Christmas at the Beach Café: A Novella Read online

  ‘Nope,’ he’d replied. ‘I’ll make another one.’

  ‘Oh, but Ed – ’

  ‘Everyone will know it’s my cooking, Evie. And we’re promoting the café here, remember. I just want everything to look good.’

  ‘But this does look good!’

  ‘Not good enough. Standards, Evie, come on.’

  Standards. Right. Before I’d known him, Ed had owned a fancy restaurant in London, where he’d cheffed to very high standards, by all accounts. Fair enough. But this was the Beach Café, and a home-made recipe book – we weren’t exactly talking Michelin stars here. Well, I wasn’t, anyway.

  But what did I know? Another apple tart had to be baked before Ed was satisfied while I escaped to the beach, a safe distance from the café, and let out a long, ear-splitting scream of frustration. (Nobody was around, thankfully. Although having said that, the villagers were all used to me by now, and wouldn’t have batted an eyelid if they’d seen me screeching into the wind like a banshee.)

  Add in the often-illegible scrawl of my aunt’s recipes, which resulted in transcription problems, and the growing realization that, actually, you needed quite a lot of recipes to make a decent-sized book as opposed to a pathetic little pamphlet . . . and my brilliant brainwave was fast turning into an enormous brain-ache. So far, we had completed pages for Idiot-Proof Scones (the first – and pretty much last – thing I had ever baked in the Beach Café kitchen), Jo’s Legendary Fruity Flapjacks, Apple Tart Extraordinaire (second time lucky), Best Bacon Butty (Ed’s recipe) and Triple-Decker Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. That made a paltry five pages in all, with at least another twenty to go. I was starting to wish the stupid idea had never occurred to me in the first place.

  But I was nothing if not an optimist. Besides, having already told quite a lot of people about the project, I kind of had to go through with it now. That would teach me to go shooting my mouth off, wouldn’t it?

  Probably not.

  ‘Mince pies, here we come,’ I said now, rifling through the folder where Jo had stuffed all her recipes over the decades. Many of them bore evidence of their years of service, with faded handwriting and oily fingerprints on the paper. A couple even had speckles of flour on their surfaces. I loved the thought of these treasured instructions being passed on to Jo’s friends and customers. If Ed could just chill out on the perfectionist front we might even finish the damn book in time for Christmas, too . . .

  ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ he said at that moment. ‘Aren’t you jumping the gun a bit? We need a mincemeat recipe first, remember.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Well, you need mincemeat to make mince pies,’ he said.

  ‘But . . .’ My shoulders sagged. ‘I thought we could just . . . buy that? Maybe?’

  Oh God, who was I trying to kid? Like he’d go along with buying a jar of mincemeat when he could spend hours making it himself. Like he was ever going to ‘chill out on the perfectionist front’!

  ‘Joking,’ I mumbled as he opened his mouth to argue. ‘Of course we should make the mincemeat first. I was just joking.’

  I was not ‘just joking’, if you’re in any doubt. Moreover, I was starting to wish that Jo had included a recipe for managing pernickety chefs in her collection: Take one large spoonful of patience and add to simmering rage. Grit teeth for at least ten seconds before opening your mouth. Most importantly, try to resist taking your heaviest frying pan to your chef’s head . . .

  ‘Ooh, these are good. Did Ed make them?’

  I grinned at Annie and rolled my eyes. It was the Girls’ Night In that evening and the café was buzzing with twenty or so women from the village. ‘Of course Ed made them,’ I said. ‘I was just Muggins, the dried-fruit-weigher and washer-upper.’ I dabbed a finger to catch the last crumb of pastry on my plate and popped it in my mouth. ‘Bloody tasty though, aren’t they?’

  ‘They’re lush,’ said Martha, Annie’s daughter. ‘I hope you’ll bake some more for the Christmas Eve bonfire.’

  ‘Already on my list,’ I assured her. ‘Which is just as well, seeing as Ed made so much mincemeat, we’ll probably still be eating it next June.’

  It had taken way longer than I’d expected for the mince pies to even get into the bun tins, let alone into my mouth. First, the combined mincemeat ingredients had to stand for twelve hours, before being gently cooked for a further three the next morning. This was not a recipe for an impatient type of person.

  Despite the unbearable waiting around, there was no getting away from the fact that the resulting jars of mincemeat looked gorgeous, especially when I’d put red gingham covers over their lids and tied them with string. ‘That’s a row of Christmas presents right there,’ I said, lining them up on the scrubbed pine table and photographing them for the book.

  The finished mince pies looked even better. We found recipes for two different varieties in Jo’s folder: star-topped pies and frangipane ones, made with almond pastry. Ed baked both sorts, so that added up to three new recipes in all for the book. Hurrah! Progress at last.

  This was going to be the last Girls’ Night In of the year and I knew there would be a good turnout, so I’d piled up two big platefuls so that everyone could sample them. The Girls’ Night In was now a staple event in Carrawen Bay. I had started it back in the summer, basically because I was lonely and knew nobody in the village, and had issued an open invitation to any women who wanted to come along, preferably with a bottle of something and a plate of nibbles to share. We usually had twenty or so people turning up for gossip and a drink, and I now counted all of these ladies as firm friends – from teenagers like Martha, right through to silvery-haired, retired ladies such as Florence. Blonde, smiling Annie was my chief cake-maker, who’d supplied us with her creations throughout the summer months. Hawk-eyed, no-nonsense Betty owned the grocery shop in the village and had terrified me initially, but was an absolute pussycat when you got to know her. There was pink-haired Mags, the mobile hairdresser; well-spoken Elizabeth who ran the local book group, and many more.

  ‘Now I feel properly Christmassy,’ Betty said, munching her way contentedly through a star-topped mince pie. ‘These are the business. Couldn’t touch a shop-bought one now I’ve tried yours. Not that I’ll be going near any shops for a while, other than my own.’ She gave a self-satisfied smirk. ‘Finished my Christmas shopping this morning, didn’t I?’

  ‘Finished?’ I yelped, half-admiring, half-panicked. ‘Blimey, Betty, I haven’t even started mine yet.’

  ‘What are you going to give Ed for Christmas?’ Florence asked, eyes twinkling. She was a big fan of romance and had become the group’s unofficial agony aunt over the months. She’d certainly been instrumental in making me realize my feelings for Ed.

  ‘Hmm,’ I said. Good question. ‘I don’t actually know yet.’

  Betty looked appalled. ‘You haven’t started your shopping and you haven’t even thought of what to buy your boyfriend?’ she said. ‘Come on, lass, shake a leg. Only three weeks to go now, you know.’

  ‘Three weeks and two days,’ I replied, correcting her. ‘And I’ve got tons of ideas for his stocking anyway. It’s just his main present I’m a bit stuck on.’

  Of course, they all took this as some kind of cue to suggest gifts for Ed.

  ‘How about buying him a nice watch?’ said Betty.

  I hesitated, not wanting to offend her. ‘Maybe,’ I said politely. ‘But I was hoping to give him something a bit more . . . exciting.’

  ‘What about some decent thermals and a hot water bottle, then? He’ll need them if you two are staying here all winter,’ Wendy suggested.

  ‘Wendy!’ I pulled a face. ‘That’s the most unsexy idea ever.’

  ‘She’s got her own ways of keeping him warm, right, love?’ put in Mags, nudging me and winking.

  ‘You could knit him a jumper.’ That was Annie’s idea.

  ‘I could not,’ I replied.

  ‘Well, what does he like?’ Martha asked. ‘What
’s he into?’

  I leaned back in my seat while I thought about it. What did Ed like? ‘Surfing. Coffee. Seeing the sun rise. A glass of wine at the end of the day. The view from the cliffs out over the bay.’

  ‘These are a few of my favourite things . . .’ Elizabeth warbled with a giggle.

  ‘The perfect bacon sandwich. Me. Surfing – oh, I said that already. Um . . .’ I thought frantically. ‘Dogs. Roast dinners. Er . . .’

  ‘Get him a new surfboard,’ Martha suggested.

  ‘I did look at some boards but they’re so expensive,’ I replied glumly. ‘Hundreds of pounds. I think that would be a bit OTT, don’t you? We’ve only been seeing each other a few months, after all.’

  ‘Buy him a dog, then,’ Elizabeth said in the next breath. ‘He loved walking Helen and Rob’s dog, didn’t he, when he was house-sitting for them?’

  ‘He’d love a dog,’ I agreed, ‘and I would too, but we’re meant to be going off to India for a month in February, which wouldn’t really be fair on the poor thing.’ I shrugged helplessly. ‘What have you got for your husbands and boyfriends, then?’ I asked, feeling as if we were grinding to a halt on good ideas.

  ‘I’ve bought a nice fisherman’s clock and a set of handkerchiefs for Tony,’ Betty said proudly. ‘Monogrammed, they are, too. Very smart.’

  ‘My hubby’s getting a Teasmade and some chunky socks,’ Wendy said. ‘He gets terrible circulation problems, his feet are always freezing. Bloody nightmare in bed, it is.’

  ‘I’m going to give Jamie some watercolours and these fancy brushes he wants,’ Martha said, blushing. ‘He’s back home next week, I can’t wait.’

  ‘Nor me,’ sighed Betty, who was Jamie’s mother. Jamie, Martha’s boyfriend, was away in Falmouth at art college. The conversation moved on to their plans for the festive period, and I stood up to take the mince pie plates down to the other end of the table, feeling guilty about my rubbish present-choosing abilities. Everyone else seemed to know exactly what to get their loved ones for Christmas – even if it was only boring old socks and handkerchiefs. Me, I didn’t have a clue. Girlfriend FAIL.

  Never mind, I told myself bracingly, there was still plenty of time. I would definitely think of the perfect present soon. Wouldn’t I?

  Chapter Three

  A few days later, we received our first bundle of Christmas cards and I felt a flutter of excitement at seeing so many red and white envelopes waiting on the mat. Just the other night I’d sat down and written mine, enjoying being able to add ‘Now living in Cornwall, running a beach café with gorgeous new man. Come and see us any time – address below!’ (Had there ever been a better piece of news written in a Christmas card? I couldn’t think of one.)

  Ed hadn’t sent any cards himself (surprise, surprise – I had never had a boyfriend who saw the point of Christmas cards) so I was slightly taken aback to see that there was a creamy-white envelope with his name on the front in spiky black handwriting. Female handwriting, I was certain. Hmmm.

  ‘Post,’ I said as cheerfully as I could, dumping it on the café kitchen table with the other cards. Get a grip, Evie. Ed probably had lots of female friends that I didn’t know about. Why wouldn’t they want to send him a Christmas card, for heaven’s sake? It might even be from his mum.

  Ed was mixing granola for my Breakfast Recipes chapter of the book and he let the wooden spoon fall against the bowl as he wiped his hands on his apron and opened the envelope.

  I started opening mine too: cards from mates in Oxford and from my sisters, and a joint one from Rachel and Leah, the lovely Aussies who’d worked for us all through the summer and were now back in sunny Melbourne. There was also a card from Saul, who was the son of my ex, Matthew, and the loveliest boy in the world. Inside the card he had drawn a picture of a Moomin wearing a Santa hat (Saul and I loved the Moomins) and I stood gazing at it, feeling a pang of missing him, until I became aware of Ed stiffening slightly as he stood beside me, and a new intense silence filled the room.

  The card. The spiky handwriting. I knew there was something ominous about it. ‘Who’s that from?’ I asked, my voice sounding high and unnatural.

  ‘Melissa,’ he grunted, chucking it down on the table and going back to his granola.

  Ahh, Melissa. The scheming bitch he’d been married to; the evil cow who’d tried to completely screw him over. Sorry, Melissa, I thought sourly, picking up the glossy red card with distaste, but it’s going to take a bit more than one poxy Crimbo card to make Ed forgive you, love.

  Dear Ed, I read inside. Great to talk to you! Have a wonderful Christmas. All my love, Melissa and Violet xx

  Violet. That must be her baby daughter – Ed had said something about her getting pregnant when she’d cheated on him. I dropped the card as if it were radioactive. Er . . . hello? ‘Good to talk to you’? ‘All my love’? Kisses at the end? I must be missing something here. Why had I not been sent the memo about my boyfriend making friends with his nasty, unscrupulous ex-wife? And wait . . . why was there no mention of Aidan, the guy she’d shacked up with?

  ‘I didn’t realize you two had been in touch,’ I said, feeling unexpectedly heart-poundy.

  ‘Well, yeah,’ he said, not meeting my gaze. ‘But only to discuss money, dissolving the business, getting divorced. It wasn’t exactly friendly chit-chat.’

  My lips twitched. ‘Her card seems pretty friendly to me,’ I said before I could stop myself.

  ‘Evie . . . I’m in the process of getting a divorce from her,’ he said, sounding exasperated. ‘You don’t seriously think there’s anything more than that between us, do you? I can’t stand the woman.’

  ‘You could have told me she’d been in touch,’ I said in a small voice.

  ‘I didn’t think there was any point,’ he said. ‘Do you tell me about every single phone call you have?’

  ‘No, but – ’ Has she broken up with Aidan already?

  ‘There you go then.’

  Tears pricked my eyes as he resumed mixing, his face cold, his body turned away from me. Ed and I never argued. Never! ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled, then pulled on my coat and went down to the beach, needing to escape the conversation before it became any worse. My breath felt tight in my lungs as if I couldn’t release it properly, and my eyes were swimmy as I marched along the sand, the wind tugging at my hair.

  I picked up a smooth grey pebble and hurled it far out to sea. Then another. Then another. Bugger off, Melissa, I thought savagely. You’re not welcome here. Take your phone calls and Christmas cards and slanty handwriting and shove them.

  Ed came down to find me later, with a Thermos of coffee and a blanket. ‘Sorry,’ he said, wrapping the blanket around us both and hugging me close. ‘I didn’t mean to take it out on you.’

  I leaned against him, grateful for the apology as well as the warmth. ‘It’s all right,’ I muttered.

  ‘She doesn’t mean anything to me,’ he said. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, even though this wasn’t strictly true. Of course she meant something to him: she was his ex-wife, the woman he’d once been madly in love with, the woman who’d broken his heart and tipped his life upside-down. There was no way you could walk away from a relationship like that and feel indifferent to the person involved. And now she’d sent this nicey-nice Christmas card and we were both left confused.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, as if reading my thoughts. ‘Really. Don’t worry. I’m with you now. You’re the one I love.’

  I snaked my arms around him and squeezed him. ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Because I love you right back.’

  Up yours, Melissa, I thought, as we stood there for a long few moments. It’s me and Ed against the world, and nothing can stop us.

  We sat down on the rocks together, still snuggled in the blanket, and shared the coffee. ‘We’re going to have a brilliant Christmas,’ I told him. ‘I just know it.’

  A week went by, which saw us put up not one but two Christmas trees: a towering and g
loriously scented blue spruce from Tregarrow Farm which looked positively magnificent in the far corner of the café, decorated with white fairy lights and silver baubles; and a little artificial tree for our flat, which was far less tastefully adorned with colourful tinsel, flashing Santa baubles and chocolate decorations. By now, I was feeling extremely Christmassy. I was playing my Christmas hits collection at any opportune moment, we had stocked up on booze, and Ed and I had just crossed off our last event of the year: doing the catering and photography for a gorgeous winter wedding in Carrawen Village Hall. We’d got quite a good business going between us now, with both of us doing something we loved: him taking care of all the food, and me with my trusty camera, filling the pages of wedding albums with hundreds of beautiful photos.

  It felt a real achievement, finishing work for the year. The café was closed and our next proper job was weeks away, catering for a fortieth birthday party in mid-January. I was looking forward to spending time together, just Ed and I, until then: taking blissfully long walks along the coast followed by cosy evenings in with a bottle of wine and some good telly. We had duvets, firewood and a fridge that was groaning with food. I was quite tempted to lock the doors and hibernate, just the two of us, for the next month.

  Another bit of good news was that I’d finally made a start on the dreaded Christmas shopping. (So there, Betty!) I’d lucked in with a spontaneous trip to Padstow, and discovered that the Christmas Festival was in full flow there: a godsend to any shopper. Oh, I did feel smug as I wandered from stall to stall, picking up yummy foodie gifts for my sisters, a handmade silver pendant for my mum, and a gorgeous scarf for my best friend Amber. I had even arranged for boxes of Cornish beers to be delivered to my dad and brothers-in-law, too. Result! What was more, I was able to tick off a few bits and bobs for Ed’s stocking as well: a travel guide to India, some chocolate and pistachio fudge, and a lovely old map of the north Cornwall coast, although I was yet to find him a proper big present, something he could unwrap and exclaim joyfully over. (The Internet was no use either. Why did shopping sites think that any man on earth would want a car-washing kit for Christmas? Or a tie? Or cuff-links? News-flash! Terrible present alert!)