I’ll be at the farm all evening, and tomorrow. I won’t call in at the Grand again, but Daisy will deliver a note if you ask her.
With faith, hope and love
G x
I read the letter again, more slowly, then a third time, because my brain still couldn’t believe what my eyes were seeing. Mum would have been thirty-seven. She was forty-nine when she became my legal guardian. I knew she’d worked in variousrestaurants before starting Parsley’s Pasties in 1990, but that was about it. At this point, all I’d learned was that a man spent the day with her, and asked to see her again. Although the stack of other letters suggested she’d said yes, and if I kept on reading, I’d surely find out. And could Parsley the bull be a coincidence? With a wry shake of my head, I reminded myself that nothing my mum did was happenstance. Let alone the name of her beloved business.
It was nearly one in the morning. My whole body was reminding me I had to be up in three and a half hours. The thought of staying awake and reading the whole stash, abandoning Parsley’s for the day, felt like an even worse betrayal than snooping through Mum’s old love letters.
Certain that I had found the man in the wedding photograph, I decided to allow myself a day to process that before I delved any deeper. I honestly didn’t think I could take any more bombshells just yet.
6
The spicy lentil and sweet potato pasties sold out within three hours. Admittedly, I’d only made a dozen, but what I’d not accounted for was how many customers relished the opportunity to sample a new flavour. The verdict? Well, the security manager, Tim, who held as much disdain for a meatless meal as my mother did for high-heeled shoes, came back for seconds. He’d only bought the first one because his assistant manager dared him.
I skipped lunch at the food court, as, unable to face any more lentils, I’d decided to go home and make a sandwich, get an early start on the prep for Thursday and then possibly read another letter before it got too late. As I pushed open the main airport door, a woman was struggling on the other side. She had a baby in a pushchair, a bawling child around four or five swinging off one arm and a large toddler flat out on the sopping wet concrete, as rigid as a dead slug.
The toddler was wearing nothing but a filthy T-shirt, socks and a Superman cape.
The automatic door wasn’t working so I stood and held the other door open for a few seconds, in case she managed tomiraculously find a way to get three children, a pushchair, four cabin bags and a giant stuffed panda to go through them.
‘Thank you,’ she muttered, starting to nudge one suitcase towards the door an inch at a time.
‘I’m not going!’ the oldest child screamed. ‘I won’t leave Sausage and you can’t make me!’
As she yanked down with all her strength, her mum let go of the pushchair, the bags hanging from the back causing it to tip over and catch the leg of a man in an expensive suit trying to dodge past.
The only one of them not crying now was the toddler. I dashed over to right the pushchair, lifting a rucksack onto one shoulder and hurrying back to the door to prop it open again.
‘It’s no good,’ the woman said with a jerky sob. ‘Boarding closes in two minutes. We’ll never make it.’
‘Hooray!’ the girl shouted, letting go of her mum and punching the air with both arms.
The next plane to leave was for Vienna. If Leandra was on the gate as usual, then it might not be too late.
‘No, not hooray!’ I said, loudly enough to get her attention. ‘Your mum has organised you a lovely holiday, and from the looks of things, she really needs it.’
‘She should have brought Sausage, then!’
‘Isobel, darling, I told you, you’re not allowed to take snakes on a plane.’
‘Yes, and I told you that’s a stupid rule because corn snakes aren’t even venomous and I could have hided him in my shorts and no one would have known.’ Isobel stuck both hands on her hips, thrusting her pointy chin forwards.
‘Corn snakes don’t like strange places. He’ll be much happier in his own tank with all his favourite things and lots of lovely crickets to eat.’
‘I don’t care. I’m not going and neither is Oscar!’
‘Okay. Fair enough,’ I said, my head scrambling. If I’d spoken to my mother like that, she’d have stuck me in Sausage’s tank for the duration of the holiday and force-fed me crickets. ‘But now you’re here, don’t you want to go to the special room and see the aeroplanes take off?’
Isobel’s eyes narrowed.
‘You even get to go through the secret special supervillain detection machine. And your shoes and bags and everything else have to go through the X-ray scanner in case you’re sneaking in a bomb or a corn snake.’
‘Do they ever find a bomb?’
‘I heard a villain might be sneaking a bomb through this very afternoon. I work here, so I would know.’
I steered the laden pushchair through the doors while the mum grabbed the bags, encouraging Isobel to see if she could find the secret scanner. The second Isobel gave a decisive nod, saying, ‘I think it might be that way,’ Oscar sprang up and ran past all of us, his bare bottom bobbing.
