by Karen Clarke
‘Freya’s done her sums,’ said Don, though I doubted this was true. She’d mostly skipped maths lessons at school. ‘She thinks ice cream makes more sense.’
‘Oh, and I’ll be here as the face of Two Scoops.’ Freya turned her wide blue eyes on me, supposedly to convey sincerity. ‘I just won’t be doing, you know,’ any work, ‘any of the ice-cream making stuff. And Don’s people will take care of the boring admin, so really, it’ll be a walk in the park.’ Freya cocked her head, her smile patronising. ‘It was really moving, the way you talked on telly about not knowing your dad.’ She moved her hand to her throat. ‘I felt really sad at you having to give up your job here, you were so lovely to me when we were children.’ I’d tried, it just hadn’t been reciprocated. ‘And then you had to leave college to help your mum. It’s awful she still can’t go out much and relies on you to…’ She let the words drift off, a look of sugary sympathy all over her smug face.
The tap dripped and the fridge gave a shudder, as if it had heard enough. Sounds of laughter drifted through, and I wished I hadn’t answered Nathan’s call.
On cue, he cleared his throat. ‘You know the local shop sells ice cream and there’s a van down by the cove all summer?’ I could have hugged him for remembering. ‘There’d be a lot of competition with an ice-cream parlour.’
‘I thought you were here to sell the place?’ Freya gave him the contemptuous look she probably reserved for anyone earning less than a million a year. ‘Why do you care whether we’re selling bread, ice cream, or sex toys?’ The look she gave Don made my stomach roll. He didn’t seem to have noticed, as he was watching me with an inscrutable expression.
‘What my wife is trying to say is, she’d love you to run it, which is surely a good thing.’ I couldn’t think of a way to argue with that, even though every cell in my body was rejecting his words.
‘And it’s not just about making money, Mr Walsh,’ Freya said. ‘I have enough of that already. Obviously we’re very lucky,’ she added, in an over-earnest way, perhaps not wanting to reveal her true colours to Don. It wasn’t hard to see that she’d needed a father figure to replace her own dad, and I would have felt sorry for her if she didn’t make it so hard. ‘Though Don has worked very hard for his money, and does a lot of good work with it,’ she added, hooking her arm through his. He’d owned a chain of travel agencies, selling them before the bubble burst and people started booking holidays online, and had made some clever investments, which had put him on the super-rich list. We’d looked him up after Kath told us Freya was marrying a billionaire.
‘So, what do you say?’ Don gave me a pleasant, white-toothed smile. ‘You’ll get a generous salary, and as much time off as you need – once the ice cream’s been made, of course. Freya tells me you’re getting married yourself, in the not too distant future.’
The Salcombe grapevine was clearly in full working order. I was just surprised that Freya was remotely interested in what I was doing. Probably checking I was still worse off than she was.
‘Well, she was getting married.’ Freya had adopted a tone of bouncy intrigue that didn’t suit her. ‘After what you said on that show, I wouldn’t be surprised if your chap has got the right hump with you.’
‘I should think her chap is very proud of her.’ Nathan’s voice was ripe with disgust. ‘Miss Larson’s passionate about the bakery, and that really came across.’
So, he had watched it.
‘Oh, of course,’ Freya, back-pedalled. ‘I just meant not everyone would be so understanding if their fiancée was having second thoughts about getting married on national television.’
‘I was not having second thoughts,’ I said and, in the ensuing silence, I had a clear vision of what it would be like to work with Freya. There’d be constant sniping and undermining, because she always felt threatened by other women, and even if she got bored and stopped turning up – which I had no doubt she would – the thought of making ice cream wasn’t really appealing. Would it be better to wait for Tamsin to go off to university in September and ask the Maitlands if I could work her hours at the café? At least I’d be working for people I actually liked.
Then again… I wasn’t sure I could bear to leave the building entirely in Freya’s hands. It was as if something was urging me to stay – to at least keep an eye on the place; keep it safe. Mr Moseley? Nonsense. I didn’t believe in spirits, and yet…
Aware of Nathan at my side, I gave him a little smile to show I was grateful for his support. Don and Freya were looking at me, Don’s expression impenetrable, Freya’s edging towards cocky.
‘Thanks for the offer.’ I forced the shakiness from my voice. ‘I’ll think about it.’
Chapter Eleven
I woke the following morning from a tangled dream, and mooched around the kitchen feeling lost. I couldn’t face going to the bakery, knowing it would soon belong to Freya, and had made a fruit cake and a batch of ginger cookies for the café the night before, glad of something to do.
It had felt odd being at home alone, but not unpleasant. No Sam dashing in from work and bolting his dinner, before whizzing off to the cycling club or gym, returning to join me on the sofa in front of Netflix (if he wasn’t too tired). His recent fixation had been a series set in the eighties, featuring a dark, alternate world called the Upside Down, which I’d watched through my fingers, as I was easily spooked.
Once I’d finished baking, I watered the garden – Sam would hate to come back to find everything wilting – then changed into a pair of baggy pyjamas Sam referred to as my passion-killers. I’d curled up in the granddad chair – so called because it had belonged to Sam’s grandfather – where I’d tried to phone Mum, worried that I hadn’t heard from her since I’d left the bakery the day before, when she’d texted to say she was fine.
She didn’t answer my call.
In the end, I’d tried to watch as many episodes of Friends as it would take to make me sleepy, but even their antics couldn’t distract me. Neither did an email from Alice Denby, thanking me again for being on the show, which had drawn great viewing figures. If I hadn’t agreed to appear on the stupid show, I’d have been in touch with Sam, hearing all about his first day in Paris. Or would I? He’d more likely be out celebrating with the group, not giving me a second thought. I’d begun to wonder whether he had a point, and the fallout from being on TV was a sign that I should be concentrating on what was really important: our relationship and our wedding.
Or maybe it was a sign that Sam and I weren’t meant to be. The treacherous thought had worked its way in as I stared at the television, where Joey was promising not to tell anyone that Chandler and Monica were sleeping together. It wasn’t the first time I’d had doubts. A couple of years earlier, I’d come home early and caught Sam staring at a photo on Facebook, and when I’d asked who the people in it were, he’d said too casually, ‘Oh, I just wondered what some of the gang from uni were up to these days,’ and I’d known, deep in my bones, he’d been looking for Andrea. And when I’d failed to get pregnant after our first few tries, I’d seen it as a sign – though of what, I wasn’t sure. Both times the feelings had been swiftly banished, put down to a lingering jealousy (the photo) and raging hormones (my period starting).
This time though, the thought had wormed its way into my dreams, and however much I’d tried to shake it off, I couldn’t dislodge the queasy feeling that instead of planning a wedding, we should be considering couple counselling.
Ugh. My mind rejected the idea. Sam would never agree and anyway, all relationships had blips, and Sam’s and mine weren’t that bad. It wasn’t as if we even argued very often, which was probably why I’d taken the scene at his parents’ to heart. He’d merely expressed his opinion, which he was perfectly entitled to do without me getting all ‘female’ about it, as his friend Chris would have said.
Sighing away the heaviness around my heart, I decided it was time to stop mooching and eating toast, and pay Mum a visit. I wanted to see for myself how she w
as, and to check that she didn’t need a doctor. I wasn’t due at the café until after lunch, but could drop off my cakes there after seeing her, and maybe head to the beach for a while; have a think about some of Beverley’s wedding suggestions, to show I was taking them seriously. She’d texted me a link to a website that offered ‘quirky’ wedding favours such as adult colouring books of Benedict Cumberbatch’s face, and bottles of ‘Happy Ever After’ fairy dust, with the question Wouldn’t these be fun?!
Maybe there was something wrong with me that my instinctive response was no.
Drying my hair after a quick shower, wishing I’d done the same yesterday before rushing out, my gaze fell on the well-thumbed itinerary at Sam’s side of the bed. Switching off the hairdryer, I picked up the typed printout and read,
Day 2. Early start to negotiate Paris before rush hour, heading from the hotel towards the Eiffel Tower, where we’ll have the obligatory group photo! Our route will take us along the boulevards of the capital’s Left Bank as we ride south-east, following the course of the River Seine…
Group photo. Surely it would be up on the Facebook page by now, as Sam had planned to post pictures along the route to chart their progress.
Unplugging my phone from its charger, I sat on the bed and logged on, which took a few goes as I’d forgotten my password and had to request a reminder, then make up a new one which I promptly forgot, and had to request another.
The first thing to appear on my timeline was a filtered photo of Freya, reclining on a lounger by her dazzling swimming pool, her long, tanned legs drawn up to support baby Milo, and to show off the heart-shaped tattoo just visible on her ankle. Milo was well covered in a matching white onesie and sunhat, but Freya’s plunging swimsuit revealed more bronzed flesh than it covered. She was peeking at the camera over outsized sunglasses, under the words Summer babies are happy babies! Just loving being a mom!
Someone called Babs had written underneath Oh my god, hun, he’s adorable, and how gorgeous do you look? Can’t believe you’ve got your beach-bod back already. Took me two years to shift the baby weight *sad face*
I was tempted to post that Freya’s ‘mom’ and her ‘mom’s’ best friend looked after the baby every day, so Freya had plenty time to spend her husband’s hard-earned money on looking ‘gorgeous’. Instead, I unfriended her. I shouldn’t have accepted her request in the first place. She’d only wanted to show off. I was surprised she hadn’t mentioned Two Scoops, and wondered whether Lester had accepted Don Williams’s offer yet. He’d probably snatched his hand off.
Switching my mind away, I found the Pedal Pushers page and, sure enough, at 8.30 a.m. Sam had linked to the photo of the twenty-strong group, posed in front of a sun-drenched Eiffel Tower, each of them standing beside a shiny bicycle, wearing adrenaline spiked grins. They looked like alien-bugs in their helmets, sun-goggles, and bright colours, and I recognised Sam right away from his royal-blue top and super-tight shorts. He’d removed his goggles and his head was inclined towards the only woman, as though he’d been in the middle of saying something to her.
I hadn’t realised there were any women in the group, and scanned the names underneath. He’d never mentioned a female member, and none of the names gave a clue. Chris, Jack, Iain, Dom, George… I ran through all twenty, twice. I’d met several of them at some point, and knew Chris well because he’d been Sam’s best friend since school, but there’d been no mention of a woman. George was the newest member. I remembered he’d joined in February, and there’d been some debate about whether there was enough time for him to train for the challenge. George. It could be short for Georgina. Hadn’t Sam once mentioned that Chris was impressed with George’s thighs because they were stronger than his? I hadn’t taken much notice at the time, and knew instinctively he’d have assumed I would think George was male.
Heart thumping, I scrolled down all the pictures I’d missed, because I rarely ventured on Facebook, and saw that ‘George’ featured in several of them. In one, she was holding up a gold trophy, her arm looped around Sam’s neck, her face radiant with laughter. She was ruddy-cheeked with wild, auburn hair and sparkly blue eyes, and Sam was giving her an openly appreciative look.
I studied the picture for a full minute, waiting for the jealousy to kick in, like it had when I’d seen him looking at the picture of his uni friends, knowing he was thinking of Andrea, but the feeling I now had wasn’t jealousy, it was closer to… resignation? Déjà vu, even. I’ve been here before.
Sam and I needed to talk. Properly. But now wasn’t the time.
I flung my phone in my bag, got dressed, and left the house.
Mum didn’t answer my knock, and when I tried my key in the door it wouldn’t budge. The safety catch inside must be on.
Shielding my eyes, I stepped out of the porch and peered up at her bedroom window. The curtains were drawn, which meant she must still be in bed. I felt a creep of unease. She must be really unwell. Despite working from home, Mum was usually in front of her computer by nine, dressed as if for the office, with a cup of tea and morning television or the radio playing quietly in the background.
Should I phone, to check she was still alive?
Moving round the back of the house, I looked through the living-room window. It was hard to see properly through the slatted blinds, but I could just make out a champagne flute on the dining table, and tried to see if there was another. Mum didn’t drink alone, but Kath had given up the ‘lady petrol’ so why the champagne flute? And why would Mum be drinking if she was ill?
Maybe she hadn’t been drinking champagne, but had merely used the glass for a drink of water. I dug my phone out of my bag and rang her number.
‘Hello?’
Oh god, she did sound rough. All throaty and sleepy, or as if she’d just had a coughing fit. ‘Sorry to disturb you, Mum. I’m outside.’
‘Meg, is that you?’ She sounded so alarmed, I pulled my phone from my ear and stared at it.
‘Of course it’s me. I’m worried, Mum. Can I come in?’
‘NO!’ she yelled, then coughed. ‘I told you, Meg, I’m not feeling very well.’
‘I know you did, but I’m not worried about catching whatever it is you’ve got, I’d probably have got it by now, anyway. Let me in, and I’ll do a bit of tidying up and make you something to eat before I go to work.’
She’d always looked after me when I was unwell, it would be nice to do the same for her, and would hopefully stop Sam, the wedding, the bakery, Nathan, and Freya from churning around in my mind on a loop. Not that thinking about Nathan was tricky. In a way, he was the one bright spot in the last few days; the way he’d leapt to my defence in front of Freya, and followed me out of the bakery to check that I was OK before I’d driven off, watching until I’d rounded the corner. ‘Mum?’
‘Meg, I’m fine, I just need to sleep it off, please don’t worry.’
Still husky-voiced, there was something else in her tone I couldn’t decipher.
‘Mum, this hasn’t got anything to do with me being on that show, has it?’
The little silence at the other end, made my heart plunge. ‘It has, hasn’t it? Mum, I can’t tell you how sorry—’
‘Meg, sweetheart, you’ve got it all wrong.’ There was a rustling sound, as though she was sitting up in bed. ‘There’s nothing to worry about, I promise, just… give me some time.’ The huskiness had left her voice, though she still sounded a bit off – not like her usual self.
‘How much time?’ I pressed my forehead to the window again. Something wasn’t right about the room, but I couldn’t think what – something out of place, but it was hard to tell with Mum’s collectibles on every surface.
A thought hit me sideways. What if someone had broken in and tried to steal her valuables, and she’d interrupted them and now they were holding her hostage? Lowering my voice, I said, ‘Mum, you’re not being held against your will, are you?’
‘Against my will?’ Mum’s laugh was a touch hysterical. ‘I’m defi
nitely not being held against my will, love.’
‘And you definitely don’t feel like getting out of bed and letting me in?’
‘Oh, Meg, you’re so sweet, but really… I’m going to be fine. Everything’s going to be OK.’
Wow, she sounded really emotional now, but flu could muddle your emotions. I’d had it in my teens, and in-between bouts of painful coughing had been a sobbing mess. ‘And you’re sure it’s got nothing to do with me?’
‘Nothing at all.’ Her voice was starting to sound strained. ‘It’s just something I have to deal with alone.’
Odd way to put it. ‘What about work?’
‘Hmm? Oh, I’m up to date with this month’s accounts, so nothing to worry about there.’
I frowned. For a second, she’d sounded as though she didn’t know what I was talking about, but again that was probably the flu.
‘You seemed OK, I mean health-wise, last Friday.’
‘Have you heard from Sam?’
Neat change of subject. ‘He’s on the road, having a great time.’ Now I sounded overly bright, but where normally she’d demand to know what was wrong, she merely said, ‘That’s lovely, Meg. I’ll see you very, very soon.’
‘Oh, OK. Love you.’
‘Love you, too. So much.’
I hung up, feeling like I’d been fobbed off, and jumped when I heard Kath’s muffled voice from her garden next door. ‘She all right, your mum? I haven’t seen her around for a couple of days.’
I turned to see Kath hanging out baby clothes, a plastic peg in her mouth. ‘No, she’s been hit with this flu virus.’
Kath nodded, clipping the peg to a tiny, lemon bootee on the washing line. ‘Poor love. Maybe she caught it from that visitor of hers on Saturday afternoon.’