by Kate Hewitt
His face lit up, making her laugh at the exuberance of his expression. “One cupcake left? How perfectly serendipitous. What flavour is it?”
“Cookies and cream.” She fetched the cupcake from the plate behind her; she hadn’t put it back after wrapping up the others for Mallory.
“Now that is a work of art.” The man studied the cupcake as if it were the edible version of Michelangelo’s David. “Are those pieces of Oreo?”
“They are.”
“Amazing.”
She smiled, gratified by his compliment, because it sounded so sincere. He seemed like one of those rare people who was truly fascinated by life, always stopping to study or stare, marvelling at the mechanics of something simple. It was a gift, to look at life like that, and one Olivia didn’t think she had, although she was happy enough.
“So,” she said after a few seconds when the man was simply staring at the cupcake, marvelling. “Are you, ah, going to buy it?”
“Buy it?” His eyebrows rose once more, with comical drama. “Of course I’m going to buy it! How much?”
“Two pounds fifty.”
“You are grossly undercharging, then. Cupcakes the size of a small rodent go for nearly five pounds in London.”
“What an unappealing comparison,” Olivia returned with another laugh. “And this isn’t London, it’s the Cotswolds.”
“So you should really be charging six pounds.”
She laughed again, properly, and he grinned in return, and right then something in Olivia stirred to life, something that had been so dead and buried she’d forgotten it had even existed. But that tiny winkle of interest and yearning felt a bit like the poke of an electric cattle prod. Whoa. I’m alive. Here is a man.
And a man unlike any other she’d seen in Wychwood-on-Lea, which usually ran to golf-playing retirees and self-important City types, whose wives had dragged them out to experience so-called country living.
“Still, it’s two pounds fifty,” she said firmly. “I’m having a hard enough time selling them as it is.”
“Are you? But you’ve only one left.”
“I gave five away just now, and another one this morning.” When Ellie had come in for a coffee and a chat. She grimaced good-naturedly as she confessed, “And I ate one myself.”
“Which means you sold…?”
“Four.”
“Think of the profit you could have made! Two pounds fifty extra per cupcake… That’s…”
He frowned, and she supplied with a smile, “Ten pounds.”
“Which is not to be sneezed at.”
“No.”
They smiled at each other, rather foolishly, or at least Olivia felt foolish. The banter had been witty and fun, but now that they had fallen silent, the man looked suddenly earnest and serious and she…she didn’t know how she looked. Or felt.
“It must be hard running a tea shop in a village this size. Do you have much help?”
“No, it’s just me.” Which, for some ridiculous reason, nearly brought a wretched lump to her throat. How bizarre. “But it’s fine,” she said quickly. “It’s all fine. You’re right, though, Wychwood-on-Lea is a small place. Not as much foot traffic as I’d like, but I try to make up for it in other ways. Still, it’s all good.”
The man nodded slowly, in a way that made Olivia think he didn’t believe her, which was exasperating because she was telling the truth. It was all good. Definitely.
“So the cupcake. Would you like it in a box?”
“You have boxes?” He sounded delighted, making Olivia smile again, and she went to fetch one of her many boxes.
“Tea on the Lea,” he read off the front with satisfaction. “Very clever.”
“Well, at least it rhymes. But I didn’t come up with it. My mother did.”
“Your mother?”
“It was her shop originally, but I took it over six months ago.”
“So has this shop been in your family for ages? Should there be a sign over the door, ‘Established in 1854’ or something? ‘Purveyors of Tea to the Queen’?”
She laughed and shook her head. “Sadly we have not supplied the Queen with anything. And my mum started the shop ten years ago, after she retired. It was always a dream of hers, to own a little shop like this.”
“Kudos to her for following her dreams.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“And is it your dream as well?”
Goodness, this was getting rather personal. “It’s become my dream,” Olivia said firmly. “I love baking, and I’m happy here.” Which, for some reason, made it sound as if she wasn’t. As if she had to convince herself, which she didn’t. “Anyway.” Olivia took a length of silver ribbon she usually saved for her wedding cake orders and wrapped it around the box, tying it with an elegant bow. “There you are. That will be two pounds fifty.”
“Why don’t you charge me five pounds?” the man suggested as he handed over his debit card. “Really, I insist. It’s practically a crime otherwise.”
“Two pounds fifty,” Olivia repeated firmly. “But if you come back again, I might have upped the prices by then.”
“I certainly hope so. Do you make cupcakes every day?”
Olivia thought of Mallory’s idea. “Actually, I’m running a promotion,” she said a bit recklessly. “The Twelve Days of Cupcakes. A different flavour of cupcake every day in the run-up to Christmas…and if you buy one on each of the twelve days, you get a free one at the end. But you have to come every day.” For some reason her heart had started beating fast as she said all this. She gazed at him, eyebrows raised. “What do you think?”
“That’s an absolutely cracking idea. Simply cracking.” He grinned. “Count me in.”
Olivia’s heart flipped over. She was being ridiculous, of course. She didn’t even know this man and he was, it had to be said, a tiny bit on the eccentric side, with his enthusiastic manner, his endless scarf. But still. There went her heart. She reached for the card reader, unable to keep from glancing at the name on the debit card as she pushed it into the reader. Simon Blacklock. What a perfectly appropriate name—like something she’d read in an Austen or Brontë novel. Very Wuthering Heights-ish.
In some ways Simon Blacklock seemed like someone from another century, with his friendly, open face, his interest in everything, even his battered tweed jacket and winding scarf. He was decidedly old-fashioned, and Olivia liked that about him.
“Put your PIN in please,” she said, and pushed the reader towards him, averting her eyes while he pressed the numbers on the keypad.
He pushed it back towards her with a smile, and Olivia gave him his card back. She had a strange, almost panicky sense not to let him simply walk out the door, out of her life.
“Enjoy your cupcake,” she blurted a little too fast. “And see you…again?” She cringed a little inwardly at how hopeful and eager she sounded.
“Yes, definitely.” He hoisted the box. “I can’t wait to try out some more flavours.” And with one last whimsical smile, he was gone, the bells jingling as he shut the door behind him.
Chapter Two
Olivia prowled around her flat later that evening, feeling unusually restless. She’d spent the rest of the afternoon finishing her shopping list and organising her storage area, hauling three boxes of Christmas decorations from the loft, without a single other person coming through the door.
At five o’clock she locked up the shop and headed upstairs to the flat she’d shared with her mum until two months ago, when Tina James had moved to a retired living housing development twenty minutes away in Witney. It still felt strange to be here alone, although Olivia had lived alone for fifteen years in London, in a shoebox-sized flat in Hackney.
Still, this place felt irrevocably her mum’s; it was a poky little place, but not without its charm: two tiny bedrooms, a sitting room with views over the river and a tiny, cast-iron fireplace, a galley kitchen, and a bathroom that you could just about squeeze into. Olivia joked about being abl
e to use the toilet, shower, and sink all at the same time, although she’d yet to accomplish that feat.
She and her mum had been constantly tripping over each other when they’d shared the small space, but it still seemed rather ridiculously big and empty without her there. After making a mug of instant noodles—hardly the most nutritious of suppers, but Olivia had never bothered with cooking for one—she collapsed onto the sofa, planning on an evening of Channel Four reality TV. Dr Jekyll, deciding to be friendly for once, leapt into her lap, making Olivia let out a startled oof. The cat really was enormous, and you never knew whether he was going to purr or unsheathe his claws, hence the name.
Olivia stroked him as she clicked the remote. Normally, after a day of work that had begun just before five a.m., she was grateful to sink into the sofa and watch some mindless telly. Tonight, for some reason, the prospect felt the teeniest, tiniest bit…well, depressing.
She needed to get a grip, Olivia told herself crossly. She was not the type of person to feel sorry for herself, not even for a moment, and in any case, there was nothing to feel sorry about. She had a job she loved, a nice home, a loving mum, plenty of friends, even this ridiculous cat. She didn’t need anything. She was really quite sure of that.
She stroked Dr Jekyll again, a little too firmly this time, and with a resentful yowl he dug his claws in—ouch—and then lumbered off her lap, plopping onto the floor before stalking away, bushy tail raised high in dudgeon. Perhaps she wouldn’t count the cat among her blessings quite yet, but still. She was happy; she was fulfilled. It was just everyone felt a little out of sorts, a bit restless, once in a while, didn’t they? Of course they did.
The next morning Olivia was up bright and early to make her next batch of cupcakes. Last night, after turning off a trashy show about discontented and overly Botoxed housewives in some American city or other, she’d designed a banner for the shop window detailing the Twelve Days of Cupcakes, complete with a border of holly leaves and bright red berries, and pictures of various delicious cupcakes. She’d also made a card that customers could have stamped whenever they bought a cupcake; in a moment of determined optimism she’d printed a hundred of them. Her Art GCSE was being put to some small use, at least.
Now, in the inky darkness of pre-dawn, she reached for sacks of flour and sugar, a basket of eggs delivered fresh from a local farm three times a week. Even though her body ached with tiredness and her eyes felt gritty, she loved these moments in the little kitchen in the back of the tea shop, creating the concoctions that would fill the cake stand and display case that day. Baking was love; it was what her mother had done all her life, what she’d taught.
They hadn’t had much when Olivia had been growing up; her father had walked out when she was two years old, never to come back, and Tina had held a variety of menial jobs to make ends meet. There hadn’t been the money for extravagant holidays or new trainers or birthday parties, but there had always, always been cake—and biscuits and tarts and pies and meringues. Her mother splurged on sugar and flour, high-quality cooking chocolate and plenty of hundreds and thousands. And just about every day when Olivia had come home from school, there had been something delicious and still-warm on the kitchen table.
Tina had passed that love of baking on to Olivia; even when she’d been doing the nine-to-five (or really, eight-to-six) slog in London, she’d loved relaxing with a big bowl of butter and sugar to cream together. She’d always brought in tins of cakes and flapjacks, biscuits and tarts, to the office, happy for anyone to help themselves. And when a friend was down, a baby was born, anything to celebrate or mourn—well, baking always helped.
And it helped now, as the restlessness she’d felt last night morphed into cheerful purpose. She’d decided to try a new flavour of cupcake today—salted caramel, with a melting, caramel centre and a butterscotch sweet on top of the swirls of creamy icing. She’d pile them in the window, on her prized Victorian cake stand, with its intricate iron swirls to match the icing. With the banner, and a few boughs of holly and evergreen around, she thought it would look very Christmassy—and as it was only nineteen days until the twenty-fifth, certainly very timely.
While the cakes were cooling, Olivia ran upstairs to shower and change before opening the shop at half past seven, when she usually snagged a few customers grabbing a coffee and muffin on their way to work.
Sure enough, her friend Ava Tucker, recently married to Jace and with ten-month-old William in a pushchair, came in at quarter to eight to buy both items.
“I’m on the way to the childminder’s,” she explained while Olivia poured her coffee from the pot she always kept brewing. “I’ve got a big meeting in Oxford today—a partnership with an employment agency.”
“Sounds very promising.” A little over a year ago Ava had started her own business, training and equipping women to return to the workforce. As a not-for-profit, she helped women not only with obtaining the necessary computer and administrative skills, but also with the right clothes, confidence, and interview techniques.
“I hope so,” she said as she reached down to wipe a bit of drool from William’s adorably chubby chin. “It would be wonderful to make some more connections.”
Olivia handed her the coffee and muffin, leaning over to give William a coo. He was adorable, with round red cheeks and a tuft of wheat-blond hair. Olivia had given up on having children herself a few years back when it looked as if there was no one in the offing—and there hadn’t been—but she still loved a good cuddle. Fortunately, William was always available.
“I love the cupcake banner,” Ava remarked as she broke off a piece of the muffin and handed it to William to gum. “Twelve Days of Cupcakes! Very catchy.”
“I hope so. It was Mallory’s idea, actually.”
“Was it? She’s a clever one, isn’t she? Too clever by half, I think.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Olivia answered with a laugh. “She’ll run rings around some poor bloke one day, I don’t doubt.”
“And Harriet and Richard as well.” Ava glanced at her son with a smile. “Thankfully I’ve a few years to go before I have to worry about such things. I’ll be applying for my OAP bus pass before William’s dating.”
“Not quite,” Olivia said lightly. Ava was three years younger than she was.
“Almost,” Ava answered with a grimace. “In any case, Jace would like a baby, as well.” She looked away as she said it, making Olivia pause. She knew William was the son of Ava’s first husband, who had died precipitously of a heart attack months before she met Jace.
“Is that something you want?” she asked carefully.
“I don’t know. Babies are bloody hard work, you know?”
“I don’t, but I can imagine.”
“Oh sorry, Olivia, am I completely putting my foot in it?” Ava cried, aghast.
“Now you are,” Olivia returned, smiling to take the sting out of the words. “Not everyone wants babies, Ava.” She’d never been particularly maternal, but then she’d never given herself the chance to be, because it hadn’t seemed like a possibility.
“Exactly. And I never thought I was the maternal type, to be honest. I love William to bits, but the thought of going through it all again…” She shuddered. “But it also seems so unfair to deny Jace the chance to be a father.”
“He’s a father to William.”
“Yes, but his own… It does make a difference, don’t you think?” She shook her head. “It shouldn’t, I know, but I suppose it does.”
“I don’t know if it does or not,” Olivia said slowly. “My father walked out when I was two years old. Biology didn’t matter much there.” She spoke matter-of-factly, without a hint of self-pity or sorrow. Her father’s abandonment had been a part of her life for so long she didn’t think it had the power to hurt her. Besides, Tina had more than made up for any deadbeat dad. She’d been—and still was—the most wonderful mum.
“Yes, too true,” Ava answered on a sigh; Olivia knew she had a troubled
family history. “Biology isn’t everything, certainly.”
William was starting to grizzle, and so Ava hoisted her coffee cup and gave Olivia a cheery wave. “I’d better get on. Are you coming to Harriet’s on Friday for our girls’ night in?”
“Yes, I’ll be there. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Every month all five of them got together for a gossip and a drink, with much hilarity ensuing. Olivia had started to be included in these gatherings a little over a year ago, and she made sure never to miss a single one.
“Great, see you then,” Ava chirped, and then she was out the door. From then until late morning Olivia had a steady trickle of customers, so she didn’t get a chance to finish her window display until nearly lunchtime.
She nipped out back to the tiny garden behind the shop to cut some holly from the overgrown bush by the gate that led out to the river and the muddy footpath alongside it, and then she rustled up some red velvet ribbon, as well. On Sunday she’d do her big Christmas shop and get a few more bits and bobs to make the window display the best it could be.
The Twelve Days of Cupcakes. Outside, in the cold, crystalline air, she stepped back from the bow front of her shop to survey her work. Would people be tempted by the plate of gooey caramel cupcakes in the window? So far she hadn’t sold one, but she had high hopes for this afternoon. If Mallory came in with her friends…
If Simon Blacklock came back…
He had, rather ridiculously, been at the back of her mind for most of the day. She’d gone over their few minutes of banterous chit-chat and decided she needed to stop remembering every single thing he’d said. He was a stranger, for heaven’s sake, and he’d just been polite, in his own, charmingly eccentric way. The fact that he’d made her heart tumble right over was testament to the exceedingly single life she’d been living rather than any possible spark between them. She hadn’t had a date in… No, she really didn’t want to tot up the time. It had been years, at any rate. A lot of years.
With a sigh, Olivia headed back into the shop and its baking-scented warmth. This was her quietest part of the day, after her lunch rush (that was putting it rather optimistically) and before the brief pick-up in the late afternoon. Normally she used the time to crack on with a few jobs, but today that odd restlessness she’d felt last night came sneaking back.