Flora hadn’t been sure if they could keep the Seaside Kitchen going over the winter, when the tourists departed and the nights drew down so low it was never light at all, not really, and the temptation was very much to stay in bed all day with the covers over her head.
But to her surprise, the Kitchen was busy every single day. Mothers with babies; old people stopping to chat to their friends over a cheese scone; the knitting group that handled spillover Fair Isle orders and normally met in each other’s kitchens who had decided to make the Seaside Kitchen their home, and Flora never got tired of watching the amazing speed and grace of gnarled old fingers producing the beautiful repeating patterns on every type of wool.
So much so that she’d realised: this was her job now. This was where she belonged. Her firm in London had originally given her a leave of absence to work with Colton, but that was over and she had to formally resign. Joel had too: he was working for Colton full time. Flora had been putting off going to London, hoping they’d be able to go together to sign off the paperwork, but it didn’t seem to be very likely.
So she helped Isla, one of the two young girls who worked with her, open up the Seaside Kitchen for the day. They’d repainted it the same pale pink it had been until it had gone to seed and started to peel. Now it fitted in nicely with the black-and-white Harbour’s Rest hotel, the pale blue of the tackle shop and the cream of many tourist shops that lined the front, selling big woollen jumpers, souvenir shells and stone carvings, tartan (of course), small models of Highland coos, tablet and toffee. Many of them were shut for the winter.
The wind was ripping off the sea, throwing handfuls of spray and rain into her face and she grinned and ran down the hill from the farmhouse, the commute that was all she had these days. It might be freezing – although she had a huge Puffa jacket on that basically insulated her from absolutely everything – but she still wouldn’t swap it in a second for an overheated, overstuffed tube carriage; a great outpouring of humanity pushing up the stairs; hot, cold, hot, cold, pushing past more and more people; witnessing shouts and squabbles and cars bumping each other and horns going off and cycle couriers screaming at cabbies and tubes roaring past, free sheets being blown by the wind up and down the street with fast-food wrappers and cigarette butts … No, Flora thought, even on mornings like this, you could keep your commute. She didn’t miss it.
Annie’s Seaside Kitchen was lit up and golden. It was plain, with ten mismatched bric-a-brac tables scattered artfully around the large room. The counter, currently empty, would soon be filled with scones, cakes, quiche, homemade salads and soups as Iona and Isla busied themselves in the back. Mrs Laird, a local baker, dropped off two dozen loaves a day, which went fairly speedily, and the coffee machine didn’t stop from dawn till dusk. Flora still couldn’t quite believe it existed, and that it was down to her. Somehow, coming back to her old stamping ground and finding her late mother Annie’s own recipe book – it had felt like a happy choice, not a desperate one, or a sad one.
It had felt like a great, ridiculous leap at the time. Now in retrospect it felt entirely obvious, as if it was the only thing she should have done. As if this was home, and the same people she remembered from her childhood – older now, but the faces were the same, handed down the generations – were as much a part of her world as they ever were, and the essential things in her life – Joel, the Seaside Kitchen, the weather forecast, the farm, the freshness of the produce – were more important to her somehow than Brexit, than global warming, than the fate of the world. It wasn’t as if she was in retreat. She was in renewal.
So Flora was in an unusually good mood as she removed the MacKenzie family butter from the fridge – creamy and salted and frankly capable of rendering all other sorts of spreads redundant – and glanced to see all the locally fired earthenware ready and in a row. There was an English incomer living up past the farms in a tiny little cottage who made it out the back in a kiln. It was thick and plainly fired in earthen colours – sand, and grey and off-white – and they were perfect for keeping your latte warm with a thin, slightly turned-in top and a much thicker base. They’d had to have a polite sign made saying that the mugs were for sale, otherwise people kept nicking them, and the sales had provided a rather handy sideline and a completely unexpected new lease of life for Geoffrey from up off the old Macbeth farm road.
As soon as she turned the closed sign to open, the clouds parted, making it look as if they might get a ray or two of sunshine with their gale-force winds, and that made her smile too. Joel was away, and that was sad. But on the other hand, once she’d got this stupid London trip out of the way she could maybe get Lorna over to watch TOWIE on catch-up and split a bottle of Prosecco with her. She didn’t make much but they could still go halfers on a bottle of Prosecco, and truly, in the end, what more was there to life than that?
A song she liked came on the radio, and Flora was as full of contentment as anyone can truly feel in the middle of February, when a shadow passed in front of the doorway. Flora opened the door to their first customer of the morning who stepped back slightly from the arctic draught, blinking as they blocked out the light behind them. Then her good mood dissipated slightly. It was Jan.
When Flora had first arrived on Mure, she’d met a nice man – a very nice man – called Charlie, or Teàrlach. He led outdoor activity holidays on Mure, sometimes for businessmen and lawyers and organisations, which paid the bills, and sometimes for deprived children from the mainland, which he did for charity.
Charlie had liked Flora and Flora, resigned to the idea that she was never going to get together with Joel, had flirted with him a bit – well, more than a bit, she thought. She was always embarrassed to look back on it: how quickly she had gone from one to another. But Charlie was a gentleman and had understood. The other thing was, though, he had been on a break from his girlfriend, Jan, who worked with him. Jan had subsequently decided that Flora was a feckless tart and that it was all her fault that she’d led him astray. She had never forgiven Flora, but instead did her down fairly loudly and publicly whenever she got half a chance.
Normally this wouldn’t bother Flora terribly much. But on an island the size of Mure, it could be quite tricky to avoid bumping into someone fairly regularly, and if that person didn’t like you, it could get a little wearing.
Today, however, Jan – who was tall, with short sensible hair, a determinedly square jaw and a constant conviction that she was saving the world (she worked with Charlie on the adventure holidays) and everyone else was a feckless wastrel – had a smile on her face.
‘Morning!’ she trilled. Flora looked at Isla and Iona, both of whom were as surprised as she was at Jan’s jolly mood. They both shrugged their shoulders.
‘Um … Hi, Jan,’ said Flora. Normally Jan ignored her completely and ordered from the girls, proceeding to talk loudly the entire time as if Flora didn’t exist. Flora would have barred her, but she wasn’t really a barring type of person and had absolutely no idea how she’d have done such a thing. Anyway, barring one person who worked with the adventure programme while simultaneously funnelling food near its sell-by date to the children who came to visit, via Charlie, seemed a little self-defeating in the end.
‘Hello!’ Jan was swishing her left hand about ostentatiously. Flora thought she was waving at someone across the street. Fortunately, Isla was slightly more up on this sort of thing.
‘Jan! Is that an engagement ring?’
Jan flushed and looked as coy as she could, which wasn’t very, and shyly displayed her hand.
‘You and Charlie tying the knot then?’ said Isla. ‘That’s great!’