‘Daisy, Fern, Bracken, Hilary and Nigella.’ She wiggles her eyebrows. ‘And a few of their very close friends.’
Nell’s parents still live at Forget-me-not Farm, the small holding where she grew up alongside a variety of sheep, cows, pigs, horses, and chickens, and that’s where she gets her eggs from. As kids, we used to love the cosy stone-built farmhouse, where the kitchen always smelled of her mum’s freshly baked bread and meat pies, and the higgledy piggledy hay barns with the animal stables underneath. As teenagers, if we weren’t at the beach we’d hang out in the meadows at Nell’s, spending the long summer days feeding baby calves, helping bring in the hay and build the wood pile, splashing in the stream, or sprawled on the grass making daisy chains.
Nell’s enthusiasm for home reared pork, her tendency to eat for England, that penchant for checked shirts, and her ability to make large groups of animals or people do exactly what she wants, all stem from her days at the farmstead. When she and Guy bought their own place on the edge of the housing estate her first priority was a garden suitable for keeping chickens. Once she found it, the hen house she built was so perfect it even had fairy lights. When she downsized to a tiny cottage in St Aidan after the split what upset her most wasn’t Guy leaving or losing lovely her home. It was that her Buff Orpingtons and Speckledy hens had to go back to live with her parents.
As I open the first egg box and run my fingers over a smooth brown shell even six eggs looks like an awful lot. I stamp on the doubts, and try to sound like I’m on top of this. ‘I’ve been watching people breaking eggs on YouTube.’ Confusing doesn’t begin to cover it. Who knew you needed knives and bottles and a whole stack of bowls, and that’s just to separate the whites from the yolks.
‘See how you go, shout when you need more.’ Nell’s backing out onto the landing. ‘Are you sure I can’t tempt you to an evening of Singles’ Scrabble at the Yellow Canary? Dakota’s not coming.’
However happy I am to hear the last part, for once my excuse is real. ‘I’d better put the time in on my meringues.’ Or more correctly, watching videos where people make them. How hard can it be, mixing egg whites and sugar? So long as I prepare in advance, one secret session should be enough to crack it. No pun intended. Let’s face it, if I’m hoping to fit in three Little Cornish Kitchen events a week between now and September, I need to sort this and fast. By the time I go to bed, I’ve found a new heroine. She’s called Cressida Cupcake and even though some of the YouTube comments complain that she doesn’t give amounts for her recipes, I’m confident she’s talked me through everything I need to know.
As soon as I’m back from work the next day, I stick my eighties mix on Spotify, gulp down my croissant, then I grab a pinny just like Cressida’s and an egg cup and a saucer. The moment I set to work separating, I know I’ve done this before with Laura.
‘Move over, Mary Berry, there’s a new kid in the kitchen.’ By the time I put my bowl of yolks to one side, and tip my dish of egg white into the mixer, I’m bopping round to Billy Ocean singing ‘When the Going Gets Tough’. I set the mixer off at slow speed, and within seconds I’m speeding it up exactly Cressida Cupcake did, and dancing to ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’. By the time I’m listening to ‘9 to 5’ and pouring in the sugar, nothing seems to be happening, but I’m enjoying myself anyway. Three tracks on, I’m staring at a mass of white sticky stuff. I’m confident I’ll be nailing it any minute, and it’s hard not to feel on top of the world singing along to Bonnie Tyler. Very loudly. It has to be ready by the end of the track because it’s been whisking for what feels like hours.
‘“I’m holding out for a hero … and he’s got to be strong … and he’s got to be up for the f-i-i-i-i-ght …”’ As I crescendo and belt out the word ‘fight’ at the top of my voice and brace myself for the next stage of the operation, something cold and wet hits my thigh. I catch my breath, then look down. ‘Diesel?’
A moment later, Charlie’s head appears round the kitchen door. ‘The French windows to the balcony were open, I knocked and you were calling out for a hero, so I came on in …’
Who the eff would say something like that? ‘Sorry, I didn’t hear you.’ I grab my phone and turn down the volume.
He’s staring at me. ‘Not surprising, it’s good you turned that down, I came to tell you people can hear you singing all the way down to the Surf Shack.’
There’s no answer to that other than to laugh. ‘And here’s me thinking getting caught mid-song by a wanker is the worst it gets.’ So, I move on to my announcement: ‘Actually, I’m making meringues.’ This has to be my worst Waitrose shopper sentence yet. Although to be fair, Cressida Cupcake sounds like she might shop at Waitrose, and she’s pretty damned impressive. ‘Although the mountains aren’t as high as I was expecting yet.’ That doesn’t sound quite right, but I’m a bit distracted by him moving in so close I can see the individual hairs in his eyebrows.
He peers into the bowl. ‘Have you made meringues before?’
Something about his doubtful tone brings out my bullshitting side. I wipe my hands on my apron. ‘Obviously. Only like, all the time. Here, let me show you this trick, it’s totally gravity defying.’ Not to mention gobsmacking. This is the one all the YouTubers do. You tip the bowl full of meringue mixture upside down over your head, and the trick is, thanks to the hugely sticky nature of the meringue mixture, it stays there. I know it’s entirely stupid, and I’m totally not competitive, but a tiny part of me wants to make up for my waist being ten times bigger than Dakota’s. There’s no way she eventhinksof meringues with a teensy bum like hers, let alone makes them herself.
‘Is it stiff enough?’ He’s frowning over my shoulder now. And obviously totally oblivious he’s sounding like a line from an actress and bishop joke.
I overlook the shocking innuendo, tilt the whisk, and with the kind of flourish Cressida Cupcake would be proud of, I whip round to face him and whoosh the bowl into the air and over my head.
‘Ta-da!’ I fix my gaze on his face, so I get every last millimetre of reaction. But what I’m reading isn’t awe, it’s horror.
‘Shit, Clemmie!’
A second later, I feel a light slap on my head. Next thing I’m blinded by a curtain of white sludge. ‘What the fuck …?’ The lumps slither down from my forehead, drop off my chin, hit my chest and slide into my cleavage and onto my skirt.
There’s an awful ‘I told you so’ note to his voice: ‘I’d say gravity won out there.’
I scrape the egg white out of my eyes with my fist. ‘Jeez, that wasn’t supposed to happen.’ Diesel’s licking my dress, but my groan isn’t for that. ‘And my hair’s totally covered.’
Charlie’s lips are twitching. ‘Isn’t egg white a conditioner? Do you want me to check on Google, see how long to leave it on for?’
I drop the bowl on the table, feel my way to the sink, and scrape as much off as I can. ‘Oh my days, it’ssosticky.’
As he hands me a towel his phone rings. ‘I’ll take that call later.’ He’s actually chuckling to himself as he taps his screen, which is a first. ‘It’s Dainty Dusters ringing about a sparkle clean for the ground floor flat. I reckon we need them a lot more here than there though.’
‘What the hell’s a sparkle clean?’ It’s a relief to take the attention off me and my fuck-up. Whatever it is, I’m sure Cressida Cupcake’s kitchen has them. All the time.
‘It’s Dainty Dusters name for the deep cleans they do for tenancy changeovers. The ones with added shine.’
‘You deal with those?’Downstairs?It sounds unlikely.
He’s shuffling and looking down. ‘Bay Holdings are multi-faceted, any property issue, we’ll cover it.’
Which still leaves me in the dark but does bring me onto something else. ‘For someone so multi-whatsit-ed, you don’t seem to work much.’
