Page 85 of The Sugar and Spice Bookshop Bakery

‘Yeah, I know. He’s probably busy.’

‘I was going to say, maybe he’s just not as into you as you’re into him.’

Maddie stares at her. ‘What?’

‘I think you should face it,’ Louise says in her most consoling, sweetest stepmother voice. ‘I don’t think he really wants this relationship.’

‘What? Because he hasn’t replied to one text? This is real life, Lou, not one of your novels, and in real life, people are busy and it just means they’re busy.’

‘But Mads, I—’

Maddie stands up. Her eyes are cold, furious. ‘At least he’s not pretending to be someone he isn’t.’

And with that, she retreats into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

Twenty-Eight

She almost doesn’t notice it.

Blood.

A pool of it, right on the doorstep.

Someone must have cut themselves – badly, by the look of it. She hopes it isn’t serious, but why on earth did they have to bleed all over her step, where someone is likely to tread in it?

She steps over it, into the bakery, and goes straight to the kitchen to fetch rubber gloves, a bowl of soapy liquid and a cloth, all the while thinking that finding blood on the doorstep is a particularly ominous sign.

On her hands and knees, she scrubs. The blood is surprisingly sticky. Syrupy almost. In fact, she isn’t sure it’s blood at all. Gingerly, she pokes her gloved finger into it and brings the resulting blob towards her nose. She can’t believe she’s doing this. Is she really going to smell it?

Suppressing a wave of nausea, Louise takes a little sniff. To her surprise, it’s sweet. This isn’t how blood is meant to smell. She can’t say she’s got much experience in the matter, but she expected it to be more metallic.

This is fake blood though, of that she’s certain. Fake blood on her doorstep. She thinks of Sheila, the hate mail and the death threats. Is this some kind of threat?

Having cleaned up the mess, she closes the door, peels off her gloves and puts them straight into the kitchen bin. She washes her hands – three times, just in case she’s wrong and it was real blood after all – then fires up the coffee machine. Heaven knows she needs one, and a good strong one preferably. She’s frothing some milk when Anna arrives.

Of course. With everything that’s been happening – Jack announcing his departure and the upset with Maddie yesterday – Louise had completely forgotten that Anna was starting work today. It isn’t great timing, but there’s not much she can do about it.

Anna bustles through the door, rubbing her hands together, then raising them to her mouth and blowing on them.

‘It’s nippy out there. And somehow I’ve lost a glove and… Oh, are you all right? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘I’m fine,’ Louise says. She isn’t about to tell her new employee about the blood. ‘Just…I had words with my stepdaughter yesterday and it’s playing on my mind. But it’ll blow over.’

Anna nods. ‘Where should I start?’

‘How about I show you around?’

‘Perfect.’

Louise picks up a box of romance books that had arrived a couple of days earlier, and they head past the kitchen and out through the back door and into the garden where a maze of paved paths now connect the sheds.

‘This is the Love Shack,’ she says, plonking the box down on a chair. She’ll sort them out later: the sweet romances go on the ‘Sugar’ side, complete with its little string of pink fairy lights across the shelves, and the sexier ones go on the ‘Spice’ side, with its red chilli pepper lights. Maddie’s idea, of course, like all the best ideas inside the enchanting little book nooks.

They continue through the garden and into the glass dome. Maddie’s influence is very much in evidence here too. She’s been weaving her magic like the elves in The Elves and the Shoemaker. Crystals hang down from the ceiling, gently spinning and creating moving patterns of light as they do. Around the sides are low shelves, still awaiting their books, but with pale, slightly abstract angel sculptures adorning them.

‘This is where the self-help and spirituality sections are,’ Louise says. ‘I’m calling it the Get Inspired! zone.’

‘Cute.’