Page 33 of Eden's Comfort Kitchen
‘There’s not all that much to tell yet. There’s quite a bit to work out.’
‘I’m sure we could do our best to help with that.’
‘I was hoping you might.’
Both Julia and Livia smiled warmly at her, and Eden sent them a smile of her own. Things were moving, and she couldn’t quite believe how willing people she barely knew were to help. She was learning that Sea Glass Bay was like that. A month ago, she couldn’t even imagine being here, but, so quickly she was hardly aware of it, she was beginning to feel as if she never wanted to be anywhere else.
CHAPTER TEN
Two weeks had passed since Eden’s first meal with Livia’s family. Since then, there had been four more, not to mention shared shifts with Livia at the Dolphin and lunchtime wanders along the beach, and all the while, assisted by Livia’s input, her plans for the community café had moved at pace. She was getting used to the expressions of surprise and some suspicion of her motives from locals she met along the way, but the one thing Eden could say she’d brought with her from a career of sales was that she knew how to persuade a person to see things from her point of view.
And so the day had come for the grand opening. Not so much grand, perhaps, but opening nonetheless. Nancy and Levi and some of their schoolfriends, with grown-up assistance, had put posters around the town to publicise it. Eden, with Ralph’s help, had devised a menu and a pricing system that meant she could cover the costs of any food she might have to buy – though a lot of it had been donated by Ralph and his contacts in the trade. The pricing was a cursory thing, really, and the cost of a meal was barely anything at all, and they kept the incentive that for anyone who wanted to pitch in and help, there would be free food.
Eden couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this nervous. She’d woken early that morning and had trudged down a rain-soaked pathway into the village to the scout hut, where the caretaker was to meet her with a set of spare keys, with a somersaulting tummy and thoughts like wasps in a bag. There was so much to go wrong, so many ways to fail that she wondered what had ever made her think she could pull it off at all, and the level of doubt was so alien to her that she almost felt she’d turned into a different person overnight. The funny thing was, since her arrival in Sea Glass Bay, she was beginning to sense that she was, slowly and surely, turning into a different person and wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She wouldn’t have been so nervous about something like this before and, if she was being entirely honest, she wasn’t sure she’d have cared this much about whether she succeeded or not. There was nothing material in it for her, so why did it matter so desperately?
Despite the plan to cover her overheads with small donations from diners, Eden had still spent a sizeable chunk of her own money on odds and ends like tablecloths, crockery and cutlery and glasses, vases and flowers and bunting to hang around the hall to make it look more inviting. She’d also had to buy cleaning products, because what the scout hut already had in their stores was OK for sweeping up and washing the odd teacup after a jamboree, but it was hardly enough for a whole sitting of diners and their mess. Wonderful Ralph had given her the use of his van to transport all the things she was going to need, and she’d been on site waiting for food deliveries all morning in a vague state of panic in case something didn’t turn up.
After many discussions with Ralph, Julia and Livia, she’d decided to make the inaugural day an evening sitting only, so that they could get everything in place and test the waters. If it proved popular and demand was there, she’d think about two sittings a day – one at lunchtime and one in the evening, on thethree days a week the hut was available. But if she thought the rest of her time would be spent bored at home, she was going to be disappointed. Eden was quickly discovering that even a three-day week was going to make a lot more work than she’d imagined, and that most of her time – other than doing her paid shifts at the Dolphin – was going to be taken up dealing with the administration of her new venture.
But she didn’t mind that. In fact, in view of the – sometimes complicated – reasons she was doing this, any time taken up with its running was time she wouldn’t be dwelling on what a mess she’d made of her life so far. She felt useful and needed and good to be doing something for others rather than taking and taking like the woman she’d always been before.
Livia and her mum still had the ice-cream parlour to run and so couldn’t help until they’d closed up, but had promised to come as soon as they could. Ralph had given Eden and Livia the night off with pay, which Eden thought was sweet but unnecessary, but when she said this to Livia, she was quickly reminded that her friend didn’t take the gesture quite so much for granted. Livia couldn’t afford to lose even the few pounds she might earn from one shift at the Dolphin, and though she was tactful in saying so, Eden felt like she’d been chastised, and it wasn’t wholly undeserved.
The sun was still strong when Livia and Julia arrived to help. Eden had left the access door open, and as she heard voices, she shouted them through.
‘I’m in the kitchen!’
Julia and Livia appeared a moment later, Nancy and Levi with them, bouncing up and down with more excitement than standing in an industrial kitchen ought to cause any child.
‘You don’t mind…?’ Livia asked as Eden glanced down at them.
‘Of course not!’ She smiled at the children. ‘You want to help?’
‘Yes!’ Nancy cried, and Levi nodded agreement.
‘Cool. I’ve got flowers over there…’ Eden nodded at a spot beneath a worktop where a crate full of flowers she’d picked from her garden at Four Winds lay with their stalks wrapped in damp plastic bags – the only way she could think at short notice to keep them fresh. ‘And you see those tiny vases in the bag next to them?’
Both children gave a vigorous nod of understanding.
‘So I want one of those flowers in each of those vases. Can you do that? They’re to decorate the tables, so it’s very important they look nice.’
‘Yes!’ they both said.
Nancy raced over and pulled out a vase. ‘It’s small.’
‘Big enough for a flower, though,’ Livia said. She went to take a closer look in the bag.
‘Um, yes, I know they don’t match,’ Eden said with a light laugh as Livia took one or two out. ‘I got them in the charity shop. No idea where they got so many from. There were one or two out on the shelf, and when I asked, they had a whole ton more in the back.’
‘It’s nuts what you find in a charity shop sometimes.’ Livia handed the vase she was holding to Levi. ‘Lucky for you in this case.’
‘I like to think it’s a sign,’ Eden said. ‘Stupid, obviously, but still.’
‘I’d agree,’ Julia said. ‘A good sign for your project.’ She went over to the freezer and began to rearrange the shelves to make space. ‘I brought some ice cream down for dessert.’
‘We’re making rice pudding, aren’t we?’
‘Yes, but I thought for those who don’t want rice pudding.’ She turned to Livia. It was then that Eden noticed the bags onthe floor where Livia was standing. She handed them to Julia, who took out the tubs and put them in the space she’d made in the freezer.
