‘Thank you. But I still feel him all around me.’ Rosie chuckled. ‘When I was making the curry, I had his voice in my ear telling me to be more generous with the spices. Mark loved his spicy food.’
I felt a tear threatening, and I was sure Ellie must have been feeling emotional, too, as she hunkered down in front of the pushchair. ‘What’s your favourite sort of cake, Amelie?’ she asked.
Amelie twisted in the pushchair to look up at her mum and made a funny shy face.
‘Tell Ellie what you like best, lovely girl,’ Rosie urged, gently smoothing her daughter’s curls. ‘You like fairy cakes, don’t you?’
The little girl nodded. ‘I like cake with chocolate on and I like pink sprinkles.’
‘Well, you’re in luck.’ Ellie patted Amelie’s knees, rose and went to the van. ‘We’ve got fairy cakes with pink sprinklesandsome slices of chocolate fudge cake.’ Smiling at Rosie, she popped the bakes into her box.
‘And what can I get for Mum?’ I asked, as Rosie pulled out her purse.
‘Actually, I love chocolate cake myself, so a second slice of that will do nicely, please.’
Ellie popped two more slices in the box I was holding, popped on the lid and handed it over, refusing to accept payment from a protesting Rosie. ‘I think it’s called bartering,’ she smiled. ‘Two cartons of Thai food in exchange for cake sounds like the perfect deal to me.’
‘Well, thank you. We’ll enjoy this. Won’t we Amelie?’
Amelie nodded shyly and they trundled off.
‘See you next week!’ I called after them as they turned to wave.
We were silent as we drove along to our next stop, which was the farmers’ market at Lockley Meadow.
‘Life can be so cruel sometimes,’ murmured Ellie as we got out of the van, and I nodded, knowing exactly what she meant.
‘She’s a fabulous mum,’ I said sadly. ‘I bet Amelie wants for nothing.’
‘I’m looking forward to trying Rosie’s food but I have a horrible feeling I might have to compete with Zak for it once he sees it. He’s a bit of a spice fiend himself.’
I grinned. ‘Ah, well, that’s yet another benefit of being single. You don’t have to share your food with anyone.’
The market was already busy when I drove into the village, my ‘clown antennae’ already squeaking as we drew ever nearer to two irritating building site workers. Ivan and Caleb had a horrible habit of showing up at exactly the wrong moment and deliberately embarrassing me. (That’s how it seemed, anyway.)
Well, not today!
I’d decided that the minute either of them appeared, I was going to ‘collect some change’ from the glove box in the van (we often ran out of it, so it was a legitimate excuse) and I’d stay there until they’d both stopped wittering on and left.
I found Caleb especially annoying. I always got the feeling that he was staring right into my soul and finding it lacking somehow. I gave a little shiver now just thinking about his intense blue eyes on me and Ellie looked over and asked if I was all right.
‘Yes, I’m fine. Oh, no, there they are.’ My heart sank as I spotted the long lanky Ivan and his slightly shorter but more ‘beefy’, broad-shouldered boss in the distance.
‘Who?’ Ellie’s eyes darted all over. ‘Where?’
‘The building site clowns?’
‘Oh, Caleb and Ivan? Great!’ She nodded happily. ‘I was hoping Caleb would be free to show me round one of his eco houses today.’
‘Ooh, how exciting,’ I muttered scathingly.
She glanced at me and chuckled. ‘You don’t fancy a nosey yourself?’
‘Er, no. You knock yourself out. But I’ve got rather better things to do than listen to that Caleb person droning on and on about how exceptionally wonderful his eco housing project is.’
She laughed. ‘I find him quite interesting, actually.’
‘Well, we’re all different.’