Page 38 of A Winter Kiss on Rochester Mews
‘But we’re very busy,’ Mattie said, staring at the line of punters waiting to order who all immediately looked elsewhere as if they were frightened to make eye contact with her.
‘I’ll call if I can’t manage. You obviously need some alone time, happens to all of us,’ Cuthbert added, as Mattie let herself be gently but firmly guided behind the teapot-patterned curtain so she could get back to her mince pies and think about what she’d just done.
She hadn’t done anything wrong though. It was Tom who’d taken shameless advantage of Mattie’s good nature and the complex goodwill system that existed between the tearooms and the bookshop. Anyone else would have done the same thing in Mattie’s position …
‘I’m not taking sides, I’m neutral like Switzerland, but how could you have been so harsh with Tom?’ Posy lamented. Mattie had steeled herself to take a couple of invoices through to the shop, along with a plate of leftover breakfast pastries, because it was now after lunch. ‘He’s been having the same panini every morning for the last four years. Is that a crime?’
‘It’s not a crime,’ Mattie said evenly, though it was a carb-laden, grease-soaked two fingers up at all her freshly baked, organic breakfast savouries. ‘But he doesn’t have to rub my nose in it every morning. Now, these invoices … they’re actually for the ingredients I used to make those cakes for the author signing last month. Remember? They wanted their book cover on a cake.’
‘Verity can deal with that,’ Posy decided and Mattie, grateful not to have to talk to Posy a moment longer, because she definitely wasn’t being as neutral as Switzerland, hurried across the shop floor to find Verity.
There was a muffled ‘Ooof!’ behind her as Posy struggled up from the depths of the sofa. ‘We really do need to sort this out.’
Tom was serving behind the counter as Mattie approached. ‘Excellent book selection,’ he said, handing over a Happy Ever After tote bag to a tired-looking woman. Then he smiled at her, a kind, warm smile that made his face look kind and warm too. The woman smiled back and in that instant, she was no longer tired-looking but had a light in her eyes and a spring in her step as she walked away.
Then Tom saw Mattie slipping past the counter to reach Verity in the back office and his kind, warm smile disappeared as quickly as if someone had taken an eraser to it. He pointedly picked up the mug next to him that was half full of black coffee that he certainly hadn’t got for free or even for one pound and twenty-five pence from the tearooms. He took a sip, eyes on Mattie, then sighed appreciatively, as if it was the best sip of coffee he’d ever had, though Mattie would have bet her entire collection of vintage cookery books that it had started life as freeze-dried granules from a jar.
Mattie glared at Tom who gazed innocently back at her, and she longed to give his elbow a quick nudge as she walked past, to spill instant coffee down his disgusting knitted waistcoat.
She didn’t though, just walked through to the office where Verity was frowning at a spreadsheet on her computer screen. ‘Invoices,’ Mattie announced, placing them down on Verity’s desk. ‘And some flaky pastries to sweeten the experience of dealing with invoices. I had some leftover caramel so I experimented with a pain au caramel instead of a pain au …’
‘No!’ Verity said rather forcefully. ‘We can’t accept any more baked goods from you, gratis.’
‘We really can’t,’ added Posy sadly, who’d followed Mattie in and was now collapsing onto the nearest chair. ‘In fact, Verity’s calculated the amount of free food the shop staff have had from you since the tearooms have been open—’
‘Oh, this is ridiculous,’ Mattie exclaimed, putting down the plate of pastries because her hands really needed to be on her hips for this conversation.
‘It’s a very rough estimate,’ Verity continued. ‘Even so, it appears that we owe you hundreds of pounds.’
The thought of supplying hundreds of pounds’ worth of free cake to Verity, Posy and Nina left Mattie feeling quite unmoved and not at all like the feeling of teeth-grinding irritation of Tom coming in every morning to demand his free coffee whileflauntinghis breakfast panini.
‘And obviously you’ll want to stop the free tea and coffee,’ Posy said, rubbing her bump. She had bags under her eyes as if she wasn’t sleeping that well. Mattie felt like the worst person in the world for adding to Posy’s stress.
‘But this isn’t about you,’ she said, hands very firmly on her hips now and chin tilted, eyes flashing. ‘This is about Tom taking advantage of the system. I amhappyto supply free tea and coffee but you always buy something from me in the morning. It’s like an unspoken rule. Tom, on the other hand, doesn’t buy anything, he just demands. Sometimes he doesn’t even say please!’
‘I’m pretty sure that I do say please every time,’ Tom called out because he was listening in like some kind of flappy-eared eavesdropper.
‘Pretty sure you don’t,’ Mattie snapped and she longed to slam the door shut but this wasn’t her house, so these weren’t her rules. ‘Anyway, I refuse to accept any money for free food that I willingly gave and I’m offended,mortallyoffended, that you would even suggest paying. Like you think I’m some tight-fisted skinflint who’s been secretly resenting every last piece of cake you’ve eaten.’
‘Oh dear,’ Posy moaned softly and her bump-rubbing speeded up.
Meanwhile, Verity’s head had sunk so low that she no longer looked as if she had a neck. She hated confrontations and could hardly meet Mattie’s gaze. Once again, Mattie was having a horrible flashback to those times with Steven, of which there’d been many, when she had always ended up being the villain when she’d been convinced that she was the victim. ‘We obviously need to establish some ground rules,’ Verity said with a pained grimace. ‘I’d hate to think thatyouthought we were taking advantage of you.’
‘But you’re not!’ Mattie wrung her hands like one of the heroines in the romantic novels that all the Happy Ever After staff were obsessed with. Even Tom. Ha! Especially Tom! ‘The only person taking advantage of me is Tom, and he can either buy his breakfast from me and get a free coffee or he can pay for his coffee, and if he doesn’t want to do that, then he’s free to drink that instant swill that passes for coffee. I don’t actually think that this is an unreasonable request.’
Was she saying this wrong somehow? Judging from their matching incredulous expressions, she was.
‘I see your point about Tom not buying things, absolutely. And we all really need to stop taking advantage of your good nature. But the coffee thing aside, I don’t know why you always have it in for poor Tom,’ Posy said reproachfully. ‘He’s actually really rather lovely when you get to know him, not at all stuffy.’
‘Thanks for the validation, Posy,’ Tom called out. ‘No, sorry, I wasn’t talking to you. That’ll be twenty-seven pounds and thirty-five pence, cash or card?’ he added to the customer who he was obviously meant to be serving, instead of listening to a conversation that had nothing to do with him, even if it was about him.
‘Yes, Tom’s great,’ Verity added, jumping on the Tom train. ‘You’ve been living with him for a couple of weeks now, so surely you can see that underneath the stern, tweedy exterior, Tom’s a teddy bear.’
‘Not a teddy bear,’ Posy said, shaking her head. ‘More like a cat that pretends to be stand-offish but actually goes all purry and headbutty when you’re stroking him.’
‘Not that we’ve ever stroked him,’ Verity said quickly. ‘But Tom is kind and thoughtful, he’s our friend as well as our colleague and … and …’
‘You and Tom really need to sort things out. Neither of you can live like this; snapping and snarling all the time. And also it’s very hard for the rest of us because if you and Tom have a problem with each other, then it affects everyone else and becomes our problem too,’ Posy said with a sad little sigh. ‘And I don’t want to have problems. Problems are not good. Problems play havoc with my heartburn and my blood pressure.’
