Page 79 of The Do-Over

‘What an interesting visit, don’t you agree, children?’ the teacher says brightly. ‘Shall we give a round of applause to say thank you to Thea for showing us around her mill?’

I smile as the children clap. ‘Thank you,’ I tell them, ‘for being such good listeners and asking so many interesting questions. If you see my colleague Rebecca in the gift shop on your way out, she has a little bag of flour for each of you to take away to remember your day here.’

They’re my last class of the day so, once they’ve trooped out with their teachers, I begin the process of shutting downthe mill. Primary school children are always a joy to have in here, because the concept of something that isn’t computerised or powered by electricity is so totally alien to them that they usually find it fascinating. By secondary school, the magic tends to have worn off, and I’ve learned to tailor my presentation accordingly. Once the mill has stopped and I’ve tidied everything up, I load the bags of flour I’ve milled today onto the trolley to drag them over to our weighing and packing area. Although we run it primarily as a tourist attraction, we do end up milling a lot of flour here. We sell some of it in our gift shop in olde worlde brown paper bags for suitably stratospheric prices, but the majority of it goes to the trade, including our café partners.

It was Alasdair’s idea to get an external company to run the café as a separate business and, after a few false starts with companies who expressed an interest only to let us down in one way or another, we came across one called The Mad Hatter. I say we came across them, but we were actually handed them on a plate by one of our other customers, the bakery down the road in Appledore, who already had a relationship with them. It’s a nice setup, actually. They use our flour in their pastry products, so visitors can see the flour being made and then taste the finished products in the café. The wheat is organic and I buy it from a local farm, so it ticks all the sustainability boxes.

It’s a beautiful summer’s day, and I glance across at the pond as I drag the trolley behind me. We’ve had a bumper set of ducklings this year, and it makes me smile to see them bobbing along behind their mothers in the water. Further away, I can see a family making a complete hash of rowing one of the hire boats. There are two children holding one oar each and an exasperated-looking father evidently trying to direct them, while their mother sits in the front of the boat staring serenely at the view. It’s at moments like this that I pinch myself, unable to believe that this is my life now.

Once I’ve weighed the flour out into the right quantities for tomorrow’s deliveries, I head back to the cottage, where I’m surprised to find Alasdair sitting at the table with his laptop open in front of him.

‘I thought you were in London today?’ I say as I bend down to kiss him. He’s wearing the sandalwood aftershave that I like, and I breathe it in deeply.

‘I was, but the meeting finished early. Besides, I couldn’t miss the test run.’

‘Oh, yes. What time is it?’

‘Six o’clock.’

‘I’ve got time for a shower then. How did the meeting go?’

‘Well. They signed.’

‘Of course they did. Finest legal mind in the south of England, they’d be mad not to hire you.’

‘Second finest. I hear there’s this peculiar hermit woman who lives in the middle of nowhere in Kent. Legend has it she was the youngest female partner at one of the most prestigious law firms in the land, before she chucked it all in to fiddle with her flour mill.’

‘Alasdair?’

‘Yes?’

‘Piss off.’

He laughs good-naturedly. This is a well-worn exchange. Ever since he started his own legal consultancy after leaving Morton Lansdowne, he’s been begging me to come on board, but I just don’t have any enthusiasm for that stuff any more, as I’ve told him every time we’ve had this conversation.

‘So, how was your day?’ he asks as I put the kettle on. ‘Mill anything interesting?’

‘Yeah, actually. This smart-arsed lawyer turned up, trying to drag me back into legal practice.’

‘No!’ Alasdair feigns shock.

‘Don’t worry. He won’t be bothering anyone else. I fed his flesh to the pigs and ground his bones to a powder. It’s like I’ve always said. Today’s smart arse is tomorrow’s scones.’

‘Sounds like a particularly unpleasant folk tale,’ he says with a theatrical shudder. ‘Remind me never to cross you. Thinking of which, I had another run-in with psycho Colin this afternoon. What is his problem with me?’

‘He doesn’t like smart-arsed lawyers either,’ I say with a grin. ‘He’s a bird of exquisite taste.’

‘He’s going to taste bloody exquisite as a Sunday roast if he doesn’t knock it off.’

‘You just need to stand up to him, show him you’re the bigger man,’ I soothe. ‘He probably sees you as a threat. Good-looking guy like you is bound to turn the heads of all his chicks. Thinking of which, we had a complaint about him today.’

‘Really? Who did he attack?’

‘Nobody. There was a group from Rollo and Louis’s school first thing and the head teacher, Mrs Steadman, came with them.’

‘Is she the one that thought you and Rebecca were a couple?’

‘That’s her. Anyway, Colin was having one of his frisky mornings, and she complained that it wasn’t suitable for young children to see that sort of thing.’

---