Libby, not the most sensitive of flowers, took a minute or two to evaluate what shed just said, and then apologised. Sorry, Josie. I take it Ben is still refusing to have any investigations done to see why there are no bambini? That man has a stubborn streak a mile wide!
I nodded guiltily, because Im sure Ben would have been horrified to discover that I discussed our private affairs with anyone else. Hed always been a bit jealous of my close friendship with Libs and he tended to say things about her sometimes that made me think that, despite having several weird arty friends from the wrong side of the tracks himself, some of his parents snobbery must have rubbed off on him. That had certainly never stopped him accepting her invitations to holiday at her flat in Pisa, or to take us out to dinner at the flagship Cazzini restaurant near Piccadilly, the first one that Joe ever opened.
But it isnt just stubbornness, I explained, its because hes seen how traumatic the whole IVF cycle thing has been for Mary and Russell, and he doesnt want to put me through that. Anyway, we have each other. Thats enough.
Yes, I can imagine him saying so, she commented drily, just like when you moved down to London to live with him when he was doing his MA at the Royal College of Art, and he suddenly started saying neither of you need the outdated trappings of marriage to show your commitment.
Yes, that was a bit odd, when wed talked of marrying before. We did row about it, because Granny had old-fashioned ideas about things and it would have meant so much to her if we had got married, but he wouldnt change his mind. But then, he does suddenly get ideas in his head and simply wont change them, no matter whathe always has done. I dont see why he wont agree to a few simple tests, though. I mean, it would be good to at least know which of us has the problem, wouldnt it?
Sometimes there is no problem, Libby said. It just doesnt happen. But I agree you ought to explore all the avenues before you give up on the idea. She changed the subject. What have you done to the kitchen? It seems to have a split personality. The left-hand wall has gone all high tech, chrome and utility. And isnt that a second fridge and sink?
I suppose it does look a bit strange, I agreed, seeing it suddenly with her eyes. Most of it was just as it always had been, with jars of wine bubbling round the old stove, herbs, lavender and strings of onions and dried apple rings hanging from the wooden rack over the kitchen table, bright gingham curtains and braided rug, and crocks and pots of earthenware everywhere. But one wall had been transformed into an ultra-modern and terribly antiseptic kitchen workstation.
Its Health and Safety. Even little home cake businesses like mine need to be checked over and meet standards. There are all sorts of rules and regulations! Its not like the days when I knocked out a few cakes and some jam on the kitchen table and sold them at the WI Markets, I said regretfully. Once things took off, it seemed easier to convert part of the kitchen to a sort of production line.
So, the bride cake business is booming?
I nodded. It really took off last year when I was asked to design a cake for the Pharamond wedding, over at Middlemoss, and there was loads of publicity. It was a bit of a challenge, what with him being a well-known chef and cookery writer and Lizzie a keen cook too. They could easily have made their own, except they couldnt agree which of them was going to do it.
Didnt she write those Perseverance Cottage Chronicles that you used to love reading, all grow-your-own and recipes?
Yes, she still does. It was her books that really inspired me and Ben to try and live as self-sufficiently as possible. The cake was quite easy, three tiers in the form of apple pies.
Weird. Why apple pies?
I dont know, except that she and her husband had some long-running feud about who made the best one. The cake featured in the wedding pictures in Lancashire Life, and so did the one I did earlier this year, when Sophy Winter over at Sticklepond married her gardener. That was trickierone big square cake with knot gardens in the corners, and a circular maze in the middle, with a bust of Shakespeare at the centre. I told you all about the discovery of a link between the family and the Bard, didnt I? Secret documents in a hidden compartment seeming to infer that the Winters were descended from Shakespeare? It was all a bit Da Vinci code!
I could hardly have missed the story! But it seems very unlikely to me and its still not proven, is it?
No, I expect theyll be arguing about it for years, but Sophy has built a whole business out of it. They get loads of visitors to the house and garden now.
You know her?
Yes, we got friendly while working out the design for the cake. Shes really nice, and so is her daughter, Lucy. Which reminds me, how is my lovely goddaughter these days? And where is she?
Pia, christened Philippa, is Libbys daughter by her brief first marriage. Her second husband, Joe Cazzini, adopted the infant and doted on her, despite already having grown-up children and grandchildren of his own, but her relationship with Libby became increasingly stormy once she hit the terrible teens. Libby tended to be a bit strict with her and I expect having a young-looking, beautiful and glamorous mother around becomes a liability rather than an asset at a certain age. You could hardly have called Gloria Martin a good role model for acquiring parenting skills, either, but Libby did her best.
God knows where she is, she said gloomily now. I text her all the time, but if I get a reply, its just something like, AM OK, which she would say anyway, whether she was or not. I thought you might knowshe tells you things she doesnt tell me, sometimes.
No, I havent had an email for a few weeks nowand I have a feeling then that she said she was somewhere in the Caribbean, on an island.
The Caribbean is all islands.
No, I meant a little island, belonging to someone.
Possibly. Once she came into her trust fund at eighteen and I lost all control over her, she could be anywhere. Joe must have been mad, doing that!
Well, remember what we were like at that age? We thought we knew it all! You finished your art foundation year and blagged your way onto a fashion course in London, and I horrified poor Granny by often staying overnight with Ben in his Liverpool digs, when he was doing his fine art degree.
Yes, but the rest of the time you were living sensibly at home, working in a nursery garden and studying for your horticulture qualifications on day release, she pointed out. And I was entirely focused on my future and getting to where I wanted to be. Pias quite differentshe goes around with a group of complete wasters who seem to have no ambitions at all, other than to have a good time, though she keeps saying shes going to go to college eventually.
Well, you did and then you barely lasted a term before you got married.
Becoming a student was just a means to an end, to get me to London, and then you have to strike while the irons hot, she said, then looked into her mug and reached for the blue and white striped teapot under its knitted hen cosy (one of Pansy Graces making, in black-speckled white yarnit looked just like Aggie).
Phillip was such a sweetie, wasnt he? I said. Once I met him, I knew you were really in love with him. It wasnt just his wealth!
Of course not, Libby said indignantly and I grinned, remembering how Id asked her when she first knew she was truly in love with Phillip and shed quoted that bit in her favourite book, Pride and Prejudice (which has always been her blueprint for perfection), where Lizzy tells Jane she first knew she loved Darcy when she saw his beautiful grounds at Pemberley!
I loved Phillip, and I was devastated when he died within a year. And then Joe came along and I fell in love all over again. She sighed sadly. You know, she confided, the trouble with marrying wealthy elderly men is that theyve always already signed over their business interests to the offspring of their first marriage, who are usually old enough to be your parents, if not grandparents, and have their own families. So although theyve left themselves plenty to live on, theres never an enormous legacy for the second wife. Neither Phillip nor Joe left me a huge inheritance, but Joe arranged Pias trust fund with the rest of the family when he formally adopted herthey always considered her one of the Cazzinis, even though she was no more related to them than I was. Shes dark like Phillip, though, so she looks like one.
Oh, come off it with the poverty-stricken bit. Youre loaded!
Comfortable, not mega-rich, she insisted, though she always seems to me to be fabulously wealthy and able to do anything she wants. If I buy Blessings, I might have to sell the flat in Pisa.
Or the London house?
Tricky. Pia mainly uses that as her home base when she does deign to grace me with her presence. And thats good, because when shes in London, she gets taken over by the Cazzini uncles and aunts and cousins, especially Joes youngest sister, Maria, and they might manage to knock some sense into her head eventually. Shes more likely to listen to them than to me. The relations in Pisa are a bit too distant to have much clout. Anyway, I like having a base in London.
She got up. Ill just go and tidy up a bit and do my face, then Im off.
You arent letting the grass grow under your feet!
I cant afford to. The estate agent said thered been lots of interest in Blessings already, almost all from the actors in that Cotton Common soap series that they shoot in Manchester.
I suppose there might have been. Theyve been moving into the area, especially round the Mosses, in the last few years.
Well, theyre not moving into Neatslake, she said firmly. Oh, and is Ben home? I forgot to ask, she added as an afterthought.
She and Ben had a fairly spiky relationship and I thought he was a little jealous of her. But it wasnt like we didnt both have other friends too, though come to think of it, they were mostly couples, like Mark and Stella who keep the goats, or Russell and Mary. Libbyafter Ben, of coursewas my best friend
He went to London yesterday. I looked at the clock. He usually gives me a ring about this time, if he can.
I hope you gave him a clean hankie and told him not to speak to strange women before he left, she said tartly, before vanishing into the bathroom, which was inconveniently located downstairs, off the living room. As the door closed behind her I heard her exclaim, Bizarre!
I expect she was impressed by my cherished collection of knitted French poodle toilet roll covers. Whenever the Graces seem to be running short of Acorns, I ask for a new one and Pansy obliges, with whatever wool comes to hand. The last one was in glitzy speckled silver yarn.
The post, including a plastic-wrapped copy of Country at Heart magazine with the article about me in it, arrived immediately after Libby had left for her viewing. I almost phoned her mobile to tell her about it, but then thought it would wait.
The pictures were rather niceone of me wearing a big floppy straw hat, digging in the garden, with Aggie waiting for worms, and Ben in his studio painting one of his three-dimensional creations. There was also a lovely one of Harry sitting in a deck chair under the plum tree, Mac curled at his feet, and a couple of smaller shots of me in the kitchen and the wedding cake I had been making (a fairy cakelots of fairies).
Then I read the article, and really, I dont remember saying most of the things it said I had! How odd. It all looked and sounded terribly idyllic, though.
Chapter Three Blessings
Im making a diamond wedding anniversary cakea stacked two-tier one, with the names of the happy couple around the top tier and Diamonds Are Forever around the bottom one. There will be a pink and blue harlequin diamond pattern all over it too, and some of the original favours from their wedding cakewhite doves and horseshoes, mostly. Id already baked the cake, so today I covered it with marzipan.
After that, I started off some carrot wine and then, being in that kind of groove, made two carrot cakes which I decorated with little carrots made from the scraps of marzipan left over from the cake, coloured orange and green with natural food colour.
Cakes and Ale
After puzzling over some of the inane, if not downright daft, things I was supposed to have said about self-sufficiency and natures wonderful bounty, I put the magazine to one side and retrieved the Violin cake from the larder, looking at it with considerable pride.
The strings were firm and hard, and it was lucky it was an autumn wedding, because with a bit of luck it would be cool at the reception and they wouldnt sag. I threaded a bunch of white and palest pink silk ribbons around the neck carefully, like adorning a medieval troubadours lute, then covered it and replaced it in the cold larder, ready to deliver tomorrow.
Then I went upstairs to move the vegetables from the spare bed and make it up, though it seemed a lot of bother when Libby probably wouldnt stay more than one night. It was pretty chilly in there, but would soon warm up once the door was left open and the heat from the stove wafted up the stairs.
As I shook out lavender-scented sheets and pillowcases, I thought how horrified Libby would be when she saw the way Blessings had deteriorated. Her recollections, like mine, would be of how it was once, the snowy interior walls of the Elizabethan part of the house studded with plaster emblems and the garden neatly laid out, all lawns, roses and specimen trees.
But Harry had said it was all sadly changed nowand, come to that, Id forgotten to remind Libby of Dorrie Spottiswodes existence, though I expect she would find that out soon enough. Dorrie and I had become friends over the last few years, but I didnt think Libby had ever met her.
I wondered what she would make of Tim, for she probably only remembered him as the languid fair youth of so long ago. Hes a solicitor in Ormskirk, and I expect he has some private income, though obviously its not enough to restore Blessings to its former glory.
Tim was in the pub one evening recently when Ben and I were meeting our elderly hippie friends, Mark and Stella (who unfortunately seem to take the smell of goat with them everywhere, though you get used to it after a bit).