Page 37 of A Recipe for Love
Bella left Darcy to gather herself, and made her way back into the kitchen. Flinty was sitting at the island, cup of tea in front of her, eyes closed and head resting on hands. She looked up, rearranging her glasses, and smiling briskly when she heard Bella come in.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Absolutely fine, dear.’
Bella raised an eyebrow.
‘Maybe a little bit tired.’
Bella had already worked out that ‘a little bit tired’ was the closest she was going to get from Flinty to any acknowledgement of illness or fatigue.
‘Why don’t you go home? You’ve been here all hours.’ Bella smiled. ‘And people do keep telling me that you’re retired.’
‘Oh fiddle faddle. What would I do at home?’ Flinty took a deep breath in. ‘Right. Veronica thinks lunch is an unnecessary indulgence but I should get on with something for you and Darcy. And Adam, if he’s coming back.’
Finally something Bella could help with. ‘I can do that. I told Darcy I’d make her something anyway. You finish your tea. If you won’t go home and rest you can at least take a proper break here.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘You don’t know where things are.’
‘Well you can sit there and tell me.’
‘It’s really less bother for me to do it.’
They were both being super polite but there was a definite hint of territorial defence in Flinty’s attitude. Bella tried a different tack. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told Darcy I’d get her something before I asked you. But, now I have, I feel like I should follow through, you know.’
Flinty hesitated. The appeal to her sense of duty seemed to be working.
‘I don’t want to put you to any bother.’
‘It’s just lunch for Adam and Darcy.’
‘Aye well, I suppose it’s not for the lady,’ Flinty muttered.
Bella grabbed the hint of acquiescence. ‘What were you planning on making?’
Flinty’s expression suggested that she knew she was beaten. ‘Well there’s eggs in the back pantry, and bacon in the fridge I think.’
‘Right. Start me off with where the back pantry is.’
‘On the left down there.’
She followed Flinty’s directions, and found the walk-in larder. A larder that truly had the potential for greatness, and in reality seemed to mostly house tinned soup, baked beans and some jars covered in a layer of dust and cobwebs that made her feel slightly terrified of checking the use by dates.
She could almost carry out an archaeological analysis of the shelving. At the back of the pantry was the stuff that looked like it hadn’t been touched in years. She made a definite decision to steer well clear of that. Then there were the tins. Again there were a lot that definitely weren’t super recent, but that was fine for cans, wasn’t it? It took her back to childhood and her nan’s famous ‘mystery teas’ which were the contents of whatever the supermarket down the road was selling off because the label had, at some point, become disassociated from the tin. Peaches in sugar syrup and mushroom soup, for example.
Darcy probably needed something a little more obviously edible.
Flinty appeared behind her. ‘I should clear this out really. They had a girl came in for a bit after I retired. She wasn’t use nor ornament.’ She started systematically sorting through tins on the farthest shelf.
‘You’re supposed to be having a break,’ Bella reminded her.
Flinty didn’t budge. ‘Veg are in the baskets.’ She picked up a carton from the shelf beside her. ‘And I’ve got your eggs.’
Bella followed Flinty’s instruction to find big ripe red tomatoes and a punnet of smaller tomatoes too, flecked with streaks of orange and yellow.
