Flick Ardmore unlocked the back door and turned on the lights in the kitchen of Pecorino. Stainless steel gleamed and light glinted off her baking tools hanging on the rack her father had installed in her corner of the family kitchen. Her kingdom. Her gaze landed on the German mixing machine in pride of place on the counter. A little burst of pride blossomed in her chest like the spray of flowers on the engagement cake she’d delivered yesterday. The mixer had cost a week’s wages, but it was a marker of her progress towards achieving her dream.
Flick’s savings were nowhere near enough to buy her parents out yet, but Dad had estimated five years before they were ready to retire. Then the best family-run restaurant in Brisbane’s east side would become her top-end patisserie. Would her parents be happy helping out part time, or would they do the grey nomad thing for a while?
No. She could imagine Mum’s response to that suggestion: Felicity, why on earth would you think I have any desire to eat dust with every meal?
After washing her hands and donning her apron, Flick checked the running list for the day. Leading up to Halloween, she needed to bake more orange and dark chocolate cakes for Pecorino and she had an order to fill for one of Brisbane’s upmarket Southbank restaurants.
Through the kitchen window the glow of pre-dawn intensified into a band of gold that lit a bank of low clouds. The sight lifted her spirits and she turned optimistically back to her morning routine. Better get the ovens on and the cakes in before Dad arrives.
She bit her bottom lip. Dad would arrive in his vintage VW with a cheery toot of the horn, and Mum would follow thirty minutes later in the delivery van. Her mother’s first words would probably be: Felicity, why haven’t you finished those biscuits. Really, must I do everything for this business? She’d follow that with a lingering look at Dad. A look full of censure and anger and disappointment. A look that had become more common over the past couple of months.
Flick wrapped her arms around her waist, hating the burn like bad indigestion racing from her stomach to her throat. Lately when her parents were together, Flick could cut the tension with a boning knife.
She headed into the cold room and assembled the ingredients for the special order, including a light, blood-red paste she’d prepared last night to create a spider-web pattern through the layers of vanilla cake. Focusing her mind on the design for the special order, she returned to the kitchen and set the first cake layer on a board.
Hinges creaked as the back door opened, and she glanced up. Her father stood in the doorway. Still, silent, sad. He didn’t enter the kitchen.
‘The ovens are heating, Dad, and I’ve started the special order—’ Her words died, along with her voice.
Her father leaned against the doorjamb as though, if he moved an inch, the building would collapse. His head shook like a bobble-head toy in slow motion, up-and-down, side-to-side, useless, winding down, drained of energy, hope, joy.
Dad’s face was pale beneath his stubble and his hollow eyes, and he looked older than his fifty-five years. Older than Yoda and as weak as Benjamin Button at either end of his life. But it was the expression in his eyes that would haunt her dreams.
Lost, lonely and unloved.
Flick set the thin-bladed knife on the counter and gripped the squared edge. She tightened her grip until her fingers turned white and the metal dug a ridge in her palm.
Only something wrong with her mother could put that expression on her father’s face.
‘What’s happened? Is it Mum?’ Her parents’ love affair was the stuff of Flick’s other dreams. Dreams that had taken a battering when her jerk of an ex-boyfriend Jason had dumped her. She aspired to a love like theirs. One day. Swallowing against bile rising in her throat, she forced herself to stay upright. ‘Has something happened to Mum?’
He shook his head again. A muscle jumped in his cheek. Slowly, as though he was the Tin Man working oil into his rusted jaw, he opened, closed, opened his mouth. Words dropped like pebbles, pinging like hail on a tin roof.
‘Your mother is divorcing me. And she’s served me with a court order. I’m not allowed to enter Pecorino.’
***
They faced each other across the picnic table at the rear of the restaurant, neither one able to meet the other’s eyes. The folded beach umbrella cast a long shadow across her father’s chest.
Divorce. D-I-V-O-R-C-E. The act of breaking apart a marriage.
Flick’s brain froze around the word. ‘How, Dad? Why? This happens to other people, not to you and Mum.’
‘Apparently, it does. I knew she wasn’t happy, but …’ Dad looked up at last, and his hands made a vague gesture. He looked helpless, hopeless—
Lost.
The pain in her strong and dependable father’s expression hit Flick like a kick in the guts. ‘I thought you were happy, in love. It’s your thirtieth wedding anniversary next month.’ She had planned a cake shaped like an oyster for their pearl celebration.
Her father dropped his head into his hands. ‘She said she needs to find herself, whatever the hell that means. Probably that she’s bored by our life together, all that we’ve achieved.’ He turned towards the building and exhaled a shaky breath. ‘I’m barred from entering the restaurant in any capacity. Flick, I don’t know what I’ll do without the restaurant.’
‘And home—has she kicked you out of the house too?’
‘Yes. I’ve asked Charlie down at the bay if I can stay in his fishing hut for the time being.’
The sound of tyres crunching over the gravel drive gave Flick brief warning before the delivery van pulled up behind Ruby, her small, ancient, but freshly painted red sedan. Her mother got out of the car and strode towards them.
‘Felicity, why aren’t you inside baking today’s orders? And you—’ She turned eyes like chips of granite on her husband. ‘You’re barred from the premises. You need to leave now or I’ll call for the police to escort you off.’
Her father lifted his head as though weighed down by an anchor and looked at her mother.
Without hope. Without care. Without passion.
‘I didn’t set foot inside the restaurant.’
Oh God, his voice … emotionless. Flick stared at his blank expression, seeking a trace of her passionate, caring father.
‘The court order includes the outside area. You aren’t allowed on the property at all.’ Her mother folded her arms and glared.
At last Flick understood. The love between her parents had died, and at this moment, she hated her mother for turning her father into a broken man.
Flick stood, untied her apron and dragged it over her head. ‘Pecorino is us, all three of us, and I can’t work here if Dad isn’t welcome.’
Essie Ardmore folded her arms and pinned Flick with a look that told her more than words ever could. Her mother was miffed at most. Not sad or angry or surprised or any of a dozen emotions that suggested a connection between mother and daughter.
Miffed negated every sense of security, of belonging that Flick had ever believed in. ‘I’ll collect my utensils and leave too. If Dad isn’t welcome here, neither am I.’ She might not be welcome, but her heart wrenched at the thought of leaving the restaurant.
‘Do as you wish. You’ve always been your father’s daughter. You might as well pack your gear from home too. Both the house and restaurant are going on the market today. They’re both in my name.’ Flick froze. For a heartbeat that expanded, pounded and filled her ears with a rush of blood that made her dizzy. All that Flick thought she knew of her mother vanished with those words. This woman with the outward appearance of Flick’s mother was a stranger.
‘You’re selling Pecorino?’ Her voice was flat, disconnected from emotion, distanced from pain.
‘Of course. I need my share of money from both sales to get away from here.’
Flick struggled to keep a note of pleading out of her voice. ‘If you’ll give me a little more time to save the deposit, I’d like to buy the business. Will you do that for me?’
Her mother shrugged, the action uncaring. ‘Do what you want. If it hasn’t sold by then, I’ll sell it to you. I don’t care who I sell it to. Frankly, I don’t know why you’d want such a damned millstone around your neck, but you’re more like your father every day. He likes being tied down to one place too.’ Without a goodbye, her mother climbed into the van and backed out of the driveway. Out of Flick’s life.
‘Sweetheart, I’m sorry about …’
‘You have nothing to be sorry for, Dad.’
‘But I have. Now you’ve got no home and no job. I should have tried harder, done more, though God knows what.’ He hugged her, rocking a little as she held him close.
Dragging in a deep breath, Flick eased out of his arms. ‘Since you’re heading to the Bay, I might head south for a break. Maybe go to Newcastle for a bit. If I can save enough for a deposit, we can reopen Pecorino. Dad? We’ll keep Pecorino going—together.’