Read the book: «The Traveller’s Daughter»
The Traveller’s Daughter
MICHELLE VERNAL
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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2017
Copyright © Michelle Vernal 2017
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Michelle Vernal asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
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is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are
the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is
entirely coincidental.
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Ebook Edition © March 2017 ISBN: 9780008226510
Version 2017-07-24
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part Two
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Part Three
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About HarperImpulse
About the Publisher
For my sister Rachel for being so brave
PART ONE
Chapter 1
The older the fiddle, the sweeter the tune - Irish Proverb
Rosa’s Journal
Kitty, if you are reading this, my darling girl, then we have come full circle. Oh, I’ve sat down so many times and picked up a pen sure that this time I will write my story down for you. The problem was that I could never find a place in which to start. The thought of writing down all those words, well it would overwhelm me. So then I would think perhaps it would be better if I just got on a train and came to see you instead.
Yes, Rosa old girl, that’s what you should do, I’d tell myself. I’d sit you down with a nice, strong cup of tea and give it to you straight. Face to face before it was too late. But then I’d come back to what stopped me writing it all down in the first place. Where should I begin? I think perhaps, at last, I have realized that therein lies the answer, but I’m not ready, not just yet, and so I’ll digress.
My past was my Pandora’s Box, and while I kept the lid firmly shut on it, I found that I could keep moving forward. Perhaps I shouldn’t have done so, but I had my reasons, or at least I thought I did. It’s strange the way we humans can twist and turn our actions until they fit inside that box just the way we want them to. I am learning though that this getting older is a funny business and not in a laughing sort of a way either. Its finiteness puts a different perspective on the things we’ve done, and the choices made when one finally stops and looks back at the complicated pattern they’ve weaved throughout life.
I imagine that writing this and getting it off my chest will be cathartic for me. There’s a nice lady, Sandy something or other who, works at the hospice I will go to when it’s time, who told me she thought it was a grand idea. She makes a cup of tea the way it should be made, so I trust her judgment. Life is like a cup of tea; it’s all in how you make it.
It was over tea and one of those chocolate biscuits – you know the ones you always loved as a child? – that I told her I wasn’t ready to let go. The time wasn’t right, not when I still had things sitting so heavy on my heart. She patted my hand and told me that some people find it easier to write down what needs to be said. It’s easier to be honest with the written word.
She’s a woman of good sense, so that’s what I have decided to do because this time I shall just have to get on with it. I don’t have the luxury of procrastination any longer. Sandy’s a kind soul and a brave one too, volunteering the way she does at the hospice, and the next time I popped my head in the door to see her she had this book for me. She knows I love roses, so she chose the cover of it well. I think it makes it look a bit more special, like something you might want to keep hold of. She told me I had no excuses to leave anything left unsaid now. That’s another thing about Sandy; she doesn’t mince her words, and she tells you it like it is. I like that about her because what’s the point in someone dressing things up and saying, ‘sure, it will all be fine’ when you know full well it won’t be.
Yes, she’s a fine woman, and I am glad she will be there holding my hand when my time comes. She’s promised me that, and I know you will feel it should have been you there with me. I hope when you’ve read all that I have to say though you’ll understand why I couldn’t do that to you. Know this though Kitty: while Sandy will have been of great comfort to me at the end, my thoughts will have been with you. Mothers hold their children’s hands for just a little while and their hearts forever.
I think it will be the cleansing of a troubled soul that lost its faith a long time ago, this business of sitting here putting my story down on paper. I’m hoping that in doing so, I will finally be able to let go of the past that has never been very far behind me. For you though my lovely girl, hearing what I have to say might be similar to a child finding out they are adopted years after the event. It might seem like a betrayal of sorts, and perhaps, as I now wonder, you might think that it was an unnecessary secret to have kept from you. I couldn’t go back, though, and I knew if I told you where I came from, you would want us both to do just that.
Chapter 2
A nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse. – Irish Proverb
Kitty
“Oh, Mum, who were you?” Kitty Sorenson whispered out loud to the empty room as she stared at the Facebook message blinking back at her from her phone. Only a moment before she had been thinking that she would have to get around to changing her profile picture. The selfie had been posted, as all good selfies too often are, after a few wines one evening. She’d taken it last year before the proverbial shit had hit the fan. Her grin was huge. She had been happy that day; she thought with a pang conjuring up the carefree feeling of warming up to dance the night away.
It felt like a lifetime ago now. If anyone had told her as she’d twirled to the music that night what lay ahead for her and Damien, she would have told them they were bonkers. Nor would she have believed that she would be sitting here at her mother’s house at 66 Edgewater Lane on this gloomy afternoon. She was waiting to hear from the Estate Agent handling the property’s sale, and the shadows were beginning to stretch long.
The message had pinged its arrival and startled her from her thoughts. She had been wondering how Yasmin was getting on without her at the market. She had assumed the message would be from the agent, Mr Baintree because a quick glance at the time confirmed that the auction should be just about done and dusted by now. She had contacted the firm when her mother’s estate had been wound up. The oily proprietor, the one and the same Mr Baintree had rubbed his hands together at her listing. He had assured her that with its stone’s throw location from the café lifestyle of Wigan Pier, the house would fetch a pretty penny. She had raised an eyebrow at that. A stone’s throw if you had an arm on you like a champion discus thrower perhaps, but still, if that was how he chose to market the property then who was she to interfere?
The two-up two-down where her mother had lived up until her death five months ago was quite at home in the sea of red brick that made up the old part of the town of Wigan in the north of England. Rosa had mumbled something about the house being low-maintenance and close to the town centre when she’d bought it. Kitty could tell from her tone that she knew full well her daughter wouldn’t like it. Still, it wasn’t her that had to live in it, she’d told herself when she’d come to visit. It was the third house in four years her mother had moved into since Kitty’s father had died. She hadn’t been seeking her daughter’s approval of it, though, and she didn’t get it because Kitty had thought this latest house with its modern renovations, characterless.
It hadn’t felt like a house her mother should be in. It didn’t suit her or her ways. Rosa needed a house that was quirky and full of character. A house like Rose Cottage stuffed with books and treasures that made it a home. Okay, so Kitty got that with her illness, her mother had wanted something low-maintenance and close to the shops. Of course, when she’d been busy passing judgment on Edgewater Lane she hadn’t known how ill her mum was. Sitting here now, though, she couldn’t conjure up any real sense of Rosa ever having lived here. It wasn’t just because her mother, ever mindful of not making Kitty’s life harder, had packed up all her belongings in anticipation of this. She’d sent all her worldly goods except for a box of treasured photographs and her engagement and wedding rings to charity before she’d moved into a local hospice. There, it transpired later, she was on good terms with a woman called Sandy, who was by her side instead of her only child when she slipped away.
Kitty twisted the rings she now wore on the middle finger of her left hand, an understated gold band and the solitaire diamond engagement ring that shone blue in certain lights. She knew Rosa had done things the way she’d done them because she hadn’t wanted to burden her by telling her she was nearing the end. Not when Kitty had been so desperately trying to pick up the pieces of her life and soldier on down in London. Still, it wasn’t fair leaving her like that without giving her the chance to say goodbye and to tell Rosa that she loved her.
Rosa hadn’t even had a funeral service – choosing instead to be cremated like one of those people with no known family or money. Kitty had collected the ashes after the event; stored in a sealed, nondescript urn from the hospice where she had died. She had met with Sandy, who, as much as she hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself, had been very nice. She’d made her a cup of tea and opened a packet of chocolate biscuits. Then, resting her hand on Kitty’s, she told her that her mother’s death had been a good one. She had slipped away peacefully and free of pain.
Kitty had wanted to scream at her that it couldn’t possibly be a good death because her mother was only sixty-five years old. It was an unfair death; that’s what it bloody well was. She hadn’t said a word though because there was something so calming and dignified about Sandy with her soft and soothing voice. She could see why her mother had wanted a woman like her by her bedside.
Sandy informed her that just as she’d promised Rosa she would, she had held her mother’s hand until the end. But it should have been me, Kitty said silently removing her hand from beneath this stranger’s. As if reading her thoughts, the older woman had said in that same calming tone that sometimes people didn’t want their loved ones’ last memory to be of them dying. By not asking her to be with her in her final hours, it didn’t mean her mother loved her any less. Kitty had felt uncomfortable then thinking about her mother confiding in this woman and had put the biscuit back on the plate. She had picked up the urn and clasping it to her chest made her excuses to leave.
It wasn’t fair that her mother kept her impending death from her, not when there was so much unsaid between them, but then she shouldn’t have been surprised. Rosa had spent Kitty’s whole life keeping things from her; she thought, her eyes sweeping the room. It was a soulless space; there was no essence of her mother etched into its walls as there had been at Rose Cottage.
This house lacked the warm, homely feel of the semi-rural property in which she had grown up on the outskirts of Preston. It’s headily-scented rose garden a riot of colour in summertime had given the cottage its name and Kitty had been heartbroken when her mother decided to sell it shortly after her father’s death. She hadn’t sought her daughter’s approval then either. It still rankled, she realized, feeling simultaneously guilty for the anger that surged even now with her mother gone because if Rosa had held onto the cottage, then she wouldn’t feel so alone. Rose Cottage had been her home too. She knew that were she sitting in its cosy, familiar living room instead of this bland space, then she would still feel she had a part of her mother and father with her.
She had just wanted Mr Baintree to call and tell her the deal was done. To her mind once the proceeds of the sale were sitting in her bank account this final phase of winding up her mother’s affairs would be complete. Then she could begin to figure out how she was going to move forward now that she was officially orphaned. She’d heard it said somewhere at some time that when you lost both your parents, you truly knew what it was to feel grown up. Kitty sighed for the umpteenth time that afternoon; she didn’t feel grown up, just awfully alone.
Now she squeezed her eyes shut hoping that when she opened them, she’d find that she had just suffered a bizarre hallucinatory episode. One brought on by her early morning start. She would find that the message was in fact just a nice, normal chatty one from Yasmin.
She had been desperate to know how Yas’s morning had gone at the Broadway Market. Had she sold out of cakes like Kitty did most Saturdays? Had the sweet Justin Bieber look-a-like with the bit of fluff on his chin managed to win his girlfriend back with her favourite Vanilla Kisses Cupcake that he had bought for her last week? He’d promised he would come back and tell her how he had gotten on as she had placed the cake in one of the pretty pink boxes she’d picked up for a steal from the Pound Shop. What about the lovely old dear who always bought two of Kitty’s favourite Chocolate Dream cupcakes? One for her and one for her older sister who was riddled with arthritis. It was their Saturday afternoon treat. How was she doing? She would have liked to have known because the damp weather they’d had these last few mornings wouldn’t be doing the sister’s bones any good. Had she been there she would have given the old dear her cakes on the house this week.
Instead, she had gotten this, a message from someone claiming to be a French photographer called Christian Beauvau. What he was asking of her just didn’t make sense, she thought, reading through his message once more. She ignored the paper clip attachment at the bottom of it tossing her phone to one side as though it had scalded her. She didn’t know how many minutes passed as she sat in the ever increasing murk of the room. There were no sounds other than the rain hitting the glass and the swish of tyres through puddles on the slick road outside.
Oh stop being ridiculous Kitty, she told herself mustering up the courage to read through the message one more time. She picked up her phone and scrolled down not knowing why she was surprised that the words were still the same as they had been the first and second times she’d skimmed over them. It still didn’t make any sense, and she wondered if perhaps it were some elaborate hoax. Was this Christian person a fraudster who, instead of being from Paris as he’d stated in his message, was really from some obscure African country? Perhaps he was trying to wheedle confidential information out of her in a very roundabout way so he could raid her bank account? If that were the case, he’d be best to wait until tomorrow when there’d hopefully be some money in it; she thought chewing her thumbnail.
Tiny flakes of the Coral Sunrise polish she had pinched off Yasmin settled on her tongue, and she thought of how her friend had told her off for this bad habit just the other day. She’d threatened to buy some of that awful smelly stuff to paint her nails like you did to stop children sucking their thumbs. Wiping the orange flakes on the back of her hand she was glad neither of her flatmates was present to tell her off. Mind you Piggy Paula with her unsavoury habits was hardly in a position to judge. Yasmin, however, would know what she should do about this strange request. She’d ring her, she decided, feeling pleased she was taking some affirmative action as she hit speed dial.
“Kitty? I am at the gym, what do you want?” A strained voice yelled upon answering after a few short rings.
In the background, Kitty could hear the fast beat of an old nineties song. She recognized the dance hit, ‘What is Love?’ The lyrics ran through her mind as she shouted, “Yas, you need to stop doing squats or rolling around on a Swiss ball or whatever it is you are doing. Pay attention to what I am going to tell you, okay?” Only Yas would have a pocket for her phone in amongst all her Lycra sports gear she thought. Mind you, only Yasmin was enough of a gym bunny to go and do a workout after the crazy time she’d risen that morning.
“Okay chill out, Kitty.” Her breath was coming in short, rapid bursts. “I know it must be weird being at your mum’s old house for the last time, but do you remember those yoga poses I showed you? Well, you need to go and salute the sun or get into the downward dog pose or something because it will calm you down.”
“There is no bloody sun; it’s drizzling and it’s not that–”
Yasmin was on a roll, though. “Well, you don’t need to stress about things here because the morning sped by and yes, your regulars did miss you. A young lad bought two Vanilla Kisses and said to tell you he’s back on with his girl. He reckons whatever your secret ingredient is it’s better than oysters. He had a right swagger in his step.”
Kitty frowned; she hoped her cakes weren’t encouraging underage shenanigans – he only looked to be sixteen. “Good, that’s great, but Yas listen–”
“And I’d sold out completely by midday, so I packed up and came to the gym. I needed to after all that icing I licked off the spoon this morning. I knew if I went back to the flat I’d go straight to sleep and not wake up until the wee hours of Sunday morning. That’s if Paula didn’t decide to draw her blinds and shut the bedroom door for another of her Saturday afternoon sessions with that slimy little git, Steve, she’s been seeing.” There was a gagging sound down the phone. “Yuck, the thought of it.”
“Yas, would you shut up for a minute and let me talk!”
“Alright, alright hang on, one, two, three, clench and release.”
Kitty rolled her eyes; she didn’t want to know what kind of exercise her friend was doing.
“One, two, three, clench and release – all done, thank God. I won’t be able to walk tomorrow after that last lot. Hang on while I grab a drink.”
Kitty held the phone away from her ear but could still hear the glug, glugging noise that followed.
“That’s better. It’s important to keep hydrated with good old H20 you know. Give me one more sec and I’m all yours.”
When she came back on the phone, Kitty couldn’t hear the pounding beat in the background anymore just the sound of running water.
“I’m in the changing room. So come on then, spill.”
“I have just gotten the most out there Facebook message.”
“Delete it; there’re all sorts of weirdo’s in cyberspace. I once had a complete random, some chicken farmer from Devon sent me a friend request. I mean it’s not as though Facebook is a dating app and more to the point I don’t even like eggs.”
Kitty shook her head.
“No, not weird like that. Just listen, this French photographer called Christian something or other French-sounding says that he took a photograph that became quite famous of my mother with her boyfriend. Who, by the way, was not my dad but some guy called Michael, in a French town back in 1965. He reckons Tres Belle, you know the fashion magazine–”
There was a loud squeal, and Kitty held the phone away from her ear. “Oh, I love Tres Belle! Watch this space because one day my designs are going to be all through its pages.”
“I don’t doubt it, but for now the magazine has commissioned this Christian fella to recreate the same scene in the photo he took back in 1965. It was called Midsummer Lovers which is kind of a gross title for a photograph with my mum in it. He wants me to pose for it along with the nephew of mum’s old boyfriend to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the original being taken.”
“What? Repeat all that and slower this time? Much slower.”
Kitty repeated what she had just said, and there was a moment’s silence as Yasmin processed what she’d been told. “Okay, so firstly I’m thinking how did this French guy find you and secondly, what was your mum doing in France in 1965? I thought she was Irish.”
“She was, though she’d spent the best part of her life here so in a way she was more English than Irish. She never lost her accent, though, and she was always saying these mad Irish things like it’s no use boiling your cabbage twice. I have no idea what she was doing in France or who this Michael was either.” Kitty did a quick mental calculation. “She’d have only been about sixteen in 1965. Christ, if I’d swanned off to the Continent with a boyfriend at that age she would have killed me! She never mentioned anything about having spent time in France; my parents were Majorca package holiday devotees.” Kitty frowned, picking a bit of carpet fluff off the dark denim of her jeans. “I’ve told you how Mum’s life prior to meeting Dad was a closed book. Anything before the age of nineteen was a no-go zone that she refused to talk about, no matter how many times I asked her to. She’d just tell me her childhood was uneventful so therefore it was not worth talking about.”
“Yeah you’ve told me, it’s well weird that.” Yasmin’s voice was muffled, and Kitty pictured her cradling the phone between her chin and shoulder as she undid her laces.
“You didn’t know my mum, she wasn’t weird, just as stubborn as they come and if she made her mind up about something, then that was it, end of story.”
“Still, you don’t believe all that crap about her childhood being uneventful, do you because otherwise why all the secrecy?” Kitty could hear Yasmin unlocking her locker. Probably fishing her bag out of it with her spare hand. Kitty’s mother had been an enigma, unlike Yasmin’s mum with her hard face and dodgy back that got noticeably worse whenever she’d dragged her brood into the local benefits office to sign on for the sickness.
Yasmin’s childhood had been so very different to Kitty’s quiet and civilised upbringing. She’d grown up in a council flat fit to burst with half-brothers and sisters in Hatfield. There hadn’t been much in the way of money, but there was plenty in the way of noise. Their reasons for coming to London were so very different too. Yasmin’s had been to escape that noise for a while. She wanted to make her way in the world far away from the council estate existence she’d always known. Kitty’s had been to put as much distance as she could between herself and her ex, Damien, who lived in a posh Manchester apartment.
Both women had their dreams, though, and this was the common denominator that brought them together and sealed their friendship. Kitty’s was to open her cupcake café, and Yasmin’s was working towards designing her clothing label. One day, she would often say, the High Street stores she loved to browse, fingering the newest fabrics and imagining how she would improve the latest looks, would be stocking her brand. The models would be wearing her signature twist on the rockabilly look as they showed off her designs at London Fashion Week. They would strut their stuff down the catwalk to the tune of her all-time favourite performer, Elvis, after which they would spend their morning tea breaks at Kitty’s gorgeous little café. Slamming the locker door shut before sitting down on the bench, Yasmin asked, “Have you seen it, this photograph I mean?”
“No.”
“Didn’t he attach it?”
“He did, I just haven’t opened it yet.”
“Why the hell not?”
Kitty cringed. “Don’t shout, Yas and I haven’t opened it because I am scared. This is the first real clue to my mother’s past I have ever had.”
“All the more reason you need to open it!”
“I know, I want to, I just can’t seem to make myself do it. I wish you were here with me, and I wish I could bake. Baking always calms me down.”
“Right, Kitty Sorenson, listen to me! Now is not the time to be thinking about cakes.” Yasmin adopted the tone she used with her little brothers and sisters when they were awkward little toads. “You, my girl, are going to hang up this call, and then you are going to count to three, and when you get to number three you are going to open that attachment. Got it?”
“But–”
“No buts. I said got it?”
“Got it.”
“And then when you have done that you are going to forward the picture to me for a sticky beak. Right?”
“Right.”
“Right then, hit the red button.”
Kitty disconnected the call and counted to three.
Chapter 3
A Turkey never voted for an early Christmas – Irish Proverb
Kitty chewed her bottom lip as she stared at the black and white photograph filling the small screen. Her eyes alighted instantly on the young girl pictured, and she barely registered the man next to her. It was like looking at a picture of herself as a teenager and at a stranger both at the same time. The difference being that her go-to outfit at sixteen had been a black T-shirt, denim mini and leggings, her hair had been straightened with almost religious regularity to resemble Jennifer Aniston’s do of the day. This girl in the photo, her mother, albeit a much younger and softer version than any she’d ever known, was dressed in a demure, feminine style.
Her look was that of Audrey Hepburn. Rosa was wearing a white, boat necked dress with puffed sleeves, cinched waist and a full skirt; her shoes were flat sandals. Her blonde hair was pulled up into a high ponytail, and she was sporting a blunt fringe that was sitting just above startlingly thick and dark eyebrows at odds with her fair hair. They were Kitty’s eyebrows, except her mother’s were obviously unfamiliar with tweezers back then, and as for that fringe, she cringed. It suited the times, but the length was one that would have seen her suing Tamsin at ‘Your Style’ who cut her hair whenever it got to the driving her bonkers length.
She continued to soak in the photograph absorbing not the background scene with its hazy stone archway and buildings but rather the look on her mother’s face. She was gazing up at the man next to her with a broad smile on her face obviously laughing at something he had just said. It was the naked longing in her eyes that shocked Kitty, though. His brooding, good looks were half hidden beneath a head full of thick, slightly too long dark curls as he looked down at Rosa. He was dressed in a plain shirt, half tucked into a pair of loose fitting, dark trousers. His sleeves were rolled up and on his feet he had a pair of boots that looked like they had seen better days. Strong worker’s hands gripped the wide, handlebars of an old-fashioned bike, its big wheels denoting its era.
The light surrounding the couple in the picture was dappled by sunshine peeping through the leafy arbour they were wandering beneath. This, their obviously private moment had been captured forever in a photograph that had the title Midsummer Lovers scrawled across the bottom left-hand corner of it. Her mother’s face was positively luminous Kitty realized, unable to tear her eyes away from the picture. “Oh, Mum,” she whispered aloud to the empty room for the second time that afternoon. It struck her then that she had never seen her mother look at her father the way she was looking at this stranger in the photo. Was that kind of blatant adoration the sole domain of the very young, she wondered, knowing that nobody who had ever been hurt or let down would ever be able to love with such an obvious unguardedness. It had been a long time since she had looked at anyone with that kind of heart on your sleeve openness and after Damien, she doubted she ever would again.
“What’s your story, Rosa?” Kitty closed her eyes. It was too much to take in. All these years of not knowing and now this photograph. It was a clue to her mother’s past, and yet at the same time, it told her absolutely nothing. All she knew now, was that at sixteen, she had been so bold as to be in some small town in France with a bloke with whom she was clearly besotted. Did she even want to know the story behind this picture? Her mother obviously had her reasons for never talking about the first nineteen years of her life.
As a child, Kitty had been curious but not bothered about what her mother had done before she’d married and before she had entered her life. For one thing, she simply could not imagine any other existence of importance for Rosa than that of being her mother and her father’s wife. That had changed though when the hormones had come home to roost, and she had begun to resent the secrecy behind Rosa’s past. As a teenager, she’d desperately wanted to know her maternal history. She’d imagined the worst, no matter how many times her mother assured her there were no skeletons hidden away in her closet. Mean Nuns hadn’t reared her in a cold stone convent or anything like that; it was just a past that was not worth revisiting. This vague, hand sweeping reply had not satisfied Kitty in the slightest, but her mother would not be swayed to confide in her nor would her father whom she could normally twist around her little finger. Eventually, she ran out of steam and had to let it go, exhausted from her years of pent-up teenage frustration.
Now as a woman in her early thirties, Kitty’s romantic notions of where her mother had come from had faded to give way to thoughts that perhaps she had been abused as a child. For all Rosa’s vague hand sweeping and bravado when the topic of her childhood was raised, she couldn’t help but think perhaps she had been the daughter of a poor Magdalene girl. Despite what she said, maybe she’d spent her early years slaving in the laundry of an Irish convent. It had happened to others after all. Perhaps this was why she wouldn’t speak of her childhood. She simply did not know, and so she had come to nurture a quiet acceptance that her mother hadn’t just been her mother, she had been a person with a right to privacy. She couldn’t help but think, though, that with Rosa having passed away the rules must now have changed.
A conversation she’d held with Rosa as a child began to run through her head as though she had just pushed play on an old video recorder. The image of them both in the kitchen of Rose Cottage was vivid. She could see in her mind’s eye that the bay window, a focal point of the room, was fogged up with steam from the sink full of dishes before which her mother stood. It blocked her view out to their sprawling garden that as a child had seemed to go on forever. This illusion she knew was due to the low stone wall that encased the bottom of their garden. On the other side of the wall were fields that in summer glowed gold with rapeseed and in winter wore a snowy eiderdown. For the most part, their home with its front garden full of vibrant blooms in the summer and twiggy branches that would tap at the window in winter had been a happy one.
“Tracey at school said that her mum was an air hostess before she met Mr Hennessy. Her plane used to stop in places like Disneyland,” Kitty said this from where she was sitting up at the table; school bag abandoned at her feet while she waited for the toaster to pop. Her mother was dressed casually; her glasses pushed up on the top of her head which meant she had been studying, again. She was always doing some course; textbooks would be strewn across the kitchen table and swept away as Kitty flung the back door open home from school.
“It’s a gift to be able to learn, Kitty,” she’d say, stacking the thick tomes on the sideboard.
Kitty thought that was a dumb thing to say because the last thing she would do when she was finally old enough to leave school was more homework. And besides, her mum never actually did anything with all that stuff she was learning about.
“That’s nice for Mrs Hennessy I bet she enjoyed meeting Mickey and Minnie.” Rosa’s tongue in cheek reply came as she plunged her hands into the hot water and began to scrub at the dishes left over from breakfast and lunch. She had meant to tackle them well before Kitty got home. She’d gotten side-tracked again by picking up the book she was in the middle of and before she’d known it she’d heard the familiar sound of the front door banging shut. It announced her daughter’s arrival home for the day. Her answer sailed right over the top of nine-year-old Kitty’s head. She was intent on retrieving the freshly browned bread from the toaster and slathering it in butter. “You know madam if you ate properly at lunchtime you wouldn’t be so hungry when you get home. It’s no wonder you pick at your dinner when you’re stuffing yourself full of toast at this time of the day.”
“But I’m hungry after school not at school.” Kitty had replied perfectly logically in her opinion, her chest puffing up self-righteously as she added, “And Tracey doesn’t have to sit at the table until she’s cleaned her plate up. If she doesn’t like something, her mummy says she can give it to the dog. I’d rather play with my friends than eat a yucky old school dinner any day.” Her bottom lip jutted out; the conversation was not going the way she’d planned. She had thought that by telling her mother what Mrs Hennessy used to do her mum might have decided to tell her what it was she had done before she married her dad. She did not want to be reminded of the stinky stuff that had been plopped on her plate at lunch time. Or the unfair way in which she was never allowed to leave anything on her dinner plate, not even peas, and she hated peas, thank you very much.
Sitting there staring at her mother’s back as she bit into her toast, butter dribbling down her chin, her eyes widened as a thought popped into her head. Maybe she had been a princess once upon a time. She was pretty enough to have been one when she took her glasses off and brushed her hair properly.
Maybe, her evil stepmother the Queen had been mean to her, but then daddy had rescued her, and the stepmother had been so angry that she waved her wand and cast a spell. Just like in Sleeping Beauty, and if her mother ever spoke of having once been a princess she’d fall asleep for a hundred years! Her mother dried her hands and left the dishes to drain. She sat down at the table with the cup of tea she’d abandoned on hearing her daughter come in. Kitty wondered if it was normal behaviour for princesses to dunk biscuits in their tea.
“Your friends aren’t going anywhere Kitty, and you need to eat the meal provided at school if you’re to be able to pay attention in your afternoon lessons. Sure, how can you expect that poor brain of yours to concentrate on learning when it’s being distracted by your rumbling tummy? As the old cock crows, the young cock learns.”
Kitty frowned; she hated it when her mum spoke in riddles. She looked at the soggy biscuit she was about to pop in her mouth, it was only a plain old digestive, not the chocolate ones she liked. Still, she wondered what her chances of both toast and a biscuit before dinner were. “It was only boring old maths this afternoon,” she answered, deciding the odds probably weren’t very good. She wished, as she finished her toast, that next time her mother did the shopping she would buy some of that yummy chocolate spread stuff. Tracey said she got to have that on her toast every single morning. As she chewed, she began to ponder how she could swing the conversation back round to where she wanted it to be when her mother interrupted her plotting.
“It’s not boring old maths and boring is a word that only boring people use. Maths is very interesting when you pay attention because we use it for all sorts of everyday reasons.”
Kitty had raised a sceptical eyebrow at her the way she had seen Tracey do to Mrs Chalmers this morning when the teacher had informed her class that dolphins sleep with one eye open. It had been such a cool thing to do but then that was because Tracey was so cool. She paused in her chewing to send up a silent prayer that she would be invited to the social event of the school year, Tracey’s tenth birthday. She’d given Tracey her best Strawberry Shortcake Rubber, so she was confident that guaranteed her an invite.
“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 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. Aha!” 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 beeped 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. Let Yas mull it over, she decided. She’d talk to her later about what she should do. Stuffing her phone back in her bag, she got to her feet. As she picked up her wheelie case and walked down the hallway, she realized she had never managed to swing that long ago conversation with her mother back around 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 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 as 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 managed to block the smell of curry!
She liked to imagine the drama that had been played out on the 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. 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 lucky 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 minimum wage in exchange for being shouted at by a Gordon Ramsey lookalike. 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 that, if she’d seen her apprenticeship through to the end, bit by bit her love for it would have been snuffed out.
Now in a round about 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. 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 early 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, but Kitty wasn’t swayed. In her opinion there was something so marvellous 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 onto. 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 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. She washed up and tied her hair back in a tight ponytail. A stray hair in a red velvet Pink Lady cupcake 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’d 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 into the mixer as Kitty had demonstrated time and time again.
“Three teaspoons of baking powder,” Kitty mumbled, measuring out the first and adding it to 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. 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 1950s 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 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.
“Thanks for doing this Yas, I’m sorry to land it on you.”
“It’s no biggie, all I ask is that when you open your café, you let me design the uniform. I think it should be something that’s short and sweet, now should I add the melted butter?”
Kitty startled back to the present as a car horn tooted at another driver’s indiscretion, and she realized she was there. As she pushed open the door of Baintree & Co., a bell jangled announcing her arrival. She stepped inside and shut the door quickly behind her not wanting to let in a blast of cold air. A girl of no more than eighteen shoved something in the drawer of the front desk she was sitting behind. Her phone Kitty was guessing, not caring if that was how she wanted to pass a quiet day at work; Mr Baintree might not be so easy going about it, though. She looked up at Kitty guiltily before affecting what she must have thought was her professional face. How she could get her facial muscles to move underneath the layers of powdery foundation slathered on her face was a wonder.
The free sample has ended.
