Page 57 of A Recipe for Love
Bella stifled her giggle. ‘Can’t be scaring the sheep,’ she muttered. Maybe that was why they were so keen to follow her down to the castle courtyard. They knew they’d be safe from Hooray Henrys bombing across the Highlands in over-powered four by fours.
‘That’s part of why he’s so keen to expand the estate over your way. We’d be nearer the coast so we could do sea fishing trips and wildlife watching. And space for the quad bikes. I mean that’s all ideas. I’m not here to try to change your mind.’ She smiled. ‘Will you change your mind though?’
Would he change his mind? Adam couldn’t answer that question because it assumed he’d made his mind up to start with, when honestly his grandmother had made it up for him. The McKenzie approach was clearly profitable, and it seemed that John McKenzie had the instincts and the drive to make things happen. Presumably he wasn’t a man reduced to a nervous wreck every time he was asked to read a balance sheet.
‘We don’t have any plans to sell at the moment.’ Bella had jumped into the silence that Adam had left. That was a suitable neutral answer. Not a no, but not closing the door either.
Fiona shrugged. ‘Oh well, can’t blame a girl for asking. Imagine the brownie points I’d get if I was the one that talked you round. I guess I should get back to work though. It was lovely to meet you,’ she told Bella.
There was something Adam had to ask before he let her go. ‘What’s it like?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Working here.’ He gestured around the purpose built, entirely characterless visitor centre. ‘With it all like this. I mean, this was your home.’
‘Well it still is.’ Her tone was slightly brittle.
‘But everything’s so different.’
‘We have to move with the times, Adam. That whole thing our dads blathered on about – duty and community and all that nonsense. I mean it’s not very twenty-first century is it?’ She patted his shoulder. ‘So nice to catch up. Can’t wait to tell the old school WhatsApp group you’re engaged.’ She grinned.
Oh no. Oh absolutely no way in hell.
‘I should add you to the group. All the old crowd are there. Liv, obviously, but Tommy and Callum and Briony. Everyone.’
‘Erm…’
‘Go on. What’s your number?’
There was no way out, was there? He typed his number into her phone, wondering too late if he should have ‘accidentally’ mistyped a digit or two.
He waited until she was out of earshot. ‘I hate WhatsApp groups.’
‘You don’t have to stay in it.’
‘But I do, cos it gives everyone that “so and so left the group” message so there’s no way to quietly sidle out.’ He shuddered.
Bella leaned towards him. ‘You can mute it. It’ll be fine.’ She looked around. ‘So what do you think? Is this what we should do with Lowbridge?’
‘Well we do need to generate more income.’ He hadn’t grasped much from his endless sessions with his grandmother trying to talk him through the estate finances, but he had grasped that money was important and Lowbridge did not have enough of it.
‘Well this place certainly seems to do that. Their cake’s bad though.’ Bella looked genuinely affronted by this fact. ‘There’s nothing worse than bad cake. Like bad leeks or something, fair enough. It’s a bit of a palaver to make leeks nice. But cake, you have to really not care to serve bad cake.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
She broke a piece off her unfinished brownie and handed it to him. She was right. Rather than delivering a rich fudgey hit of chocolate, the mouthful seemed to simply disappear in a second. ‘That’s sort of plasticky.’
‘It’s gross. And brownies are so easy. They were pretty much the first thing I ever made on my own.’ She broke another piece off and rolled it around her mouth. ‘They’re super forgiving. If you undercook them they come out fudgier. If you overcook them they’re more cakey and you get more crunch on top. So it’s still all good. And it’s just butter, sugar, chocolate, a little bit of flour and eggs. There’s nothing to go wrong.’ She pushed her plate away. ‘That has never seen a block of butter though, and the chocolate must have been the cheapest they could get their hands on.’
‘All the jobs they’ve created though.’
‘I know.’ Bella didn’t sound impressed.
‘Lowbridge needs jobs. There’s hardly anyone our age around, is there? Because there’s no work.’ Aside from Pavel and the Reverend Jill, everyone even close to Adam’s age seemed to have moved away a long time ago.
‘And maybe this is the way forward. They’re attracting lots of people.’
Bella shook her head. ‘Yeah but…’
