her age for so long that she’d forgotten what it really was. So what with that and the realisation that she was never going to oust the two new contenders for her father’s affections (and wallet), she’d plunged into a bit of a panic.
He’d finally relented to the point where he agreed to pay her a reduced allowance for six months while she got on her feet, but her friends and the party crowd had moved on in her absence and now she was struggling to pick up the threads of her old life. She was out of touch … and suddenly starting to feel old.
When someone told her the rumour about the big lottery win at Gilligan’s, she wondered … and even tried pumping that snotty, red-headed fiancée of Jago’s friend David, while she was having her hair done, but got nowhere. Sarah had pretended she had no idea what Aimee was talking about and then insinuated that her hair extensions were giving her a bald spot on the crown, which had to be a foul lie.
She wished she knew just how much he’d won on the lottery … No one at Gilligan’s had been prepared to tell her – in fact, they’d been really reluctant even to give her his new contact details. Maybe that meant it had been squillions? She certainly hoped so!
She tried ringing him again, but still couldn’t get hold of him on his mobile, because he must have been so flustered at hearing her voice that he’d given her the number wrongly. She thought that was a good sign, but it was annoying that the shop number now rang through to voice mail and that friend of his was quite probably wiping her messages as fast as she left them …
Chapter 11: Flaky
On Monday morning I was up so early again that the sky was still a deep blueberry with only the tiniest hint of single cream seeping into the east. The sparse streetlights of Sticklepond glimmered like tired fireflies below me and were answered by the sharp, minute diamond sparkle of a star overhead.
Twinkle, twinkle … I thought of next Christmas and how much I hoped that Stella would be running round, fit and well and excited about Santa’s bumper crop of presents for a special little girl …
That sky made me want to try out blueberry fairy cakes, but apart from the fact I didn’t have any blueberries, I’d got up expressly to have a giant baking session for the new articles, so I got on with that. I’d produced Eccles cakes, Chorley cakes and even a few Sad cakes, before anyone other than Toto and Moses was awake, and I added a recipe to my ‘Cake Diaries’ outline.
Although there are several variations on the same theme as Eccles cakes, there’s nothing else quite as delicious as a proper one, made with thin, flaky, crisp pastry and stuffed full of juicy currants. If you’ve never tasted the real thing, follow my recipe and be amazed!
The kitchen air smelled so good it could have been cut up and sold by the slice, and I munched on a warm Eccles cake as I wrote. When Ma came down she said she was becoming accustomed to waking to the smell of baking, because even if I don’t cook first thing, I still pop some kind of loaf into the bread maker the night before and she can smell that.
‘You’re like a sort of culinary Pied Piper, luring me into the kitchen. Just as well I took to elastic-waisted trousers and baggy tops years ago,’ she remarked, deciding to try one of each pastry for breakfast. ‘I’m sure otherwise I’d be exploding out of my clothes like the Incredible Hulk.’
‘I think I already am,’ I said ruefully.
‘Oh, I don’t know, you look about the same as when you got here,’ she assured me. ‘I expect those long walks in the afternoons with the buggy and Toto are keeping it down a bit.’
‘Yes, that’s true, I must be getting fitter even if not thinner, because apart from Primrose Hill, which is more of a grassy bump than anything, there weren’t really that many nearby open spaces to tempt you to have long walks in London. Stella says she misses the zoo, but that’s all.
He’d finally relented to the point where he agreed to pay her a reduced allowance for six months while she got on her feet, but her friends and the party crowd had moved on in her absence and now she was struggling to pick up the threads of her old life. She was out of touch … and suddenly starting to feel old.
When someone told her the rumour about the big lottery win at Gilligan’s, she wondered … and even tried pumping that snotty, red-headed fiancée of Jago’s friend David, while she was having her hair done, but got nowhere. Sarah had pretended she had no idea what Aimee was talking about and then insinuated that her hair extensions were giving her a bald spot on the crown, which had to be a foul lie.
She wished she knew just how much he’d won on the lottery … No one at Gilligan’s had been prepared to tell her – in fact, they’d been really reluctant even to give her his new contact details. Maybe that meant it had been squillions? She certainly hoped so!
She tried ringing him again, but still couldn’t get hold of him on his mobile, because he must have been so flustered at hearing her voice that he’d given her the number wrongly. She thought that was a good sign, but it was annoying that the shop number now rang through to voice mail and that friend of his was quite probably wiping her messages as fast as she left them …
Chapter 11: Flaky
On Monday morning I was up so early again that the sky was still a deep blueberry with only the tiniest hint of single cream seeping into the east. The sparse streetlights of Sticklepond glimmered like tired fireflies below me and were answered by the sharp, minute diamond sparkle of a star overhead.
Twinkle, twinkle … I thought of next Christmas and how much I hoped that Stella would be running round, fit and well and excited about Santa’s bumper crop of presents for a special little girl …
That sky made me want to try out blueberry fairy cakes, but apart from the fact I didn’t have any blueberries, I’d got up expressly to have a giant baking session for the new articles, so I got on with that. I’d produced Eccles cakes, Chorley cakes and even a few Sad cakes, before anyone other than Toto and Moses was awake, and I added a recipe to my ‘Cake Diaries’ outline.
Although there are several variations on the same theme as Eccles cakes, there’s nothing else quite as delicious as a proper one, made with thin, flaky, crisp pastry and stuffed full of juicy currants. If you’ve never tasted the real thing, follow my recipe and be amazed!
The kitchen air smelled so good it could have been cut up and sold by the slice, and I munched on a warm Eccles cake as I wrote. When Ma came down she said she was becoming accustomed to waking to the smell of baking, because even if I don’t cook first thing, I still pop some kind of loaf into the bread maker the night before and she can smell that.
‘You’re like a sort of culinary Pied Piper, luring me into the kitchen. Just as well I took to elastic-waisted trousers and baggy tops years ago,’ she remarked, deciding to try one of each pastry for breakfast. ‘I’m sure otherwise I’d be exploding out of my clothes like the Incredible Hulk.’
‘I think I already am,’ I said ruefully.
‘Oh, I don’t know, you look about the same as when you got here,’ she assured me. ‘I expect those long walks in the afternoons with the buggy and Toto are keeping it down a bit.’
‘Yes, that’s true, I must be getting fitter even if not thinner, because apart from Primrose Hill, which is more of a grassy bump than anything, there weren’t really that many nearby open spaces to tempt you to have long walks in London. Stella says she misses the zoo, but that’s all.
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