Page 17 of The Sugar and Spice Bookshop Bakery

Her mother and her friends arrive, and Louise serves them with huge wedges of the freshly baked Victoria sponge, slabs of ginger cake and scones oozing with jam and cream, fresh coffee and strong Yorkshire tea. There is, she has to admit, a certain satisfaction to be had in feeding people, in watching their faces light up as she places her culinary creations before them, but there’ll be even more satisfaction in helping a customer find the perfect book.

Louise leaves them to it, retreating to the kitchen to wash up her baking utensils.

A short while later, she hears the front door open and close. From the voices, she can hear that someone else has arrived. She leaves the kitchen to find there’s a middle-aged man and woman waiting.

‘Could we have a table please?’ the man says.

They must have seen her Facebook ad.

‘Sure,’ she says. ‘Take your pick. Would you like some chairs too?’

The man gives her a puzzled look. He glances around the bakery, clearly weighing up which of the tables would suit their needs best, but then, to Louise’s surprise, they don’t lift the table up and take it away; but sit down at it.

‘Are there any menus?’ the woman asks.

‘Menus?’

For a second, Louise is confused, and then she realises what’s going on. They haven’t seen the Facebook ad. They don’t want a table for their house. The man said, ‘Could we have a table please?’ because he thinks this place is still a bakery, and that it’s open for business.

‘Don’t worry about menus,’ the man is saying now. ‘We’d just like a pot of tea please, and some of your grandmother’s famous ginger cake.’

Louise looks over at her mother and catches her eye. Elizabeth shrugs, holding her hands up in a kind of ‘Well, what can you do?’ gesture, then says, ‘You remember Mr Grainger, Louise? Such a good friend of your father’s.’

The man’s face does seem familiar. Louise has a vague recollection of her father occasionally going for a pint with him in the Red Lion. Has he really wandered in by accident, thinking the bakery was open, or has her mother had the audacity to invite him here? She wouldn’t put it past Elizabeth.

But still. There’s ginger cake left. And it’s easy enough to make tea. It would be churlish not to serve them, especially given Mr Grainger was a friend of her beloved dad.

‘We’re not really open, but I can make you some tea and there’s plenty of cake. On the house,’ she adds, so there’s no misunderstandings.

‘It’s wonderful that there’s going to be a bakery in the village again,’ the woman – Mrs Grainger presumably – says as Louise places a steaming pot of tea in front of her. ‘Just what Applethwaite needs.’

‘Well, actually, I’m planning to run a bookshop here,’ says Louise. ‘Not a bakery.’

Mr Grainger looks up at her. ‘How will that work?’

She isn’t sure how to answer. ‘Erm, I’ll… sell books?’

*

Two days later, and it’s Hazel’s turn to host the coffee morning and – surprise, surprise – she wants to have it in the bakery again.

‘Just one last time,’ Elizabeth had cajoled. ‘I’ll help.’

And, liking the word ‘last’, Louise had agreed.

And was then furious with herself for agreeing. Why can’t she just say no?

And the angrier she feels, the more she bakes. By the time Hazel arrives for her coffee morning, there’s a veritable mountain of carrot cake, a kind of poppy seed roll she found on a Polish baking website, ginger cake, of course, and enough cherry scones to feed the whole village.

Which is just as well, because it isn’t just Elizabeth, Janet and their friends sitting down for tea and cakes. Mr and Mrs Grainger have arrived too.

‘Lovely to see the bakery open again!’ Mrs Grainger trills, clearly having forgotten all about the bookshop conversation.

And then the vicar and his wife appear, and Louise can hardly turn away a man of the cloth, can she?

Then a rather dapper gentleman of around her mum’s age, perhaps a little older, comes in and sits down in the corner table, where he unfolds a large newspaper. Louise is about to go over to tell him that the place isn’t actually open, when her mother puts a hand on her arm and says, ‘That’s Richard. Giacomo’s father. He’s an old friend of mine. Please give him a coffee and some cake…’

*