by Livia Day
With saplings.
I was capable of getting into a whole lot of trouble without even trying, so I would probably need a girl like Xanthippe around.
‘Ladies and gentlemen and valued members of Tasmania Police, Hobart division!’ said Darrow, balancing dramatically on one of my Pop Art chairs. ‘I have an announcement to make. Some of you may know that I was recently involved in a certain accident, with a certain car, belonging to a certain woman…’
Xanthippe snorted. ‘Fully-restored 1967 Lotus Super Seven Roadster…’
‘Yes, yes,’ Darrow said with a wave. ‘I have been racking my brains as to how to make it up to said woman.’
‘Get on with it!’ I yelled, and threw a cream bun at him.
‘If there are no further interjections from the crowd,’ said Darrow grandly. ‘I would like to announce a compensation package—’ and he waved some documents from inside his jacket ‘—which is to say, the ownership papers for a slightly used (I know you like a challenge) 1972 Alfa Romeo Spider, ready for restoration, and to fund said exciting new project, we have here a contract signing over forty percent of the business of Café La Femme to Xanthippe Anastasia Demetria Carides, long may she reign.’
‘What?’ Zee and I shrieked simultaneously.
A car. I understood the car part. But he was giving her my café. Suddenly my unobtrusive, policy-of-no-interference silent partner had dumped me and handed the power to a woman who thought sandwiches didn’t need butter.
Xanthippe recovered faster than I did. ‘Tish, some thoughts on changing the menu. How do you feel about Buddhist cuisine? Ethiopian-Caribbean fusion? Also, here’s a novel idea, plastic cutlery that saves on washing up!’
I pushed her off the desk. She scrambled to her feet with good humour and ran across the courtyard to pounce on Darrow, asking questions about her new car. Obviously that was the prize she was really interested in, and he beamed at the attention she was giving him.
Maybe she hadn’t realised yet that the café shares were designed to make her stay in Hobart. He didn’t want to lose her again. Sneaky, but not subtle. She should know that. Maybe she did know that. Maybe she wanted the excuse to stay…
And I was caught in the middle of their courting dance, yippee.
‘You know,’ said Ceege thoughtfully. ‘If Xanthippe’s sticking around Hobart and needs a place to live, I reckon she could be the third housemate we need to take over Kelly’s room.’
I rescued the bottle of champagne from him, and then pushed him off the desk too.
‘Scuse me,’ said Bishop, grabbing me from behind and hauling me off the desk. ‘Let’s remove you from further temptation to do violence to your friends, shall we?’
He drew me into the kitchen, and as soon as I was away from the crowd, all my objections spilled out in one crazy lump: ‘Xanthippe in my café, we’ll murder each other, Darrow never interferes but I know she will, he’s only doing this to get in her knickers again and Nin hates her, it’s going to be flat out war, and how can we be friends again if she’s in my face twenty-four hours a day…’ I couldn’t cope, I really couldn’t cope with this; I needed no more surprises.
‘Morticia,’ said Bishop.
I blinked at him. ‘What did you say?’
‘I know what Tish means. Before I met you, there was an embarrassing goth phase, yes? So your dad called you Tish after Morticia, from The Addams Family.
Xanthippe picked it up, because it annoyed the hell out of you. And I picked it up off them both without knowing what it actually meant.’ He crossed his arms, and looked almost as smug as Darrow on a bad day.
‘Xanthippe told you,’ I accused.
‘Nope. I figured it out all by myself. Well, I found the old picture your dad used to keep on his desk, at the station. And it clicked.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well, good thinking. Well done, there.’
‘I won’t,’ Bishop said, and hesitated. ‘I won’t call you it any more, if you don’t want me to. I know it was your dad’s thing.’
Of all the horrible things I’ve ever said to him, this is the one he remembers?
‘I don’t mind. Well, obviously I do mind, it’s a nickname designed to humiliate me by reminding me what a complete try-hard I was at high school, but you’ve been calling me Tish for a while. It would be weird if you stopped now.’
‘Well,’ Bishop said with a smirk that reminded me that he was, after all, related to Xanthippe. ‘We wouldn’t want things to get weird.’ He swept his arm towards the open kitchen door, and the raging party beyond. ‘This was a good idea.’
‘I owed it to them,’ I said softly. ‘I haven’t been very nice to Dad’s mates this year.’
‘You were grieving. Trying to push us away.’
‘Not successfully.’ And how.
He gave me a friendly hug, patting me cheerfully on the back as he did so. All mates here. ‘It’s not something you want to get good at.’
I breathed him in, enjoying the rare moment of not shouting at each other. Then I tensed up. Only a couple of hours ago, I’d been molesting Stewart in the café with kissing and trifles. Now this—what the hell was I doing?
I shifted with a vague plan of putting some distance between us, but Bishop spoke against my hair, making me not want to move away at all. ‘All the arguing this year wasn’t completely about me trying to protect you now your dad’s gone,’ he muttered. ‘Actually, most of it was not about that.’
‘I know,’ I said as his breath tickled my ear. ‘Hey, wait. What?’
Then he was kissing me, and I was letting him, and my hands were all—well, busy—and my brain had temporarily left my head, obviously, and still neither of us had closed the damn door behind us.
What was it I had decided I wanted, in that aeon before Gary came to my kitchen door and everything went to hell? I want my café back, and Stewart to stick around, and Darrow to stop disappearing, and Xanthippe to be my friend again, and Bishop to kiss me like he did in the stairwell that time, only more.
Now I was never going to get uniformed patrols out of my café, there was going to have to be meat back on the menu all over again, and I had Xanthippe as a business partner who was going to drive me up the wall, moving into my house and stealing my clothes on a regular basis. All that and I had pashed two different boys on the same afternoon. Just like bloody high school all over again.
I mumbled something against Bishop’s mouth.
‘What?’ he said, drawing back a little to look at me with those drop-dead dark and gorgeous eyes of his.
‘Be careful what you wish for if you don’t know what you really want,’ I said, more clearly.
It was one of those things Dad used to say, when he suspected I was about to do something profoundly stupid.
Kissing now. Thinking later. Priorities, Tabitha!
Trifle Recipes
Chocolate Lime Shot Trifles
Kathryn Linge
This trifle differs from most in that it uses biscuits (cookies) for the cake base instead of, well, cake! Biscuits are particularly good to use in a shot glass trifle, such as this, because they will normally soak up surrounding flavours faster than cake, without going overly mushy.
This trifle will work well with any plain dark chocolate biscuit—nothing too sweet. Arnott’s Choc Ripple Biscuits are ideal if you are pressed for time and want to make this trifle as simple as possible. However, if you want to get a bit fancy, you can also make your own chocolate biscuits, and use them instead. One recipe that works well in this trifle is Garret McCord’s Chocolate Cookies with Cocoa Nibs and Lime (see: http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/chocolate_cookies_with_cocoa_nibs_and_lime/). Making your own biscuits has the added advantage giving you the option to make both normal size biscuits, to chop and use in the trifle, plus tiny, half-sized, biscuits to decorate the top. They make a nice alternative to either kiwi fruit, candied cacao beans—and tiny biscuits are so cute!!
Makes 5 individual trifles, or around 15 shot gla
sses
* * *
Preamble
Ingredients
One packet (approximately 250g) of shop bought plain chocolate biscuits or cookies, or an equivalent amount of homemade chocolate biscuits.
3 kiwi fruit
Juice of 1 lime
2 teaspoons caster sugar
300 mL (10 oz) thickened cream
Candied coca nibs for decoration (optional, see recipe below)
* * *
Method
Mix lime juice and sugar.
Slice all three kiwi fruit into 5mm slices, and chop all except three or four slices very finely. Marinate in the lime sugar mixture for an hour or more. For the remaining slices, quarter each slice, then half each quarter into a triangle and reserve for decoration.
Chop two or three biscuits into 5mm chunks to use as the biscuits base, chopping additional biscuits as needed during assembly.
To assemble, alternate layers of biscuits, kiwi fruit, and cream, using approximately 1 teaspoon of each per layer (vary as desired or required by the size of your shot glass).
Decorate each trifle with candied cocoa nibs, a small cookie, or kiwi fruit as desired.
* * *
Candied Cocoa Nibs
Adapted from
http://candy.about.com/od/chocolate/r/candiedcacaonib.htm
* * *
Ingredients
50 grams (2 oz) cocoa nibs
30 grams (1 oz) sugar
1/2 teaspoon butter, softened
* * *
Preparation
Line a baking tray with baking paper.
Place the butter in a dish within easy reach of the stove.
Put the nibs and the sugar in a small saucepan over a medium heat.
As the sugar begins to dissolve and stick together continually stir the mixture.
Cook until the sugar becomes a liquid. Remove from the heat and stir the butter in thoroughly.
Scrape the coated nibs onto the prepared baking sheet, separating them as much as possible. Allow them to cool at room temperature before breaking them apart by hand.
Store in an airtight container. Do not refrigerate.
* * *
DEATH BY TRIFLE
Cherry and Marzipan Trifle
Louise Williams
* * *
Cherries and almonds both have cyanide in them, but you would explode from the sheer volume of this trifle before you consumed enough cyanide to kill you. To make this trifle extra deadly, substitute ground cherry or apricot pits for some of the ground almonds.
Make sure the sponge cake you use is dry (not buttery) and if possible slightly stale. I use a bought sponge but if you want to make your own any plain sponge recipe will work as long as you make it in advance.
Makes 6 individual trifles, or around 18 shot glasses
* * *
Ingredients
Cherry Jelly
2 cups apple juice
250g (9oz) whole cherries (fresh or frozen)
Sugar if required
2 leaves of titanium gelatine
* * *
Marzipan
80g (3oz) ground almonds
½ cup caster sugar
½ cup water
¼ teaspoon almond essence
* * *
Custard
1 cup cream
1 cup milk
½ cup sugar
1 vanilla pod or 1 tablespoon of vanilla essence
2 tablespoons cornflour
* * *
1 sponge cake
* * *
Prepare the layers beforehand. When assembling the trifle the custard, marzipan, and cherry jelly should be cool but not completely set.
* * *
Cherry Jelly
Put the gelatine leaves in cold water to soak.
Place the juice and cherries in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Lower the heat to a simmer and cook, covered, for around 20 minutes until the fruit is soft.
Press the fruit and juice though a fine sieve, then discard the seeds and skin.
Taste the cherries and add a small amount of sugar if necessary to make the cherry pulp slightly sweet.
Return the sieved cherry pulp and juice to the pan and warm until slightly higher than blood temperature.
Squeeze excess water from the gelatine leaves and stir into the cherry pulp; they should dissolve quickly.
* * *
Marzipan
Combine the almonds, sugar and water in a saucepan.
Stir on low heat until the sugar is dissolved, then bring to the boil and cook until the mixture until thickens to the consistency.
Take it off the heat and let it cool slightly, then stir in the almond essence.
Taste and add more almond essence if desired.
* * *
Custard
Mix the cornflour with a bit of the cold milk to form a smooth liquid.
Combine the milk, cornflour mixture and cream with the sugar in a saucepan.
Split the vanilla bean in half lengthways and scrape out the seeds; add the pod and seeds to the pan.
Stirring continuously, bring the mixture to a low simmer and cook until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
Taste and add more sugar if desired.
Strain to remove the vanilla pod and any stray lumps that may have formed.
* * *
To assemble
When assembling the trifle, allow each layer to set slightly before adding the next layer.
Crumble sponge cake into the bottom of each glass—for individual trifles you need about ½ of a cup of cake each, for shot glasses about 1 tablespoon—and sprinkle with some of the cherry pulp (around ¼ cup for individual trifles, about ½ a tablespoon for shot glasses). The cake should be wet but not soaking; add more cake or cherry liquid as required.
Press the cake and jelly mixture down with the back of a spoon to even the surface, and put the glasses in the fridge to firm up a little.
Spoon about half the custard over the cake, then top the custard with the remainder of the cherry jelly, followed by the marzipan, then finally with the last of the custard on top.
Refrigerate until firm, at least a couple of hours but
preferably overnight.
An extract from the novella set between A TRIFLE DEAD and DROWNED VANILLA in the Café La Femme series
* * *
THE BLACKMAIL BLEND

It's practically inhumane not to stop for tea.
Gail Carriger
* * *
I heard him coming and didn’t bother to look up. His soft shoes moved around my kitchen, and I heard the click of the hot water jug, the slight rattle of teacups.
Helping himself. I might have objected to the presumption, but I heard the sound of two cups being laid out, and I’ll forgive many things of a bloke who makes me a cup of tea.
If he could bake, I’d probably have married him by now, but a girl’s got to have her standards.
It was Sunday, and Café La Femme was closed. I lay full length across the top of the café counter, reading my third Regency romance of the day while a presumptuous Scotsman took advantage of my kitchen, and I let him.
Meanwhile, Arabella danced with a devilish duke.
‘I remember ye dinnae care fer Earl Grey,’ said Stewart as he bumped his way through the swinging door from the kitchen with one mug and one teacup with a proper saucer. ‘This was in the canister marked ‘Tabitha Breakfast’, which seemed like a clue.’
We hadn’t seen each other in a week, but we didn’t bother with extraneous words—hello, how’ve you been. We cut straight to the banter and the exchange of comforting hot drinks.
I stretched my hand out for the teacup, which rattled only slightly on its saucer as I set it down beside me, not taking my eyes off the page. ‘Last chapter.’
‘Spoiler warnin’: they lived happily e’er after.’
‘You’re hilarious.’ I gave up on th
e book, though, letting it fall closed as I sat up, cross-legged on the counter, and inhaled from the cup. My favourite blend: green and black tea together with fruits and chrysanthemum. The fragrance makes me feel at home no matter where I am.
‘Smells a’right,’ said Stewart, peering at his own mug. He sat at a table some distance from me, under the mural of Wonder Woman, various Bond girls, and other vital icons of feminine glamour. I watched him swig the tea slowly and thoughtfully, like he was testing a glass of wine. ‘Mango?’ he said finally.
‘And peach.’
‘No’ bad. Wha’s it called?’
I smiled behind my mug. ‘Tabitha.’
‘Ye hae yer own tea?’
‘All great brands have to start somewhere. Was Earl Grey named after a real earl?’
‘I ’spect so.’
‘You don’t know?’ I returned to my book. ‘And here I thought you were an expert on earls. And dukes … the occasional marquess, but they’re not as popular as dukes, are they?’
Stewart’s brows drew together just a bit. He never liked me talking about his books. It was almost as if he expected me to constantly make fun of him for making a living writing romance novels. Well okay, I did occasionally, but only when I ran out of other things to make fun of him about. ‘Reading my books again, Tabitha?’
‘Hardly at all. I can’t rely on you for Regency. Your alter ego Diana Glass has only written a couple. You’re letting the side down.’
He shrugged. ‘Couldnae get my head around the historicals, tae be honest. The clothes are complicated.’