Now that Beige Anorak was finally gone, Mattie could get on with washing the floor. She plunged her mop into the bucket of soapy hot water that she’d filled earlier. ‘We are a flap-free zone. Not like them.’
Mattie and Cuthbert were their own little fiefdom within the wider territory of Happy Ever After, the bookshop that lay beyond the glass-panelled double doors. The tearooms had their own traditions, their own way of doing things, their own set of rules, but they co-existed quite peacefully alongside the bookshop. They made sure that no customers brought books they hadn’t already paid for into the tearooms to spill food and drink all over them. They checked daily that Strumpet, the portly, gluttonous cat who belonged to Verity, Happy Ever After’s manager, was safely locked in the flat above the shop. There had been several incidents when Strumpet had staged a prison break and headed straight for the tearooms and the lap of anyone who had cake.
EMERGENCY MEETING IN THE MIDNIGHT BELL NOW!!!!!! WHY ARE YOU IGNORING MY TEXTS? HAVE I MENTIONED THIS IS AN EMERGENCY?
‘Why she can’t just toddle fifty metres and tell me in person, I don’t know,’ Mattie murmured, as she paused mopping to read yet another panic-stricken text message.
‘A lady in her condition can’t be toddling here and there,’ Cuthbert noted as he gave Jezebel one last affectionate buffing.
Cuthbert was right. Cuthbert was usually right about all things.
Mattie swirled the mop in a hard-to-reach corner. ‘Yes, but … but … she’s managing to toddle all the way to The Midnight Bell for a so-called emergency meeting,’ she said. ‘Shall I make your apologies?’
‘If you will. My Cynthia will already have my dinner on,’ he said of the love of his life, his wife. ‘Now you get your beauty sleep, my darling,’ he ordered his sidechick, draping a special cover over Jezebel. ‘It’s another busy day tomorrow, so you need your rest.’
It was so tempting to ask Cuthbert if he and Jezebel would like some privacy. Mattie shook her head, patted Cuthbert on the shoulder as she squeezed past him (it was a tight fit behind the counter) to empty the bucket and finish tidying away. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow then, Cuthbert.’
‘Indeed you will,’ Cuthbert agreed, shrugging on his coat and donning a nifty trilby hat for the five-minute walk home to a flat in the beautiful, Art Deco 1920s Housing Association estate just around the corner.
Mattie’s phone trembled again.
DON’T IGNORE ME, MATTIE! WHY ARE YOU IGNORING ME?
It probably would be a good idea to reply to one of these so-called urgent text messages, Mattie decided.
I’m not ignoring you. I’m doing my next-day prep and I’ll see you in The Midnight Bell when I’m done. I hope you’ll have a large glass of white wine and a bowl of cheesy chips waiting for me. Mattie x
She didn’t even need to take one full step to enter the tiny kitchen shielded from public view by a curtain adorned with little teapots. So tiny was the kitchen that if Mattie stretched out her arms she could touch the walls.
But she didn’t stretch out her arms, instead she washed her hands, then set to work making the flaky pastry for tomorrow’s viennoiserie: croissants, pains au chocolat, pains aux raisins and several other buttery, melt-in-the-mouth delights. The dough needed to chill overnight, which was why Mattie wasn’t currently quaffing Chenin Blanc in the pub.
Before she took off her apron and retrieved her handbag from the one cupboard that she had room for in the kitchen, Mattie pulled out her compact to confirm what she already knew: her face – skin the colour of the lightest, most delicate caramel sauce with a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose – needed a generous dusting of matte powder to tone down the effects of slaving over a hot stove all day. Adding a slick of tawny-pink lipstick, a re-application of mascara and a quick check that the two flicks of liquid eyeliner from this morning were still in place, all she needed to do was make sure that there weren’t any flour or grease stains on her black trousers and jumper, and Mattie was good to go.
It helped that she had a look and she stuck to it rigidly. Mattie had seen the film Funny Face at an impressionable age and even though she was now a very grown-up twenty-eight, she still wished that she was Audrey Hepburn, the bookshop clerk who jetted off to Paris with Fred Astaire and modelled for a fashion magazine when she wasn’t dancing to freeform jazz in seedy bars.
Not only did Mattie now work next door to a bookshop, she’d also been to Paris. In fact, she’d lived in Paris for three whole years and had danced to freeform jazz in seedy bars on several occasions. But that was long in the past and Paris was now dead to her, yet she still dressed like Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face: long, dark-brown hair caught up in a ponytail with a blunt-cut thick fringe which was the perfect foil for her permanently arched eyebrows, above eyes which were the exact same shade as a mink coat her grandmother had once owned.
And like Audrey, Mattie always wore black. Before Paris and especially after Paris, she wore black. In summer, a black cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows and slim-fit black cropped cigarette pants, and the same pair of Birkenstocks she’d been wearing in summer for years. On winter days like today, she swapped the shirt for a jumper, the cropped trousers for a longer version and the Birks for a pair of black Chuck Taylors.
Wearing the same thing every day (Mattie had many black shirts, jumpers and trousers, both cropped and long – it wasn’t like she wore the same two pieces every day until they crawled to the wash basket of their own accord) was practical and quick. No agonising over a wardrobe full of different colours and styles. Which was just as well, because as Mattie stepped out onto the cobblestones of Rochester Mews and locked the front door behind her, she’d be unlocking it again at seven thirty the next morning. Such was the lot of someone who had a hell of a lot of breakfast pastries to bake before the tearooms opened at 9 a.m.
Mattie’s phone buzzed insistently.
WHERE ARE YOU? HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO CHUCK TOGETHER SOME FLAKY PASTRY?
But that was tomorrow. And Mattie wasn’t going to think about tomorrow, especially the part where she had to get up at six, while it was still dark. She was going to think about the large glass of wine that she hoped was waiting for her.
Mattie wasn’t disappointed. As soon as she hefted open the heavy door of the pub around the corner from Happy Ever After, swapping the waft of fish and chips from There’s No Plaice Like Home opposite for the fug of beer, someone waved frantically at her.
‘Mattie! Over here!’ yelled Posy, the owner of Happy Ever After and sender of multiple, needlessly dramatic text messages, as if they hadn’t bagged their usual corner table and banquettes and Mattie might not know where they were. ‘Your wine is perfectly chilled.’
Mattie dropped gratefully onto an empty stool and picked up the glass of Chenin Blanc. ‘Thank you,’ she said fervently. ‘And cheers.’
As they all clinked glasses, Mattie checked for panic in the eyes of her co-workers. Posy, who was fairly heavy with child and drinking elderflower cordial and soda, the glass resting on the top of her bump, looked serene. Verity, the manager of the bookshop, was nursing a gin and tonic and a faintly harried expression, but then Verity always looked faintly harried. And then there was Tom, and Mattie didn’t really care what Tom’s mental state was because Tom was on her list.
Mattie’s list, as Tom well knew, was not a good list to be on, so she ignored him.
‘How are you?’ she asked Posy and Verity. ‘How was the world of bookselling today?’
‘Very, very busy,’ Posy noted with a quiet satisfaction. She rubbed her bump and then very gently and delicately burped. ‘Thank God for that. Have I mentioned that I have the worst indigestion?’
She had. Several times a day, ever since her three-month mark had passed and she was able to tell people that she was pregnant. Now she was almost at seven months