Page 74 of A Recipe for Love
Flinty was quiet for a second. ‘I wasn’t there. That was the night my mother went into hospital with her appendix.’
‘Of course you weren’t.’ Anna nodded. ‘Silly of me to forget.’
Bella had that feeling once again that she was swimming through apparently calm, but actually shark infested, waters. ‘Why doesn’t she like Darcy though?’
The women looked at each other. Netty scribbled on her pad,American?
Jill pulled a face. ‘It can’t only be that?’
Netty scribbled some more.No heir?
Nina frowned. ‘You mean Darcy never had kids? Well he’s already got an heir, hasn’t he?’ She nodded at Bella. ‘This one’s lad. And that would only explain why she took against her later, not right from the start.’
Flinty broke the following quiet with a loud, and pointed, tut. ‘For goodness’ sake, you’re coming at this from the wrong end.’
‘What do you mean, Maggie?’
‘I mean whatever set them against each other is ancient history now. We need to work out what they’ve got in common today.’
The group fell silent. Bella shook her head. Darcy was sociable and had the attention span of a toddler on a sugar rush. Veronica was calm, almost unnaturally calm – even when she argued with Darcy it was the younger woman who did all the screaming – and she was reserved, never one to step an inch out of line. ‘They have nothing in common.’
The other women nodded. ‘Yep.’
‘Seems right.’
I agree.
Flinty sighed. ‘You’re all blind as bats. They’ve got lots in common. They wouldn’t be fighting so much if they didn’t.’
‘What do you mean?’ Bella had definitely learned, during her time in Lowbridge so far, that Flinty knew more than pretty much anyone about the inner machinations of the Lowbridge family.
‘Well they’re both trying to cling on to being Lady Lowbridge.’
‘Both like the airs and graces it gives them,’ Anna muttered.
‘Nonsense,’ replied Flinty. ‘They want to be the lady of Lowbridge because they love it here. It means something to them. That’s their common ground.’ She paused and looked at Bella. ‘That and your lad, and his dad. I mean of course Veronica dotes on her grandson.’
Bella couldn’t picture Veronica as a twinkly over-indulgent nana.
‘But Darcy’s always adored him, right since she got here. Even though he was right in the depths of his moody teenager phase.’
OK. So Veronica and Darcy both loved Lowbridge. They had both loved Alexander and they both loved Adam. Maybe Flinty was right. Maybe she needed to appeal to their better instincts and find some common ground rather than try to unpick whatever was at the root of their fighting to begin with.
‘It is a very difficult time for both of them right now too,’ Jill pointed out.
Everyone nodded. That seemed to be the main thing anyone said to Bella at the moment. It was, everybody agreed, a Very Difficult Time.
‘What about the cookery lessons?’ Nina asked.
‘Yes. Right. Basically we need to do something to raise some money so we can maintain…’ Bella looked around. ‘Well, all of this, and…’ She fell quiet for a moment. ‘I really want to try to start a cookery school.’ She really did. She could picture it up and running. Residential courses, with students staying in the coach house and learning in the castle. Courses on different types of cuisine. Maybe a write-up in one of the less terrifying broadsheets, with a photo of Bella in chef’s whites, standing, arms folded but expression happy and relaxed in front of the castle. That all fell down on two simple problems though. ‘But I have no idea if I’d be any good at teaching people, and I don’t know how to get started.’
‘Well that’s easy,’ Nina answered straight away. ‘If you don’t know how to get started, you just start.’
Anna nodded. ‘I had no idea how to run a shop until the old grocers closed and we decided to start one.’
‘But…’ Bella shook her head. ‘How?’
‘Right.’ Nina pursed her lips. ‘We can find out if you’re a good teacher easy enough. Teach us something.’
