Page 75 of One Summer

‘You don’t want anyone?’

‘No, but we never let that show, because we need the holidaymakers and we swallow our pride, and sometimes other people’s ignorance and insults too, to give the tourists what they’ve bought and paid for. That’s the deal, the trade, the way it has to be.’

She sighs, looking a million miles away.

‘Would you like a slice of cake, girls?’ Maud asks us, startling us.

‘Depends what you’ve got,’ Betty says. ‘I don’t want any of that carrot cake muck you had last time.’

‘Raspberry genoise sponge with vanilla rosewater frosting.’

‘I’ll try it,’ Betty says, pursing her lips as if she’s prepared to be displeased.

‘How about you, dear?’

‘You had me at raspberry,’ I say.

Goodithea’s voice rings out. ‘And for Radigon and me, Maud! Don’t forget us.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it. You’ll have the biggest slices, my darlings.’

‘Quite right too,’ Goodithea says. ‘I haven’t endured over a century of living to be given a skinny slice of cake.’

Betty grins. ‘God, I love my family.’

‘They’re your family?’ I say, confused because I thought it was only my grumpy neighbour who was Betty’s family.

‘Yes, they’re my family on my mother’s side. Goodithea and Radigon are my great-aunts.’

‘How?’

‘I’m only sixty-seven,’ Betty says, offended. ‘I’m a spring chicken around here.’

I’m not sure how to backtrack from my surprise, so I try to disguise it. ‘Is Goodithea really a hundred and ten?’

She nods. ‘By the end of this year, she will be. It’s all the sherry. She and Radigon are pickled from the inside out. They’re literally never going off.’

‘Don’t tell her,’ Maud whispers to me. ‘But we’re thinking of throwing her a secret eleventy-first birthday.’

‘Hang on,’ I say. ‘Isn’t that a scene in The Hobbit?’

‘It’s actually The Lord of the Rings, I think you’ll find,’ Maud corrects me, as she hands me my cake. ‘You’re thinking of Bilbo’s eleventy-first farewell party. Still, I don’t think Goodithea is going to disappear by putting on a magic ring.’

‘I wouldn’t put it past her,’ Betty says. ‘She offered to read my tea leaves the other day.’

‘Did you let her?’ I ask.

‘You can’t say no to someone that age.’

‘And? What did the tea leaves reveal?’ Maud says, sounding deeply intrigued.

‘Oh, nothing much. Only that I’ve been put on this earth to spread joy.’

I give her a cynical look.

‘What?’ she says. ‘Look at how much joy I brought you and my grandson the other day with my wonderful cookies.’

‘When you spiked us.’

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