‘Because I didn’t want to work inside all day. What would you do with all this unlimited everything?’
She flicked a few braids over her shoulder. ‘Initial thoughts… I’d form a circus troupe. Open a spa-hotel for pets. Set up a cookery school for ex-female prisoners. Become a Hollywood agent.’
‘I have no idea how to do any of those things. I have no interest in doing them.’
‘Neither do I, especially, but the point is we start with nothing off the table, then narrow it down to what sparks your interest, seems worth exploring. It’s called blue-sky thinking.’
‘Blessing, you know I’ve worked at the same place doing the exact same thing forever. I grew up living and breathing one basic food item. You might need to start a little more down to earth.’
‘Fine.’ She straightened her shoulders and took a bite of pastry, undaunted. ‘Let’s try a different angle. What do you like? Whatdoesspark joy for Emmaline Brown? Apart from dreamy thoughts about island farmers with great hair.’
It was a cheesy start to the discussion, but soon made it clear that Blessing had been busy while I’d been away, reading,listening to podcasts and even attending a couple of online seminars on setting up a new business.
After winding our way through starting our own organic chicken farm, via cooking vlogs, party planning and a detour into painting and decorating, we ended up near to where I started.
I wanted to keep baking, but was determined to have more flexibility, fresh air and to bring things into the twenty-first century.
And so, Parsley’s Pasties became Sherwood Street Food. My inheritance money was enough to buy a second-hand food truck. A modest loan from Blessing’s parents would cover the remaining initial outlay, which was minimal thanks to Parsley’s. We would keep selling drinks and pasties but also experiment with specials including nachos, mini loaded Yorkshire puddings and, my favourite: individual portions of Siskin pot sausage. I spent hours perfecting new recipes, completing all the legal and health and safety admin and other practical tasks such as finding out how on earth to manage a catering business that moved. Blessing put herself in charge of publicity and marketing, including creating a website and the most important task of finding us places where we could sell the new food.
I’d thought running an established business was hard work. It was nothing compared to setting a new one up. Once we’d completed the first, major task of buying the truck, the rest of the summer was full-on, to say the least. But I had a partner – one who listened, collaborated, was eager to try new ideasandbelieved in modern technology.
I loved every second of it.
On the first weekend in August, we opened our hatch door at the Robin Hood Festival, Sherwood Forest’s busiest event, which would be held over the next four weekends. One of the organisers had been a regular customer at the airport andsnapped up our last-minute request the same day Blessing emailed them.
We spent most of the festivities with a queue weaving in and out of the trees. Robin Hood, Maid Marion and almost all the Merry Men became regular customers. Little John even gave us a shout-out during the big battle with the Sheriff of Nottingham’s soldiers, crediting our pork and mustard Yorkshire pudding with fuelling his winning moves.
‘These are heavenly,’ the woman officially acting as Marion said after biting into a vegetarian pasty – it turned out her real name was also Marion, and she was married to the person playing Robin. ‘Would you be interested in supplying my restaurant? It’s on a campsite, not far from here: Scarlett’s?’
Would I be interested in supplying one of the most popular restaurants in the area? I double-checked that Blessing’s younger brother, Ben, who happened to be as charming a salesman as his sister, and far more skilled in the kitchen, was happy to keep being employed with us for the foreseeable future, and arranged a meeting for the following week.
Blessing also wangled an interview with a reporter, Bea Armstrong, who featured feel-good stories on the local news. As well as sticking to Mum’s commitment to support Nottinghamshire businesses, we’d signed up to provide autumn work-experience placements for pupils at a local alternative provision school, Charis House, that happened to be run by Bea’s parents, and also where her fiancé worked. After someone made a meme of her amusingly enthusiastic response to tasting pot sausage, it caused our website to crash under the number of enquiries.
We hired Blessing’s sister, Honour, who was starting a university course in the autumn, so was delighted to be earning some proper money up until then, and redoubled our efforts on workdays, while ensuring we fiercely protected two days off eachweek. We said yes to the enquiries we liked the sound of, and no to those that we suspected would be more stress than we cared to take on.
We were living the dream. Spending at least a couple of days every week enjoying the outdoors at festivals, weddings and other events, not an air-conditioning unit or harsh strip light to be seen.
Well,adream, anyway.
Did I still dream about the Isle of Siskin?
Far too often. Possibly not helped by my occasional – or should that be embarrassingly frequent? – peeks into island goings-on via their social media pages and online newspaper.
Did I miss the barley fields, the quaint harbour cottages, and how naturally the islanders all lived in each other’s pockets?
Did I yearn to have been there for the Sunflower Festival, selling my pasties, dancing an island jig and then strolling back to wherever home was beneath the stars?
Did I ache for Pip, wondering what he was doing, whether he’d found someone else to watch the sunset with, or if he still thought about me?
Absolutely. All of the above, and more.
But I also vowed to appreciate how far I’d come in the past few months, how, after the most unexpected turn, I’d ended up somewhere exhilarating, and been able to take some other brilliant people with me. Most of the time, I kept that vow.
35
On the last weekend in August, I was hit with another plot twist. Sherwood Street Food was starting to settle into a rhythm. We’d spent the summer smoothing out kinks, streamlining systems and had a steady yet manageable number of events booked in for the autumn. I’d barely found any space in my head for anything other than ensuring we had the right stock for the new recipes, supervising our staff and planning, prepping and providing the best street food in Nottinghamshire, but had found the odd afternoon or evening when I felt prompted to do a few quick online searches for my family, in the hope and fear that I might have one out there somewhere.
I got nowhere in looking for Nell’s parents, which I wasn’t surprised about as they would have been ninety-three and ninety-five, were they still alive. I tried my birth mother, Kennedy Swan. She’d died long before social media, online news or obituary websites, but I had little else to run with. After a few evenings fruitlessly investigating with the information from my birth certificate, I had hit nothing but dead ends.
