Cooking had always offered comfort. Weighing and measuring, chopping and stirring: these simple acts somehow lifted the spirits and, luckily, Della had plenty to occupy her that day. She set to immediately, her enthusiasm reignited as she gathered together her ingredients and ran through a mental checklist of what needed to be done. Mark had presumably sloped back off to bed – he enjoyed a lie in on Sundays, being golf-free – even though there was a small party to cater for this afternoon. Della had suggested to Sophie that she could invite a bunch of friends over before they began to disperse to colleges and universities all over the country during the following week.
She spent the next couple of hours making mini savoury tarts and samosas, without Sophie’s help – her daughter wasn’t a cook, she could barely peel the foil off a yoghurt pot without slopping it everywhere – and anyway, Della preferred to get on with the job alone. Mark remained upstairs as she chopped onions and peppers, and she couldn’t help but feel relieved. Negativity seemed to ooze from his pores these days; he wore it like a particularly unpleasant aftershave, and she wondered whether he had begun to carry it with him to his consulting room. Sorry, Mrs Fletcher, it’s a particular vicious strain of fungal infection. This toenail is no longer viable …
He did have a point, though, about the whole viability thing. After all, it wasn’t as if Della had bookshop experience, or any kind of proper grown-up business plan. She had been a shoddy typist, worked in a cafe and a florist’s, and spent the past seven years selling Heathfield Castle perfumed soaps and build-your-own balsa wood castles (with working drawbridges). She wasn’t even terrible gifted in the practical department. When she had brought a castle kit home, hoping to entertain Isaac and Noah on a visit, she had got a splinter in her finger and been unable to fit the pieces together in any kind of castle-resembling way. ‘Looks derelict,’ Jeff had snorted from his spectator’s position on the sofa, sipping his wine. It’s meant to look derelict. It’s not a Barratt house. It’s supposed to be nine hundred years old! Plus, how many cookbooks would she need to stock this hypothetical bookstore of hers? It occurred to Della that, while 962 were clearly far too many for the narrow hallway of a terraced house, they might not be enough for a shop.
Jane Ribble, the woman for whom Della’s father had left Kitty, had opened a shop in Ambleside in the Lake District: a boutique of the mother-of-the-bride variety, selling jewel-encrusted dresses and stiff little pastel-coloured suits. ‘A vanity project,’ Kitty had sneered, and she was probably right. On the rare occasions Della had visited her father, the shop had seemed rather bare, as if the flouncy frocks and lilac net fascinators were only on display temporarily, and would soon be whisked away to make way for the kind of shop people really wanted.
And what kind of shop was that? As she placed her tarts and samosas in the oven, Della tried to conjure up the image she had already painted in her own mind. Deep red walls, glowing lamps, a velvet sofa to sink into … but now all she could think of was Jane Ribble, a terribly gushy woman, the Cartwright children had decided – well-meaning and kind, in the way that she cooked for them whenever they stayed for weekends. However, they did wish she wouldn’t try so hard, serving up uneasy parings of meat and fruit (pork with prunes, a ham salad with slices of blood orange weeping slowly into the iceberg lettuce), as if driven by a desire to impress them. With no children of her own, Jane had seemed bewildered by the Cartwright trio. She hadn’t realised they’d have all been far happier with Alphabetti Spaghetti on toast. Della had visited Jane only a couple of times after her father’s funeral, and only because she happened to be in the area. She couldn’t help feeling sorry that, as Jane’s shop had failed, she had had to sell their semi-detached home and move into a poky flat above a photocopier repair shop from which a sharp chemical odour seeped at all hours of the day and night.
Stopping for a coffee now, Della flipped through Entertaining with Flair, deciding that canapés would be fun for Sophie and her friends. Actually, here they were called hors d’oeuvres, which sounded pleasingly quaint. She could have a section for hors d’oeuvres cookbooks in the shop – an entire shelf dedicated to things on sticks. That would be fun; in fact, she could have a bookshop opening party, inviting all the villagers who had so kindly turned up for Kitty’s funeral tea. She would pick out her favourite canapé recipes and have a retro theme …
Turning her attention back to the matter in hand, Della decided to rustle up a batch of vol au vents. Adults were coming, as well as Sophie’s gang: Freda, of course, plus Charlotte and Tricia, fellow mothers she had known since their children were friends at primary school.
At around eleven Mark finally put in an appearance, requiring Della to negotiate her way around him with floury hands and a scalding tray of just-baked tarts. ‘Sausages,’ he observed as she slid another tray into the oven.
‘Honey and chilli-glazed chipolatas,’ she corrected him, trying to lighten the atmosphere between them. ‘Both veggie and pork.’
‘What is it about teenage girls and vegetarianism?’
‘Oh, I don’t know – I think it’s sort of obligatory. Here, try one of these.’ She thrust a plate of samosas at him.
‘Mmm, these look great.’ He bit into one. ‘They’re delicious, Dell. Can’t believe you’ve managed to make all of these. They look so professional.’ He glanced appreciatively at her morning’s baking all set out on the kitchen table.
‘It was fun, actually.’
Mark smiled. ‘Nice to see you enjoying cooking again.’
‘But I do enjoy it.’
‘Yes, but you know what I mean – being creative about it, the way you used to be.’ He meant this as a compliment, Della decided as she started to load the dishwasher. ‘You’re so good at it,’ Mark went on. ‘Look, if your heart’s set on leaving the gift shop – and I really don’t blame you for that – maybe you should think about doing something with catering?’
‘Maybe,’ she said lightly, not wishing to discuss the folly of her bookshop idea now.
‘I mean, surely it’d make more sense than opening a shop? You could work from home, there’d be no overheads really.’ She nodded, pretending to consider this. ‘And this kind of thing,’ he continued, ‘top-quality party food … people would love that, wouldn’t they? I mean, it’s a bit of a step-up from crisps! And you have tons of experience from running that veggie cafe.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ she said, pecking his cheek and pulling on the old fisherman’s cardi she had plucked out of Sophie’s ready-for-charity bag. ‘I’m off to buy drinks, okay? I’ll take my car.’
‘Fine,’ he said, as if rather hurt by her lack of enthusiasm over his suggestion for what she might want to do with her life.
In the supermarket Della roamed the booze aisle, plonking wine into her trolley, plus beer, cider and soft drinks for the teens, and a couple of packets of puff pastry for the vol au vents. Although she knew Sophie and her friends favoured vodka with mixers, she couldn’t quite bring herself to buy spirits: silly, really, as what was the difference? They were all over eighteen and if they wanted vodka, they would simply bring their own.
She was making her way to the checkout when she saw them: the man and his boy who had arrived at the castle just as it was about to close. Della stopped and watched them. Eddie, that was the boy’s name. She didn’t know the father’s. They were debating what to buy at the fish counter; the supermarket had a proper one, with a range of catches displayed on crushed ice. ‘I don’t want anything with a face,’ Eddie retorted, and Della smiled.
‘What are those, Dad?’
‘They’re scallops, a kind of shellfish.’
‘What are they?’
‘Sardines, Eddie.’
‘No, they’re not!’
‘They are, look, the sign says so.’
‘But sardines are in tins …’
Della stood for a moment, hoping she looked casual rather than weirdly stalkery, gripping the handle of a trolley laden with booze. She wanted to go over and say hi. Although she wasn’t sure why, it seemed important to remind them where they’d met, and to say she hoped they’d come back to the castle sometime.
The man turned and caught her eye. He was tall and rangy, with kind eyes, and still had the slightly harassed air of a weekend father. Della smiled and, perhaps a little too eagerly, pushed her trolley towards them. ‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Hi,’ the man said distractedly. He took his son’s hand – she was surprised that Eddie allowed it – and turned back to the counter. ‘How about salmon, Eddie? You liked it last time.’ Eddie gave Della a blank look and muttered something to his dad.
Feeling foolish now, she stared hard at the fish. She had planned to say something funny about sardines, about them having a life outside tins before they were canned, but what kind of lunatic eavesdropped on father-and-son conversations in supermarkets? Anyway, it was clear now that neither the man nor his son recognised her and that, on a score of one to ten, the risk of her seeming like some batty middle-aged stranger probably hovered at around a nine.
They ambled off together with their bag of salmon, and Della found herself buying two trout fillets she didn’t even want (Mark was funny about fish). No wonder they’d had no recollection of ever having met her before. Although she planned to spruce herself up later, to apply the full whack of make-up and dig out her most flattering dress, right now she was wearing the lumpen old fisherman’s cardi she’d plucked out of Sophie’s charity bag. Beneath this, clearly visible, was a faded T-shirt which, she realised now, had a daub of eggy mixture – the filling for her savoury tarts – on the chest. She hadn’t even showered yet.
‘We need to get Milo’s birthday card, Eddie.’ The man’s voice floated over from the pickles aisle. It shouldn’t have mattered that this attractive, clearly kind man and his son – with whom she’d had a proper conversation about the terrible fate of prisoners in the dungeon – didn’t even recognise her. But it did matter, because she clearly remembered them.
In the car park she loaded her purchases into the boot of her car, noticing the man and his boy pulling away in a rather scruffy blue Mini. She watched them leave. Occasionally, Della wondered if she was starting to fade, like the botanical illustrations on the tea towels Kitty used to buy from National Trust properties, and would use for years until the flowers and their exotic Latin names were barely visible.
Whatever Mark thought, she decided, slamming the boot shut, she had to do something – something that thrilled her – before she completely faded away.