Remembering Rose (Mapleby Memories Book 1) Page 20

  * * *

  If only Ella had been happy it would have been a perfect evening. She tried. She smiled at everything and asked questions, and told stories about her work on different film locations around the world, and the celebrities she knew. She had brought some flowers for Millie too, and they added to the gaiety of the occasion, as did Leah who had just started to giggle and who found everything the little boys did hilarious. They played up to her of course, and in the end Millie had to call things to a halt when all three of them developed hiccups.

  “I’ve had the best time,” she told me as we washed up together in the kitchen afterwards. “And so has Granddad. He doesn’t get out much and the boys get bored when we go to see him because his room is very small and they have to be quiet.”

  “Well, he’ll be able to come and see you now and maybe I can persuade him to visit my grandmother, after all they live in the same place.”

  “That would be nice. I know he misses having people to talk to who remember what Mapleby was like when he was young.”

  Recalling some of my conversations with Grandma, I grinned as I hung the wet tea towel over the sink. “I can’t promise he’ll get much sense out of her, but I’ll introduce them when I next visit.”

  “When you do, ask him to tell her about Rose,” she said.

  I stared at her as goose bumps prickled along my arms. “Rose?”

  “Yes. I don’t know who she is but he often talks about her. At one time I thought she was someone who lived in one of the other rooms but when I asked, nobody had heard of her, so I think she must be a visitor. I expect she saw him sitting on his own and felt sorry for him. Hopefully I’ll get to meet her one day.”

  I was just telling myself that I was getting het up about nothing when she spoke again. “It’s a bit weird, actually. Mostly he just says he’s seen her again, but one day a few weeks ago he asked me to get Daniel to visit him because he wanted to talk to him. I didn’t have a clue what it was about and he wouldn’t tell me. It was only afterwards, when Daniel said the boys and I could live over the shop, that I discovered Granddad had been put up to it by this Rose, whoever she is. Maybe she’s one of your relatives, because although a lot of people know that you and Daniel own the shop, hardly anybody knew there was an apartment above it until I told them. Everyone just thought it was a storage space. You don’t know anyone called Rose do you, Rachel?”

  I shook my head, forcing a frown of puzzlement across my forehead. “Sorry I can’t help. I don’t know anyone in Mapleby who would do something like that.”

  It was almost the truth.

  * * *

  “What a day!” Daniel and I were lying in bed, arms and legs tangled, too sleepy to do anything but cuddle.

  “Mmm,” I nuzzled my face into his shoulder. “It was good though.”

  “Mostly thanks to you. If you hadn’t offered to look after Liam and Connor and then produced enough food to feed an army, the whole day would have been much harder for Millie.”

  “Maybe,” I snuggled closer. “But the best thing is having Ella back.”

  He moved his head and I felt his lips brush my hair. “Not as good as having the old Rachel back.”

  I slipped my hand under the sheet and began to stroke his chest. He tried to ignore it. “You said you’d tell me why she stayed away so long, and also why Robbie suddenly disappeared in a hurry. Am I right in guessing the two things are related?”

  “You are but I don’t want to talk about it now.” My hand began to move south and that’s when we discovered we weren’t too sleepy after all.

  Epilogue

  Robbie never told anyone what happened. All I know is that he returned to Mapleby a couple of days later, handed Ella the DVD and told her she could stop worrying. “It’s the only copy and I would have destroyed it but I thought you might want to do that yourself.”

  “Have you…did you look at it?” she whispered, barely able to say the words.

  “Of course I didn’t and nor should you. Just get rid of it Ella. Jump on it, stamp on it, run the car over it, anything that’ll help you forget what he did to you.”

  He didn’t tell me himself, I heard it from Ella at the same time she told me she was going to stay in Mapleby for a while and help out at The Cobbler’s Arms. “Dad wants to pay me a wage,” she said, laughing. “Try as I might I can’t convince him that I’ve earned so much money in the past few years that I can afford to take a few month’s break from work.”

  “Of course staying here for a bit has nothing to do with Robbie being in Mapleby,” I teased her.

  She grinned at me. Although she still had dark shadows under her eyes and was far too thin, she was beginning to look like the old Ella. “It might have.”

  “So he does still want to marry you.”

  “Yes, but I’ve told him we have to take it slowly. It’s not that I don’t love him, I just don’t feel I’m good enough for him, Rachel. I feel sort of tarnished.”

  Remembering how hard Robbie flirted when the mood took him, I shook my head in disgust. “That’s because his past is white as snow, is it? Don’t tell me he hasn’t done some stupid things of his own because we all have.”

  “I know but it doesn’t make any difference. I’ll know when I’m ready and he says he’s prepared to wait.”

  “Well be careful because he’s a bit too dishy to leave lying around for anyone to pick up.”

  She laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to make him wait that long.”

  And that’s when I knew it would be okay.

  * * *

  Leah was just two when she was flower girl at their wedding and very cute she looked too in her little Victorian dress with its blue sash and a matching ribbon in her hair.

  * * *

  I loved being back in the shop and Leah loved spending time with Millie and the boys. I enjoyed my Saturdays with them too, especially once Marcie Trayner joined in and we began to take all the children on an outing from time to time. The days when we all piled into her big car and took off to spend a few hours at the seaside, or to visit a museum, or just took the children to kick a ball around on the village green were some of the best I remember from those times, and sometimes, when it was my turn to work, she would take Millie instead.

  Whether Millie will ever risk another relationship I don’t know and I don’t ask her. I hope she does though, because she’s a brilliant mother. She’s a good friend too.

  When I was pregnant the second time, she was marvelous, and so was Marcie. Between them they looked after Leah so often that Ma and my sisters started to complain they never saw her. I took no notice because it wasn’t true. I still visited the farm, and Grandma, and my sisters, and eventually they began to invite Millie and the boys as well as the Trayners to almost every family event.

  What with all the usual Pavalak advice plus the more down to earth stuff from Millie and Marcie, and the constant messages from Ella whenever she and Robbie were away on location, plus working at the shop as well as looking after Leah and Millie’s two little boys, I never had a moment to worry about my second pregnancy. I know Ma and my sisters were concerned when I first told them another baby was on the way, but Daniel just smiled and kissed me. He knew I was never going back into the shadowlands I had inhabited after Leah was born, and when the midwife handed him our little girl, he kissed her too.

  “Hello Rose,” he said.

  * * *

  I never did see my Rose again, not after the Trayners moved in next door. I looked for her from time to time because there was something important I wanted to tell her, but she never came back. She probably knows I burned her diaries anyway, all but the page with the Victoria sponge recipe printed in thick black ink. Marcie was so delighted I had found it that she devoted a whole chapter to it in her cookbook about traditional English cakes.

  * * *

  When Jerry asked if he could read the rest of the notebooks I pretended to be upset as I told him someone in the family had thrown th
em out by mistake. Well, it was only a little lie and I knew it was what Rose wanted. She would have hated her life plastered across the pages of an historical novel. Besides, I’d promised her I would keep her secret. So now all that’s left is the horseshoe that Robbie fixed on my fence, and the tiny pair of blue shoes hanging above the mantle in The Cobbler’s Arms, and they could have belonged to anyone.

  The End

  A special cake for Mama’s birthday

  I’ve never made a cake all on my own before but Mama said I could make this one as long as I followed her recipe exactly. It was such a success that I’m going to copy it into my diary so I never forget it. Making a Victoria sponge is much more exciting than mixing up a fruit cake or a plain old madeira cake because there’s always a risk that it might not rise.

  First I had to weigh out eight ounces of butter, then eight ounces of sugar, and then I had to beat them both together with a wooden spoon until they were white and fluffy.

  After that I had to crack four eggs into a small bowl and stir them around with a fork until the yolk and the whites were all mixed in. It was a lovely color when I finished because the hens are laying well at the moment. It was a deep orangey yellow like the beginning of a sunset. Then came the tricky part. I had to pour the egg mixture into the fluffy butter and sugar just a little at a time and then beat it hard. If I had tipped the whole lot in together the mixture would have curdled and spoiled the cake.

  When I was sure there wasn’t even the tiniest bit of curdle, I measured out eight ounces of flour and added two teaspoons of baking powder to it. Then I gradually sifted the whole lot into the bowl through Mama’s smallest sieve. All that was left to do after that was to mix everything together with a metal spoon. Mama showed me how to lift it up to get air into the mixture. If I had just stirred it round and round with the wooden spoon it would have probably come out flat. It didn’t though. It came out of the oven like a puffed up golden moon, well two moons really because I had divided the mixture in half and put each half into a separate tin.

  Greasing the tins with butter was the worst part, and then sprinkling flour over the butter and banging the tins on the side of the table to make sure it covered every little bit. I knew if I got that wrong it would be a disaster. The cakes would stick to the tin and I would have to patch up the broken bits the best I could. Fortunately it didn’t happen, so I must have floured and greased them enough. The cakes slid onto the cooling rack beautifully, and once they were cold I put one on our very best plate, the green one with the pansies painted on it, and then I spread it with the preserve Mama made last summer when we had too many raspberries. I could have used the strawberry one if I had wanted to, but I like raspberry best. I licked the spoon clean when I finished.

  Next I placed the other half of the cake on top of the jam and dusted the top with sugar. When I finished it looked magnificent and Papa said it was the best cake he had ever tasted and ate two slices!

  May, who always seems to know everything, says it was invented by one the the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, the Duchess of Bedford I think she said. I suppose she called it the Victoria sponge to please her mistress. I was a bit fed up when May told us that because she always has to interrupt things, but then I didn’t mind because she said it was good too, although she did add that when the Queen ate it she usually put a layer of cream over the jam as well. I told her this wasn’t the Queen’s cake, it was Mama’s cake, and I said I am never ever going to put cream in it however many times I make it in the future.

  Oh, I forgot to say. I cooked it in the oven at a medium temperature for about half-an-hour.

  Other Books We Love titles by Sheila Claydon

  Cabin Fever

  Reluctant Date

  Double Fault

  Kissing Maggie Silver

  Mending Jodie's Heart (Book 1: When Paths Meet)

  Finding Bella Blue (Book 2: When Paths Meet)

  Saving Katy Gray(Book 3: When Paths Meet)

  Miss Locatelli

  The Sheila Claydon Special Edition

  About the Author

  In the 1980s Sheila Claydon wrote a number of romances under the pseudonym Anne Beverley. Then a busy career and family life got in the way and before she knew it, she had turned her back on the characters who were begging to be liberated from her imagination. Now she is back to writing fiction again and, considerably older and no longer shy, writes under her own name.

  Her motto is a quote by the late Ray Bradbury: 'First, find out what your hero wants. Then just follow him.'

  She starts with plots, chapter outlines, characterization; she knows all the rules and faithfully follows them each time she starts to write a new story. Then the hero takes over and she follows him instead.

  Although family remains central to her life, she still finds the time to read, to write, and to travel. Many of the places she has visited feature in her books. Her fans say that reading them is like buying a ticket to romance.

  Books We Love Ltd.

  http://bookswelove.net