‘You’re in sympathetic company here. Since the group started, Veronica, Laughlin and I have all lost our partners, and Milly might as well be widowed for all she sees of her workaholic husband. Cake & Craft Club has been quite the lifeline for us all.’
A lifeline? Just what I needed!
She placed her hand on my forearm. ‘We’re here for you if ever you want to talk about your husband or here for you if you want to keep it all about the crafts.’ She gave my arm a gentle squeeze and smiled as she released her hand. ‘So, what’s your poison? Carrot or chocolate?’
‘Chocolate every time.’
‘Me too. I’ll be honest with you, Yvonne, carrots in a cake? What possesses someone to make a cake out of vegetables? If you’re going to indulge, do it properly.’ She cut two generous slices of chocolate cake and added them to plates, passing me one. ‘But don’t tell Veronica I said that. She’s a carrot cake fiend. Makes cake out of beetroot too. I know! Don’t even get me started on that one.’
Paulette passed me a fork and serviette and we returned to our tables but, before we could eat, she said she wanted to make a few more introductions. The next ten minutes passed in a whirl of names and faces and, when we finally sat down, I was fairly certain I wouldn’t retain a single name except Paulette’s and Veronica’s. The introductions had thankfully wiped away the nerves and I was glad I’d come. I already adored Paulette and everyone she’d introduced me to had been warm and friendly. What she’d said about several of them losing their partners was interesting. I’d come here hoping to find some friends with whom I’d have crafting in common, but I’d never thought about finding people with bereavement in common. After Eric from next door died, that shared understanding of loss had deepened my friendship with Betsy. Perhaps I’d find the same here.
Looking round the room, seeing the smiles, hearing the chatter and laughter, I felt as though a little colour had returned to my world. Cliff would be proud of me.Iwas proud of me. Coming along today had been a huge thing, although I did realise it was a small step in a long journey to establishing a life for myself without Cliff. But didn’t they say from little acorns mighty oaks grew? This was my acorn moment and hopefully it would grow into something bigger.
4
THREE AND A HALF MONTHS LATER
‘Oh, my goodness, Yvonne!’ Veronica placed the cake box lid on the table. ‘This is a masterpiece.’
I wouldn’t go as far as calling it a masterpiece but it was by far the most ambitious design I’d attempted and I was very pleased with the result. As soon as I’d seen my name on the cake rota for the final meeting of Cake & Craft Club before we paused for Christmas, I’d planned something extra special as my thank you to the people who’d given me such a warm welcome over the past few months.
‘It’s simply wonderful,’ Veronica continued, moving round the table to see the cake from different angles. ‘Everywhere I look, I notice something new.’
The centrepiece had taken me the longest – a sewing machine made from small pieces of sponge cake wrapped in cream-coloured fondant. Under the presser foot and draped across one side of the cake was a patchwork quilt and I’d crafted a pair of scissors, some cotton reels and a thimble for the other side. The sides of the cake were covered in pastel-coloured buttons of assorted sizes and the base was trimmed with a tape measure. As many of the club members knitted or crocheted, I’d added a couple of balls of yarn to the cake board, one with knitting needles sticking out of it and the other accompanied by some crochet hooks.
Paulette, Milly and Laughlin edged closer and my cheeks glowed with their generous compliments.I didn’t realise you could decorate cakes.Is there no end to your talents?That’s incredible, Yvonne. You could go into business doing this.
Although I was flattered that my new friends thought my work was good enough to sell, I had no intention of turning cake decorating into a business. Experimenting with fondant icing had merely been the new skill I’d chosen to learn this year – something I always did to both challenge myself and to help fill the empty days.
‘It’s so beautiful,’ Paulette said, whipping out her phone and taking a couple of photos. ‘It’s almost a shame to cut into it.’ She gave me a cheeky smile. ‘Note the use of the wordalmost.’
A few weeks after joining Cake & Craft Club, I’d discovered that Paulette was a retired funeral director, which had been a huge surprise. She was loud, chatty and always wore vibrant colours and bold patterns accompanied by statement pieces of costume jewellery so really didn’t fit with the image I had of a sombre funeral director dressed in black. At seventy-five – slightly older than I’d guessed – she was the eldest member of the group but arguably the most childish. With a hearty laugh and eyes that twinkled with mischief, she frequently declared,the day I stop laughing at fart jokes is the day you need to ask my previous employer to order my coffin.
If there was a spectrum for immaturity, our sixty-two-year-old founder Veronica would be at the opposite end to Paulette. Her husband had been a senior officer in the British Army, retiring as a brigadier after a long and distinguished career. Veronica had fully embraced the role of a military wife, organising a host of events, running various clubs and always doing things ‘properly’, hence the cups and saucers. To be fair to her, Veronica did have a good sense of humour but she drew the line at toilet jokes.
‘The only reason I still come here is for the cake,’ Laughlin quipped. ‘So I don’t care how stunning it is, I’m ready to dive in.’
We all laughed at his comment, knowing that the cake was the least important part of the meeting for him. For all of us. But it helped. I’d never forget Paulette describing Cake & Craft Club as a ‘lifeline’ during my first meeting in September and I’d absolutely felt that. I’d been so lost when I joined but the two-hour meeting every week gave me something to look forward to and helped break up the monotony. Although everyone was friendly, there were specific friendship groups within the club – inevitable in any large collection of people – and I’d found myself adopted by what appeared to be the core group of Veronica, Paulette, Laughlin and Milly.
Milly, a curvy brunette with flawless skin and dimples, was the youngest member at fifty-three and the only one of our immediate group who was still working. Formerly an English teacher in Manchester, she’d retrained as a proofreader and copy editor when she moved back to her roots in the Lake District.
As for seventy-one-year-old Laughlin, he’d told me he’d started accompanying his wife Noreen several years ago to assist her after the arthritis in her hands meant she struggled with anything fiddly. When Noreen passed away in April this year, he’d asked the others if they’d mind him still attending as he valued their company. They’d assured him he was as welcome as Noreen had always been and they couldn’t imagine him not being there. That spurred him into finding his own craft instead of favouring crocheting like his late wife. Pyrography – decorating wood with burn marks – had become his thing and, my goodness, did he have a talent for it? Paulette had told me that the discovery of pyrography had also coincided with the discovery of his own personal style, ditching smart trousers for jeans and ties for a tweed waistcoat over an open-necked shirt. He also had a tweed cap to keep his balding head warm while he walked to his Willowdale home.
Laughlin was a quiet, thoughtful individual but, when he did speak, he always had something interesting to say and would soon have the group captivated, his rich and deep voice so easy to listen to. He could have read me an old telephone directory and I’d have been hanging onto every word. And I was completely in love with Lancelot – Laughlin’s adorable four-year-old dapple Dachshund who came to class accompanied by his soft toy red panda, Spud. Lancelot was as good as gold, curling up on his favourite orange blanket in a sunny patch and dozing all session. When the sun moved, he dragged his blanket and red panda across the floor to find it again, which was so sweet to watch. My camera roll was full of photos and videos of Lancelot and Spud.
As Milly and Laughlin headed into the kitchen to help Veronica get the cups and saucers out, a few more members arrived and my cheeks deepened in colour with further compliments about the cake. Before long, we were seated around tables with our drinks and slices of Victoria sponge. Laughlin, who had an exceptionally sweet tooth, had asked me if it was okay to take one of the fondant bobbins and it warmed my heart to see him biting into it and closing his eyes as he savoured the sweetness. Cliff used to do the same thing.
Cake eaten, we dug out our crafting projects. I’d recently started a new patchwork quilt and it was a bit of an experiment for me. I’d made loads of quilts over the years and usually followed a symmetrical pattern but this time I was recreating a photo I’d taken years ago of one of my favourite places around Derwent Water – a wooden jetty into the lake just south of the Willowdale Hall estate. It was still a patchwork design; just not a symmetrical one.
While I enjoyed making clothes, I could get lost in patchwork quilting for hours. There was something so soothing and rewarding about the patchwork part – taking hundreds of small pieces of fabric which weren’t anything special on their own and joining them together to create something incredibly beautiful. I equally loved the quilting aspect – the process of stitching together the three layers of patchwork, wadding (or batting in the USA – the cosy layer in the middle) and the backing fabric. It required concentration and precision, keeping my mind focused on the task instead of drifting off into the past where there were too many difficult memories.
With Christmas Day being a week tomorrow, the conversation inevitably turned to Christmas plans. Veronica’s eldest daughter, Rebecca, was flying over from Germany with her family, Germany being where Veronica’s husband had previously been stationed.
‘They’re arriving on Tuesday and flying back the day after Boxing Day,’ Veronica said. ‘Not quite as long as I’d hoped for but any time with family is precious.’
‘Will you see Felicity too?’ I asked. Veronica’s youngest daughter had met a Scot not long after she’d returned to the UK with her parents and had settled in St Andrews with him.
‘Not this time, but I’ll see her for my birthday in February.’
