My stomach must still be in my body because it just flipped over. ‘How are the meringues?’
He pulls a face. ‘Fine … so long as you like your cinders well cooked.’
I feel as crumbly and wrecked as those meringues. ‘Damn. I totally forgot. I’m sorry.’ It’s half whisper, half rasp.
‘Are you okay?’ Something about his concern makes my insides crumple even more.
‘I just found a picture of my dad.’ I nod towards the photos fanned across the bed.
Charlie’s frown is puzzled. ‘I’m guessing he liked ice cream.’ He moves in closer. ‘You’re very alike. A whole family of redheads too.’
‘Shit, I hadn’t even noticed the hair.’ I was too busy looking at our eyes and our cheekbones, and our mouth shape and our foreheads. ‘It’s a shock to know I’m related to a family of full-on ginger nuts.’ It’s also a surprise to realise how little mum has to do with my face. The Marlows must have super strong genes. As well as wanting to spread them around.
‘It can be very emotional discovering where you come from, seeing your parents when they were small.’ He squints at me then pulls out a tissue from the box on Pancake’s side of the bed and puts it in my hand. ‘Here, have a hanky.’
‘Why would I need a …’ Then I put my hand to my cheek and find he’s right. As I mop my eyes and sniff I’m kicking myself for inviting him through. ‘It’s allBlue Peter’sfault for feeding us so much bullshit when we were kids. If I hadn’t been searching for bloody Penny Blacks, this would never have happened.’
His hand comes to rest lightly on my shoulder. ‘You did that too? I spent so many holidays as a kid hanging round the Post Office sales windows, trying to spot sheets of stamps with imperfections so I could auction them for millions at Christies.’ He does his half cough. ‘Then I discovered property development gave better returns for less time.’ His forehead wrinkles again. ‘You have seen his picture before?’
I shake my head. ‘Nope. Never. Not that I know, anyway.’
His voice rises. ‘Shit Clemmie, this is two thousand and eightteen, not the bloody dark ages. Why the hell not?’ Then his face falls. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked that.’
The thing is, I want to tell him. I want everyone to know what a bastard my dad was, and that I’ve been a-okay wonderful and better off without him. ‘It’s not complicated. He didn’t want my mumorme. Why would I want to knowanythingabouthim?’ I collect the photos, stack them into a pile, and slide them back into their folder. It’s hard to reconcile a boy with ice cream up to his ears who did his first strokes bobbing about in the bay as the same guy who walked out on my pregnant mum. ‘I actually wish I hadn’t found these. And I won’t be looking at them again, because that’s not a door I want to open.’ It’s the same promise I’ve been making to myself my whole life. Which is exactly why I should have gone with my first instinct and stayed away from the flat. ‘So did you mention cream?’
His worried expression hasn’t completely gone, but he’s sounding upbeat. ‘If you’re up for making more meringues …?’
‘Hell, yes.’ If I’m going to do this a hundred times more I need to get this.
And there’s another hint of a smile. ‘In that case I’ll show you how to whip cream without accidentally making butter.’
With the mountain of Pavlovas lining up on my horizon, that’s an offer I can’t refuse either. Not that I can tell him that. ‘I’ll remember the timer this time.’
‘And while we’re waiting for the meringues to cook, I’ll show you how to use up the yolks making lemon curd in a bain marie.’
Shucks. Cressida Cupcake never mentioned that.
14
On Plum’s deck
Chickens and eggs
Thursday
‘So now you’ve perfected meringue’s, Nell can go ahead and take bookings for next week.’ Sophie licks the hazelnut crumbs off her fingers and reaches for one with pink pomegranate syrup swirling through it. ‘Little Cornish Kitchen,here we come. I’m so proud of you for this, it’s a phenomenal effort, Clemmie.’
Sophie and I are sitting out on Plum’s deck, sipping tea and dipping into giant plastic cake boxes filled with my try-outs, deciding which to include in the final line up. She might be proud of me, but I’m effing delighted with myself. Who’d have imagined I’d ever be able to make meringues? Although once Charlie showed me the basics, I couldn’t resist tryingeveryvariation in the basket. I moved on to scour the recipe books too, but Laura had all the best ones on cards. No surprise there.
‘And it’s so funny that when I got right to the bottom of Laura’s basket, one of her Eton mess recipes used lemon curd too.’ I lick the mix of lemon, meringue and raspberry off my spoon and close my eyes as I let the flavours melt onto my tongue. ‘At least that saves me having a produce stall on the footpath outside the cottage.’ I can imagine how well that would go down with Charlie and his Residents’ gang. With Diesel tearing up and down it wouldn’t last five minutes.
Sophie’s brow furrows into her best business frown. ‘If there’s any spare lemon curd you can always sell it to the singles. I’ll print off some labels and put the word out for jars at the school gate.’ She purses her lips. ‘And how’s the running total going?’
I’m doing a Nell wiggle with my eyebrows because I can hardly believe it myself. ‘The next evening should take us past the thousand pounds’ mark. All from sorbet.’ Although to be fair, the last two weeks we’ve made it by the bucketful. And a lot of the customers have come back for seconds and even thirds. And we’ve kept the music down, and Nell trained the guests to tiptoe up and down the stairs in silence – she has a talent for making people do just what she asks.
Sophie high-fives me. ‘Brilliant or what? We’ll get you to your target, no worries.’
‘Yay!’ I high-five her back. The thought of keeping this going for ten times as long complete with variations might be mind boggling, but I’m completely caught up in the challenge. I go to sleep thinking about recipe cards, and that’s what I think about when I wake up too. If Charlie Hobson happens to march his way into my brain, which inexplicably he does from time to time – much to my horror – the thought of chomping on a spoon heaped with cream and meringue is enough to drive him away.
