The Summer Seaside Kitchen

by Jenny Colgan

  They walked on, both of them, talking through the case, and by the time they’d reached the end of the beach and turned round (Joel feeling ridiculously disappointed that it did eventually have an end, a lighthouse manning the headland), the white sky was turning the faintest of blues, promising the most beautiful day ahead.

  And by the time they’d got back to where Flora’s boots were, where they’d started, she had, reluctantly, agreed to marshal the troops while Joel went back to London, and stick to Colton like glue until the council meeting.

  ‘Breakfast?’ she said.

  Joel glanced at his watch. ‘It’s five a.m. We were still eating four hours ago, and also, by the way, it’s technically the middle of the night.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Flora. ‘Just a thought.’

  ‘Would it have to be cheese?’

  ‘No.’

  Oddly, Joel found he was actually hungry again. Something about the air, he suspected. Normally he controlled his diet the way he controlled every other aspect of his life.

  ‘Where’s open for breakfast?’

  ‘Oh, the boys will be up soon. You can come to the farm.’

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  By the time they’d picked their way up the track to the farm, the boys were indeed up and the place was buzzing. The warmth of the kitchen was delicious after the fresh morning air, the Aga and the fire turning the room cosy and fuggy.

  ‘Hey,’ said Innes, stomping across the floor in worn pyjamas and holey socks. He filled the kettle at the sink and stuck it on the stove; only then did he turn round and notice Joel standing there.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ he said.

  Joel’s coat was slightly damp, as were his expensive shoes and the bottoms of his trousers. His glasses were starting to steam up. For the first time, Flora thought he looked vulnerable.

  ‘I’m Flora’s boss, Joel Binder,’ he said quietly, sticking out his hand.

  ‘It’s five o’clock in the fricking morning,’ said Innes. ‘What kind of hours do you lawyers work?’

  ‘Not as hard as farmers,’ noted Joel.

  ‘DADDY?’ came a small but definite voice. ‘MUCH MOST NOISE, DADDY.’

  Everyone stopped as a pair of tiny feet pattered into the kitchen. Her pure white hair all mussed up, one hand rubbing her eye, the other clutching her beloved raccoon, Agot stood barefoot on the flagstone floor, squinting at everyone.

  ‘WHY NOISE, EV’BODY?’ she said fiercely.

  Joel blinked.

  ‘Why don’t I make everyone a cup of tea?’ said Flora quickly. ‘Good morning, Agot darling.’

  Agot grinned to see her, and ran into her arms.

  ‘WHO MAN, AUNT FLOWA?’

  ‘This is Joel,’ said Flora awkwardly.

  Joel gave a half-smile.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  ‘HI,’ said Agot. ‘ME AGOT.’ She turned back to Flora. ‘BEKFAST?’

  Eck loomed into the kitchen.

  ‘Dad!’ said Flora. ‘You shouldn’t be getting up for milking!’

  ‘And how am I supposed to sleep with all of you havering about in here?’

  Eck seemed to take Joel’s presence for granted, and tea was handed around.

  ‘GRAMPA!’ shouted Agot.

  ‘What is it, bairn?’

  ‘BEKFAST? SAMWIDGE?’

  Flora smiled. Agot’s favourite thing.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ frowned Eck. ‘You wouldn’t rather have a nice bowl of porridge?’

  ‘SAMWIDGE!’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said Flora. ‘Seeing as I woke everyone up, apparently, Innes, you make coffee – not everyone drinks that horrible tea slop – and I’ll make bacon sandwiches.’

  ‘YAY!’ said Agot. ‘AN’ MUSIC.’

  Innes turned the radio on to BBC Radio Gael, and Agot started swirling around the floor, her nightie streaming out behind her.

  ‘You spoil that bairn,’ said Eck as Flora went over to pull out the huge old blackened frying pan.

  ‘I bloody will,’ said Innes. ‘After what she’s been through with me and Eilidh, I’ll spoil her every day.’

  Flora fetched the bacon, simply wrapped in paper, from the cold store, while Innes brewed up coffee: good dark stuff that Flora had found, along with a cafetière, and that most of the farm boys turned their noses up at; they preferred the powdered stuff still. Agot was still dancing, and the big kitchen windows were steaming up with noise and chat and happy music.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Flora suddenly, turning to Joel. ‘Do you eat bacon?’

  Eck noticed him for the first time.

  ‘You’re not one of the hands?’

  ‘Dad, fix your glasses, for God’s sake! Before you try and milk Bramble!’

  ‘Aooo!’ agreed Bramble, lifting his head at the sound of his name.

  ‘I’m… I’m with Flora’s firm,’ said Joel. Flora looked closely at him. Was he… was he smirking? ‘And yes, don’t worry, bacon’s fine.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t it be fine?’ said Eck, and Innes told him to shut up.

  Fintan wandered in whistling, with his head up, which was extremely unusual. Innes narrowed his eyes.

  ‘What are you so cheerful about?’

  ‘Nothing,’ smiled Fintan, filling his cup. ‘Oh wow, that smells awesome. Make one for me, sis.’

  He grabbed Agot and whirled her round and she screamed and giggled.

  ‘Good morning, my gorgeous girl.’

  As he turned, he saw Joel.

  ‘Oh my goodness, did you stay the night?’

  The entire kitchen fell silent.

  ‘What?’ said Eck.

  ‘YOU HAVE SLEEPOVER?’ said Agot.

  Flora went bright red.

  ‘Of course not!’ she said.

  ‘You know this guy?’ said Innes to Fintan. ‘I thought he was working with Flora.’

  ‘He is, and shut up,’ said Flora.

  ‘You’re very red, sis,’ observed Fintan.

  ‘SHUT UP, EVERYONE! Just get out and milk the damn cows,’ said Flora. ‘Or you won’t get a sandwich.’

  They all sat down eventually round the huge table. Joel didn’t say very much. Flora thought he was horrified by their rough ways.

  In fact, although he had spent time with plenty of families as a child, he hadn’t got to know any of them well. He’d been always passed on – the smart little closed-up boy who wasn’t cute or smiley or friendly or appealing enough ever to be adopted; who was so difficult to reach; who said curious things; who beat the older children in every exam they ever sat and every book they ever read.

  By the time Dr Philippoussis had spotted his obvious fierce intelligence and found him a place in a good school with a sympathetic teacher who provided him with all the books he could read and fed his hunger for study and learning, he was a teenager, and nobody wants a teenage boy around the place, not really. He had won a scholarship to boarding school, and with a sigh of relief social services had washed its hands of him.

  He found his current situation unnerving. Flora’s family talked so much; yabbering away as they grabbed sandwiches and drank endless cups of tea. Joel kept his diet very tightly controlled; he never ate bacon sandwiches, though it had nothing to do with any religion – he’d been brought up by a ragtag of different sects: Evangelicals, Baptists, atheists, and had taken nothing from any of it. No, it was because they were made up of carbs and fat, two things he had attempted to banish from his diet for ever, to keep himself fit and healthy and one step ahead of the baying pack he somehow always felt right on his heels. He couldn’t have told you who the baying pack was. He just always knew it was there.

  He took a tentative bite of his sandwich. That was another thing he was wary of: don’t leave your food for a second. Someone would take it. Eat when you could.

  He blinked. This kept happening. He didn’t know anything about catering or running a business. But he knew quite a lot about high-quality food: expensive client dinners; vast amounts of money spen
t at hot new restaurants. And he could tell one thing: this stuff was miles ahead. Absolutely miles. The bread might have been yesterday’s, toasted, but its astonishing qualities showed through. The crispy, salty bacon; the chipped enamel mugs of strong tea: you could sell this absolutely anywhere. Flora was going to be fine. He looked at her, effortlessly dishing up seconds to a huge, quiet boy who must be yet another brother – how many were there? This, he thought, was where she could absolutely shine.

  And as he watched the laughing, noisy, teasing clan and concentrated on his sandwich while a plethora of incomprehensible conversations about cattle feed and yields and bloody cheese went on over his head, he realised, to his surprise, looking down, that there was a small shape scrambling up onto his lap; Agot had wandered over to him completely unselfconsciously and was crawling up his leg.

  ‘Agot, get down,’ said Flora when she saw her.

  Agot pouted.

  ‘I YIKE MAN,’ she said defiantly, scattering crumbs from her sandwich all over his trousers and the floor.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Innes. ‘Agot, get down.’

  Joel had frozen. He wasn’t used to children; didn’t have the faintest clue what to do.

  ‘I’S NOT GET DOWN,’ said Agot, offering Joel a piece of her toast.

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Joel, taking the toast and putting it on the table. Everyone else visibly relaxed. Be normal, he told himself. This is completely normal. Families are totally normal. It’s you that’s weird.

  And although it was an unfamiliar sensation, it was not, he realised, at all unpleasant. The child’s chubby little legs kicked out in front of her as she made herself comfortable; she smelled nice too, of toast, and a faintly familiar shampoo, and sleep.

  ‘AHHH, SAMWIDGE,’ she said happily, taking a large bite and causing a spot of grease to land on his now basically ruined trousers. Flora winced, but when she caught Joel’s eye, she realised he was smiling.

  ‘This is,’ he said, ‘a pretty amazing sandwich.’

  He looked at Fintan.

  ‘You’re going to do this, you know. I really think you are.’

  Fintan blinked.

  ‘Thanks!’

  Joel glanced at his watch.

  ‘I have a flight to catch,’ he said.

  Flora nodded.

  ‘I know. And I’d better get to it too. Come on, Agot, let’s go put you back to bed.’

  ‘I’S NOT TIRED!’

  Joel made to stand up, and Agot immediately flung her arms around his neck.

  ‘MAN NOT GO!’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Flora. ‘Agot! Stop that!’

  ‘NOT GO BED!’

  Joel carefully disentangled Agot’s arms from round his neck and put her down on the floor. Flora watched him, feeling ludicrous at how much she wanted to do exactly what Agot had just done: throw her arms around him and see that gentle look in his eyes.

  No. She didn’t want a gentle look in his eyes. Not at all. She breathed in and out. She had to get a grip. She had to.

  ‘NO GOING TO BED!’

  No, thought Flora. None of them were.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  After that, things moved with extraordinary speed. Flora had briefly wondered, with a bittersweet pang, whether Joel would come back up to deal with the paperwork, but of course it was far beneath him.

  Within weeks, everything was organised. New equipment arrived every day, along with very stern people from the Food Health and Safety Executive, who inspected everything, demanded changes and then came back again to check them. Fintan worked day and night to get everything in the dairy regulation and utterly gleaming.

  All of Colton’s old staff were sent over to help, even as he went on a huge recruitment drive in the village, offering decent wages and flexible working at the Rock just to get everything moving. Lorna held a competition for the schoolchildren to design a logo; an extremely happy cow standing in a field with the pale sea behind it won the day. Agot scowled furiously when the triumphant child had their photo taken for the Island Times, and refused to appear alongside them, instead hurling herself on the ground and kicking her little boots against the cobblestones.

  Flora got in touch with some of the girls she’d been at school with and asked them if they wanted a bit of work, of if they knew anyone who did. Which was how they got a couple of bonnie girls, Isla and Iona, back from the mainland for the summer, all cheery and ready to work.

  She also recruited Mrs Laird, who ‘did’ for the doctor and the vicar, but who was also, Fintan happened to know, the best breadmaker on the island.

  ‘There were a lot of ladies popping by for Dad,’ he told a horrified Flora. ‘She was by far the best baker, though.’

  ‘You didn’t let them do that!’

  ‘We did! They brought over a lot of frozen stews. Although we mostly just stuck to sausages.’

  ‘I wondered how we’d managed to acquire nineteen new casserole dishes.’

  ‘Hmph,’ said Fintan.

  ‘I hope you didn’t string Mrs Laird along.’

  But it was true, she did make wonderful bread, bannocks and bridies.

  Flora had them all up to the farmhouse, and together they pored over the increasingly battered recipe book.

  ‘Everything is to come from here,’ she told them. ‘Scones. Cakes. Pancakes. We’ll do two soups every day. Toasted sandwiches. Nothing too complicated. But you HAVE to follow these recipes.’

  Mrs Laird nodded.

  ‘Those are Annie’s recipes,’ she said seriously. ‘And she was the best cook I ever knew here.’

  ‘Which is high praise coming from you,’ said Flora.

  They divided up the work. Flora took pastry, as she had such a knack for it, and found it comforting to do, although she wasn’t above kneading a loaf once in a while. She and Mrs Laird took the new recruits step by step through the cakes. Iona and Isla, both fair-haired, pink-cheeked, healthy-looking girls, smiled happily. They were being paid rather better than the other island jobs were offering for the summer season.

  Everyone pitched in to clean out the shop, and the boys came down to give it a lick of paint on the inside, Innes flirting up a storm with the girls home for the summer. Fintan didn’t give them a second glance. I’ve been such an idiot, thought Flora, reminding herself that she must talk to him about it sometime. When they’d stopped teasing the great big fancy-pants London legal hotshot for being down on her hands and knees scrubbing behind a radiator.

  POP-UP they wrote on the sign outside.

  ‘Just so people know,’ Flora said. Once the council had had their vote, she was going back to London. If they wanted to carry it on afterwards, that was fine, but she wouldn’t be here.

  ‘Pop-up?’ said Mrs Laird. ‘What does that even mean?’

  ‘It means it’s temporary. That it’s only here for the summer.’

  ‘Well, just call it “summer”, then.’

  Flora shrugged. ‘All right.’

  ‘You could call it Annie’s Café,’ said Mrs Laird.

  Flora looked at her, but didn’t say anything.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she managed finally. Mrs Laird nodded kindly.

  ‘The Summer Seaside Café,’ said Isla.

  ‘It’s Mure. Everything’s seaside,’ pointed out Iona, and Isla rolled her eyes.

  ‘It’s not really a café, though,’ said Flora. ‘It’s just odds and ends from our kitchen.’

  ‘Well, call it a kitchen then,’ said Mrs Laird. ‘Then people will know they can’t order stupid things. Just normal stuff you can make at home.’

  ‘That will do,’ said Flora. And ‘The Summer Seaside Kitchen’ was stencilled on a nice white wooden sign that went well on the pink wall, and Innes and Hamish shinned up and hammered it in.

  They’d been thoroughly checked over and the shop was full to the brim with scones and cakes; Mrs Laird’s bread and Fintan’s cheese; warm pasties, and pies glistening with fruit. Looking at it, Flora couldn’t suppress an incredible feelin
g of pride as to what they’d accomplished in a few short weeks. She quelled the thought immediately. But this wasn’t just pushing paper about or running to help the lawyers, or filing or sitting in front of the computer. This felt, for the first time, as though she’d actually built something. Made something that was useful, and beautiful. It was a very unfamiliar feeling.

  ‘Wish me luck, Dad,’ Flora said as she headed out to open up on the first morning. The pink had long gone from the sky; it was a clear, beautiful day and you could see for miles. They were now well into June, when the days never ended, and the tourists had descended, exclaiming over the beauty of the landscape and the deep tranquillity of the island.

  Eck only grunted.

  ‘Seems like a will-o’-the-wisp thing to me,’ he said. ‘And I lose the boys again.’

  Innes bit his lip.

  ‘Is it still that bad?’ Flora said. ‘Surely selling the cheese will help?’

  ‘You’re going to have to sell a hell of a lot of it. We got the bill in for the calf transportation.’ The farm was taking its yearlings to Wick to sell at the market. ‘We’ll be lucky to cover our costs.’

  Flora rubbed her hands over her eyes. She didn’t know what to say.

  ‘And now you’re taking Fintan away for good.’

  They both looked at him. He was wearing a dapper new blue and white striped apron over a white T-shirt and tight jeans.

  ‘I think Fintan checked out a long time ago,’ said Flora.

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ said Innes. ‘Well, good luck. Save us a pie.’