Читать книгу Alice’s Secret: A gripping story of love, loss and a historical mystery finally revealed - Lynne Francis - Страница 14

The larder in her aunt’s kitchen was a thing of delight to Alys. A relic of days gone by, its neatly ordered shelves held all manner of ingredients that Moira used for cake making. Apart from paper sacks of flour from a local mill there were eggs supplied by a nearby farm, slabs of chocolate, packs of sugar in shades from purest white through caramel to dark brown, packets of coconut, and oats, and pats of butter wrapped in paper.

Her introduction to this Aladdin’s cave of baker’s delights had come on her return from the café when Moira, resting on a chair at the kitchen table, had told her to go and open the door in the corner of the kitchen. Half expecting to find a storage cupboard or a hidden staircase, Alys had stood transfixed on the threshold. Within, all was cool, ordered calm. One section was reserved for Moira’s own household needs but the rest was given over to baking. Alys didn’t need to ask why the butter and eggs were stored there, rather than in the fridge. She knew that it made it much quicker to bring them up to ideal room temperature for cake-making; the larder, which was tiled, was cool in both winter and summer.

Alys could almost feel her fingers twitching as she surveyed the ingredients. She wanted to make a start right there and then, to fill the kitchen with the wonderful aroma of baking. But something told her to proceed with caution. Moira was in pain and although she’d asked for help to run the café, now that Alys was here she could see that her aunt needed help around the house too.

‘Let’s move you through to the other room,’ Alys said, helping Moira up from the hard kitchen chair. ‘I’m going to make you a cup of tea, then you can tell me a bit more about the café. And we can make a plan.’

With Moira settled by the wood burner, and tea on the table beside her, Alys sat down on the sofa. ‘So, tell me the story of the café. How did you come up with the name? Where did the lovely cushion fabric come from? And the angel’s wings?’

Moira eased herself back against the cushions that Alys had stacked behind her, and over the next hour she described how the transformation of the business had come about. She had taken possession of the café a couple of years previously, when the style of the interior had still reflected the previous owner’s taste. It had floral wallpaper, rather faded curtains at the windows and the general feel of being stuck in a 1950s time warp.

‘I just ripped off the wallpaper and gave it all a lick of paint. The wings came first, though,’ Moira said. ‘They inspired me to give the café its new identity. I spotted them in an antique shop in Nortonstall shortly after I took over the lease. I just had to have them – they were so unusual. I thought they would be made of wood or plaster and really heavy but they’re not. Otherwise, I would have hung them on the wall rather than in the window. Wouldn’t like to think of them falling and squashing the customers.’ She chuckled, and then winced – her back muscles were very sore. ‘I think they must have been carved out of a block of polystyrene and then given a paint job. Maybe they were a prop from a theatre or something?’ She paused to sip her tea. ‘So, the name of the café came from the wings, really. I liked the way it sounded, too. Alliterative.’

Alys grasped at some half-remembered fact from her schooldays. ‘All the C’s at the beginning?’ she asked. ‘Celestial Cake Café?’

Moira nodded. ‘Then it was a case of trying to do the place up as cheaply as possible,’ she continued. ‘The chairs came from a junk shop and I painted them to use up the tester pots I’d bought when I was trying to get the colours right for the walls and the front door.’

‘And the cushions?’ Alys asked. ‘They’re such glorious fabrics.’

‘Lovely, aren’t they?’ Moira was smiling. ‘I’d had the fabric stashed away for years, wondering what to do with it, and it seemed to work perfectly. Otherwise, I think the place would have looked a bit too tasteful. I wanted it to look smart but also feel relaxed and homely.’

Moira went on to describe how she had built up the business. Apart from the Post Office and a general store, the café was the only other shop in the tiny village. Locals dropped in for bread, for cakes to take home for tea, for a takeaway sandwich as a change from what was to be found in the fridge at home. Wet mornings found them drawn in for coffee and the chance for a chat and a gossip with the other villagers. Her other customers were tourists, who found their way off the beaten track to visit the imposing church with its beautiful stained glass, or hikers striding out on the trails that took them down into the valley and up again, to the open moorland and the Pennine Way.

‘I’ve mainly concentrated on building up the clientele, finding out which cakes people like best,’ Moira said, but Alice could tell that despite her modest assertion she was really pleased with what she had achieved. The picture that Moira painted, of a thriving, bustling business with many loyal customers, made Alys all the more determined to have the café open again as soon as possible. Moira was clearly thinking along much the same lines.

‘I made a phone call this morning,’ she said. ‘To Flo, who helps me out when it’s busy in the summer. She’d be happy to come in and work alongside you for a while, to show you the ropes, help you with the coffee machine and the cash register until you get the hang of it. And until I feel more able to be there.’

‘That sounds great!’ Alys was enthusiastic. ‘But who’s going to look after you? You can’t stay here alone all day. You can barely move as yet.’

‘It’s not quite that bad,’ Moira protested. ‘I’ve got a couple of friends in the village who will pop in and help me out – make me some lunch, get me a cup of tea, that sort of thing. And I need to keep moving otherwise I will stiffen up. I can’t be just sitting around all day.’

Alys was longing to experience the café routine that Moira had described to her but she insisted on probing further to make sure that her aunt was going to be properly cared for over the coming days. Finally reassured, she got to her feet to prepare some lunch.

‘And then,’ she announced, ‘you’re going to have a rest and I’m going to bake.’

Baking had been an important part of Alys’s childhood. It wasn’t an interest she had inherited from Kate, who had shown only puzzlement when nine-year-old Alys spent her Sunday afternoons turning out fairy cakes and chocolate cake from packet mixes. She’d graduated to homemade scones after a family summer holiday in Devon, where the whole family – apart from Kate – had embraced cream teas with enthusiasm. Kate had got over her worry about the amount of cake that she might be forced to eat, and the number of calories it contained, when she realised that David, along with Alys’s older siblings George and Edward, were only too happy to fulfil their duties, and hers too, in that respect. She left her daughter to it, buying whatever ingredients she requested.

By the time Alys was thirteen, she was in demand among friends and family for birthday cakes, millionaire’s shortbread, flapjacks, Bakewell tart, and ginger parkin for Bonfire Night. Then, almost overnight, she’d stopped baking. Kate had suspected that it wasn’t cool for a Nineties teenager to be into baking. The usual teen interests had taken over: music, fashion magazines and flushed and giggly phone conversations achieved by dragging the household phone out into the draughty hallway for some privacy.

However, in her late twenties, Alys had discovered that the ability to bake wasn’t a universal skill and her contributions to her friends’ Sunday gatherings were always sweet in nature, guaranteeing open-mouthed admiration. So, she hadn’t been daunted at the prospect of helping Moira out in the café. In fact, as soon as she had said that she would do it, she had been looking through recipe books and bookmarking her favourite Internet sites, and she was itching to get started. Tim hadn’t been a lover of cake or dessert so her baking opportunities had dwindled of late, although her contributions to charity cake bakes at work had always been the first to sell out. Now she couldn’t wait to make a start.

Moira had said it would be best to keep things simple at first – maybe two or three cakes and a couple of different types of biscuit. Everything needed to be sold as freshly made as possible and Alys wouldn’t have the speed to batch-bake that Moira had developed over the last year or so.

‘If only I could stand for any length of time I could be baking while you are at the café,’ Moira said, frowning. ‘As it is, you’ll have to come home and bake once you’ve closed up the café for the day.’

Alys caught her eyeing her walking frame in a speculative fashion. ‘Oh no you don’t.’ She laughed. ‘You’ll get better all the sooner if you rest like the doctor said. You don’t want to risk a setback. I’ll be able to manage, I’m sure.’

‘It’s the Easter break next weekend.’ Moira sighed. ‘If the weather’s good there’ll be plenty of walkers around. It will be a baptism of fire for you, I’m afraid.’

‘First things first,’ Alys said, determined not to let Moira’s worries rattle her. ‘I’m going to get baking so that at least there’s something to sell. Then I’ll get the café open again. It probably won’t be operating in quite the way you’d like it, but it will be better than it being closed at such a busy time.’

Moira laughed. ‘I consider myself ticked off. You’re right. Time to make a start.’

Alys had been planning which cakes and biscuits to make to impress her aunt but on this subject Moira was firm. ‘The regulars have their favourites. They’re slow to adapt to change so it will be safest to stick to what they know at first. So, I’m afraid it’s biscuits this afternoon – flapjacks and shortbread. Then tomorrow a Victoria sponge, lemon drizzle cake and maybe a coffee-and-walnut loaf. Or something chocolatey?’ Moira was suddenly undecided.

Alys’s expression must have given her away. ‘I know, I know,’ Moira said. ‘A bit safe and traditional. When I’m up and about properly we can build on these. I can bake them with my eyes closed but I’m really looking forward to trying some new recipes and I’m sure you’ve got plenty of ideas.’

Ideas were practically bursting out of Alys, but she limited herself to suggesting that brownies were popular with everyone and would fulfil the need for chocolate, and millionaire’s shortbread would make more of a treat than plain shortbread and so it was agreed.