Page 74 of New Beginnings on Railway Lane

Everyone carried on chatting about how bad the storm was and the lack of electricity. There was also news about the fallen tree, but that would take at least an hour to be removed, they had heard.

Paddington had settled down on people’s feet and seemed quite happy to entertain the children, who were a bit unsettled by the darkness.

‘Do you think the power will be out for long?’ asked Harriet, who was sitting nearby with Joe’s arm around her.

‘I forget that you weren’t here last winter,’ said Eddie, sitting down next to her. ‘It was out for three days last year.’

Katy, who was standing nearby, was horrified. ‘Three days?’ she said. Without any electricity, they couldn’t even use the coffee machine. The coffee shop would have to temporarily close less than a week after it had opened.

Eddie nodded. ‘We’ve got overhead power lines out here in the country. Don’t stand much of a chance when the wind is so fierce.’

‘What do we do for food?’ she asked, thinking fast.

‘Barbeque,’ Joe told her with a grin.

‘Or a Pot Noodle if we can boil a kettle,’ murmured Ryan for Katy’s ears only.

She turned to look at him. ‘Don’t kid! If only we had something like that now,’ she told him. ‘Everyone looks cold and miserable. A bit of hot food might help.’

He blew out a sigh. ‘Both the hob and oven in the back kitchen are electric,’ he said, scowling his face.

‘Can’t we do something with that?’ she asked, pointing at the fireplace.

‘What do you mean?’ he said. ‘Like a kettle on top of it?’

‘What about the gap that Del created?’ asked Katy, pointing at the poster behind which they both knew was still a wide hole as Ryan had been unable to book a builder to rebuild the brickwork until the following week.

Ryan looked a bit nonplussed. ‘What about it?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Katy. ‘I just thought that it looked like a shelf.’ But she had no idea what they could do with just that and some flames from the fire.

‘What about…?’ said Ryan, his voice trailing off in thought as he stared at the chimney.

‘What?’ prompted Katy.

Katy waited whilst he ran through everything in his mind.

Finally he turned to face her. ‘You know, upstairs I’ve got flour, cheese, tomatoes, yeast and everything else we might need,’ he said, beginning to look a little more cheerful.

‘Okay,’ said Katy bewildered. ‘For the record, I have no idea what those ingredients would make.’

He laughed. ‘Your lack of culinary skills are mind-boggling to me.’

‘So just tell me,’ she urged him.

‘I reckon I could fix up a temporary pizza oven,’ he told her, glancing back at the chimney before nodding his head.

Katy was stunned. ‘You could? By cooking it on the flames, you mean?’

‘Haven’t you ever heard of wood-fired pizza? If anyone actually wants to eat them,’ he carried on quickly.

But Katy had already made up her mind. ‘That’s great!’ She turned around to announce to everyone that, if they wanted, there would be pizzas coming very soon.

‘Wait a moment,’ said Ryan, looking a little nervous all of a sudden. ‘Maybe this is a bad idea.’

She had already guessed that something had caused his career to come to an abrupt halt. Not knowing why, all she could do was reassure him. ‘You’ll be fine,’ she told him, giving his hand a squeeze. ‘It’s just pizza. Nothing fancy.’

‘That’s easy for you to say,’ he muttered. But he gave her a small smile in return and she knew that he would be all right.