Page 16 of The Sugar and Spice Bookshop Bakery

‘Well, that was…’ Elizabeth begins when her friends have left, having eaten every last crumb of the scones and ginger cake and drained every last drop from the teapot.

‘…so very nearly a triumph,’ Louise finishes her sentence for her. ‘They loved my bakes but hated my bookshop idea.’

‘Oh, darling, I’m sure they’ll come round eventually. Hopefully.’ Elizabeth sighs, then stands up. ‘Right, I’ll make a start on the clearing up.’

Louise looks at her mother’s hands, hands that have kneaded countless batches of

dough and whipped up countless bowls of eggs, butter and sugar into the lightest of sponges.

‘No, I can do it. It won’t take me long.’

Elizabeth takes a long look around the bakery. ‘At least this way, we keep the place in the family. I didn’t want to have to sell. I hope you can get enough customers, Lou, to make it work. What am I saying? Of course you will. You know the book industry inside out. If anyone can do it, you can. And you have my full support, darling. Anything I can do to help, you only have to ask.’

But Louise doesn’t hear the ‘if anyone can do it, you can’ or her mother’s offer of help. Her mind has latched on to ‘I hope you can get enough customers to make it work’, and she’s thinking, What if I can’t?

Elizabeth wraps a scarf around her neck. ‘Though I do hope you won’t feel too lonely here in the winter months when there’s no one around. The bakery was always so warm and bustling.’

She sighs, then plants a kiss on Louise’s cheek, and with a glance at her watch, hurries away.

As the door shuts, Louise starts stacking the plates and loading the tray with the empty teacups. This is what life would be like if she ran this place as a bakery, whereas if it was a bookshop, there’d be no waiting on tables or loading dishwashers. She’d be choosing which books to stock and arranging them on the shelves. Deciding which ones should go on the table in the middle. Writing little cards to highlight her personal favourites. She’d be the sort of bookshop owner who’d know her customers and their reading tastes so well that she could give personal recommendations.

Perhaps she’d create bookish gift boxes with special editions and carefully selected little extras like bookmarks and scented tealights and sachets of hot chocolate.

Perhaps she’d sell those sprayed edge books; she has several herself, her favourite being one adorned with shimmering peacock feathers.

Perhaps she’d even host author talks. She knows enough authors.

Although most of them probably won’t want anything to do with her now. Not after what happened with Sheila.

Six

A week later and it’s Janet’s turn to host the coffee morning, but somehow – and Louise isn’t quite sure how – it’s taking place in the bakery again. She’s baked scones and a ginger cake, and is now preparing a Victoria sponge, wondering how many times she’s going to have to do this.

Not too many more hopefully.

Despite her doubts, she’s already put the tables and chairs on Facebook – free to anyone who needs them – and someone has already collected the smallest one and two chairs. With any luck it won’t be long before the others are claimed too, and then her mother and her friends will have to return to hosting their gatherings in their own homes.

She’s spent most of the week not in the flat, but downstairs in the bakery, supposedly planning the bookshop, although if the truth be told, she hasn’t actually done much beyond listing the tables and chairs, and cleaning the front windows to let the early autumn sunshine in.

Ironically, she’s been spending an awful lot of time baking. It soothes her. There is something almost hypnotic in the action of creaming butter and sugar. Furiously beating eggs is a great way of letting out her anger.

She’s angry at herself for screwing up what had been her dream career and for dallying now about the bookshop transformation.

And for a whole host of other things. Marrying the wrong man, then procrastinating about leaving him, then finally going at the worst possible time. She’d been selfish, she knew that.

She’s angry because she’s forty-one and has nothing to show for her life. No career. No business. No partner. No child. She has amounted to nothing.

Miss Anderson had been right in her predictions.

Just thinking about her elderly English teacher infuriates her more. This Victoria sponge cake is going to be the lightest ever, because those eggs are really getting a good whipping.

Baking is better than therapy.

(Cheaper too. Even though butter is expensive and the freezer is getting rather full.)

Better than therapy, but not what she wants to do all day, every day.

She wonders whether word has spread round the village yet, that Applethwaite will be getting a bookshop. Janet and Hazel always have been gossips; there’s no way they’d have kept this news to themselves. She’s been aware all week of some of the villagers peering in through the now sparkling front windows, attracted perhaps by the delicious smells wafting from the kitchen. Hopefully those same people will still be peering in when she’s created her window display of books.