Poppy's Recipe for Life: Treat yourself to the gloriously uplifting new book from the Sunday Times bestselling author!

by Heidi Swain

  I looked at her, my mouth falling open.

  ‘Do you really mean that?’ I eventually dared to ask.

  I’d had my suspicions that her feelings for him had changed ever since the day she unveiled the makeover plans, but what with one thing and another I hadn’t found the right moment to talk to her. Looking at the state of her now, I knew I should have. I had been a little too absorbed in my own affairs recently. Good friends were hard to come by and I felt guilty for neglecting one of mine.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, biting her lip. ‘I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him since he left.’

  ‘But your feelings for him had changed before he went, hadn’t they?’

  ‘Was it that obvious?’ she gulped.

  ‘Only to me,’ I said, rubbing her arm and feeling excited that Colin was going to come back to embrace a happy-ever-after.

  I didn’t tell Lou that he had loved her for ever. I thought that he should decide when and if she needed to know that.

  ‘Relationships are tricky, aren’t they?’ I said to Jacob once Lou had headed back to her flat to try to Skype Colin. She’d been trying every day but had little success. The internet at his parents’ place was sketchy at best.

  ‘God, yes,’ he agreed.

  ‘And I think you know that better than most, don’t you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well,’ I went on, ‘I know you’ve had a falling-out with your brother and that you aren’t currently in touch with your family, so you know for yourself that those kinds of relationships are tricky, but was there ever a Mrs Grizzle? Or at least someone who came close to being a Mrs Grizzle?’

  Jacob looked at me and raised his eyebrows.

  ‘You did tell me, not all that long ago,’ I forged ahead, ‘that you don’t do promises and you don’t do trust. I can’t possibly imagine that’s all down to falling out with your brother. Something tells me there was a woman involved.’

  ‘You’re always going to wonder about this, aren’t you?’ said Jacob, narrowing his eyes.

  ‘Afraid so.’ There was no point in lying. ‘You hated everything when you moved here camping out in an empty house: you didn’t talk to your neighbours; you weren’t working, even though you love your career; you wouldn’t set foot in this place . . .’

  ‘Come on then,’ he said with a sigh, ‘let’s go over to the green. It’ll be quieter there.’

  I couldn’t believe he was going to finally open up and tell me. After checking Ryan was still happy chatting to Mark, I grabbed a couple of bottles of cider and headed to the green – ahead of my neighbour to ensure tongues weren’t set wagging for the wrong reasons.

  ‘Okay,’ said Jacob, his hands straying through his untidy hair. We were settled in the shade of a tree on the green. ‘I’m going to tell you the whys and wherefores, Poppy, but only because I know I can trust you.’

  ‘Wow,’ I gasped. ‘Thank you, Jacob.’

  For a man who had recently told me he didn’t do trust this really was a declaration, and I felt honoured to be considered worthy of his confidence.

  ‘I can’t tell you how much it means to hear you say that.’ I smiled.

  He let out a long breath while I tucked my hair behind my ears and fiddled with my drink, waiting for him to begin.

  ‘Ever since Daniel and I were born,’ he eventually started, ‘we’ve been compared and measured against one another.’

  ‘I’m guessing Daniel is your twin then?’

  ‘Yes, sorry,’ said Jacob, smiling wryly, ‘twin thing. As much as I hate it, he’s still an extension of me and I just assume everyone knows.’

  I nodded and handed him a bottle to help lubricate proceedings.

  ‘I suppose,’ he continued, ‘that comparing us to one another was only natural really.’

  I wasn’t sure about that. I think if I’d had twins I would have gone out of my way to treat them as individually as possible so that one never felt pressured to be like the other, but I didn’t feel qualified to say as much, so I stayed quiet.

  ‘We are—’ Jacob stopped and corrected himself. ‘We were so similar in every possible way, with our lives running along parallel tracks, and that continued as we got older and both decided that we wanted to pursue a career in education.’

  ‘Did you study at the same university?’

  ‘Yes, our lives were still identical at that point, right down to our exam grades. It was spooky sometimes. I wondered if anyone would realise if one of us disappeared. It was like life had provided a spare in case anything went wrong with the prototype.’

  ‘I can see how that would freak you out.’

  ‘It did . . .’ Jacob nodded, stopping for a second to take a swig from his bottle, ‘and as we worked our way through uni, I became more and more aware of it. I talked to Daniel about it but he just shrugged it off. He reckoned all twins felt that way at some time or another but once I had acknowledged it I couldn’t shake the feeling off.’

  ‘So, what did you do?’

  It was obvious that he had done something. I was certain that was the point where Jacob’s life had changed from duo to solo.

  ‘I jumped off the track,’ he said, looking right at me as he confirmed my thoughts. ‘We both of us had great postgrad jobs lined up but I decided not to take mine. On the day we graduated I announced I was taking time out to travel instead and off I went.’

  ‘That was brave.’

  For someone who had lived a life running in perfect synchronicity with his brother, it was incredibly daring.

  ‘That’s not how my parents saw it,’ he said with a short laugh, ‘or Daniel. Everyone thought I was mad. We had our future, our entire lives plotted out and suddenly I was telling them I was going to, quite literally, follow a different map.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘I know. I thought it would be liberating, and after a few months it was, but in the beginning I was as scared as hell. Being on my own, rather than one half of a whole, took some getting used to but I stuck it out, and once I began to relax, enjoy myself and trust my own decisions, I decided to stay away for as long as I could.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Over five years.’

  ‘Crikey.’ I almost choked. ‘Five years. What did you do for all that time? How did you fund it?’ I didn’t have him down as some rich kid and was fairly certain his parents, given their annoyance that he had gone in the first place, wouldn’t have paid for a gap year that lasted half a decade even if he was. ‘Did you come back to the UK during that time at all?’

  Jacob took another gulp of cider.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, reaching for my own and picking at the label. ‘Too many questions.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s fine. I spent quite a lot of time teaching in India. I revelled in the freedom and once I’d earned enough to move on a little way I did. The pay was practically pennies, but it was enough to live on and no, in all that time I didn’t come back.’

  ‘And what was Daniel doing while you were away?’

  ‘Exactly what he, I mean we, had always planned to do,’ he explained. ‘He was zipping up the management ladder, happily running up every rung of it. He never gave up trying to get me to come back though.’

  ‘So, what made you return in the end if it wasn’t your brother?’

  Jacob shook his head and I sensed that we were getting to the heart of the matter.

  ‘I met a girl,’ he told me. ‘Rebecca. She was younger than me but had also been travelling around since graduating and was heading back to the UK to take up a teaching post of her own near to where my family lived. She’d satisfied her wanderlust far faster than I had and . . .’ he sighed, stopping to take a breath. ‘And I know this probably sounds ridiculous, but it felt as if my own thirst for adventure couldn’t be quenched until I’d found her. She was the missing piece my life had been looking for ever since I’d cut the umbilical with Daniel.’

  Jacob shook his head, but I got it. He had found the p
erson I still hadn’t. The one person in all the world that he knew he would be able to commit to, for life.

  ‘It was meant to be,’ I said, trying to help him out.

  ‘Exactly.’ Jacob nodded. ‘That was exactly how it felt. It was a whirlwind romance played out on white sandy beaches and before I knew it we were flying home. I made amends with my family – they adored Rebecca, which helped things considerably, of course, and then we rented a flat and both settled into the comforting rhythm of the school routine.’

  ‘And were you happy?’

  ‘Happier than I had ever been,’ he said huskily. ‘I’d seen something of the world and I’d broken free of the twin thing. Daniel was his own man, as was I, the family idolised Becky, I loved my job and, at the risk of sounding smug, everything was pretty damn perfect.’

  ‘So, what went wrong?’

  Jacob looked at me and shook his head.

  ‘Well something obviously did,’ I pointed out, ‘otherwise you wouldn’t be living here, on your own, would you?’ I waited while he collected his thoughts.

  ‘Daniel,’ he eventually carried on, ‘as expected, had streaked miles ahead of me on the career ladder in the time I’d been away.’

  ‘I can’t imagine you cared much about that,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I didn’t. In fact, when he called us all together for a celebratory family lunch to announce he had been awarded a headship, I was the first to congratulate him.’

  ‘He was young to become a head, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Very,’ Jacob agreed, ‘but his dedication and determination have always been second to none. His ambition,’ he said, sighing heavily, ‘only just outstripped Becky’s by the tiniest of margins.’

  That took me by surprise. I hadn’t imagined Rebecca as someone looking to get ahead at all. I envisaged her as a tanned, toned beach beauty. A free spirit with sun-bleached hair and an abundance of shell jewellery – but clearly I had mistaken her for someone else.

  ‘I know exactly what you’re thinking,’ Jacob said, looking at me again, ‘and I hadn’t seen it either. I had thought that she’d be as happy with a regular teaching post as I was, but within a year or so of returning to the UK she was looking to further her career, just like Daniel.’

  ‘I see.’ I swallowed nervously.

  ‘We started to argue. One time she even asked me why I couldn’t be more like Dan. She seemed in awe of him, seduced by his success, and it was at this damn meal,’ Jacob said with a frown, ‘that I realised . . .’

  He stopped and shook his head and I guessed what was coming.

  ‘That she had fallen for him,’ I whispered.

  Jacob nodded.

  ‘It was just a look, a two-second glance between them, but I knew.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I had been going to propose that Christmas,’ he said grimly, ‘but when I tackled them about what I’d seen, they didn’t deny it. They’d already—’ He stopped and took a breath. I didn’t need him to spell it out. ‘So,’ he went on, ‘instead of ring shopping I found myself working my notice and buying this place.’ He tipped his bottle towards his house. ‘I left everything behind, including my car, and managed to get through the winter with the bits and pieces the previous owner was happy to include in the sale.’

  No wonder he had shut himself away. With hindsight it was probably the best thing he could have done. He had hidden away from the world and worked through his trauma. Surely that had to be better than pretending everything was all right and powering through with a brave smile?

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, sitting up straighter and clearing his throat, ‘they’re welcome to each other. I’m moving on. I’ve put hundreds of miles between us and now I have this place and the garden and a new job and you, Poppy.’

  I met his gaze, unsure as to what he meant.

  ‘But there’s just one snag, of course,’ he carried on before I had time to work it out.

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Every time I look in the damn mirror, I see Daniel staring back at me.’

  Part of me wanted to laugh when he said that, but it wasn’t funny. This wasn’t some made-for-TV drama, it was real life, Jacob’s life. I wondered if that was why he still hadn’t had a haircut.

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ I croaked.

  ‘Of course you don’t,’ he replied. ‘Who would?’

  I shuffled over and reached for his hand.

  ‘No wonder you were Mr Grumpy when you moved here,’ I said sympathetically, ‘and no wonder you don’t do trust.’

  ‘But I do trust you, Poppy,’ he said for the second time, squeezing my hand back. ‘I told you that. I really do feel as though I can trust you and that’s hit me like a bolt out of the blue because I never thought I’d be able to trust anyone ever again.’

  I nodded, delighted that he felt that way, had the capacity to even consider feeling that way after everything he had been through.

  ‘And this spark between us,’ he shocked me by adding, ‘that’s another surprise.’

  ‘Spark?’ I squeaked.

  ‘Don’t embarrass me by denying it,’ he tutted. ‘I know you feel it too.’

  I nodded again but couldn’t look at him. The way my heart had fluttered when our hands had touched, the pain in the pit of my stomach when I had first seen Hannah sitting at his kitchen table. Those uncontrollable physical reactions were all about the spark. They were things I’d never felt before. For anyone.

  ‘Yes,’ I admitted, ‘I feel it.’

  But feeling was one thing and acting on those feelings was something else entirely.

  ‘But—’ I began.

  ‘But,’ he interrupted, ‘given my recent heartbreak, we aren’t going to let that spark burst into flame, are we?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea just now.’

  ‘That’s all right then,’ he said, giving me back my hand, ‘because right now what I really need, more than anything, Poppy, is a true friend.’

  ‘Me too,’ I whispered.

  Chapter 19

  Having unburdened himself, and feeling safe in the knowledge that I wouldn’t let the heartbreaking details of his past go any further, Jacob was a changed man. He was often to be heard laughing, swapping silly jokes with Ryan, who thought the world of him, and he’d even braved a trip to the barber.

  The tidy-up wasn’t particularly dramatic, and his fringe still flopped when he ran his hands through it, but he was delighted with the results nonetheless and it was nice to be able to see his eyes for a change. Even if I did have to endure more than my fair share of tummy butterflies whenever I caught them looking in my direction.

  ‘I even managed a couple of glances in the mirror,’ he told me as he stood scratching at his hair-filled shirt collar immediately after the event. ‘I couldn’t have done that six months ago, Poppy, or even six weeks, come to that.’

  I could well believe it. Ryan aside, I had no close family connections to compare with, but I was having a hard time getting my head round how Jacob’s brother and Rebecca had treated him. I had always thought there was some sort of unwritten rule, some extra-special twin code of conduct, forged as a result of shared amniotic fluid, which somehow guaranteed against this sort of fuckwittery – but obviously I was wrong.

  ‘Don’t forget the meeting in the garden later,’ Jacob reminded me. ‘I’m going home for a shower and a change of clothes first, so I’ll meet you there.’

  We’d all been on the lookout for the council rep but, in spite of our meerkat sentry set-up, we hadn’t seen or heard a thing. Weeks had flown by rather than the days suggested when Lisa and Neil had explained what was going to happen and I couldn’t help thinking that we had failed. If the garden had been inspected at least one of us would have known about it because we would have had to let them in. This sudden summoning was no doubt going to be a ‘better luck next time’ announcement.

  ‘Thank you all for coming,’ Lisa said wit
h a nervous smile, once we were all gathered. ‘I know it was short notice so thanks for turning out. The heavens look fit to burst, so we’ll keep this brief.’

  The clouds were indeed gathering. I hoped that wasn’t a bad sign. A portent predicting our failure. A downpour would get me out of watering duty, but I’d rather spend an hour exercising my arm muscles if it meant we were in the competition.

  ‘So, it looks like we have some news,’ said Neil, holding up a white envelope bearing the council stamp.

  ‘Is it good?’ asked Graham.

  He sounded every bit as edgy as the rest of us were feeling.

  ‘We haven’t opened it yet,’ Lisa explained. ‘We thought we should wait until we were all together.’

  ‘Well, get on with it,’ urged Carole. ‘My nerves can’t cope with the waiting.’

  We looked on as, with shaking hands, Neil tore the envelope open and handed the letter over to Lisa. Her eyes skimmed across the contents and then her face split into the biggest grin.

  ‘We’re through!’ she shouted, joyously waving the letter. ‘We’ve made the shortlist!’

  She went back to reading as the rest of us clapped and cheered. Even Jacob, once so convinced that he wouldn’t be having anything to do with the place, looked delighted.

  ‘But when did they come and look?’ asked Colin, scratching his head.

  ‘About a week ago,’ said Luke, turning red. ‘I had to be here to let them in and they asked me not to mention it. Sorry, guys. I didn’t want to risk breaking the rules.’

  No one looked particularly upset that he had been hanging on to the secret.

  ‘Is this going to mean you’ll have double duties?’ Ryan nudged at my side. ‘Even more deadheading and potting on?’

  ‘Afraid so,’ I said with a laugh and he rolled his eyes.

  ‘Just as well I’ve almost finished at Colin’s shop then, isn’t it?’

  ‘Will you help?’ I gasped.

  ‘I suppose.’ He beamed. ‘If I must.’

  I was delighted. I couldn’t imagine there were many sixteen-year-old lads who would allow themselves to get roped in to something like this, especially if their older sister was involved.