The Bakery at Seashell Cove

by Karen Clarke

  As I pulled the car round the back of the bakery and got out, Big Steve emerged from the butcher’s, a camera slung round his neck. When he wasn’t working at the bakery at Tesco’s in Newton Abbott, he liked to indulge his love of wildlife photography. ‘No interest yet?’ he called.

  ‘’Fraid not,’ I said, thinking, as I always did, how much like a typical baker he looked with his cuddly frame and plump smiley face, topped off with a shock of curly brown hair. He’d probably looked the same as a child, and wouldn’t change much as he aged, but I guessed he was in his late thirties. ‘Sure you won’t put in an offer?’

  ‘Wish I could, believe me.’ He pushed his curls off his forehead. ‘On my salary, I can’t even afford a place of my own to live.’ He jerked his eyes to the flat above the butcher’s, where he lived with his brothers. ‘Plus,’ he added, ‘it would probably finish off the old man.’

  His dad had nearly disowned him already for not joining the family business, struggling with the fact that his youngest son was a vegetarian and loathed the sight of meat. Luckily, Steve’s brothers had taken the reins at the butcher’s shop when their father retired.

  ‘Ah well, happy baking,’ he said, moving with a light step towards the corner of the building. ‘Let me know if you’d like some loaves to pop in the window for show. I could make a few if you don’t mind me using the kitchen. The oven in my flat is a leetle bit temperamental.’

  ‘Will do,’ I said, smiling. If only Mr Moseley hadn’t been so territorial in his kitchen. Big Steve would have been a great asset, and things might not have gone downhill as Mr Moseley made fewer loaves, and his eyesight started to fail.

  As I let myself in through the back door, goosebumps peppered my arms. I’d driven the ten-minute journey from Salcombe with the car windows down, glad of my sleeveless dress, but wished now that I’d thought to bring a cardigan.

  In the past, Mr Moseley would have already been there for hours, proving the dough and baking the first batch of bread, ready for the early customers. The kitchen would have been warm and fuggy from the heat of the ovens, the door propped open in summer, and while I got busy serving, he’d start on another round, including his famous ‘doorstopper’ scones. Around nine o’clock, his long-time assistant, Martha, would arrive to take over serving so I could bake my repertoire of cakes, and mouth-watering aromas would drift from the building, drawing people like magic. Often, there’d be a queue outside, and Mr Moseley’s furrowed face would light up with satisfaction.

  ‘That’s what I’m talking about,’ he would say, before disappearing back into the steamy kitchen.

  But that was before his eyesight deteriorated, and Martha retired to Scotland, and he started buying in part-baked bread to warm up in the ovens. Business had tailed off, despite the occasional request for a celebration cake, as regulars began buying their baked goods from the nearby supermarket.

  Sighing, I pushed my hair inside one of the little white hairnets Mr Moseley had always insisted we wear, and pulled on my ‘Star Baker’ apron (Mum’s nod to my love of The Great British Bake Off), before switching on the ancient but efficient ovens.

  Everything about the small kitchen was old-fashioned (or ‘vintage’ as my friend Tilly would call it), from the original red-brick walls, to the cream-and-terracotta tiled floor and frosted glass panes in the window, but Mr Moseley had been rigorous about cleanliness, and all the equipment worked.

  After washing my hands and cleaning the surfaces, I lined up my ingredients on the wooden worktable. As well as making another cherry and almond tart, I wanted to try a chocolate and raspberry cream cake recipe I’d seen in a magazine, and adapt it by adding some lemon zest, and layering the top with toasted flakes of coconut.

  Anticipation unfurled as I weighed out the flour to make the pastry for the tart. I didn’t take any chances when I was baking for the café, though I had a knack for guessing quantities correctly, like some people could play music by ear.

  Mum said I took after my granny, who we’d lived with until I was seven, and my earliest memory was of cracking eggs into a ceramic bowl, her gentle hand guiding mine, while the scent of a baking cake still whizzed me back to Saturday mornings in her kitchen in Plymouth, cartoons blazing from the television in the living room.

  ‘Baking was her way of showing love,’ I’d heard Mum say to someone outside the church after Granny’s funeral – she’d collapsed on her way to buy eggs one winter’s morning and never came home. I hadn’t understood what Mum meant because Granny had shown love in all sorts of ways, which is why it had been so tough to accept she’d gone, and why Mum had sold the house (‘too many memories’) and taken us to Salcombe, where she’d holidayed once when her father was still alive.

  But I’d grown to understand that when someone took their first bite of something I’d baked and got that look on their face, it was as if I’d given them a gift; that a cake baked with love could lift feelings, make a day better, or even create an emotional connection.

  Sam still remembered the Maltesers-smothered chocolate cake I’d made for his sixteenth birthday, and said to this day it was the tastiest cake he’d ever eaten. I couldn’t imagine a day that didn’t feature flour. Apart from anything, it kept me focused. Devising new recipes, mixing and measuring, rolling and kneading, meant my mind stayed away from trickier issues – like the wedding, and the bakery being for sale, and Sam’s cycle challenge, which meant he’d be away for the week from Monday—

  A noise like an old-fashioned doorbell made me jump. The sound of a text arriving. Normally, I kept my phone close by, knowing Mum would be in touch, and the fact that I’d left it in my bag was a worrying indication that baking-as-meditation wasn’t working as well as it usually did.

  Sighing again – did I usually sigh this much? – I rested a sieve of raspberries on the side of the mixing bowl, dusted my hands on my apron and reached for my bag.

  This is Milo! Isn’t he adorable? X

  I stared at the attached photo of a yawning baby with wisps of black hair, and tiny fists bunched beside plump cheeks. I was worried she’d taken to snapping pictures of random newborns, until I remembered her friend Kath’s daughter had given birth a few weeks ago.

  Gorgeous x

  I replied, my stomach clenching. Mum was so desperate to be a grandmother, it was as if she thought that talking about babies and showing me pictures would magic one into my tummy.

  This could be you next year!

  Another photo, this time of Milo cradled in his mother’s arms. Freya was smiling piously, wearing full make-up and an expensive looking top, her long, salon-red hair a glossy sheet. We’d tried to be friends, because of our mothers, but hadn’t found any common ground.

  Don’t hold your breath!

  I replied, adding smiley faces to show I was being playful, wishing Sam hadn’t broadcast our intention to start a family in the first place, assuming it would be as simple as clicking his fingers.

  Mum had gone into excited overdrive, just as Sam’s mum had about the wedding. It was as if becoming a mother-in-law and grandmother had been her sole aim in life, and she had been sorely disappointed when I broke the news that we’d put starting a family on hold.

  I’ve got a new treatment for you to try!

  I groaned. This was Mum’s latest attempt to ‘help’ me conceive in the future; torpedo-sized supplements that tasted like dirt, courtesy of the health food company she worked for.

  I’ve got a cake in the oven, talk to you later! X

  I replied and switched off my phone to avoid any more pictures of Milo and his photogenic mother. Freya’s Instagram feed was probably flooded with cute, filtered images and multiple hashtags, but knowing her from old, I suspected the baby was more of an accessory than a living, breathing human being that would need taking care of for at least the next eighteen years.

  Swinging my attention away, I switched the radio on, tuning it to a station playing popular songs from the nineties, and ten minutes later slid a couple
of tins of cake mixture into the oven, and decided to make some buttery, crumbly shortbread to take home later.

  The kitchen had warmed up nicely, and I propped the door open with the mop bucket. I grabbed a bag of flaked almonds to toast for the tarts, which were cooling on the side, and hummed along to an All Saints version of ‘Lady Marmalade’. Using a chopping knife as a makeshift microphone, I did some pelvic thrusts as I belted out a couple of verses, and had just got to Voulez vous coucher avec moi… ce soir, circling my hips in time to the beat, when someone exaggeratedly cleared their throat behind me.

  I spun round, heart seizing with shock, and the knife flew out of my hand, heading straight at the man in the doorway.

  ‘Whoa!’ He ducked, shooting one arm up to shield his face as the knife landed with a clatter by his feet.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ Panting with shock, I rushed to pick it up as All Saints continued to sing Would you sleep with me tonight in French. If only I’d been caterwauling to something less suggestive.

  ‘It was actually pretty good, until the moment you tried to kill me.’

  ‘I didn’t… I wasn’t…’ I backed away, clutching the knife, knowing I must look deranged, wishing the man had been anyone but Nathan Walsh, the agent tasked with selling the Old Bakery. ‘I was about to chop some nuts,’ I fibbed, switching the radio off.

  Nathan comically widened his eyes. ‘In that case, I think I’ll stay over here.’

  ‘Not those kind of nuts.’ Flustered, I shot behind the table and tipped out the almonds, which clearly didn’t need chopping. I wished he’d let me know he was coming, so I could have… what? Nipped through to the downstairs toilet, put on some lipstick, and whipped off my hairnet and apron? Nathan Walsh held the future of the bakery in his hands, I reminded myself. Just because he’d agreed to ask Lester Moseley if I could continue using the kitchen, and had swung by a couple of times since to see how I was doing, didn’t mean he was interested in what I looked like.

  ‘I sing occasionally with friends at the Smugglers Inn,’ I said, arranging the almonds in a pile, then scattering them again, praying my cheeks didn’t look as hot as they felt. ‘Only karaoke, nothing special. Just for fun, when we’ve had a few drinks. I’m no Barbra Streisand.’ Great reference, Meg. Very current. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘It was better than my Mick Jagger.’ Nathan leaned his shoulder against the doorframe, and slid his hands in the pockets of his lightweight trousers. ‘No one gets any satisfaction when I start singing.’

  Trying to picture it, I smiled.

  He grinned back, and I felt a leap in my chest as I took in his olive-green eyes, and perfectly straight nose and teeth. His toasty tan was showcased by a cream shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and his short beard and wild brown hair added to his attractiveness.

  ‘Sounds like you need to update your act,’ I said in a sisterly tone.

  ‘More like I need to ditch it.’ His smile grew. ‘Something smells good.’

  ‘That’ll be the sponge for my chocolate and raspberry cake.’ The timer went off and I moved to the oven, fumbling a little as I stuffed my hands into oven gloves. ‘You should pop to Maitland’s Café sometime and try it.’

  I’d told him the first time we met that I worked there part-time, as well as supplying their cakes, which was why I’d hoped to carry on using the kitchen at the Old Bakery until it was sold.

  ‘Maybe I will,’ he said, and this time there was no mistaking the look in his eyes when they fastened on mine, or the flutter of excitement that erupted beneath my ribcage.

  It had happened the first time we met, when I’d dusted off my hands to show him around the bakery, and he’d told me he was fascinated by old buildings and liked to explore their history.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about writing a book on the subject, but I don’t know if there’ll be much of an audience.’

  It had surprised me how easily we’d fallen into conversation, and how much I’d enjoyed it, considering I’d planned to be cool and efficient, and when I got home that evening I’d kept replaying our conversation and found myself hoping to see him again.

  The second time he came over I’d been baking a chocolate fudge cake, and he told me the building had once been a post office run by a smuggler’s son, before it was bought by Mr Moseley’s great-grandfather and turned into a bakery.

  I hadn’t told him I already knew the bakery’s history. I’d been too fixated on his face and how animated he’d looked while talking. Like Sam, when he’d finally mastered removing a gilet from his jersey pocket, putting it on and zipping it up, whilst riding his bike no-handed without slowing down.

  Snapping back to the moment, I put down the cake tins, slipped off the oven gloves and reached into my apron pocket, where I kept my engagement ring when I was working, in case I inadvertently baked it into a cake.

  Unlocking my gaze from Nathan’s, I slipped it onto my finger and said brightly, ‘Did I tell you, I’m getting married next year?’

  Chapter Three

  ‘What’s up?’ Gwen greeted me, after I’d transferred my chocolate and raspberry cake to a wooden stand and brought it through to the counter. ‘Is that future mother-in-law of yours still trying to get you in white on your wedding day?’

  Her laughter, a series of wheezy rasps, was hard to resist. ‘I’m fine and no, she’s given up on white,’ I said, smiling. Gwen was the manager of Maitland’s Café and a massive hit with customers, who considered it a privilege to be insulted by her.

  ‘Why do you look like a bulldog chewing a nettle, then?’

  ‘I’m a bit warm, that’s all,’ I lied, failing to banish the memory of Nathan’s face after I’d told him I was getting married. Had I imagined a flash of disappointment before his smile reappeared, and was it a coincidence that he’d made his excuses to leave immediately after? More pressingly, why did it matter? I’d only been out with one man apart from Sam – after he’d dumped me for Andrea – and that had only lasted a month, so it was unlikely I’d be attracted to a virtual stranger when my wedding was only a few months away. Even if the stranger was interesting, kind, and good-looking.

  ‘I wore purple Doc Martens on me wedding day, and a studded collar wiv me dress, which weren’t white, I’ll tell you that for nuffink,’ Gwen was saying, her cockney accent bringing to mind East End gangsters and Pearly Queens. Her short, burly figure didn’t lend itself to images of swirly, girly gowns, so it wasn’t hard to imagine her as a punk bride. ‘Not that I weren’t a virgin, mind.’ Her tone turned steely, as though I’d called her a slut. ‘I saved meself for me wedding night, which weren’t easy as I’m a red-blooded woman, but I wanted me first time to be special, know what I mean?’

  It was difficult to imagine Gwen in any intimate clinch, other than a headlock. ‘Of course,’ I said faintly.

  ‘Waste of time, mind you,’ she carried on, seeming unaware – or uncaring – that a short queue of customers was agog to hear what was coming. ‘Turns out I’m allergic to whipped cream. Got a nasty rash all over, and spent most of me wedding night at an ’ospital outside Rio, trying to get diagnosed.’ Scanning the delighted faces of her audience, she said, ‘And you lot can drag your minds out of the gutter. I’m talking about the whipped cream we ’ad for dessert at the wedding reception.’

  There were shaking heads and peals of laughter, and I wondered whether Gwen was even telling the truth. I knew from her cousin, who’d worked at Maitland’s for years before retiring, that Gwen was divorced, but she’d never talked about her marriage before.

  Intrigued, I waited until she’d taken a couple of orders and turned her attention to the coffee machine. ‘How long were you married?’ I said, oddly nervous to be treading on personal territory. ‘If you don’t mind me asking.’

  ‘Long enough,’ she said, raising her voice over the hiss of the steamer. ‘In the SAS ’e was. ’E didn’t ’ave no time to be a proper ’usband so I left him. Broke ’is ’eart.’

  Unsure whether
or not she was teasing me – I couldn’t read her as well as I did most people – I said, ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Was he The One?’

  ‘Oh, I geddit.’ She aggressively sprinkled chocolate powder over two foamy coffees. ‘You’re ’aving doubts about young Samuel.’

  ‘Of course I’m not.’ I grabbed a cloth and wiped ‘Lemon and Blueberry’ off the board on the wall too vigorously, removing ‘Cake of the Day’ as well. ‘And his name’s not short for Samuel, it’s just Sam.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t want to marry Just Sam, you should tell ’im before fings go any further.’

  ‘I do want to marry him.’ I put down the cloth and turned to look at her. ‘I just wondered whether your ex was The One, even though it didn’t last.’

  ‘S’pose ’e was, being as I ’ain’t met no one else since.’ She cocked her head. ‘Wouldn’t ’ave married ’im if I didn’t love ’im, but I s’pose there were signs it wouldn’t last.’

  ‘What signs?’

  ‘’E were never there, for a start, always off on some mission, and ’e couldn’t talk about ’is job, which drove me mad.’ She seemed about to say more, then nodded at the board. ‘Better sort that out,’ she said, and I plucked some chalk from the drawer underneath the counter. ‘So everyfink’s ’unky dory with you and Just Sam?’

  ‘Everything’s fine.’ I concentrated on the chalkboard, gratified when both waiting customers ordered some chocolate and raspberry cake. It was a good job I’d made two, in the end. The café was busier than ever now the summer holidays were underway, and the weather was so glorious. Once the customers had taken their plates to the only available table, I decided to change the subject.