‘Baking?’ Joy raised an eyebrow.
Radia knew she was no baker. The closest Radia got to eating homemade cake was the Mr Kipling Angel Slices they regularly scoffed in airport lounges or during bedtime stories, in whichever Airbnb they were crashing in that night.
‘There’s a recipe book,’ Radia told her, producing the pamphlet that had been left in the kitchen for them. ‘That lady told me these recipes are her grandad’s.’
‘What lady?’
‘The one that’s getting married. I liked her.’
Joy knew when she wasn’t going to get out of something, so she opened the little booklet at the page for ‘traditional plain scones’ and then found a couple of aprons.
Izaak had stripped away all the plastic from the kitchen last night and now it gleamed white and bright, all new-smelling and clean.
A tiny part of Joy thought of her own little kitchen back in London, a brown and beige relic of the early nineties. Nothing back home was new at all, but it had been hers all the same. She thought of the simple joy of tipping red-wine bolognese into her slow cooker or the smell of pizzas baked on that sizzle stone her mum and dad had given her as a flat-warming gift. She’d loved it there. Even when she was just cooking for herself, learning how to live alone.
In the wobbly post-natal days when she couldn’t stop herself crying and the blinds had been drawn all day and she’d shoved a ball of Blu Tack into the peephole on the flat door in case Sean came spying, she’d still found a little sanctuary stirring the porridge over the hob while Radia slept in her Moses basket on the Formica kitchen island. She’d loved it because it was hers. And curiously, the knowledge that it wasstillhers – and Radia’s too – brought her a little wave of comfort now.
The café oven bleeped to signal it was now a perfect one hundred and eighty degrees, snapping her out of her thoughts. She’d been wondering why her mind was so strongly directed towards home since she’d arrived in Clove Lore. The same memories hadn’t come for her in any of the other places they’d stayed.
‘Flour, Mummy?’ Radia said, still keeping up the cuteness in case Joy changed her mind and made them order takeout instead of making food of their own.
‘Right, yes, of course. Four hundred grams of plain flour it says, so we’ll quarter that, since it’s just us.’
Radia, however, kept a hand on the bag as her mum poured it into the bowl over the new electronic scales. ‘Let’s just make a big lot, OK Mummy?’
And so, by eight o’clock Radia and Joy were both fast asleep on Joy’s bed upstairs, full of scones, jam, clotted cream and tea, with Radia’s copy ofThe Borrowers– already a quarter read – folded open across Joy’s gently rising and falling stomach.
Unseen by the sleepers, the sun dipped towards the horizon sending the sky in the west all shades of pink and apricot as Clove Lore slipped into another perfectly peaceful summer slumber.
Chapter Fourteen
The message woke her. So few people had her number, it could be one of only three people: Patti, her mum or Gaz.
Hey Joy Joy, how’s u? More important, where r u? I have a contract in Durham that’ll be tricky for me to get to on time now
Want it? It’s for October 3rd
Swap you anything you have starting on the 4th (anywhere)
I’m in Brixton installing in a warehouse until Sunday, then Bahrain for 2 wks. Paths crossing?
Joy had met Gaz when they joined Tech Stars at the same time, right after her graduation, and they’d stayed friends when he went freelance and she was going on maternity leave. He’d called her ‘Joy Joy’ from day one and it hadn’t seemed annoying coming from him. He was one of those rare people who exuded sunshine and he was, Joy acknowledged with gratitude, not only a really good contact to have, but her only friend.
Very rarely, they’d meet up on a layover in Amsterdam or Singapore and they’d all go to Snow City to muck about on the slopes together or to the Van Gogh museum. Radia adored him, of course. He always had duty-free Toblerone for her in his bag and, according to her, he was the ‘funnest’ of all the grown-ups she knew, which admittedly wasn’t many.
She texted back.
Sorry, fully booked. We’re at the seaside at the moment. South-west. I’ll message you if anything changes and if I can send any more work your way.
Fully bookedwasn’t quite true. Joy had been nursing a secret. There was the Lisbon weekend job coming up – that would take them into September – and then they’d be back at the flat in London by the fourth. She hadn’t booked anything else after that, not until January.
She’d told herself she deserved a break after travelling pretty much non-stop since Radia was nine months old, and goodness knows Radia deserved to stay in one place for a short while.
Only a tiny part of Joy had the courage to admit to herself that she was considering moving home for good – or at least to let Radia have a decent try at primary school.
The whole thing was still barely formed in Joy’s mind. She’d worked so hard at pushing the idea away every time it arose, but it was becoming impossible to ignore now.
Maybe Radia wouldn’t like school, anyway? After years of travelling, the daily routines of learning might not suit her. It doesn’t suit every kid. If that was the case, she could easily arrange some new contracts and take them out on the road again. Then again, maybe she’d absolutely love it. Or maybe there was a future in doing both things; workingandstaying put for school? Joy could always find IT work in London or be a freelancer working from home now that remote connection support was standard. She wouldn’t miss hardware installations, or on-site software upgrades, she had to admit. Or hotels.
