‘And you’re going for traditional white icing?’ Minty wanted to know. ‘Yes? Nothing that will clash with the pastels?’ She was peering at the kitchen counter behind them.
‘You just leave it to us,’ Mr Crawley said as gently as he could, his Borders accent helping to soften the urgency as he rose and made his way to the kitchen to wash his hands.
‘Very well. I’ll finalise the table plans and send them over to you,’ Minty told Jude.
‘Table plans? There’s no need. It’s just a buffet. Our friends can choose where they sit.’
Minty only blinked.
Behind her, Jude heard her dad reorganising the oven shelves to accommodate the cake pans. ‘Better go,’ she told the screen, apologetically.
Minty ended the call, saying she had to get to the Siren anyway to make sure the champagne was on its way up to the Big House cellars, like Finan and Bella had promised.
‘You mean Prosecco?’ Jude said, alarmed, worrying about the budget, but Minty’s screen went blank.
‘She’s quite the organiser,’ Mr Crawley said, tying his apron, which readCrawley and Son, Bakersacross the pocket. He’d brought three of them from home.
‘Hmm, it’s possible a person can betooorganised,’ Jude replied, joining her parents around the stove.
In a kitchen, Jude’s parents really came into their own, having run the family bakery for near-on thirty years before they sold the building to developers and retired early off the money.
Jude drew her grandfather’s recipe book from its spot on the shelf, turning to his handwritten instructions for a three-layer celebration cake. She’d never baked it before, but how hard could it be?
‘You read it,’ her dad said, and all three bent their heads over the familiar words written down so long ago, back when Jude’s grandfather was handing the business over to his son. Until then, the recipes had all lived in his memory.
‘A fruit cake is almost impossible to get wrong,’ read Jude. ‘As long as there’s plenty fruit and booze and it’s stirred with love, you’ve got a recipe for a smashing celebration. For good luck, make sure everyone on the premises mixes the cake in turn,especiallyif the cake is intended for a wedding.’
It was all coming back to her now. Her mum and dad, who always shared the task of making the wedding cakes, would call to Jude and her gran in the flat above the bakery to come down and ‘stir for luck’.
Her dad set to work zesting oranges while her mum prepared the dry ingredients, and the bride-to-be tumbled the port-soaked currants into a bowl.
Crawley and Son cakes must have been cut at thousands of weddings over the three decades her parents ran her grandad’s bakery. There was no way all of those weddings had ended in good fortune; a third of them were probably divorced by now. Even though she told herself it was just a superstition, Jude nonetheless wished Elliot was there to help stir the mixture.
Minty’s well-meaning wedding planning was beginning to make her feel nervous. Nothing was likely to go wrong, not if Minty had anything to do with it. Only, the wedding had grown from a small, informal ceremony for their loved ones into a far grander affair than either of them had envisaged. If Minty would only stop now, before things got too elaborate, she’d feel calmer and more in control. Still, the wedding cake was all her responsibility, and it was going to be sweet and simple and full of love.
Her mum stopped the whir of the Magimix just as the butter and sugar formed a creamy mass and her dad stirred in the eggs and flour.
Jude had run her own small baking business from this very kitchen to supplement her university studies in book history and conserving. Books and baking were her first loves and she got the best of both worlds in her new Clove Lore life.
Jude lifted the wooden spoon, another relic brought from the Borders.
‘I’ll stir for Elliot too,’ she said.
‘Good idea,’ her mum agreed.
Each took turns folding in the boozy fruit and the mixture’s sweet vapours rose in the warm kitchen.
‘Better stir for my dad too,’ said Mr Crawley, putting his arm around his daughter.
Jude knew there’d be tears in his eyes so she didn’t look up. Her dad was the weepiest man she knew. That was where she got her softness from.
So she stirred and everyone thought of her grandfather as yet another of his wedding cakes took shape.
Chapter Eight
That afternoon, once the sand had been brushed from their feet, Joy surveyed the Borrow-A-Bookshop, where the shelves still stood entirely empty and expectant.
Radia was full of fish ’n’ chips, just like she’d wanted, and glued to the phone screen, cackling along withBingbunny, even though she’d protested at first that she was much too old for baby programmes. The respite meant it was time for Joy to get to work.
