I was already placing it into a paper bag. She always had the parsnip and white Stilton pasty, despite the younger man who often travelled with her trying to persuade her to go for the meat option, a venison and minted mushy pea recipe Mum had developed on the basis that it was both local and the most environmentally friendly meat.
‘She’s not a vegetarian,’ he often told me, rolling his eyes. ‘Just refuses to believe that anything else could be as tasty as this one.’
‘I don’t care if the venison is better,’ his colleague once scoffed. ‘I live on salad and grains all week to offset the calorific pleasure of this feast. Why risk it?’
Today, he went as far as to put a hand on her arm as she reached up to take her purchase. ‘Come on, Cathy, you know I’ve gone vegan this month. Are you seriously going to make me hunt down a prepacked plant-based sandwich in here?’
Apart from Parsley’s, the only places to get something to eat were the food court on the other side of the building, which didn’t do takeaway, or the Travel Shop, which by this time of day was probably down to a flabby cheese and tomato wrap and a couple of cheap sausage rolls.
‘And what is a vegan, however superficial they are about it, going to do with a Stilton pasty?’ Cathy asked.
‘Damn.’ The man’s face fell. ‘It’s got cheese in it?’
‘That’s what makes it so delicious.’ She smirked, opening the bag for a deep sniff.
‘You don’t have any other options?’ he asked me, despite already knowing the answer because we only had three flavours on the menu, and, even if the custard in the cinnamon apple pasty had been dairy-free, we now had only one pasty left.
‘Sorry. They do a good soup in the food court, if you’ve time.’
We both glanced at the clock on the display board. He didn’t have time.
Mum had considered it revolutionary to put a vegetarian option on the menu, back in 1990 when she’d opened the kiosk. It had taken years to persuade her to stock soya milk.
‘I don’t suppose you have any gluten-free?’ another man asked as Cathy’s dejected colleague slunk off muttering about finding a packet of crisps.
‘Sorry, this is the only one left. It’s normal pastry,’ I said, as if gluten-free were ever an option.
I was getting asked questions like this more and more often, I mused while cleaning up a few minutes later, simultaneously trying to scrub away the strange numbness I’d woken up with. Mum had been adamant that sticking to three recipes, done well, was key to our success. Broadening the menu would only compromise the quality. And it wasn’t as though I needed to attract more customers. Apart from the horror of the pandemic, business was always enough to keep things ticking over. More recipes meant more work, which I simply didn’t have the time or the energy for.
And yet.
Had any of my reluctance to get up that morning been due to feeling a teensy bit bored with facing the same routine for the squillionth time? Had sleeping through my alarm, not simply doing what I’d always done, been enough to awaken a tiny part of me that wasn’t sure this was actually what I wanted to be doing for the rest of my life?
I couldn’t help wondering if there was another reason I kept putting off signing a new three-year lease.
Every day, I watched up to a thousand strangers jet off to far-off places. And while the short-haul flights from our tiny airport were not that adventurous compared to many, when the most exotic trip you’ve undertaken is a long-weekend in Whitby, getting on a plane to anywhere is a prospect beyond thrilling.
But that was a fantasy, of course. My life was here. Parsley’s was my legacy, and I owed it to Mum to put as much effort in as she had. Most of the travellers at Sherwood Airport were heading off on business, anyway. Probably to boring meetings, trying to fix nightmarish problems or drum up more sales, because they didn’t have the luxury of hundreds of customers walking right past them every day.
Besides, Mum and I were the type of people who valued routine. Just like Cathy. When you’d figured out what works best, why risk changing it?
Nell had told me about her cousin – my birth mother. How she’d spent her short life staggering between trouble and disaster. In and out of prison along with the rest of our sparse family. How when the cousin had turned up high on goodness knew what and handed over a tiny baby and a plastic bag containing three nappies and a tub of formula milk, Nell had known the only decent thing to do was take them.
She’d learned how to be a mother through checking out every parenting book in the library, discarding the new-fangled nonsense, and incorporating the remaining advice into a regime based on common sense and practicality, all while continuing to run the kiosk.
It had worked, as she’d often used to remind me. I’d grown into a sensible young woman with a faultless work ethic, one capable of being entrusted with a thriving business when the time came. Any genetic tendency towards criminality or chaos had been suppressed thanks to cutting off all contact with Negative Influences (by which she meant my aunt and grandparents, my mother having died a year after relinquishing me), and building our new family of two on the foundation of self-discipline and integrity.
Still, I’d grown up with the ghost of my birth mother hovering over my shoulder, especially in those adolescent moments when I’d dared to dream about a life more like the ones that the girls at school had enjoyed. Shopping with friends at the weekend, hobbies in the evening and even going away in the school holidays, rather than forever braising venison or peeling parsnips.
‘Make-up?’ Mum had shaken her head in disgust the one time I’d asked if I could spend my meagre earnings on someeyeliner. ‘That only leads to trouble. Do you want to throw away everything I’ve taught you for a few minutes of frivolity with a boy? It only feels good while it lasts, Emmaline. The consequences are a whole other matter.’
What I’d actually wanted was to see if I could make my eyes look mysterious and cool like the most popular girl in school, Jodie Mayfair.
Now, fourteen years later, I thought about this as I flicked off the kiosk lights, locked the door and headed straight over to the Travel Shop. I was twenty-six. Mum had died almost two years ago. Why was I waiting for her permission to do anything any more?
After my detour to the shop, I found my usual table in the food court. This table was rarely busy, partly because the food-court offerings consisted of an all-day breakfast that looked as if it had been sitting on the lukewarm counter ‘all day’, and a ‘hot special’, rotating five variations of greying, greasy minced beef. There were also a few sandwiches and snacks and the spicy lentil and vegetable soup. Which was delicious.
Six days a week, I treated myself to soup, a warm bread roll and a slice of flapjack with a pot of tea before setting off for home. Today, Blessing, who was working the afternoon shift at the Travel Shop, hurried over to join me.
