‘But you wouldn’t go back, would you?’
‘I don’t miss the hurricanes – that’s for sure,’ she said with a wry grin, ‘and I’m more British than anything else. No, cold or not, I’m happy enough in England. I’ve been here since I was five, after all, and I hardly know anything else.’
‘It must be lovely having such a gorgeous place to visit when you go to see family.’
‘I wouldn’t know; it takes me so long to get round to all the family, I hardly see any of the islands! I suppose it is though.’ She nodded at the vase Cathy was carrying. ‘Be a darling and straighten those out a bit, would you? They look like they’re having a fight in there.’
Cathy nodded and then set it down. ‘Talking of baking, I’m going to bake some cakes for the coffee morning at St Cuthbert’s next week.’
‘Oh yes, I had a leaflet through about that. It’s for cancer research, right?’
‘Yes.’
Fleur nodded. ‘You should make those gorgeous red velvet cupcakes you brought in last week – they’d go down well.’
‘I thought about those too. I’ll probably make a few different things – what do you reckon?’
‘Everything you bake would get a thumbs up I would imagine.’
‘I hope so…’ Cathy paused. ‘I wondered if you might come with me.’
Fleur reached for a pair of scissors with a frown. ‘To the coffee morning?’
Cathy nodded.
‘What for?’
‘I don’t know… I thought it might be fun.’
‘I’m sure it would but I’ll be here, won’t I?’
‘But couldn’t the Saturday girl… Jade, is it? Couldn’t she cover for an hour? Didn’t you say earlier she’d be off college that day?’
‘I also said she’d be off college all that week; she’ll be in Corfu – remember?’ Fleur said with a half laugh. ‘I think someone needs to go back to bed and start again this morning.’
‘Oh.’ Cathy smiled and twisted a gerbera so that its head faced the same way as all the others. The vase looked like a sunny little choir in the middle of the drab wintry building, and Cathy thought vaguely that Fleur was right – they would bring customers over to have a closer look because their little orange faces couldn’t fail to cheer. ‘I think I do – I clean forgot about that bit. Must have gone in one ear and out the other.’
‘Don’t worry about it, love. But I’m sorry I won’t be able to come.’
‘That’s OK. Ignore me; I was being silly.’
‘It won’t stop you from going, will it?’
‘No… of course not.’
Cathy forced a smile. It wasn’t that she was particularly shy, but sometimes social situations could overwhelm her, particularly when she was faced with lots of new people at once, and for some strange reason she had become particularly sensitive to this since her mum died. She could only imagine that it was perhaps because her world had changed so drastically now that she was on her own and it had made her so much less certain of herself than she used to be. Or perhaps it was because she had nobody to fall back on in the same way she did when her mum was around; even though her mum was physically disabled she’d always been able to offer moral support, encouragement and love whenever Cathy had needed it.
‘It’ll do you good,’ Fleur said with a shrewd look.
‘I’m alright, you know.’
‘I know,’ Fleur replied with very deliberate carelessness. ‘But even so. And they’ll love your baking.’
‘You think so?’
Fleur laughed. ‘You’ve tasted your cakes, right?’
Cathy’s smile was genuine now. ‘I know, but I don’t think… I mean, they’re quite nice, I suppose, but I don’t think they’re all that special, and if they are then it’s down to what Mum taught me, not any talent I have.’
‘Honestly, accept a bit of praise from time to time,’ Fleur said with the barest edge of impatience in her tone. ‘Take it where it’s due – it wouldn’t kill you to feel good about yourself for once.’
Before Cathy had the chance to think of the right reply Fleur was across the stall greeting a customer she’d just spotted approaching. ‘Alright, love, come to pick up that birthday arrangement?’
Cathy left them to it. Her gaze caught that of the woman on the cake stall across the aisle and she gave her a guilty smile. Cathy would never admit it but her own cakes were pretty good, and perhaps they were even better than theirs, as Fleur kept saying. Hopefully the people at the coffee morning would think so too.
Three
Though Cathy had some recollections of attending church services at St Cuthbert’s with her dad, she couldn’t recall ever being inside the adjoining church hall. Those dim memories (along with the desire to do some good and share her baking) were part of the reason she’d been drawn to come today, because she recalled feeling happy and content during those visits. Even if they were false memories, she’d take happy and content right now over feeling lost and lonely.
It was funny, though, because her mother had forsaken religion completely soon after Cathy’s father had died and so Cathy shouldn’t have felt any kind of pull to this place at all, but strangely, today, she did, and it was strong. If there was a God, her mum had said, then why would he make people suffer like she was forced to? Why would he or she (probably he, she said) take husbands so suddenly and before their time and curse the grieving widow with a horrible illness?
Cathy had taken a more philosophical view of things – some people were just unlucky, God or no God – but she could understand why her mum would think that way. And even though she now found herself alone with no parents and no siblings and precious little other family, she still didn’t feel like she could blame anyone, least of all someone she couldn’t see or hear or prove the existence of in any way.
The church itself was fairly standard – a dark old building of grey stone and tall, heavily leaded windows in need of some repair, just like many churches in many towns across Britain. So Cathy had walked into the more modern church hall tagged onto the back in a separate building, expecting some draughty old space with peeling window frames and paint that had been on the walls since Margaret Thatcher had been in power. But the room she was sitting in now had a pink carpet with pretty handmade rugs strewn across it, lots of squashy armchairs and a pair of huge beige sofas. All the furniture was clearly old, but it would have been expensive when new and was still quite serviceable and very comfortable.
She was fairly certain that all church halls weren’t like this, but then, she hadn’t set foot in one for a very long time, perhaps twenty years or more. Perhaps churches had cottoned on at some point in those twenty years that people didn’t want to sit in freezing old rooms being stared down on by a tatty Jesus on a dusty crucifix; no, they wanted to be in a homely room where they felt welcomed and comfortable. Or maybe it was just this one.
On her way through she’d seen another, bigger room with a wooden floor and high ceilings. The lady who’d shown her and her groaning basket of cakes in had informed her that that was where the Brownies and Scouts met weekly. Cathy had been to Brownies once. She couldn’t remember where the meeting had been held and how old she’d been when she’d tried it out, but she’d never really settled and had spent the evening longing for her mum to come and pick her up. The other girls had all known each other and seemed so much more confident and clever than her, with badges for this and that achievement crammed onto every spare inch of tunic space. They’d played some elaborate game with beanbags and a whistle and Cathy had been awful at it, and then they’d discussed at length a camping trip that Cathy wasn’t altogether sure she wanted to go on. When her mother had finally come to reclaim her, Cathy had announced that she didn’t want to go back the following week.
Balancing a chintzy cup and saucer on her lap and longing for a good solid bucket of a mug, Cathy gave a polite smile to the woman who had just spoken to her, dredging her recent memory for the woman’s name. So many had
been fired at her as she’d sat down and everyone had introduced themselves that she could hardly recall which one belonged to who – apart from Colin, who was the only man present, possibly in his seventies, with a thick head of white hair and the only person she’d ever seen in real life wearing a cravat. This was… she wanted to say Iris, but she couldn’t be certain.
‘We haven’t seen you at church before,’ the woman – possibly Iris – said. ‘We haven’t seen you at all. Don’t you go to church?’
‘I haven’t been for a long time,’ Cathy replied, dimly recalling that the last time she’d been to a church service (at a different church outside Linnetford) was probably for a family wedding when she’d have been about twelve. Her mum hadn’t wanted any religion at her funeral at all, so the service had been conducted in a forest clearing, her ashes scattered in that same forest. Some of their relatives had been horrified at the lack of tradition, which had annoyed Cathy a little because if any of them had bothered to pay the slightest bit of attention to her mum they’d have known that she was never going to take the traditional route to her final resting place. And why would she have embraced religion in death when she’d never done so in life? It would have felt like slapping her in the face, a smug dismissal of all she’d believed in, as if her daughter knew better. Cathy would never have insulted her in that way.
‘Perhaps you’d like to come now you know where we are?’ Iris said cheerfully, seemingly working on the twin assumptions that anyone who lived in these parts could somehow have missed the huge spire that rocketed into the sky, and that everyone of sound mind would want to give up all their other Sunday activities to sit inside it and hear someone drone on about kingdoms of heaven and how blessed meek people were. Cathy considered herself meek, but she hardly felt she was blessed. She didn’t feel cursed either, just somewhere in the middle – pretty much like everyone else was.
Still, Iris seemed friendly enough and that was one thing Cathy could appreciate – almost all the regular churchgoers she’d ever met had been very friendly. She certainly didn’t want to offend her, having just arrived and not even got started on the cake yet.
‘If I’m not too busy I might do,’ she said, hoping that would be enough.
Iris looked faintly stunned at the notion that anyone might be too busy to attend, but she nodded uneasily and turned to Colin.
‘You’ll be able to play organ for us this week, won’t you?’ she asked. ‘Only Mr Pettigrew still isn’t right since his bypass. Between you and me, I don’t know if he’ll ever be right again, and all that flailing around at the organ won’t do his recovery much good.’
‘I didn’t think you’d want me again after last time,’ Colin said sombrely.
‘I don’t think anyone’s going to worry about the odd wrong note,’ Iris replied.
‘It was more than the odd wrong note, Iris,’ another lady chipped in. Newly arrived, she settled into a nearby chair. ‘It was like that time Morecambe and Wise had André Previn on their show.’
‘Dora!’ Iris scolded. ‘Why would you say that?’
‘Because it’s true.’
Colin gave a wry smile. ‘Don’t worry, Iris,’ he said. ‘I know I’m terrible, but I also know you don’t have anyone else and I won’t let Dora’s frightening honesty put me off. I’ll play for you on Sunday if you need me to.’
‘You just might have to hand out ear defenders as the congregation files in,’ Dora said as she helped herself to the teapot.
‘I’d better go and buy about four pairs then,’ Iris said wearily. ‘It’s hardly a congregation these days, is it?’
‘You want to get Songs of Praise in,’ Dora said. ‘You’d have a full house then, let me tell you.’
‘Yes, but you’d also have me playing the organ,’ Colin said. ‘Songs of Praise certainly wouldn’t come back after that and neither would all the new parishioners.’
Dora let out a laugh while Iris gave a haughty sniff.
This was all very well, and Cathy was quite enjoying listening to this conversation, but she couldn’t help wondering if everyone who was going to be coming to this coffee morning was a member of the church community. Obviously, the venue was the church hall, but she’d been expecting some people a bit more like her to come – in fact, she’d been banking on it. She’d feel very out of place if it turned out she was the only person who didn’t already know everyone else.
Quite a few had arrived already, and they all seemed to know each other and were engaged in their own little conversations. Most of the people she’d seen arrive were retirement age too – or at least close – and she was starting to wonder whether she didn’t feel a little incongruous for being so young in comparison. But if anyone there thought it was odd that someone of her age had turned up, they certainly didn’t show it; in fact, quite the opposite – they seemed pleased to see her there. Cathy, on the other hand, was starting to wonder if she ought to make her excuses and leave. Perhaps this wasn’t the place for her to be today after all.
But then she looked up to see the door open and another lady arriving with carrier bags. Cathy would have put her at perhaps her late thirties, early forties. Her mid-brown hair was cut into a neat bob, with a clean grey streak framing one side of her face, and she was dressed in a fitted grey sweater, bootcut jeans and black-heeled boots that flattered what was a neat figure.
‘Hello!’ she said, giving a warm but slightly apprehensive smile to everyone in the room. It looked as if she was in the same situation as Cathy – not knowing anyone – and Cathy relaxed a little. At least she wasn’t the only person starting from scratch – or the only person under the age of sixty.
‘Welcome!’ Iris got up, apparently deciding to be the spokesperson for the whole room. ‘I see you have goodies there.’
‘Oh, just shop-bought, I’m afraid,’ the woman said. ‘I’m hopeless at baking but I know a good brand of Jaffa cake when I see one.’
‘Anything is welcome,’ Iris said. ‘We were just about to start actually.’ She placed a hand on her breastbone. ‘I’m Iris; I’m the church secretary, and treasurer and keyholder and… well, just about everything really.’ Then she proceeded to point out others. ‘This is Dora, Colin, Myrtle, Julia, Janet, Karen, Lulu and… I’m sorry, dear.’ She stopped at Cathy. ‘I’ve quite forgotten already. How rude of me.’
‘That’s OK,’ Cathy said. ‘You can’t be expected to remember everything.’
‘That’s the problem,’ Dora said. ‘She remembers nothing.’
A low snigger rolled around the room. Iris didn’t seem to notice the comment or, if she did, she didn’t seem too offended by it.
‘I’m Cathy,’ Cathy said.
The newcomer smiled. ‘I’m Erica.’ She gave the room an approving once-over. ‘I’ve never been in here before – it’s nice, isn’t it? Much cosier than I imagined.’
‘We do our best to make it welcoming,’ Iris said with obvious pride. ‘Shall I take those bags from you?’
‘Oh, lovely,’ Erica said, handing them over. ‘I hope it’s OK that I only got shop-bought cakes. I can’t bake to save my life!’
‘Anything is gratefully received,’ Iris said. ‘Whether they’re home-baked or not, we’re still doing our bit for charity, after all.’
‘Well,’ Colin said, ‘I make it eleven o’clock and I vote we get things started. If we get any latecomers, they’ll just have to take what’s left over.’
‘There’s plenty to go round,’ Dora said.
Cathy got up from her seat and went to the table where her own creations were currently stashed inside large Tupperware containers. ‘Shall I uncover everything then?’ she asked.
‘Might as well,’ Dora said.
As Erica unwrapped her offerings, she glanced across to see Cathy prise the lids from her tubs and gave a little gasp of approval.
‘Oh, I feel so ashamed now,’ she said, laughing. ‘Look at those! Mary Berry couldn’t do better.’
‘You haven’t tasted them
yet,’ Cathy said, blushing. ‘Looks could be deceiving.’
‘I doubt it,’ she replied. ‘No cake could look that good without tasting good too. And you’ve made so many!’
‘Well, I didn’t think it would be enough to be honest,’ Cathy said.
‘Did you think we were feeding the multitudes?’ Colin asked with a smile.
‘Sort of,’ Cathy replied.
She sat down without taking a cake and waited. It felt polite, somehow, to make sure everyone else took what they wanted first. Though she’d feel it improper and a bit arrogant to think that everyone would want to eat hers, secretly she couldn’t help feeling that they did look better than all the shop-bought ones and certainly better than the sorry, sunken little fairy cakes that one of the other ladies had brought in. And she didn’t think this because she believed for a minute she was better or more talented than anyone else, but because her mum’s recipes were so good that it was more or less impossible that anything baked to one of them could turn out wrong. That was all Cathy had done – followed the recipes to the virtual letter, her mum having never written anything down and Cathy having memorised them over the years. It was her mum who had been the real talent.
‘Aren’t you having anything?’ Dora asked her.
‘I just thought… Well, I was waiting for everyone else.’
‘You’ve baked them – you get first choice; to hell with this lot of scroungers.’
‘Dora!’ Iris cried, but Colin simply threw back his head and laughed.
‘Say it like it is, Dora!’
‘Nobody is scrounging!’ Iris said testily. ‘Everyone has donated and deserves their fair share.’
‘Oh, don’t be so sensitive.’ Dora waved an airy hand to dismiss Iris’s possibly misplaced outrage.
‘I’ll have a cake after all,’ Cathy said and shoved a coconut madeleine into her mouth with some haste, just so she wouldn’t have to offer an opinion on scrounging either way.
‘Oooh, I’m having one of those,’ Erica said, leaning over to help herself to one of the cakes she’d just seen Cathy eat. ‘Did you bake these too?’
Cathy's Christmas Kitchen: A heart-warming feel-good romantic comedy Page 2