heads before the girls would agree to go to bed. Mum and Dad slept on an airbed in the drawing room.

‘It works on the principle of stored heat. We didn’t give it long enough to warm up.’

‘Thanks, Mum.’ I put my arms around her. ‘I couldn’t have done this without you and Dad.’

‘It’s the least we could do, love. Just promise me though that this is the first and last of your harebrained schemes?’

‘Where is Dad?’ I say, changing the subject. ‘I thought I heard him outside.’

‘He’s taken the girls shopping for a draining board – this one’s cracked and you can’t have that in a professional bakery.’ Mum emphasises the word ‘professional’ and I can hear the pride in her voice. I’m touched that she’s proud of my ambition and entrepreneurial instinct. ‘We thought we’d get the kitchen sorted first since that’s going to be the most important room in the house. The sooner that’s done, the sooner you can get on to environmental health to register your premises.’ She smiles. ‘Jennie, this is so exciting.’

It is exciting, but I’m also finding it tremendously scary too. I think I can cope with the paperwork and
the baking, of course. I’m just not sure how I’m going to find my customers. I look out of the window, past the drive, at the green fields stretching away down to the river. I can see cows and birds, but where are the people?

‘Sit down and eat. The bread’s on the table.’ Mum hands me a warm plate of food, then picks up a cloth and a bottle of cleaner. ‘I think I saw your new neighbour, the farmer. Or I suppose he could have been a farmhand. Anyway, I was looking out of the window, admiring the view and watching the cows go by, when he walked past. He saw me and touched his cap. Very polite.’ Mum pauses. ‘Come on, Jennie. Aren’t you curious?’

‘Not really,’ I say, somewhat stubbornly because I know there’s nothing Mum loves more than a good gossip. ‘Oh, all right. Go on.’

‘He’s quite tall, about six foot, I should guess.’

‘Is that it?’

‘I’d say he’s in his thirties, no older. Rather a hunk, if you ask me.’

‘I think the term used today is fit,’ I say, amused by Mum’s turn of phrase.

‘All right then. He was fit, and I reckon he lives on his own on that farm.’

‘How do you work that one out?’

‘Have you seen anyone else coming and going?’ she challenges me.

I shake my head, my mouth full of bacon and egg.

‘What’s more, I just happened to notice him hanging out his washing this morning.’

‘Mum, have you been spying?’

‘You can see over the wall into his garden when you’re in the girls’ room. It wasn’t spying. It was a
chance observation … and it struck me that the clothes were all of the masculine variety.’

‘So? He’s a New Man. He does his own washing.’ I can’t help smiling. ‘Mum, I know what you’re trying to do, and it won’t work. Farmer or farmhand, I’m not interested.’

‘I’m not saying, go out and chat him up,’ she says, looking hurt. ‘I’m saying, you need to keep an open mind. Jennie, I want you to be happy.’

‘I am happy. Funnily enough, I can be happy without a man in my life.’

‘Yes, but you’re still young, beautiful, bubbly …’ Mum sighs. ‘I don’t like the idea of you living out here all alone in the middle of nowhere.’

There’s a thud from upstairs. Adam?

‘I’m hardly all alone,’ I say, rolling my eyes.

‘But when the children leave home …’

‘That’s ages yet.’

‘Time passes more quickly than you think,’ she says wistfully. ‘They’ll soon go.’

Time passes, but it doesn’t necessarily heal, I muse as we go on to clean the kitchen, scrubbing at the years of grime that has built up on the walls. Why can’t Mum see that I’m really off men? I wipe down the windowsills, clean out the row of cupboard units along the wall opposite the Aga, and start unpacking my baking utensils and recipe books.

As I pick my favourite book out of the crate it arrived in, it falls open at one particular recipe, a well-used page spattered with spots of grease. I’m not sure if it was the beating of the egg whites and sugar into stiff peaks, or the sensual pleasure of piping the mix on to baking parchment, or removing them from the oven, barely browned and still spongy under my fingertips,
but I always thought there was something naughty about boudoir biscuits – until the last time I made them, as a treat for David.

It was an extraordinarily ordinary day in early spring. I remember it being particularly cold and the boiler at our old house had been playing up, so I’d been in the kitchen all day, baking to keep warm. I’d made a Simnel cake. I like to do it for my mum for Mothering Sunday – and I love having an excuse to get my cook’s blowtorch out. I use it for browning the marzipan on the top. I’d also made a birthday cake for a friend’s daughter – a simple round sponge cake with butter cream and jam through the middle, decorated with white fondant icing, pink ribbons and sparkly ballet shoes. It looked really sweet.

While waiting for Adam to come home from school, I slid the cooked boudoir biscuits on to a wire rack to cool, glancing out of the kitchen window where the two girls were bouncing on the trampoline under a heavy sky. The lawn, pierced here and there by clumps of battered daffodils, swept downhill beyond the trampoline to a dense hedge of beech and laurel, the boundary to the garden of our old house. Beyond that, the ground rose again, quite steeply, and if it weren’t for the golfers with their buggies and brightly coloured umbrellas, and the high-rise office blocks that loomed on the horizon, I could have pretended I was in the country, not a few miles from central London.

Adam came flying into the kitchen from the hall, flung his backpack on the floor and made a grab for a biscuit.

‘Hey, not so fast,’ I said, intercepting him. ‘They’re for your dad’s tea.’

‘He won’t miss a couple.’ Adam eyed them hungrily. ‘Anyway, he’s on a diet, isn’t he?’

David was watching his weight. He’d always been careful, but since he’d hit forty several months ago, he’d become almost obsessed. However, he hadn’t been able to resist my baking so far.

‘You can have two, that’s all.’ Adam smiled at me, revealing the tram-track braces that he wore back then. ‘Just don’t tell the girls.’

‘What isn’t Adam to tell us?’ Georgia kicked off her outdoor shoes inside the back door, followed by Sophie who headed straight for the biscuits, padding across the floor in wet socks. ‘Adam! What did Mum say? Why are you eating a biscuit?’ Georgia turned to me, all serious. ‘Mum, you said we couldn’t have one.’

‘It isn’t fair,’ Sophie began.

‘All right,’ I said quickly, not wishing to be drawn into a debate. ‘Two each, and you’d better eat your tea,’ I added as I watched the biscuits disappearing from the rack.

Georgia nibbled at hers, the picture of restraint in a long navy coat.

‘They’re yummy,’ said Sophie, showering her school sweatshirt with crumbs. ‘Mummy, what does boudoir mean?’

‘It’s a lady’s bedroom,’ I said.

Sophie frowned.

‘Why does the lady have her own bedroom?’ she asked, all innocence. ‘Why doesn’t she share it with her husband, like you and Daddy?’

‘She might be divorced,’ said Georgia matter-of-factly. ‘Mrs Webber was in tears last week at school because her husband’s left her.’

‘Are you sure?’ Mrs Webber, Georgia’s teacher at
school, had married only last term. I remembered because Georgia spent hours making her a card.

‘She was so upset, she hid in the cupboard in the classroom and wouldn’t come out till break-time.’

I thought of Mrs Webber’s encouraging notes written in the margins of Georgia’s schoolbooks. ‘Well done, Georgia. Super work. You’ve tried very hard.’ And I thought – smugly, because I reckoned I deserved to be smug after fourteen years of working at mine – that Mrs Webber obviously hadn’t made that much of an effort to save her marriage.