Page 11 of A Winter Kiss on Rochester Mews
‘I’ll be sure to remember that,’ Mattie snapped, snatching Tom’s mug of coffee from Cuthbert and slammingthatdown too. ‘Anything you might like topurchasewhile you’re here?’
Tom held up the bag that contained his sodding panini. ‘No, I’m good. Thanks for the coffee, Cuthbert.’
Cuthbert, traitor that he was, touched his hand to his head in salute. ‘Always a pleasure, young sir.’
‘It’s not a pleasure,’ Mattie muttered as Tom wended his way through her actual paying customers and slipped through the double doors that led to the shop. ‘Never has been and never will be.’
‘You’ll end up with an ulcer with that kind of attitude,’ Cuthbert said as he worked through the next set of orders. In the past, Mattie wouldn’t have tolerated that level of backchat from her baristas, but then, Cuthbert was older than anyone else she’d interviewed by several decades and she’d been brought up to respect her elders. Cuthbert Lewis was seventy-two and had worked for the Post Office all his life until he’d retired two years ago. He’d spent two weeks being retired, decided that he didn’t like it very much and had retrained as a barista. His granddaughter Little Sophie, who worked in the tearooms on Saturdays, had told him that Mattie had a job going, and the rest was history.
Now, come rain, come shine, come whatever inclement weather you could throw at him, Cuthbert turned up for work, always immaculately dressed in suit and tie, and charmed both the coffee machine and customers alike with his grace, mischievous twinkle and old-fashioned good manners. Although Mattie did wish that he wouldn’t keep saying that operating Jezebel to her optimum potential was like bringing a beautiful woman who’d had her heart broken back to life, she still regularly thanked whatever deity (and Little Sophie) had brought Cuthbert into her life. Apart from when he was singing the praises of her arch nemesis.
‘Young Tom is a perfect gentleman. He has a lovely smile. Lovely manners too.’
‘I’ve never seen evidence of either,’ Mattie said with a sniff, disappearing into the kitchen to prepare her lunchtime bakes, which always included a speciality jumbo sausage roll. This week she was trialling a pork belly and apple confit sausage roll.
Mattie was disturbed in her apple prep by the arrival of Posy, who brought her own stool with her: she was obviously planning to stay a while.
‘I can’t be on my feet for longer than a minute,’ she said by way of a greeting.
‘Swollen ankles still bothering you?’ Mattie asked, attacking a mountain of peeled apples with one of her favourite knives.
‘Honestly, Mattie, I’m happy about the baby, really I am, but being pregnant sucks,’ Posy said with great feeling. ‘I wouldn’t recommend it.’
‘I’m not planning on getting pregnant anytime soon,’ Mattie said with a shudder, because when other girls had played ‘Mother’ she’d pretended that she was running her own Michelin-starred kitchen. ‘I know that you feel lousy, but you look very well on it.’
It was true. Posy had always been pretty, but now her pink-and-white complexion had a rosy glow, her hair shone and had picked up an auburn tint and OK, yeah, her ankles did look quite swollen but she had a very pleasingly round bump.
‘I don’t, but it’s sweet of you to say I do,’ Posy said. ‘I was up half the night worrying about the Christmas brainstorm. I really want to wait until Nina gets back, but she won’t reply when I email to ask her for an ETA.’
‘That’s not like Nina,’ Mattie noted with a frown, because usually Nina was so welded to her phone that she responded to messages within the minute. ‘I hope something hasn’t happened to her.’
‘No, she’s definitely still alive because she is sending me all sorts of other emails. For instance, how I feel about having life-sized reindeer in the shop,’ Posy said unhappily.
That definitely warranted putting down her paring knife. ‘Live reindeer in the shop?’
‘Not live. Life-size. Though either way, I don’t think it’s a very good idea,’ Posy said unhappily. She sighed and then her expression changed from harassed to something more speculative, if the narrowing of her eyes was anything to go by. ‘So, Tom, then. I was very surprised when he showed up with those lads yesterday afternoon. Tom has friends, who knew?’
‘Well, I suppose he had to have at least one friend,’ Mattie said uncharitably. ‘Some poor unfortunate who didn’t know any better.’
‘But there werethreeof them. Three!’ Posy said wonderingly. ‘Did they say where they knew Tom from? How long they’d been friends? Are they academics too? I mean, they didn’tlooklike academics.’
‘Well, Tom isn’t an academic. He works in a bookshop,’ Mattie said as she threw the now-cubed apples into the big pan on the hob.
‘But hewasan academic,’ Posy said and she wasn’t going to let this go. She was twitching with curiosity, so Mattie took pity on her and told her about the Banter Boys: they’d been quite nice, actually.
‘Really? I thought you’d have shut them down in five seconds flat.’
‘I don’t shut down every man I meet.’
‘Most men. So, you and Tom living together …’
‘Are you going somewhere with this?’ Mattie asked, turning to Posy, knife in her hand. ‘Because Tom and I … in fact, there is no Tom and I. There is me having to share living space with Tom under sufferance, and neither of us is happy about it,andhis friends insisted that he give up the big room, so he’s much more unhappy about it than I am.’
‘But if in the course of living with Tom, sorry, living in the same space as Tom, you were to find out some personal details about him, you will let me know, won’t you?’ Posy’s eyes were gleaming with the prospect of finally having any nugget of information that might explain the enigma of Tom, her colleague of five years about whom she knew nothing.
‘Posy, just listen to yourself! I’m not Tom’s biggest fan, but you know as well as I do that there are rules about sharing living space with someone, and I’m not about to go rifling through Tom’s underwear drawer or steaming open his post,’ Mattie exclaimed as she grated nutmeg into her pork and apple mix. ‘I, and you, have to respect his privacy.’
‘Of course, of course,’ Posy said quickly. ‘Absolutely, but if you were to find out something, even if it seems quite mundane, like where he was living before, or if he has parents, then it would be perfectly all right to share that with a friend.’
