The Cosy Teashop in the Castle: The bestselling feel-good rom com of the year. Caroline Roberts

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       3

       Ellie

      Sickie pulled, she was heading north again. Ellie turned off the A1, away from the trail of lorries and cars, driving one-handedly at times, the other securing the cake box that sat on her passenger seat as the lanes got more winding. The box contained the choffee cake, Nanna Beryl’s special recipe, that she had created last night. A batch of cherry-and-almond scones, baked fresh at six-thirty this morning, were nestled in a tub in the foot well.

      She’d thought and thought about how she might impress Lord Henry and Joe, but with her ‘on paper’ lack of experience, the only thing she could come up with was to take a sample of her baking along with her and suggest a spot of ‘afternoon tea’ at eleven o’clock. It was her best shot.

      Ellie had turned to Nanna’s recipe for ‘choffee cake’ in her hour of need, mixing and baking, and decorating it with fat curls of white and dark chocolate and those lovely dark-chocolate-covered coffee beans (her own tweak on the original recipe). She had been up until the early hours, as the first attempt hadn’t risen as well as she wanted. Her mum appeared in the kitchen in her dressing gown and slippers, bleary-eyed, wondering what the heck her daughter was doing at one o’clock in the morning still cooking; she had thought they were being burgled. Oh, yes, she was an intruder bearing a pallet knife and chocolate buttercream, Ellie had joked.

      Anyway, there she was driving rather precariously along the lanes, whilst securing her precious cargo. There was no way she was going to risk the whole lot sliding off the seat, down into the foot well, ending up a smashed mess.

      She was on a long straight now and she relaxed a little. The panorama panned out ahead of her; sheep were scattered across rolling green fields, clusters of small villages, the foothills of the Cheviots. Cattle were languidly grazing, the odd shaggy head lifted and gazed across their domain. Could it be her domain? For a city kid she was curiously drawn to the countryside. When she was smaller the family used to come up for picnics to the Ingram Valley once or twice a year, park the car on the chewed-down grass of the river bank and spend the day in shorts and T-shirts paddling in the icy brown waters, damming up a small pool area. Finally coming out, to be wrapped in towels when the shivers struck, to munch away on cheese-and-ham sandwiches and packets of Mr Kipling angel slices or mini apple pies (her mother had somehow missed the baking gene). They’d often track down some other kids along the river bank and have a game of bat and ball or rounders, if there were enough of them. Then, the hour back down the road to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, tired and happy, leaving the sheep and the bracken in peace once more.

      Her little Corsa wound its way down into the valley below, through a small village: stone cottages, a village pub, a friendly nod from an old man with his dog. She’d bet they all knew each other around here. Turned off at the sign for Claverham Castle.

      That was when the nerves hit.

      How the hell was she going to convince them that she could run a successful teashop and afford to pay the lease, when she wasn’t even sure of it herself? She didn’t even have any qualifications. She’d been chatting with Kirsty at her café, and she knew some of the basic health-and-hygiene and food-handling requirements from when she had worked there that time. And then there was the health and safety side of things to consider, customer service, staff issues – it seemed a bloody minefield. If she hadn’t spent half the night baking these bloody cakes, and the thought of her mother’s ‘I told you so’ ringing in her ears as she landed back at Fifth Avenue, then she might have turned around right there and then.

      Thankfully her optimistic alter ego took over, in fact the voice in her mind sounded very like Nanna Beryl’s, ‘You’ve got this far, girl, keep going. Just try your best and see what happens’ and the warm flicker of her dream gave her the courage she needed to drive on. Turning into the castle driveway, she slowed instinctively to take it all in this time. Crocuses and snowdrops lined the grassy verges, making way for the tight yellow-green buds of daffodils just about to bloom; she’d hardly noticed these a few days before. Tall gnarled trees lined the track, dappling the road with shadows and light. Then the majestic outline of the stone castle itself, curls of smoke from a couple of its chimneys, the turrets along the rooftop. It was regular in shape, four storeys high with the main door bang smack in the middle and four square towers securing its corners; like a castle a child might draw. She wondered briefly what might have happened between its ancient walls, what trials and tribulations – the joys, the pain, loves, births, deaths?

      And her own little bit of history about to unfold, would she ever be back? Was there a glimmer that her future might be here, for a while at least? What would it feel like to come here every day to work, to be baking cakes and scones, prepping sandwiches and soup in the kitchen, serving customers, dealing with СКАЧАТЬ