A couple in matching tweed hats steered away from the hut with their eyes wide.
Bella burst out laughing. “Jesus, Fred, I wasn’t sleeping with high school students!”
“Neither was I.” She side-eyed her mum and laughed. “Of course, that wasn’t really the reason! It just took me a while to find someone I liked enough to want to have sex with. You know how picky I can be.”
“You didn’t miss much; men don’t really get good at sex until they reach at least their late twenties,” Bella said, glibly.
“You would know,” Fred snorted.
Bella looked down and picked at the edges of her fingerless gloves. “I’d hoped that being so open about things in that regard would ensure you never had to feel the kind of inherited guilt that I did around sex. I always imagined that once you reached your teens, we’d be chatting about the people we were seeing as though we were mates.” She frowned. “But it didn’t happen that way.”
“I didn’t want you to be my mate, Mum, I wanted you to be my parent. You know, tell me off for not doing my homework, maybe ground me occasionally.”
“I know.” Bella’s voice was small.
Fred sighed. “It wasn’t all bad,” she said finally.
“Oh, well, that’s something. You can pop that on my gravestone. Here lies Bella Hallow-Hart, she wasn’t all bad.”
“You were the most fun mum at the school gates,” Fred said. “I was always very proud about that.”
“Read: irresponsible, pushover.”
“And you always did the voices when you read me stories.”
“Frustrated actress,” Bella responded, drolly.
“And you gave the best hugs of anyone, ever.” Fred smiled at her mum. “Still do.”
Bella smiled back, putting her arm around Fred and pulling her close into her side, kissing the top of her head. “I’ll take that one and put it in the bank.”
The wind blowing in through the hatch had grown evencolder now that night was settling into place, and it was no match for the portable heater doing its best on the floor of the hut. Fred stayed contentedly in her mum’s embrace until a flurry of harried customers, desperate to purchase last-minute items before the market closed for the night, descended on them. Then she helped to take payments and pack their boxes into the stiff paper bags with the Hallow-Hart insignia on the side. She knew that the aunts would have something hearty on the stove, ready for their return, and a sense of warm gratitude flowed through her…either that, or she was in the late stages of hypothermia.
10
For the next few evenings,it was all hands on deck in the cracker workshop. Sales had been going remarkably well at the market, and two of the independent shops they supplied—one in St. Ives and one in Little Beck Foss—had run out of stock and put in last-minute emergency orders. Fred was glad to be able to help but she couldn’t help wondering if it was this busy every year, and if so, how did they manage when it was only the three of them? An unpleasant twinge of guilt twisted in her stomach.
Making crackers with her mum and aunts felt good, a little too good. She had remembered—to her own dismay—how much she enjoyed working with them. Remembered, too, the steady precision required to make the perfect cracker and, as each box was filled, the satisfaction of knowing the hands that had crafted the gifts inside and the papers they were wrapped in.
Over the last decade, she had forcibly stuffed all this knowledge to the back of her mind in order to persevere inforging a life outside of Pine Bluff. She had always believed that staying here and joining the family business would somehow rob her of the chance to carve out her own niche in the world. As if she was copping out of making it on her own. She had never wanted to be accused of simply riding on her family’s coattails. Her mum had always said that if there was a hard way to do something, Fred would find it; she’d been right.
But she was here now, and she was seeing things with, if not new, then certainly wiser and less prideful eyes. The family business needed help, and she was in a position to give it. At least she would feel as though she was earning her keep while she was here. With that in mind, she put her name down on the family rota to take her fair share of shifts in the hut. The market would be running seven days a week for the next few weeks, and Bella had fixed a whiteboard to the kitchen door mapped out with who would do what and when. Despite their protestations, she had arranged it so that the aunts never spent more than two hours in the hut at a time and made sure that all of them had two days off a week. Her mum, of course, put herself down for more shifts than anyone else, insisting that she “simply loved the atmosphere,” but Fred knew that it had far more to do with not wanting to put pressure on her. She waited until her mum was in bed one night and then rejigged the rota, scribbling out her mum’s name and replacing it with her own. When Bella came down to breakfast in the morning and saw it, she didn’t say anything, she just smiled happily, and Fred felt it like the sun on her face.
She and Warren had been messaging back and forth, and it was nice to have someone find her interesting after so long feeling inadequate. Sometimes she filled in gaps in his local knowledge for his article about the Christmas market, or they talked about how he might approach the foodie piece he wanted to send his editor, and sometimes their chats were a bit flirty. A small part of her wondered if she was making such an effort with Warren because no one had paid her any attention in a long while and her self-esteem had taken some knocks, but she shushed that part.
On Wednesday, Fred took the early shift at the market and when the aunts came to take over at two o’ clock, she decided she would go and find Liam. Her mum had seen him almost daily since he’d arrived, but thus far Fred had missed him. He was coming to the house for dinner on Friday evening, and she wanted to get the awkwardness out of the way over not having seen him since Claire had passed.
“Oh, that’s lovely, dear,” said Aunt Cam, settling herself into one of the two moon chairs Fred had set out for them. They couldn’t see over the hatch when seated but they each wore a green, stiffly pointed Santa’s elf hat with a bell, so shoppers could see the hatch was attended. “He’ll be so pleased to see you,” Aunt Cam went on.
“Right, young lady, off ye bugger,” said Aunt Aggie, picking up her crochet hook and starting a new granny square.
“Are you warm enough? It’s due to get even colder this afternoon.”
“Oh, we’ll be fine, dear,” replied Aunt Cam, pulling a Thermos out of her patchwork bag and shaking it. “I madeus up some hot chocolate with plenty of brandy to keep us going.”
“Alcohol o’ clock again already, is it?” Fred asked, giving a sideways smile.
Cam tittered gently. “Silly goose, brandy doesn’t count, it’s medicinal.”
