by Alix Kelso
Keith laughed. “Janice was always a walking disaster. I should’ve seen her coming, but she was fun and bubbly and made my life brighter for a while, and so I chose to ignore the bad stuff. Worse, I chose to ignore my own suspicions that she was seeing other men. Sometimes it’s easier to hold on to the fantasy than face up to the reality. I was embarrassed when she left because I knew what people were saying about me and about her, but mostly I was embarrassed because I’d allowed myself to believe in a lie. And since then, there have been a few girlfriends, and one or two women I would’ve liked to get to know better. But nothing’s ever come of it.”
Sighing, he shifted on the bench and thought of all the women he’d loved and lost. Almost forty years of giving his heart away, only to see it shattered into pieces every time. And yet he’d always believed that one day he’d find someone who’d love him the way a man ought to be loved. Or at least, that’s what he’d believed until last year, when the last of his romantic endeavours had come to naught. He’d given up hope then.
Yet here he was, sitting on a bench on a pretty spring evening with a woman who sent shivers across his skin just by looking at him. Was he still without hope? Or was that tiny flame somehow rekindling inside the cold ashes of his heart?
Keith glanced at Chrissie. Her gaze was on him, studying him, violet flashes in a sea of green. If she looked at him that way forever, Keith thought that would be just fine.
“Do you regret any of it?” Chrissie asked quietly. “The marriages? The failed romances?”
He shook his head. “I honestly don’t. That surprises some people. It hurts when someone you adore says they don’t love you anymore. But despite getting hurt, I don’t regret anything.”
Chrissie watched him as he spoke, seeming to consider every word. “That’s brave, not letting hurtful things stop you from living your life.”
“I never thought about whether it was brave or foolish or somewhere in between. When I liked a woman and wanted to be with her, I just did something about it. I’ve been licking my wounds recently and thinking that maybe my time has passed in the romance game. But, who knows? There’s this saying I’ve always liked – you miss one hundred per cent of the shots you don’t take. I’ve been hurt, there’s no doubt about that. But I’ve had a lot of happiness, too. Maybe you don’t get one without the other.”
Her gaze held his for a long beat before she looked away. He couldn’t be sure what lay in her eyes. Just as he was about to say something more, he heard music playing and noticed that the two busker lads had turned up outside the park and were strumming their guitars.
“How lovely,” Chrissie said, smiling now, that earlier strange expression gone as she tapped her coffee cup in time to the drifting music. A breeze caught the cool evening air, sending a soft flurry of pink cherry blossom petals down around them. Keith remembered how the same thing had happened the first time he’d sat on this bench beside Chrissie. That had been just two nights ago, yet it already felt like he’d known her far longer.
The music turned sweet and melancholy. Chrissie looked at him, and it seemed to Keith like all the other city sounds melted away – the traffic; the giggling laughs from a group of young women walking along the pavement; the screech of the seagulls circling overhead. There was only the sweet music the street buskers were playing and the weight of Chrissie’s gaze upon him.
Keith looked into her eyes, into those green depths. Part of his brain said, You only met her two days ago. But another part said, So what?
He leaned closer and brushed her lips with a kiss as another flurry of cherry blossoms drifted around them like confetti. He expected her to pull away. But she didn’t, and a flutter of excitement raced through him as she shifted closer and her lips parted against his.
The kiss probably only lasted a few seconds. But they were excellent seconds, each and every one of them.
“I didn’t expect that,” Chrissie said when they moved apart.
“Really?”
A coy smile came to her lips. “Okay, maybe I expected it a little.”
Keith grinned. “What are you up to tomorrow night?”
“Probably practising my wedding cake icing, why?”
“If you can spare an hour, maybe I could buy you a drink.”
“You don’t like sneaking a boozy sip with me here in the park?”
“I like it just fine. But I’d like to be civilised and buy you an indoor drink all the same. It’s quiz night tomorrow at the pub and I’m on quizmaster duties until eight, but after that maybe we could go to that bistro place at the other end of Shaw Street?”
Chrissie smiled. “I like the sound of that.”
“Good,” Keith said and checked his watch. “I’d better get back to the pub.”
A cherry blossom petal was caught in her hair, just like the other night. This time, Keith didn’t think twice about reaching out and freeing it. She smiled when he handed it to her, and when he kissed her cheek, Chrissie slipped her hand into his, surprising him into a smile.
“Goodnight, Keith.”
At the park gates, they turned their separate ways. Keith watched her walk away, and then dug into his pocket and tossed a twenty into the busker’s open guitar case, drawing a huge smile from one of the young lads. As he walked back to his pub, he knew there was a goofy grin on his face, but he really didn’t care.
Not one bit.
17
When Chrissie woke the following morning, her first thought was of Keith’s kiss and how it had made her lips tingle.
The man did something to her, pure and simple. It had been so long since she’d been interested in a man, let alone gone out with one, she wondered if it might just be the novelty factor that was turning her all flustered.
But it wasn’t. It just wasn’t. Those three brief spells they’d spent together on the bench in Couper Park had left her wanting more. She’d felt so comfortable sitting with him, talking with him, watching the world go by out on Shaw Street. Yet she’d felt more than comfort, too. Last night, desire had begun twisting inside her long before Keith had moved close and put his lips on hers. If he hadn’t done it, she would have.
And now she’d agreed to meet him for a drink. That wasn’t just two people becoming so caught in the romance of a spring evening that they wound up kissing. Getting together for a drink was a step beyond that. Was she ready for that step? Did she want to take that step? And if she did want to take it, how could she fit a man into her life when she scarcely had time for all the other things it already contained?
Chrissie thought about these questions all morning as she and Alison tackled the housework and the laundry and the supermarket run. When Gregor returned from his Sunday morning shift and he and Alison prepared lunch in the kitchen and Poppy threw a bowl of pasta across the floor and Alison snapped at Gregor as they tried to clear it up, Chrissie pulled on her coat and sneaked out of the house.
As she walked towards her cake shop on Caledonia Road, she thought about things. Her house was currently in chaos, thanks to Alison and her family. No matter how much Chrissie loved them (and she did love them, she kept reminding herself), having three adults and a small toddler living in a two-bedroom house was not a recipe for calm and quiet. Some new mishap or disaster always seemed to be unfolding – some of them amusing, many of them not.
Alison snapping at Gregor over Poppy’s spilled pasta was unusual because the two of them normally got along so well, but this wasn’t the first time tempers had flared. It stood to reason that they must be feeling the stress of the confined living arrangements just as Chrissie was, but there’d been little sign of it until now. They were far less affectionate with one another these days, Chrissie thought. They’d always been big on kisses hello and kisses goodbye, but it was a while since Chrissie had witnessed any of those.
If Alison and Gregor were struggling in their relationship – or worse, already drifting apart – what would that mean? Chrissie had no idea.
Then there was t
he cake shop and the wedding cake competition to consider. These alone could fill every moment for the next week as she worked to fill customer orders and pull together something breathtaking for the competition. So what did all this mean for her personal life? Surely it was impossible to create a little space in her world to find out if something might be possible with Keith.
As she turned the key in the door of the shop, Chrissie thought back to that simple, quiet year she’d enjoyed alone in her house before Alison and Gregor and Poppy had descended upon her. People had commiserated with her for being lonely now her daughter was gone, but Chrissie hadn’t been lonely at all. She hadn’t told anyone that, of course, because she understood what people would have thought. An unmarried woman in her fifties who didn’t miss her daughter? She must be selfish, that woman. She must be unloving. She must be cold.
And so Chrissie had simply agreed that the house was quiet with Alison gone and that she was lonely without her. But it wasn’t true. She’d loved every minute of it.
Having the place to herself had reminded Chrissie of a brief golden time in her mid-twenties, when she’d finally had enough money to rent a tiny place of her own instead of flat-sharing. It had been bliss to live alone, doing her own thing and running her postage stamp-sized flat exactly as she pleased. She sometimes wondered how long she would’ve continued that way, had it not been for Steven Addison blasting into her life and bringing it all to an abrupt end. Once she found herself pregnant and alone, Chrissie had had no choice but to move back in with Irene so that she could continue to work and earn money. It had taken Chrissie years to save enough to buy her gorgeous little two-bed terraced house, but she’d eventually done it and made a good home for her daughter there.
But she’d always imagined that by this point in her life, she’d be living on her own terms. Maybe she was selfish after all. But that was just maternal guilt rearing its nasty head and trying to shame her. She ached for her daughter and the mess that had befallen her. Chrissie certainly hadn’t wanted to end up living back with Irene all those years ago, not after having been independent for so long, and she knew that Alison must now feel the same way. Chrissie hadn’t raised a lazy daughter, or one who’d be content squashed into her old childhood bedroom with her boyfriend and tiny daughter in tow. Alison and Gregor wanted to move out and move on, of course they did. But nevertheless, they still all found themselves trapped together in limbo.
When Chrissie finally got her little house back to herself, maybe it would be easier to think about being with a man, and maybe even being in a relationship, with the space and energy to deal with all the complications that accompanied both. Why couldn’t she have met Keith at the start of that glorious year of solitude? Perhaps everything would’ve been easier and simpler that way.
In the cake shop kitchen, Chrissie pushed the thoughts aside and set to work on a retirement cake that was due for collection on Tuesday. She’d baked it yesterday, and now wanted to make progress with the icing and decorations. The order specified lots of horticultural-themed decorations to signify the time that would now be spent by the retiree in their beloved garden. Chrissie looked forward to the creativity and had sketched out a pretty garden scene with soft flowers and garden tools and a sweet little deckchair at the centre of it all.
As she worked – shaping the petals of the sugar roses and teasing out the detailed edges of a watering can and adding a pretty patchwork throw over the back of the deckchair just because she felt like it – Chrissie enjoyed being lost in the intricate precision of it all. This was what she’d always loved about baking – if you planned it properly and knew what you were doing, things almost always turned out as anticipated. When you were new and still learning the ropes, it was inevitable that you’d burn a cake or two or make mistakes with some of the complicated techniques. But once you got the hang of it, there was comfort in the predictability of it all. There was no mystery about the combinations required – a certain type of cake demanded a certain set of ingredients, and if you supplied those and combined them in the correct way and baked them for the correct length of time, you were guaranteed to achieve your desired outcome. Once you’d mastered the key elements, you knew where you stood when it came to baking a cake.
Chrissie thought about this, and about the beauty of the baking process, as she moved away from her retirement cake and set to work on a trial sponge for the wedding cake competition. While practising the icing technique, she’d wondered if coconut sponge might be the perfect flavour to accompany her luscious and romantic design. Chrissie wanted to choose something that would set her apart from the other competitors, most of whom she expected to opt for variations on vanilla and white chocolate ganache. Coconut might just ignite the taste buds of the judges and make her cake stand out from the crowd.
Chrissie mixed the sponge ingredients, thinking about the right balance of coconut and how much would be too much. Knowing how to flavour a sponge was a high art. Not enough flavouring and you ended up serving people something bland; too much and you simply overwhelmed them. The trick, as with so much in life, was to find the sweet spot in between. As Chrissie measured the coconut essence, she hoped she’d be lucky enough to find that sweet spot first time around.
Forty minutes later, Chrissie removed the sponge from the oven and gave a wry laugh. Somehow, she had allowed the top of the cake to catch and turn much too dark. Worse, she’d made a mistake with the coconut essence, because when she tasted a slice, it was like eating a solid slab of Malibu liqueur.
No matter, she thought. At least she’d learned a few things about how not to bake this particular coconut sponge. So much for her theory about everything being predictable in baking. She decided that the ruined cake ought to stand as a lesson about what happened when you assumed you knew what you were doing.
Mixing another sponge batter, she took more care with the coconut essence, and when this second attempt finally came out of the oven, Chrissie was relieved to be able to declare it a success. There was still some tweaking required to make the flavour just a little lighter and dreamier. For now, though, things were moving in the right direction.
Returning to the retirement cake, Chrissie finished the delicate edging work that signified the herbaceous borders, and when she next glanced up at the clock, it was after six. As usual, she’d lost track of time while she worked.
Once the kitchen was cleared and the equipment washed and stored, she turned out the lights and quickly walked home. If she didn’t hurry, she’d hardly have enough time to get changed and freshened up before going over to The Crooked Thistle to meet Keith.
Looking good took a lot of effort these days, she thought with a laugh. There really wasn’t much time to lose, not if she planned to deal with the dark circles beneath her eyes and do something more with her hair than shove it into a band. When they’d met on the park bench, she’d just been her normal self. Tonight, however, she actually wanted to look good.
In fact, she realised with another laugh, she wanted to look downright amazing.
If that was even possible anymore.
18
She looked amazing – absolutely amazing.
Keith stared speechless, watching Chrissie step through the doors of The Crooked Thistle and glance around the pub. She looked so good that he didn’t notice the lager he was pulling had begun overflowing the glass and draining into the grill.
“Watch out, boss,” Aiden said as he stepped towards the vodka optics. “You’re pouring your profits away.”
Scowling at the spilled lager, Keith turned off the tap and looked back at Chrissie. As she turned to him and smiled, Keith felt his heart swell up inside his chest. She’d looked pretty these last few nights, sitting in the park with the pink flowers of the cherry blossoms making the violet in her eyes spark and sizzle. But tonight, the way she looked left Keith’s breath catching in his throat.
It wasn’t just the extra make-up, or the way she’d styled her dark hair so that it curled into the n
ape of her neck. It wasn’t the crisp white shirt she wore, or the pale yellow trousers that stopped mid-calf and showed off her ankles and the heeled sandals on her feet. It wasn’t even the hot pink polish on her toenails, although Keith had to take a deep breath when he noticed that particular detail as she walked across the pub.
It was all of those things, but something more, too. There was a grace in her movements that he hadn’t noticed before, as well as a look in her eyes that made him want to throw every punter out of his pub and lock the doors before turning his attention entirely to this woman who now stood before him.
“Am I interrupting the quiz?” Chrissie said when she reached the bar and set her bag down on an empty stool.
“We’re almost finished.” Keith waved an arm in the direction of the customers. “I’m just about to announce the quiz answers and declare the winners. Do you mind waiting for ten minutes?”
“Of course not.”
“What can I get you to drink?”
“Orange juice. I’ll save myself for our drink at the bistro.”
Serving her juice, he grinned. “You look really lovely tonight.”
Her smile once more got his heart clip-clopping. “Thank you.”
“Aren’t you going to introduce us?” Jimmy Pearson said from his bar stool, his eyes glinting.
“Aye, who’s your friend?” Big Kev said, his tone one of genuine interest in contrast to Jimmy’s default mockery.
Keith cleared his throat. “Jimmy, Kev, this is Chrissie Sullivan. Chrissie runs the cake shop where I’ve ordered your wedding cake, Kev.”
Big Kev’s eyes widened and he extended a hand towards Chrissie. “Oh, that’s brilliant! Thanks for squeezing us in at the last minute.”
“It’s a pleasure,” Chrissie said. “Are you looking forward to your big day?”
Big Kev nodded and Keith grinned to see him automatically reach for his notebook and pen.