The timer beeped and Alys heaved herself out of her chair. She manoeuvred the oven door around her bump. The eye-level oven had not only been a great choice for checking on the progress of the cakes, but it was proving invaluable in the later stages of pregnancy. No bending over and back strain – given that she planned on working until the very last moment, this was a blessing.
She took the lemon poppy-seed cake from the oven and set it down on the work surface. It could cool in its tin for ten minutes or so before she turned it out onto the cooling rack. Alys looked down at the raised golden-brown top, cracked slightly in the centre exposing a sprinkling of dark poppy seeds and releasing a mouth-watering aroma. She was glad she’d found a foolproof recipe. It had become one of the most popular cakes in the Nortonstall café and it was Alys’s own personal favourite.
It seemed so long since her first disastrous attempt at baking it, and so much had happened in the meantime. In the last eighteen months alone, her life, which had changed such a great deal since she arrived to help Moira in Northwaite, had simply taken off in a dizzying spiral. Her future was most definitely here, among the very fields, valleys, woods and lanes that had been home to her family, through good times and bad, for so long. The businesses had gone from strength to strength and they had branched out into providing cakes and table settings for weddings, as Alys had planned. Moira and Tom were married now and they’d taken in Lottie and Ralph, her cats from London who’d adapted very happily to country living. Hannah had arrived back in Nortonstall with her boyfriend Matt, declaring that she’d quite fallen in love with the area. They’d bought a house in the countryside near Haworth and proceeded to have a baby. And now Alys’s own twins were due at any moment. She could foresee that she and Rob were going to need all the help they could get, but she figured that Julie, Derek, Moira, Tom and now Kate, who had already arrived and was ensconced at Moira’s, much to everyone’s surprise, would take care of that.
Her scan had shown that she was expecting a boy and a girl, and Alys had already decided on their names: Alice and Albert, who would undoubtedly be Bertie from birth. Rob, who was just generally thrilled with life at the moment, was perfectly happy with her choice but had suggested ‘Allie’ as a pet name for their daughter. ‘Otherwise we’ll all get hopelessly confused,’ he’d said. Alys could see his point but she hoped that her choice of names would be a fitting tribute to their ancestors. She’d come to feel very close to them, and the bench in the Northwaite graveyard overlooking Alice’s gravestone, beautifully carved by Albert, had become her favourite spot to sit and think things through. There was a kind of stillness and peace there. Alys would never have acknowledged this to anyone else, except perhaps to Rob, but she felt so safe there, as though someone was watching over her. In fact, when she was quite sure that no one else was around, she sometimes had conversations with Alice. She didn’t expect any response, but she always felt the better for them. Of course, if anyone had spotted her, she knew they’d think she’d gone quite mad.
Alys looked at the kitchen clock. Time to get on – the lemon poppy-seed cake was ready to turn out of its tin, and it was time for the sign on the café door to read ‘Open’, ready for the start of another day.