Page 7 of A Recipe for Romance in Brambleton

Lauren grinned. ‘I love it already.’ She moved closer, looking at the details on the eighteen-by-twelve-inch landscape canvas. Myriam had chosen the small row of Lower Brambleton’s shops as her subject. Lauren smiled at the detail her mother had picked out in the shop windows – the playful way she’d painted a teddy bear with golden fur and a red ribbon around its neck sitting sedately in the corner of Purrfect Paws; the contrasting green and gold lettering that made up the banner sign above the window of Noah Hathaway Country Estates; the red and yellow of the Post Office and Stores, and then, on the end of the row, the pink, blue and white board over the window of Hope’s Café. She could make out the beginnings of the table complete with a red and white gingham cloth, and she blinked, yes, a figure at the back of the window in a blue and pink striped apron.

‘I could do without you putting me in there!’ Lauren giggled.

‘Nothing doing. You’re the heart of Hope’s Café, and you’re staying there.’ Myriam’s firm tone brooked no disagreement.

‘Well, I’m going to get dinner sorted,’ Lauren said. She hurried down the stairs and soon had the pie in the oven.

It had always been just her and her mum. While she was at art school in Manchester, Myriam had fallen pregnant with Lauren. She was nineteen years old, and Lauren had been the result of a short-lived relationship with an exchange student, who’d left the UK at the end of his course without realising Myriam was carrying his child. Although she’d tried to contact him for some time after she’d discovered she was pregnant, in those pre-social-media days, it had been nigh on impossible. In the end, Myriam had resigned herself to raising Lauren alone, albeit with some support from her parents, who’d paid her rent in the early days, which had allowed her to finish her course when Lauren could go to a nursery. It hadn’t been easy, and Lauren had vivid memories of being chilly at night when her mother couldn’t afford to put the heating on, but the one thing she’d never lacked was love.

When Lauren was eighteen, Myriam had embarked on her long-desired ambition to study at postgraduate level, and, through sheer hard work, had begun to make a name for herself on the British art scene. Just as she was about to break through, having been exhibited alongside the likes of Tracey Emin and Banksy, disaster had struck. Myriam had been involved in a road traffic accident that had left her in a coma for several weeks. When she woke up, because of the brain injury she’d sustained, she’d lost a great deal of fine motor function in her hands, and doctors weren’t hopeful that she’d be able to paint again.

It was at this point that Lauren had put her own plans for further education on hold. She’d intended to go to catering college, but her mother needed full-time care. An inheritance from her parents meant that Myriam could afford a change of scene, moving from North Manchester down to a tiny bungalow in Somerset, and Lauren had uprooted and gone with her.

For more than a year after the accident, Lauren had, with the help and expertise of dedicated nurses, been her mother’s principal carer. Then, as her mother’s condition began to improve, Lauren started working part-time in a local nursing home, Everscombe Hall. Her ability to cook soon brought her to the attention of the care home’s owner, who deployed her in the kitchens, baking all kinds of tasty treats for the residents. The work fitted in well with her caring responsibilities, and soon she was increasing her hours.

It was only when her mother suffered a fall that Lauren realised she needed more flexibility than the care home could give her. After three extremely rewarding years, she handed in her notice. Myriam had been cross with her: she’d lost none of her spirit after the accident, but Lauren was adamant – they’d work it out somehow.

It was then that Myriam had taken matters into her own hands. She’d received a substantial payout from the insurance company after the road traffic accident that had covered a great deal of her rehabilitation and allowed herself and Lauren to pay off the mortgage on the bungalow. Selling it at a good time meant that they could take on the property in the row of shops in the village, which was already partly renovated. The property comprised the maisonette with a decent attic, and a tiny retail space, its footprint no more than forty square metres. With a little imagination, and Lauren’s excellent cookery skills, Hope’s Café had been born.

Now, with the aid of a stairlift, which Lauren had forcefully insisted upon, Myriam used the attic space as a studio, and they both shared the rest of the house. It had been a lot of work to get Hope’s Café up and running, but it meant that Lauren could stay close to Myriam and keep an eye on her, and Myriam had given Lauren the chance to develop her catering skills closer to home.

Sometimes, Lauren wondered what it would have been like to leave home, to pursue her dream of going to catering college, to see a little more of the world. But having her own business was more than enough compensation, and, with her tendency to be a worrier, it set her mind at rest that Myriam was nearby if anything like another fall ever happened again. She knew that her mother hated to think of herself as vulnerable, especially because she was only in her early fifties, but Lauren couldn’t imagine the thought of life without her. Myriam might be cantankerous and impatient sometimes, but she was also funny, caring and had an all-encompassing heart and a smile that could power the National Grid. There were worse ways to end up, Lauren always thought. And at least she and her mum would always have each other.

As Lauren was about to check the pie in the oven, she suddenly remembered the small pair of gloves that she’d found. Worried she’d forget all about them if she didn’t return them quickly, and aware that a small boy was likely to need them if the family were out and about during this cold spell, she turned down the oven.

‘I’m just popping out, Mum,’ she called up the stairs. ‘I’ll sort supper out when I get back.’

‘All right, love,’ Myriam’s voice drifted back to her. ‘See you in a bit.’

Grabbing the gloves, Lauren jumped into her car, an ageing red Peugeot 206, and made her way towards the lake house.

7

While Marc was making dinner, he’d managed to regain some sense of equilibrium. Refereeing between his two sons would never be easy; he was telling the truth when he’d admitted to Luca about his and his brother Noah’s past confrontations as kids. It was only in this last year that he and Noah had grown closer. They’d led such separate lives; all three brothers had, despite their own early parental loss. Their father had died when Marc was nine and Joel was seven. Noah, at twelve, had done his best to keep the brothers close, but things hadn’t worked out that way. They were all such different people, and as their careers and wider lives had taken them in different directions, it had been increasingly difficult to maintain meaningful contact. They all phoned each other occasionally, and in the immediate aftermath of Tessa’s death both Joel and Noah had made more of an effort to keep in touch with him, if not each other. But a lifetime of distance was a hard thing to bridge.

That was one of the reasons why Marc had decided to buy the lake house. Being just a couple of miles away from Noah, who’d recently bought a house with his partner, Bella, was as much of a motivator as the price of the place. Money hadn’t been an issue: he earned a good salary as an AI systems executive for a large, multinational software firm, and at this stage of his career he could work from anywhere that had decent internet. Lower Brambleton had been connected to the fibre optic network during the past year, which had made the move an even better decision. He could still remember Noah’s exclamation of surprise when he’d told him he’d like to make an offer on the lake house, but once Noah had got over his shock, he’d negotiated a very reasonable deal for the property. It might need a lot of work, but Marc was desperate for things to take his mind off Tessa, and this house would certainly do that.

Marc also hoped that being so close geographically to Noah would mean the two brothers would grow closer emotionally too. It certainly seemed, in the past couple of weeks, that Noah felt the same way. His brother had visited the lake house several times and although he seemed sceptical that Marc would ever get the place completely modernised, he had admitted that the house had great potential. As for bringing the two of them closer to their other brother, Joel… Well, time would tell on that one.

All he knew was that he didn’t want his history to repeat itself with his own sons. He’d do everything he could to make sure that they remained close.

‘Boys, dinner!’

One thing he could be proud of was that he was a good cook, and he and the children enjoyed eating together. He had the French culture to thank for that, and it was a habit he intended to maintain. The twins had been playing upstairs since they got back home, their previous spats all but forgotten, which had given Marc time to cook up a half-decent lasagne and shove some garlic bread in the oven.

He heard the reassuring thump of two pairs of feet on the stairs, and only just had enough time to call out to them not to run, before they erupted into the kitchen, dragging a couple of toys and bickering amiably about whose turn it was to sit next to the radiator.

‘All right, all right, look at the chart on the fridge – that’ll tell you.’

Liam grinned as he saw the blue soldier figure that he’d picked to represent himself, making him the winner. Luca was downcast for a second, but his eyes brightened when he saw the huge baguette stuffed with garlic butter that Marc was now removing from the oven.

‘Have you washed your hands?’ Both boys nodded. ‘With soap?’ There was a slight hesitation, before Marc sent them to the downstairs bathroom to do them properly. Upon their return, he’d laid out the garlic bread on a serving plate and was in the process of dishing up a hot, bubbling, cheesy lasagne: the perfect comfort food for a cold December evening. Marc gave the boys their plates and had put his down on the table when the chime of the front doorbell broke into the beginning of their meal.

‘I’ll get it!’ Liam trilled.

‘No you won’t. You sit and eat your dinner. I won’t be a tick.’ Checking they both had all that they needed, Marc flipped the tea towel he’d been using to hold the lasagne dish over his shoulder and hurried to the front door. He wasn’t expecting anyone, but he wondered if Noah or Noah’s girlfriend, Bella, had decided to pop over on the way past. Not that the lake house was on the way past anything, per se, but they’d checked in on him a couple of times since he’d arrived, and he’d been touched by their concern. If it was either of them, they could stay for a plate of dinner. Goodness knew, he’d cooked enough to feed an army.

Hurrying through to the hallway, he saw an indistinct figure through the frosted glass of the front door. It was too short, and too female, to be Noah, but in the slightly odd illumination from the security light it didn’t look much like Bella, either. He really hoped it wasn’t a salesperson or a religious representative interrupting their dinner. Taking a deep breath, he pulled open the door.