‘But can I come as your guest, not Pip’s?’
Lily turned around and leant back on the worktop, arms folded across her bump. ‘I don’t know why you two are faffing around about this. It doesn’t take Flora’s spy skills to see that you’re sweet on each other.’
Knowing what a bunch of gossipy old tattletales they were, I decided the best way to deal with this was to be honest. Lily could then let everyone else know, and at the very least, they could stop grilling me on the subject.
‘I’ve lived in the same place, done the same job and pretty much nothing else for my whole life, so anything different is a big deal. I’m not used to dating, and I’ve done more socialising in the past two days than in the previous six months. I’m not going to be able to keep anything casual, or a bit of fun. While I can’t deny that I like your brother, I don’t want my first proper holiday to end in a broken heart.’ I tried to lessen the oversharing with a laugh, but it came out more like a strangled cry for help. ‘I might never find the courage to get on a plane again.’
Lily came to sit down, kettle forgotten, her face creased with compassion. ‘Pip wouldn’t deliberately hurt you, Emmie. Or playwith your feelings. But I can understand why you don’t want to start something when his life is here, and yours is on the mainland.’
‘Thank you.’
She patted my hand. ‘Having said that, no life is set in stone. Ask Malcolm. I for one would not be complaining if Parsley’s Pasties relocated.’
17
Sunday morning, I awoke to find the sun beaming through my window and a rapid tapping on the bedroom door.
‘Emmie,’ Lily pretend-whispered, loud enough for me to hear her clearly through the solid layer of oak. ‘Are you awake?’
I padded over, glancing at the clock to see it was only eight-thirty, and opened the door. ‘Has something happened?’
‘Yes.’ Lily was fizzing with excitement. ‘Logan at the harbour messaged to say the meat’s arrived on the morning ferry. His wife, Jennie, is heading to North Cove to visit her grammie who’s taken a fall, so she’s dropping it off on the way.’
‘Great.’
‘It will be here in approximately seventeen minutes.’ She looked me up and down, bouncing on her swollen toes. ‘Will you be ready? It would be amazing if we can have some pasties baked in time for the beach.’
‘Give me twenty. And maybe time for some breakfast?’
‘Eggs, bacon, pancakes?’
‘Toast is fine.’
She gave a determined nod. ‘I’ll do an egg and throw on a couple of rashers.’
I ate breakfast in the garden. I would have stayed inside, due to an early-morning chill still lingering, but every available clutter-free surface was rapidly filling up with ingredients and cooking equipment. Lily was itching to get started, and I was itching to have a quiet moment to eat my egg and bacon on toast before we embarked on a marathon baking session.
She shooed the children and Malcolm off to Siskin Church – still a regular part of most islanders’ weekends – and sat waiting with such simmering anticipation that I forwent the second cup of coffee I’d been hoping for, and we got to work.
It had been twenty months since I’d stood shoulder to shoulder with another chef, and I’d forgotten how helpful it was to have someone to pass the salt, form a two-woman production line or simply share in the quiet contentment of chopping a mini mountain of vegetables.
Lily was a focused cook, saving any conversation for intelligent, informed questions about flavours or technique. When the pastry was chilling, venison stewing, peas mushing, we stood together at the kitchen table with the vegetarian ingredients and began working out how much of the different cheese to add.
The simple act of tasting, discussing, tweaking a little, before repeating the process until finally agreeing on the perfect quantity, was another new experience. Having someone to share this with made my chest ache with the loneliness of both the past couple of years, and the decade prior to that, where it had taken months of conniving to get any of my suggestions heard. Even then, they’d never been discussed, merely announced as if they had been Mum’s idea all along.
There should have been freedom in running things by myself but, up until creating the new vegan pasties, all I’d done was carry on enforcing the old rules and routines. Nevertheless, I tried not to be too harsh on myself – making changes to a successful business was a lot of responsibility for a twenty-six-year-old whose biggest decision prior to that had been whether to wear blue or black socks on her day off, or which book to check out of the library. Of course I would struggle to find the confidence to make any changes alone.
But having someone else to say, ‘Do you think that’s too salty?’ or, ‘I agree, the third version is the best,’ was a revelation.
I briefly wondered whether Blessing might like to swap her turquoise tunic for a Parsley’s uniform. Then I remembered how she’d manhandled my kitchen contents (pausing in my mixing to send her a reminder to water my herbs) and decided that an unsuitable co-worker would probably be worse than continuing alone.
At two-thirty, I carefully lifted the final tray out of Lily’s huge oven.
‘Wow. They look and smell so much better fresh,’ Lily said, dreamily, gently poking a perfectly golden crust.
‘That’s why I bake most of them once I get to the kiosk, with each batch small enough to sell out within a couple of hours.’
While they were undoubtedly tastier fresh, these looked like the best pasties I’d made without Mum. It turned out teamwork really did make the dream work.
