Prologue
Eleven Months Ago
Outside it was trying to snow. Flakes drifted against the windowpane before disintegrating, the weather depressingly symbolic of the situation Lola found herself in on Christmas Eve. Not just Christmas Eve, but her birthday, and the last one of her thirties at that. Topping up her glass of Baileys, although the temptation to just guzzle it out of the bottle was strong, Lola settled back on the sagging rust-coloured sofa and tried to smile through the pain. It could be worse, she reminded herself, she could still be with Jared. Shuddering at the thought of his betrayal she ignored the notion that being with him would at least mean she wasn’t alone.
Lola whispered to herself, ‘Inner happiness is much more important than company. Happiness and contentment.’ She repeated it like a mantra, hoping if she said it enough, she’d believe it. ‘Cheers! Happy birthday to me!’ She swigged her drink.
Putting down her glass, Lola reached for her phone, opened her messaging app and scrolled through all the unopened texts from him. She wavered slightly, memories of the good times they had assailing her, before highlighting his number and blocking it. The satisfaction was instant.
Lola glanced around the poky studio flat that was positioned slightly wonkily above the Oxfordshire bakery she’d waltzed into four weeks ago – right when they were in the middle of a complete flap due to their baker having broken their arm at an ice rink. Spying the urgent advert in the window, Lola had stepped inside. Armed with a little bit of her natural charm, her always up-to-date food hygiene certificate and a CV as long as her arm, Lola had managed to convince the harried owners that she was just the woman to step into their breach. A light as air Victoria sponge and a round of fruit scones had quickly sealed the deal. The bakery wouldn’t have to cancel orders in the run-up to Christmas and Lola would be able to pause and take stock.
Pulling the patchwork quilt snuggly around her knees, Lola counted her blessings. She’d had the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time, she had a roof over her head that did not leak (many years of travelling around the country, of camping and cramming herself into dreadful flats had taught her a watertight roof was a luxury) and although she had chosen to spend Christmas alone, she had been invited to join various people the following day. The kindness was overwhelming, but Lola felt very much that this Christmas needed to be done solo. Her heart and mind were all muddled up and she knew come the middle of January she would have to move on, but where to?
She loved the tight-knit community she had found, the way the locals hurried in each morning to buy their bread, the way they’d filled their baskets with mince pies, gossip and good cheer. All the compliments about her cakes and bakes filtered through into her borrowed kitchen and it didn’t take much for Lola to reconnect with her childhood dream of having her own little bakery, full of cheery locals, piles of fat scones and the rumblings of local news. If circumstances had been different, she would have stayed on in Oxfordshire, tucked away in the biscuit-coloured villages with their sloping roofs and undulating hills, the smell of wood fires on the chill night air. It was an uncomplicated life; the locals were content and they loved Lola’s cakes. Although thrilled with her success, Lola hoped the original baker didn’t get wind of how well she was doing. She never, ever wanted to step on anyone’s toes.
The fire flickered in the grate and Lola shuddered. It was the call of the wind, the echo of change. There was a week left of this old year, a week left to find her next adventure. The year had had a mighty good go at knocking Lola off her feet. If the pain of discovering her long-term partner, Jared, had been cheating on her, hadn’t been enough she was then felled by the sudden passing of her beloved Nannie Ruby. Her grandmother may have lived to the grand old age of ninety-three and would have been much annoyed to find Lola grieving – after all, she’d had very good innings, as she liked to say – but that didn’t make her passing any less painful. The grief still sliced through Lola’s heart, causing her to catch her breath and stem her tears as best she could.
Lola felt utterly lost without her grandmother to call up for guidance. Ruby had always been on the end of the phone, lapping up her granddaughter’s adventures, dishing out advice and comfort when needed. Ruby had taught Lola everything she knew. Their bond had been so tight – like two peas in a pod – that her mum, Bridget, had confessed to feeling squeezed out.
Determined not to cry at the memory of Ruby, Lola reached onto the bookshelf, pulling down an old wooden box, the surface worn smooth through years of handling it. Lola sniffed back tears; Ruby would not be impressed with her if she started to cry. Certainly not on her birthday. Birthdays had always been marked with towering home-made cakes and glasses of fizz.
Lifting the lid, Lola peered at the contents; they always made her feel close to Ruby when the pain threatened to engulf her. A box of tarot cards, the gilding worn off the edges, a blue sprigged teacup. Lola held the teacup up, checking for cracks or chips, but it was perfect in its delicate beauty. The saucer was similarly undamaged. White with pale blue flowers painted around the rim, it was the cup Ruby had used to read people’s tea leaves. A skill Lola had never quite mastered, although it fascinated her and she had, on occasion, given it a go.
Cradling the cup in her hands, Lola closed her eyes, allowed the memories of sitting in Ruby’s dining room on dreary Saturday afternoons, listening as her grandmother peered at the formations of leaves left at the bottom of the cup before imparting her wisdom. Lola had once asked Ruby how she knew the future, only to be met with a half-shrug and the cryptic response that people always wanted reassurance. Lola placed the teacup on the table and lifted the next package out of the box. Ruby’s tarot cards.
The box was scuffed and slightly damaged through use. Lola held it briefly to her lips before tipping out the cards, worn smooth and still smelling faintly of Ruby’s perfume. Ruby had carried them everywhere, offering divine guidance on the bus or in the local library. She’d been a bit of celebrity in their hometown for her predictions and sage advice, which Lola’s mother had found frankly embarrassing as she didn’t believe in all that hokum. Lola knew her mother would have loved to have curtailed Ruby’s influence over her, but her mother also enjoyed spending long hours at the hair salon or shopping and Ruby had been a convenient babysitter.
Lola lifted out the contents and shuffled the cards, their weight comforting as she dealt a hand for herself, as she had done many times in her life for others looking for guidance. Turning the cards over, Lola was not surprised to see the same combination she had been getting for the past ten days, ever since she’d started to think about moving on. Strong indications of new beginnings, of happiness, of love even, although Lola was not ready or looking for a new relationship. The thought of ever giving her heart away again terrified her. However, the message from the cards comforted her, made her feel closer to her grandmother. Gave her hope.
With a smile Lola reached into the bottom of the box and pulled out a brown leather-covered notebook. The well-thumbed and slightly greasy pages contained all of Ruby’s recipes and had been a constant companion to them both throughout Lola’s childhood. Ruby had called it her spell book because she knew true alchemy was in baking a perfect sponge cake, not turning dross into gold. Cake, Ruby had always reminded Lola, was happiness made real. Lola closed her eyes and thought of this, of how she could spread love and happiness through her baking. She indulged in the fantasy of having her own little café, with an awning and bunting and children coming in to choose gingerbread men. It was a dream she’d harboured since she was a child, one Jared had scorned and made her suppress. Well, as she now knew, following him had been a bad decision, and anyway, he was gone, her future was whatever she wanted it to be, cake-scented and sugar-dusted. But where?
Lola flicked through the notebook, past recipes for rock cakes and lemon drizzle sponge, mince pies and apple strudels, her mouth watering until something fell out. She picked it up, an old-fashioned postcard of a tiny beach with fishing boats washed up on it. Lola turned it over, her excitement fading as she realized there was no message on the back, just a description and a date:Fishing Boats at Polcarrow Bay, Cornwall, 1950. Why on earth had her grandmother kept a postcard with just a date on it? Ruby had been an unsentimental woman, not prone to keeping souvenirs or writing gushy messages in birthday cards, but she had always had a fondness for Cornwall. There had been a few allusions to a summer spent by the sea there, all recalled with a wistful smile, before the subject was quickly changed.
Peering closer at the faded colours, Lola felt a nip of cold air at the nape of her neck and her tiny apartment was filled with the scent of the sea. ‘Polcarrow, Cornwall,’ the name triggering a memory. ‘Polcarrow,’ she repeated. She’d seen it before somewhere. She tapped her fingers on the postcard, running the name through her brain until it clicked into place.
Lola frantically flicked through the pages of the notebook until she came to the scone recipe. The paper was smudged and soft from use, the ink mired by sticky fingers from baking, but there it was, next to the word ‘Scones’, written in tiny curling letters in faded pencil:Polcarrow. A memory assailed Lola, sunlight filtering through yellow kitchen curtains, flour-strewn countertops, the scent of something baking in the oven. Lola recalled tracing her fingers over the unusual word, forming the letters with her mouth before asking her grandmother what a Polcarrow was.
Lola still remembered the way Ruby had frozen before quickly pulling herself together, tugging the book from Lola’s hands and cramming it back on the shelf. ‘A place,’ she’d said, ‘somewhere I went a long time ago. Now, what colour shall we ice the cakes? Blue or pink?’
Polcarrow had been tucked away in Lola’s mind after that, pretty much how the postcard had been hidden in the book. Her younger self had thought nothing of the way Ruby had changed the subject, but now Lola’s intrigue got the better of her. She picked up her phone, typed the name of the village into the search engine and watched as the screen filled with photos of a tiny fishing village tucked into the ragged edge of Cornwall’s coast. Blue skies and sunshine shone down on the harbour, bouncing off a row of adorable ice-cream-coloured cottages. The photos reminded Lola of childhood holidays, sticky ice creams on the beach, sand between her toes, endless, perfect days.
Lola’s sixth sense twitched. Deep down she sensed Polcarrow must have been somewhere special to Ruby. Why else would the card have appeared when Lola was searching for guidance? Was it mad though – to drive all the way to Cornwall on a whim? Hadn’t she done madder things? Packed up and gone travelling around Portugal at a moment’s notice, set up a mobile cocktail bar to tour the summer festivals?
Propping the postcard up against the TV, Lola decided she’d leave it there, see if she was still called to travel to Cornwall in the morning. They’d been when she was a child, but she couldn’t remember the name of the town they’d stayed in. Only the seagulls threatening to steal her pasty and the luminous turquoise sea. Maybe Cornwall was worth a chance, if nothing else? Change of scene.
Three days later, Lola was trundling down a steep, cobbled road in her pink Mini. There’d been no rooms in the pub in Polcarrow so she’d found a cheap holiday apartment in a nearby town, arriving late the previous night to black skies and sea, like a shroud across the world. Turning off the radio, Lola allowed the squawk of the gulls to lure her towards the sea. She made her way past picture-perfect whitewashed cottages, their doors painted in jolly, primary colours and wound her way down past the church towards the seafront. After pulling up along the harbour, Lola got out of her car and glanced around. So this was Polcarrow.
With the sky and sea merging into a grumpy grey, it was hardly the beautiful village of her internet searches. Lola’s heart sank as her eyes ran along the slightly dilapidated seafront. The whole village had an air of being slightly uncared for, as if forgotten about. However, as she took in the pastel cottages, the pub sign swinging in the sea air, the sun briefly broke through the clouds and something lifted in Lola’s heart. On a summer’s day she imagined there would be nowhere quite like this quaint little village with the sun sparkling on the sea.
Her eyes skimmed the seafront before falling on the café across the road. It was tired, old and had a ‘To Let’ sign above its burgundy awning and a hopeful possibility bloomed in her heart. Studying it, she repainted the dark, flaking windows a pale grey, imagined chairs with parasols outside, the door open, sunshine streaming in and people buying cream teas to eat on the beach. She was so engrossed in mentally redecorating the café that she didn’t hear someone draw up beside her until they spoke.
‘Be a shame to lose that—’ the old man indicated to the café ‘—Scruff and I always get a tea and a bite to eat after our morning walk, don’t we, boy, although, between you and me, the scones are usually a bit stale. Think she buys them in.’ The old man gave her a long, considered look. ‘You interested?’
Lola turned to him. ‘Well my scones would always be home-made and never stale,’ she promised.
‘Well, if you’re serious about that place, I’ll hold you to it. Come on, boy.’ He whistled, and the fluffy sheepdog followed him.
Lola watched them amble down the harbour front and head towards the pale-yellow cottage. A smile spread across her face. Polcarrow, it seemed, was a village in need of a baker.
