Page 6 of A Recipe for Romance in Brambleton

‘No, you don’t,’ Marc protested, shocked by the vehemence of his younger son’s tone.

‘Yes, I do. I wish it was just you and me, Dad.’

‘No. Don’t ever say that.’ Glancing up the path to make sure Liam was still in sight, Marc dropped down to speak eye to eye with his upset son. ‘You and Liam might not always get on at the moment, but you’ll always have each other. Never forget that. One day, you’ll look back on this and laugh at the way he teased you.’

Luca gave him a very astute pull the other one look, and Marc couldn’t help smirking. ‘Well, all right, maybe you won’t. But you will get on better one day than you do now. I promise. Uncle Noah and I used to have some real scraps when we were kids and look at us now – we even live in the same village!’

‘What about Uncle Joel?’

Marc gave a short laugh. ‘Well, Uncle Joel was even worse.’ And he still is, he added inwardly; Joel never saw eye to eye with anyone.

‘I wish Mummy was here.’

The despair in Luca’s tone made Marc pull his son towards him in a tight bear hug. ‘I know.’ He swallowed hard before adding, ‘So do I.’

Marc glanced up the path again and saw Liam poking a pile of horse manure with a twig he’d found. Obviously a recent addition, the poo was still steaming. Not a bad metaphor for how I’m feeling right now, Marc thought. But this wasn’t the time to admit that. The boys needed him to be strong. He might break down occasionally on his own, but while they were awake and with him, he needed to be their rock.

‘Come here, Liam,’ he said firmly.

Sulkily, his older son mooched back.

‘Apologise to your brother for calling him a baby and punching him.’

Liam looked sullen but didn’t say anything.

‘Liam…’ Marc warned.

‘You always take his side!’ Liam shouted. ‘He lost his gloves, not me!’ Liam ran off in the direction of home again, not looking back.

Marc got to his feet and tried to give Luca a reassuring smile. ‘It’ll be all right. I’ll speak to him again when we get home.’

But as they both hurried after Liam, who in his bright red winter coat made a vivid splash of colour against the dun and dull brown winter landscape, Marc knew he’d failed again.

6

After a busy day, Lauren wearily wiped down the tables in the café and checked over the coffee machine, ready for the next day. Ever since she’d introduced a takeaway service, her trade had doubled, and she had spent a lot of time that afternoon preparing warm drinks and to-go mugs for locals and tourists alike. She might have only had room for twenty people in the inside of the café, and even that was a squeeze, but many more than that visited daily. She was glad; times were difficult for small businesses and that had been brought home to the whole of Lower Brambleton last year when Mollie Wakefield had nearly lost the lease on the Purrfect Paws charity shop.

Pausing in front of the bay window that looked out onto Lower Brambleton’s small main street, Lauren took a much-needed moment to regroup before she shut up shop for the night. Hope’s Café was her shield against the world, and it was also the place where she felt happiest.

Moving away from the window, she ambled through the dividing door that separated the café from the rest of the house and locked it up behind her. There was a cottage pie in the fridge and a couple of slices of leftover fruit cake for pudding, which would do for dinner. Flipping the knob on the oven to the right temperature, Lauren called up the stairs.

‘Hey, Mum!’

‘All right, love? I’m up in the studio.’

That was a good sign. Her mum being in the studio meant a good day, and they’d been too few and far between since the days had been getting shorter.

Smiling, Lauren climbed the first flight of stairs to the bedroom level of the maisonette that formed the living portion of the building. Then she scuttled up the shallow concertina staircase that gave entry to the converted attic, a space that covered the entire floor space of the house and had the most glorious light, to allow her mother to work on the canvases that were such an important part of her life.

‘How’s the latest one coming along?’

‘Come and see for yourself.’ Myriam Hope, greying blonde hair tied back with a vibrant blue and yellow scarf, clad in dungarees and an oversized shirt that were more paint than fabric, glanced over her shoulder and gave Lauren a quick grin.

Lauren smiled back. She couldn’t claim to understand much of her mother’s more abstract work, but every so often Myriam would produce something she could get a sense of. Thankfully, her current output was a touch more conventional than the Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon inspired abstracts that formed much of her oeuvre. This was mostly because Lauren had wanted to hang some of the pictures on the café walls, to give her mother’s work more exposure, and to generate extra income from the sales that might result, but Lauren appreciated her mother’s nod to the more mainstream if it meant she could keep herself in paint.

‘Mum, that’s awesome!’ Lauren couldn’t keep the enthusiasm out of her voice. ‘You’ve really captured the essence of the place. This one’s got to go on the wall in the café.’

‘Let me finish it first, before you go making wild promises like that.’ Myriam glanced over her shoulder. ‘I know you’re not always so keen.’