The Plumberry School of Comfort Food Read online

  I couldn’t help but laugh as I shook my head.

  I’d already filled her in on the Liam-Melanie-redundancy affair. I’d phoned her on the way home to let off steam with a good rant. She’d exploded with fury and had suggested every sort of retribution, from suing the backside off Liam to taking Rod to an industrial tribunal to plastering naked photos of Melanie all over Facebook (not sure where Rosie would have obtained these from or whether Melanie would actually have been bothered but I appreciated her rage).

  ‘Do you know what? He’s welcome to the job and Melanie’s welcome to him,’ I said with conviction. ‘I thought we might have had a future together and I thought I cared about the job, but the thing I was most upset about today was not being pregnant. And now I realize that even that is probably a blessing in disguise.’

  There’d be plenty of time in the future for babies. Preferably with a man who’d stick around long enough to at least do the pregnancy test with me . . .

  ‘That’s the spirit, but if you change your mind and want revenge,’ she leaned forward and whispered menacingly, ‘I know people, if you catch my drift.’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ I said, pressing my lips together to hide my chuckle.

  Rosie made the most of her Italian heritage and liked people to think she had connections. The truth was that her mum and grandmother ran a village café in the north of the county and her dad was a university lecturer. Not one of them has displayed even the teensiest Mafia-like tendencies in all the time I’ve known them.

  ‘So what’s the rash thing, then?’ she said, stretching back on the bed, hands behind her glossy dark head of hair.

  I grimaced. ‘I’ve agreed to move to Yorkshire for a month to help Gloria open her cookery school. I said I’ll leave in the morning.’

  ‘Wow! That’s brilliant! Come here.’ Rosie sprang up and pulled me in for a bone-crushing hug. ‘I thought you’d be moping round here for months. But in barely,’ she flicked a glance at my alarm clock, ‘six hours, you’ve got your life back on track. I am bursting with admiration. So what’s holding you back?’

  I chewed my lip. ‘I’d do anything to help Gloria, but—’

  ‘You’ll do anything to help anyone. That’s half your problem,’ said Rosie wryly. ‘Go on.’

  ‘The cookery school, being with Gloria twenty-four-seven . . . It’s all the things I’ve been trying to avoid since Mimi died wrapped up in one neat parcel.’

  ‘Oh, Verity,’ she murmured, squeezing me even tighter.

  After Mimi died I lost my appetite. I couldn’t face eating and before long I couldn’t face cooking either. Every time I opened a cookery book or looked up a recipe online, I’d hear her voice in my head doing a commentary like a TV chef: ‘Add fresh herbs right at the end so they keep their colour and flavour.’ Or, ‘You can prepare this dish up to two days ahead.’ And things like: ‘Cool hands; that’s the key to successful pastry.’

  It was torture.

  I pulled away from Rosie’s hug and gave her a wobbly smile. ‘You know what I’m like in the kitchen these days. Imagine that on a larger scale in a cookery school . . . day in, day out. I don’t know if I can do it.’

  Not only that, the guilt I felt at going to Plumberry in Mimi’s place – at living the life that she should be leading – lodged deep in the pit of my stomach like a stone and I wasn’t sure I could bear it.

  I refused to let the tears out and tried to put my feelings into words. ‘If Mimi was alive it would be her going to Gloria’s rescue tomorrow. Not me. I feel as if I’m stealing her life. I get to hug her husband, I get to kiss her baby boy and now I’m going to live with her mother. It’s so not fair.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’ She gripped my shoulders and gazed at me fiercely. ‘But you are alive and it’s time to make your own heart sing. It’s as if you’re waiting for permission for that to happen. What would really make you happy, Verity?’

  ‘Well . . .’ I blinked at her.

  I couldn’t think of anything.

  And then a memory of Mimi and I making meringues the month before she died popped into my head. Noah was having a nap in his pushchair in the hallway after a walk and we’d decided to use the rare moment of free time to bake. But we must have done something wrong because the egg white wouldn’t go stiff no matter how much we whisked it. We’d had fits of giggles but carried on regardless and ended up making pancake-flat meringues that had all run into each other in the oven to make one giant meringue. We then tried to cover it up by pretending we were making pavlova anyway but the whole thing crumbled when we tried to peel it off the baking parchment. We’d been videoing ourselves for YouTube and had been helpless with laughter, and when we played it back our words were unintelligible and all that could be heard was squeals and squeaks.

  That was over two years ago.

  Gloria had moved on and was starting a new project. Gabe had completely altered his life to suit his and Noah’s new circumstances. But somehow I’d got stuck. I was living in limbo, too afraid to move forward. I was like those meringues: without Mimi I’d crumbled and couldn’t find my way back to happiness.

  I blinked the tears from my eyes. Rosie was still waiting for an answer.

  ‘I’m not sure any more,’ I said finally.

  ‘Then I’ll tell you.’ She reached across and wiped a stray tear from my cheek. ‘You are the best marketing person I’ve ever met, with the best ideas, and if you can make insurance sound interesting, just think what you could do for Gloria’s cookery school. That will make you happy.’

  I opened my mouth to argue, but she closed my jaw with her fingertip.

  ‘Don’t cook, don’t even go near the kitchens if you don’t want to, but go! I’ll look after the house. In fact the builders have found a well in the kitchen of the house I’m doing up, so they’ve had to stop work while they wait for a building inspector to come out. It’s bound to cause some delays. I’ll be living here a bit longer than planned, if that’s OK with you? And I’ve just had another bright idea: we’ve got a new intern starting at work next week who’s looking for somewhere to stay. Joe or John or something, can’t remember now, he could move in here.’

  She sat back and folded her arms, looking pleased with herself.

  Oh. She seemed to have everything covered.

  ‘So, any more excuses why you shouldn’t go?’ Rosie cocked an eyebrow at me.

  I shook my head. ‘You make the toast, while I finish packing.’

  Chapter 5

  The next morning, I waited until the commuters were safely at work, programmed my phone’s satnav to take me to Plumberry and made my way leisurely up the motorway to Yorkshire under a golden spring sun.

  I was quite curious to see the village that had enticed Gloria away from city life. When Mimi and I had been growing up, she and her mum had lived in a small suburban house close to the centre of Nottingham where Gloria had an easy journey to work. She was a food stylist at the big TV studios, creating all manner of beautiful dishes that were used on screen, from soap operas to police dramas. She had worked on the set of chat shows, too, prepping food for celebrity chefs to use in their cookery slots. When the studios closed down, she moved back to York where she’d grown up and worked on the food pages of the Sunday newspaper until she retired five years ago.

  And then a year ago, she traded her modern apartment overlooking the River Ouse for the delights of a stone cottage in Plumberry and two rescue dogs, Comfrey and Sage, a pair of miniature dachshunds, who she’d brought with her the last time she came to Nottingham. I hadn’t visited her so far in her new abode and as I turned off the main road at a sign saying three miles to Plumberry, I felt my stomach flutter with joy. After the emotional events of the last couple of days, what I was really looking forward to more than anything was one of Gloria’s special hugs.

  The road was winding and narrow on the approach to the village, but gradually the undulating countryside opened out and I passed farms and large country houses and event
ually smaller, more modest homes just outside the village. I turned into the high street and felt a smile tweak at my lips; I could see the appeal for Gloria straight away. Plumberry was chocolate-box picturesque: its little shops had old-fashioned striped awnings, large wooden planters brimming with tulips and primroses lined the main street and the buildings themselves were all made from chunky yellow stone.

  My satnav was giving me more orders, so I dragged my attention away from the view and concentrated.

  ‘Turn left into Hillside Lane.’

  I obeyed.

  ‘You have reached your destination.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I replied, reversing my little Fiat smartly into a space outside number eight.

  I climbed out of the car, circled my shoulders and stretched. Hillside Lane was – unsurprisingly – a hilly sort of a road with a row of tall three-storey cottages on both sides. Gloria’s cottage sat at the top and my eye followed the slope down and beyond the edge of the village to the bright yellow fields full of rapeseed flowers and a silvery streak of water running between them.

  My new home for a month was rather lovely.

  I raised my hand to knock on number eight but before my knuckles had made contact with wood, the door of the next house flew open.

  A woman with cherry-red lipstick and dazzling blonde hair flung her arms out. She was short with generous hips and a large chest and was dressed in a long colourful kaftan. As she lifted her arms, the hem rose up to reveal fluffy kitten-heeled slippers and red toenails to match her lipstick.

  ‘Verity? It is, isn’t it, I recognize you from Gloria’s description,’ she said in a broad Liverpudlian accent.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, nodding. ‘I’m Verity Bloom.’

  ‘A waif, she said, with a pretty face and in need of a good meal. We’ll soon sort that out, don’t you worry.’

  ‘Oh, thanks,’ I replied, going pink. I think.

  A waif? I was thin, I supposed, at least thinner than I had been. Two years of not bothering to eat properly, without baking cakes and puddings, had had an effect on my waistline.

  She grabbed hold of my shoulders and kissed my cheek noisily. ‘I’m Mags, and am I glad to see you.’

  ‘Lovely to meet you too,’ I said, glancing through the front windows of Gloria’s house. No sign of life.

  ‘She’s not in. I’m the welcome party,’ Mags said with a grin. ‘Come in, chuck, you must be exhausted!’

  With that she turned away and scurried into her own house and so I followed, hoping there’d be an offer of tea. A long corridor led past the staircase and to the rear of the house. The walls were lined with faded photographs of celebrity chefs from the eighties and nineties and there was an old-fashioned telephone on a table in the hall with a velvet stool tucked under it.

  ‘You’ve got a lovely house, Mags,’ I said, peering through an open door to see a cosy sitting room with two armchairs facing a pretty, tiled fireplace. ‘Who else lives here?’

  ‘Just me.’ She turned and fluttered heavily mascaraed lashes. ‘But if George Clooney ever gets fed up of married life, I’m sure I could squeeze him in.’

  ‘Join the queue,’ I laughed as she gestured for me to go through the kitchen door ahead of her.

  The kitchen was long and narrow with French doors at the far end overlooking the garden. A small round table with two chairs sat in front of it and on the floor, in a patch of sunlight, were Comfrey and Sage, Gloria’s dogs, curled up around each other.

  ‘Go and say hello to the boys,’ she said, bustling to put the kettle on. ‘Cup of tea?’

  ‘Perfect,’ I said, bending down to stroke Comfrey. Sage scrambled to his tiny paws and pushed his damp nose into my palm.

  ‘Hello, you two gorgeous things,’ I laughed. They were easy to tell apart; Comfrey was the colour of brandy snaps with a pinky brown nose and a white muzzle, while Sage had a dark chocolatey coat with an almost black nose. They both had irresistibly silky ears.

  ‘Well, this is nice.’ Mags beamed as she poured tea from a pretty floral teapot and pushed a matching cup towards me. ‘Milk, sugar? Take a biscuit.’ She nudged a plate piled high with an assortment of homemade shortbread and something oaty-looking.

  ‘It is,’ I agreed. ‘But you needn’t have gone to so much trouble. I’d have been happy with a mug and a packet of Rich Tea.’

  ‘Well, I don’t get many visitors.’ The tiniest hint of sadness flittered across her face before she winked at me. ‘Besides, Gloria made all these.’

  The dogs, I noticed, were now sitting to attention beneath the table and I reached down to pet them.

  ‘Pair of gannets,’ Mags tutted. ‘I dropped a toast crust earlier; Sage had digested it before it hit the floor.’

  ‘And where is Gloria?’ I said, biting into a delicious flaky biscuit. Yum. I wouldn’t be waif-like for long, with these treats on offer.

  ‘Interviewing at the cookery school. She apologizes for not being here but an opportunity to employ a Michelin-starred chef cropped up at the last minute. She wants someone to share the teaching with her for the first month.’

  I raised my eyebrows as I sipped my tea. ‘I thought Gloria was going to run all the courses herself.’

  ‘So did Gloria.’ Mags chuckled. ‘But reality has bitten, big time. “You’ll work yourself into an early grave,” I said to her yesterday when I was trying to sort out front of house. Then, as luck would have it, word got to her late last night about some top chef from Manchester being at an unexpected loose end.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, wondering why Mags was sorting the front of her house. ‘That sounds like me; I’m at an unexpected loose end too.’

  ‘Not any more you’re not, chuck.’ Mags drained the tea from her cup and passed me a set of house keys. ‘I’m to hand you these. Go and get settled into the guest room on the top floor and then Gloria says to wander down to the cookery school any time after one.’

  I stowed the keys in my pocket, placed my cup back on the saucer and fed the last crumbs of my biscuit to the ever-watchful sausage dogs.

  ‘Thank you for a lovely welcome, Mags. I’ll stick my bags in the house and then take the dogs out for a little walk before I go and see Gloria. They can show me round Plumberry.’

  It felt odd letting myself into someone else’s home, especially as it was my first visit, and I was glad that I had Comfrey and Sage for company. I decided not to hang around, preferring to wait for Gloria to give me a proper tour later, so I simply left my bags in the hallway, stuffed the keys and my phone into my denim jacket pocket and set off to explore the village.

  The three of us made slow progress. I was happy to take a closer look at the shops I’d seen as I’d driven along Plumberry high street and the dogs, who seemed to know everyone we passed, stopped to be petted and to investigate every lamp-post and leaf we encountered.

  Plumberry, I quickly realized, was foodie heaven.

  I hadn’t been able to see what sort of shops those pretty green and white striped awnings were hiding as I drove in but now I peered into every window. The lady behind the counter in the cheesemonger’s waved at me as I stared at the myriad varieties of cheese piled up in the window. Next door was an organic bakery; the smells wafting out of there made my mouth water. The dogs tried to tug me into the butcher’s shop, but I was more interested in the sign advertising tastings at the wine merchant. I passed a deli with lovely wooden bowls displaying olives and stuffed vine leaves and tiny red peppers filled with cream cheese. And finally, I came to a greengrocer’s with a spectacular rainbow display of fresh fruit and vegetables on wooden tables outside. There were one or two other shops, too – a gift shop, newsagent’s and florist – but food, I noted, was definitely important to the folk of Plumberry. I bet none of the villagers would bung a readymade lasagne in the microwave and call it dinner. It seemed like the perfect spot for a cookery school.

  On the other side of the road was a clothes shop – much more up my street – set between a small supermarket and a pub
that looked closed for business. I led Comfrey and Sage to the edge of the pavement and was about to cross over when my phone beeped with a text message.

  ‘Sit! There’s good boys,’ I said, reaching into my pocket whilst keeping a firm grip on their leads. ‘This might be Gloria.’

  My heart bounced as I saw the name flash up on the phone: Liam.

  This had better be another apology, I thought, opening the message.

  Could I just explain the details of my One, Two, Three Plan to him because he realized he hadn’t really understood it . . .?

  What? Un-bloody-believable! I prodded the delete button angrily as heat flooded my cheeks.

  The absolute nerve of the man. He steals my idea, takes my job and then expects me to help him out? Not a chance, buster.

  I attempted to stuff the phone back into my pocket but I was all flustered and it got caught on the denim flap and clattered to the ground. I bent down to retrieve it but as I did so I somehow managed to drop the leads.

  ‘Wait! Heel!’ I yelled as the little dogs took full advantage of their freedom and ran as fast as their dinky legs could carry them back along the high street.

  Arrghhh!

  I scooped up the phone and ran after them, my heart thundering against my ribs. ‘Comfrey! Sage! Come back.’

  What if they ran across the road and into the path of a car? Oh God, I’d only been here five minutes . . .

  The dogs darted between the legs of several shoppers and bypassed others. A little girl lunged at the leads as the dogs flew past but to no avail.

  I wove round them all, shouting out random enticements in between my apologies. ‘Excuse me! Here, Comfrey, biscuits! Oops, sorry! Sage, look – sausages!’

  A man stepped out of the cheesemonger’s as the tearaways scampered towards him. He jumped out of their way just as I was aiming to squeeze behind him. We collided and he sent me crashing into the shop window.

  ‘Oof!’ I grabbed my shoulder, panting with exertion, but he ignored me and dropped to a squat. He stuck his forefinger and thumb in his mouth and gave a shrill whistle.