That brought me back to the envelopes. The first one was handwritten to Nell Brown, with no address.
The obvious way to learn more would be to open the envelope. But my mother had been so private when it came to her past. I’d assumed this was down to both her lack of sentimentality and her deep disdain for her family. It had never crossed my mind that she could have been hiding a whole other life.
A sudden thought hit me. Had she lied about everything? About me? If Mum had been married, then maybe this mysterious, conveniently deceased cousin was a lie, too. Could Mum be my biological mother? Was this man, her husband, my father?
Although Mum hadn’t actually lied about this. I couldn’t recall her telling me that she’d never married, never been in love. I’d concluded that for myself. And I’d seen my birth certificate enough times. The named mother was Kennedy Swan, the father unknown.
So, if this had nothing to do with me, did I have the right to pry into it? These were personal letters. Love letters, potentially. After the events of the day, my brain was in no fit state to decide something like that. I pictured what she’d have to say about it, and let her decide for me. Returning the contents of the box, I put it back on the shelf and went to bed.
After a brief battle with the urge to bury my head under the duvet and pretend pasties had never been invented, I got up only a few minutes late on Monday. Blaming my grouchy mood on the hours I’d spent churning over the revelations inside Mum’s box instead of sleeping, I did my best to plough on as usual.
Gregory firmly plonked a large envelope on the counter when he came for his breakfast. ‘I’m presuming there’s something wrong with your emails, because I can’t think of any other reason why you’ve still not signed the lease. Here’s a paper copy. Read it when you have your soup and call me if you’ve any questions.’
‘Mum may have known this inside out, but I’m in charge now. A responsible business owner would take the time to study it properly,’ I said.
‘If you’ve not had time to read a twenty-page document in two months, then you need to seriously question your life choices,’ Gregory said, laughing at his own joke. ‘A responsible business owner would make the time and get it done.’
Blessing came over to the kiosk before her shift started at two o’clock, leaning up against the hatch to take a good look at me once I’d filled her travel mug with coffee and handed her a pasty.
‘Mascara and dusky-rose lipstick. Subtle, yet effective. I bet no one’s said you look crap today.’
I swapped my Parsley’s Pasties smile for a real one.
‘Thanks for coming over last night.’
‘Getting to nosey about the mysterious Brown house while showing off my make-up prowess? The pleasure was all mine. Although, next time we hang out, we’re going shopping. That blue T-shirt made your skin tone appear way more porridge than Arctic hare, and I have a feeling the rest of your wardrobe isn’t much better.’
‘It’s no better,’ I started to reply, before Blessing, who had turned to check the time on the airport display board as she picked up her purchases, gasped.
‘Hello!’ She whipped her head back, eyes wide with glee. ‘What a perfect day for your secret lover to appear.’
‘What?’ I instinctively craned my neck to scan the trickle of travellers wandering about the concourse, embarrassed anticipation flooding my pale cheeks.
I didn’t have to ask who I was looking for. Blessing had been teasing me about Pip Hawkins since she’d caught us chatting back in September. Not that she knew we were on first-name terms. I’d been doing my utmost (and, it would seem, failing miserably) to pretend her comments about my crush were a puerile joke.
I had one real friend. No family. The only other men in my life were Stefan at the wholesalers, Dev the butcher and Gregory.
Of course I had a crush on the lovely, slightly awkward agricultural student who stopped to chat to me at the start and end of every term. (He’d assured me he was a mature student. I wasn’t blushing about a teenager.) I thought about Pip far more often than was reasonable. To see him now, a week before his university broke up for the summer (yes, I’d checked the dates), on a day when there weren’t even any flights to the Isle of Siskin, the tiny island in the Irish Sea that he called home and everyone else who lived there called simply ‘the island’, had my insides flapping like a flustered chicken.
He wore his usual outfit of heavy lumberjack shirt and dark T-shirt, hands pushed into cargo-trouser pockets, but there was no sign of the tatty rucksack he always took as a carry-on.
‘His hair is incredible.’ Blessing sighed. ‘Do you think he’d let me stroke it if I asked nicely?’
Pip had, in my unqualified opinion, perfect hair. Thick and glossy, so dark it shone indigo, it curled over his brow in a way that made your hand itch to smooth it out of his Celtic-blue eyes. He was a couple of inches above medium height in heavy boots, with the lean, robust frame of a man who’d spent his whole life working outdoors.
But none of those things were the reason I’d fallen hopelessly in crush with him. ‘Nothing is more beautiful than kind,’ Mum used to tell me, and it turned out she was right.
A few weeks after Mum died, I was still reeling, alongside getting to grips with the business and living with the vast, aching hole where she used to be. On a particularly bad day, starting with a flat tyre and including someone demanding a refund because they’d discovered they didn’t like mushy peas, splashing scalding-hot coffee down myself and running out of soft drinks because I’d forgotten to stocktake, I was now facing a customer threatening to sue me for causing his brand-new wife’s itchy, swollen face.
‘Look at her!’ he demanded, grabbing her arm and pulling her closer to the hatch.
Two flights had recently landed, with another one due to take off in an hour, and the kiosk was about as busy as it got.
‘You can’t deny she looks hideous!’
My frazzled mind was scrabbling like a hamster on a wheel, unable to reach an appropriate reply.
‘It does seem quite uncomfortable.’
