The Traveller’s Daughter. Michelle Vernal

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СКАЧАТЬ eat your dinner.”

      “I will if it’s something yummy.”

      Having washed her hands, Kitty donned an oversized pinny that her mother wrapped around her waist twice before standing on tiptoes to stare at the open cookbook. That was the afternoon she learnt how to read a recipe as she made her first batch of cupcakes. Her mother oversaw the proceedings watching as she followed the instructions to cream the carefully measured butter, sugar and vanilla until it was light and fluffy before cracking an egg into the mix. She’d turned the handle on the old fashioned beater until her arm felt like it was going to drop off and was relieved when her mother said it was time to measure the flour and baking powder out. Sifting was much easier than beating, she’d decided, tapping the side of the sieve until it was empty and a mountain of white sat on top of the wet mix. Tired of standing on tippy-toes, she’d pulled a chair in from the dining table and kneeled up on it. She’d watched with her chin resting on her clasped hands, elbows on the bench as her mother demonstrated how to fold the dry ingredients into the batter adding a bit of milk as she went.

      “See it needs to be a dropping consistency like this.”

      Kitty was transfixed as the mixture plopped back into the bowl. She was hoping there would be plenty left in it for her to scrape up with her finger once the cakes were in the oven. It was time her mother said to spoon the mixture into the paper cases lining the patty tin.

      “Too much in that one Kitty, three-quarters full. Aha!” she clapped her hands. “There do you see what I mean? That was a fraction right there.”

      At nine years of age, Kitty was not too old to concede that her mother was right, and she decided tomorrow she would try not to drift off when Mrs Chalmers made them chant their times tables. Fifteen minutes later when she donned the oven gloves and pulled the plump cakes from the oven, she puffed up with pride. She couldn’t wait until her daddy got home from work so she could tell him she had baked the cakes all by herself. “Can I taste test one, please?”

      “I suppose so, sure as a rule of thumb a good cook should always taste what she makes. Food is a good workhorse.”

      Kitty couldn’t believe her luck. She peeled the paper off a little hot cake and leaving half the mix stuck to the wrapper, popped it in her mouth. That was the moment that her life-long love of baking had been born.

      The thing with baking was that at the fundamental core of a good batch of anything there was the need for a reliable recipe. Despite this, and no matter how measured and precise her ingredients were, now and then something would go wrong with the mix, and her cakes wouldn’t rise. It was the same with life Kitty thought as her eyes refocused on the photograph this Christian Beauvau person had attached to his message. For the most part, each day ticked along much like the one before but now and then something would be tossed into the mix and it would test her ability to rise to the occasion.

      She shivered, the house had that unlived in temperature that seeps through to your bones she thought as her phone beeped another text’s arrival. Closing the photograph, a quick glance revealed the message to be from Mr Baintree, her stomach flip-flopped and despite her nerves at what he might have to tell her, she was glad of the distraction. Crossing her fingers and hoping it was good news she scrolled down and breathed a sigh of relief, the auction had closed four thousand pounds above reserve! He finished his message by saying he would meet her back at his office in an hour. Kitty’s face broke into a grin; it had not been a wasted journey. She was buoyed by the news and decided she’d rather wait in the agency’s warm reception area than sitting here freezing.

      Quickly flicking back to Christian Beauvau’s message, she forwarded it through to Yasmin adding the good news regarding the house’s sale. Let Yas mull it over, she decided. She’d talk to her later about what she should do. Stuffing her phone back in her bag, she got to her feet. As she picked up her wheelie case and walked down the hallway, she realized she had never managed to swing that long ago conversation with her mother back around to what it was she used to do.

       Chapter 4

       A trout in the pot is better than a salmon in the sea – Irish Proverb

      Kitty shut the front door of the house that no longer belonged to her mother, locking it before stuffing the key in her jacket pocket. She glanced up at the grey sky with a frown. She wished she’d packed a waterproof jacket instead of the lightweight belted one she was wearing. Stealing herself against the steady drizzle, she didn’t look back as she set off down the road toward the offices of Baintree & Co.

      Her feet were clad in her usual choice of thoroughly unsuitable heels, and she stepped around the freshly formed puddles. She momentarily wished she had a bit more sense when it came to footwear but ever since she’d had a say in the matter, she’d always opted for pretty over practical. Still, she comforted herself, at least she didn’t have far to walk, and as she tottered down the empty footpath, her mind drifted back over how she’d come to be here.

      The letter had arrived from the firm of solicitors, whom her mother had been with for as long as Kitty could remember, four weeks ago. In her opinion, Rosa had single-handedly kept them in business these last few years with her conveyancing, not to mention her final bit of business, dying. It held no surprises, apart from what she thought was an odd request on her mother’s part, that Kitty keep her ashes for at least six months before scattering them. Apart from that, her affairs had all been in order.

      Rosa’s will was quite straightforward with no beneficiaries other than Kitty, and so the house at Edgewater Lane was hers to do with as she wished. She hadn’t bothered to glance at the statement attached, knowing the firm’s bill had been paid from her mother’s bank account. The account was now closed, and the balance was to be transferred to her account. It was the formality and finality of the letter that made her eyes burn with threatened tears. She’d sat there for an age in the dip of the old couch in the London flat she shared with Yasmin and Paula feeling utterly lost.

      She and Yasmin had only let the room to Paula for two reasons. Number one, being that the third bedroom was a box room so small that no one else had been keen to take it upon viewing it. The second reason was the smell; not everybody could stomach the permanent smell of curry that hovered in the air thanks to the flat’s upstairs location over a Bangladeshi takeaway.

      Their flat was located in the East End near the old Spitalfields Market and Brick Lane, which was known these days as London’s Curry Capital and had long been nicknamed Bangla Town. Kitty loved the little pocket of East London she had run away to just on a year ago, determined to put as much distance between herself and Damien as she could manage. You could almost smell the history seeping from the bricks; that’s if you managed to block the smell of curry!

      She liked to imagine the drama that had been played out on the streets as she wandered around them and to know she was now part of that thread work made her feel special. Sometimes she’d pause down bustling Brick Lane and imagine she could hear the call of the Costermongers’ selling their fruit and veg. Once she had gotten herself in a right stew hot footing it home as she conjured up the darker side of the East End’s infamous past, Jack the Ripper. She could sense a shadow lurking behind her and had picked up her pace so that she’d been puffing by the time she burst in through the front door of her flat.

      “What’s up with you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Yasmin had stated as Kitty locked the door behind her before swinging round to face her friend, wild-eyed.

      “Nothing, I’ve got an overactive imagination that’s all, my mum always said so, but I think СКАЧАТЬ