My route took me past the Royal Pavilion, an enormous, lavish, domed seaside pleasure palace built for one of the British monarchs. It looked suspiciously like a rip-off of the Taj Mahal, with turrets and bulbous domes. Then across Church Street and up Jubilee Street into the North Laine district with its hippy, edgy, student-friendly vibe and myriad shops, cafés, and cool pubs. I turned down another, smaller street, and then I saw it. I stood for a moment, just staring in awe.Toastit read in simple letters. It was housed in the exact old brick building I’d always thought would be perfect, formerly a factory of some sort, with a gleaming black-painted front and huge glass-panel windows that could be opened up when the weather was nice. It had a pale yellow-and-white-striped awning fluttering in the breeze and a profusion of stone planters that were now, this late in winter, housing a few forlorn ornamental purple cabbages. It was utterly charming. It was how I’d always pictured it.
A tall young woman with long black braids coiled around the crown of her head and cascading down her back opened the front door and waved to me as she set a sandwich board out on the pavement. I returned the wave, sure that I was supposed to know her but having absolutely no idea who she was. This was going to be a very tricky day to navigate. I took a deep breath and crossed the street, holding my head high. The advice of my high school best friend, Ashley, came back to me.Fake it till you make it.
“You’ve got this.” I felt a flutter of nerves mixed with anticipation. I was about to see just what I had been missing all these years.
11
The interior ofToast was just as charming as the outside. White walls reflected the light streaming in through the huge picture windows, and the wooden floor was painted a pale jade green. A jumble of endearingly mismatched tables and chairs dotted the main room, each decorated with a vintage cut-glass vase of winter branches. The entire back wall of the restaurant had floor-to-ceiling shelves stocked with local edible goods. Jars of East Sussex honey. Bottles of cider. Bunches of lavender and sage. It was cozy and serene and tidy. For so many years I’d dreamed of this place, and to see it here in real life was overwhelming. I felt a swell of emotion as I took it all in, pride mixed with sorrow, bittersweet.
The woman who had waved at me greeted me warmly, rolling her eyes at the noise coming from what I presumed was the kitchen at the back.
“She’s in rare form this morning,” she murmured to me. Jamaican British, I guessed by her accent. She was wearing a name tag, thank goodness.
“Thanks for the warning... Chandice,” I said rather belatedly.
“I’ll get everything sorted in the front of house before we open for brunch,” she said. “You’ll have enough on your hands with Nicola today.”
“Great. Thanks.” I took another long look around. The interior was just the right mixture of Scandinavian serene and offbeat inviting. I loved it. I wanted to live right here forever.
“Is that you I hear mucking about out there, Lolly?” A strident call from the back roused me, and I hurried down a passageway into a bright and gleaming industrial space. There were several crates of lettuce standing forlornly in a corner. A huge pot of something savory steamed on the stove. A sous-chef or member of the kitchen prep team stood at a long table, dicing and chopping a mountain of vegetables. Another team member stood at the stove, stirring several pots alternately. They both murmured a greeting, but no one looked up, keeping their eyes on their work. And in the middle of the kitchen stood a woman I assumed was Nicola.
Dressed in chef’s whites, her arms akimbo, spiky blond crew cut sticking straight up, she wore white clogs and a thunderous expression. She was probably in her early fifties, short and sturdily built, with a work-worn face.
“Good morning.” I decided to stick to general pleasantries until I got a feel for what exactly was going on around here.
“This is the last straw,” she informed me bluntly. “I know you’re shagging Colin, but he’s got to go.” She gestured dramatically to the bins of lettuce.
Oh boy. Who was Colin? Did “shagging” mean what I thought I remembered it meaning?
“What happened?” It seemed like the safest question.
She grimaced. “Does Colin grow some of the best produce in East Sussex? Yes. Are his heirloom tomatoes sweet enough to make theangels weep? Absolutely. But he can’t get our bloody order straight. This is the third time he’s mucked up this month. We can’t keep scrambling to change the menu at the last minute or serve subpar dishes. It’s true that I lust after his root vegetables, and I know you’re a goner for those dreamy bedroom eyes, but you’ve got to find a different supplier. It’s a matter of professional conduct.” Speech concluded, she folded her arms and waited, her expression stony.
I stood there, mind racing. What could I possibly say? Then inspiration hit. “Absolutely, and I want to talk about this more thoroughly. Could we have a meeting tomorrow to talk this through?” Because tomorrow, presumably, if what Aunt Gert said was accurate, I would be safely back in my normal life and whatever strange sort of magic was at work would have ironed itself out to normalcy. I decided to put off as much as I could today, push it all to tomorrow and let the universe sort it out somehow. It was, I thought, a fairly good plan under the circumstances.
Nicola nodded curtly. “Fine. Tomorrow before we start. So what do we do about the menu today?”
“What have we got to work with?”
For the next twenty minutes we took an inventory of on-hand ingredients, bandied about ideas, and finally settled on replacing the salad for the eggs Benedict with roasted potatoes, and the swede (which I finally identified as rutabaga by surreptitiously googling it on my phone) with roasted parsnips instead. Having to think on the fly was both hair-raisingly terrifying and sort of fun in an electrifying, adrenaline-fueled way.
“Are we all set?” I asked finally when we’d agreed on an alternate menu.
Nicola nodded. “It’ll do.” She wiped her sleeve across her brow. “I’m getting too old for this utter nonsense. I need a bloody holiday.”
“You should take one,” I answered neutrally.
“Ha.” She snorted. “That’s rich coming from the woman who hasn’t taken a single day of holiday since we opened.”
“Really?” That couldn’t be right. Hadn’t Toast been open for almost six years?
She sighed dramatically. “This business will suck your life away. But we’re addicts, right?” She shook her head. “Look at us. What a pair. Working all the time, no vacations somewhere warm and tropical where they put umbrellas in your fruity drinks. Before you know it we’ll blink and we’ll be sixty—alone and wrinkled and eating a tinned pudding in front of the telly.”
What a cheering thought. Really, I hadn’t had a vacation in almost six years? What about seeing my family? Going home to Seattle?
“It can’t have been six years?” I protested. “When was the last time I was back in the States?” I knew it was risky to ask a question that could seem odd to her, but I had to know.
She shrugged. “No idea. Not since I started working here.”
