Something in me, some need to protect Raff, hasn’t told her his real name, so she just calls him Hagrid.
“He’s a very nice, very kind man.”
“Are you really interested in him?”
“No,” I say. Out of arguments.
“Then don’t muddy the waters.”
After that call, I can’t find my good mood. Was it only half an hour before that I’d been so excited? So happy?
For the last two weeks, I’ve been a different person. Leonie the granddaughter who buys good biscuits and makes tea and cooks porridge for Kendric House in the morning. But one phone call with my mother and I’m back to being husband bait. I’m back to viewing every man with a little mistrust.
Later that night, Raff sends me a text message.
Cynthia has agreed to the additional invitation. So that’s granddad, Philomena, Jack, Deniro, Gethin, Shirley and Vanessa. And Raff, obviously. I can hardly make him wait outside in the van.
Time to search out cream tea recipes
Chapter Seventeen
Friday Morning Kendric House
Everything I’ve seen online says that fresh baked scones compared to shop-bought ones are like real flowers to plastic. Besides, I can bake a hundred scones at home for the price of buying twenty from the supermarket. The only problem is, I’ve never baked a scone in my life, but the internet assures me it’s a walk in the park. so I’m going to try.
The internet is also full of recipes for sandwiches. Most of them unusable.
The Michelin starred cafés in London, the ones Mum and Horrible Howard would go to, charge £120 per person. What can they serve for this kind of money? Because I might be able to make it here.
I scroll through various menus on my phone, spinach bread filled with octopus ragu, smoked rabbit liver pate, mountain goat cheese with micro herbs on purple potato bread, I put my phone on the kitchen table, face-down.
Why do restaurants do this? We’ve heard of gilding the lily, but this is burying the lily in gild. I can’t imagine Bill or Shirleyor even Gethin having any truck with green bread and smoked cheese. And Jack, poor man, would be scared half to death if I offered him purple bread.
My feeling – please God let me be right – is to keep it traditional. Butter and cucumber, obviously. Cream cheese and ham. Egg and cress. What else? How about coronation chicken; there has to be recipes for that online. I drive down to the bakery in Llancaradoc, and they promise to make me white bloomers and tiger bread. Then I order ingredients from the supermarket to deliver. Clotted cream, because I’m never going to be so ambitious a to attempt making that. The same goes for Jam.
What I really want to do, is give my grandfather and his friends a really wonderful cream tea; this ambition wins over my need to be economical because the big Sainsbury in Lampeter has so many exciting kinds of jam and marmalade. Also, English Breakfast tea, Darjeeling, Ceylon, Earl Grey, Green tea… The only economy is in making the scones instead of buying them, But any savings there are off-set by buying lots of flour, sugar and butter because it will take a few trial bakes before I get it right.
I don’t care.
I want this to be wonderful. For all of them. They deserve it after boiled dish-rag tea Jenkins serves.
The next morning, the shopping arrives at 7am. Armed with my downloaded recipe lists, I start experimenting.
The first batch of scones, made with sultanas, double cream and brown sugar, come out dense and heavy. Alex and Llewellyn who agreed to be my guinea pigs, take a polite – and tiny – bite and leave the rest.
I try again without the dried fruit. Similar results.
“They taste okay,” Alex says, perching on the edge of the kitchen counter and chewing one. “But why does it look like something you use to plug the sink with?”
“Don’t be an ass,” Llewellyn tells him. “They’re okay.”
“But I don’t want okay. I want light and fluffy and delicious.”
Llewellyn gets up from his chair at the small table where I’d set up small pots of cream and jam. “Call us again. We’re happy to keep tasting.”
“But” – Alex adds, laughing – “maybe make us a larger pot of tea to wash them down with.”
“Shut up.” Llewellyn punches his arm on their way out.
