Page 39 of A Winter Kiss on Rochester Mews
Could all these so-called problems be resolved if Mattie agreed to let Tom have a free cup of black coffee each morning? Quite frankly, she’d rather have her nails detached slowly from her nail-beds with a pair of rusty pliers.
Besides, her terms were not actually unreasonable. Posy had even admitted that Tom shouldn’t have been shamelessly freeloading off her. So Mattie wasn’t the problem. Tom was the problem because Tom wasn’t a lovely, tweedy teddy bear, he was a … ‘Tom’s not a stand-offish cat, he’s a no-good Lothario!’ Mattie heard herself blurt out as if her mouth was acting independently of her brain. ‘He’s a shameless seducer of women!’
‘What?’
‘No!’
Posy and Verity both had their hands to their mouths, eyes wide.
‘Yes! And what’s more, he’s been lying to you all this time because he’s an expert on romantic novels. In fact, he wrote his bloody thesis about them!’
‘Oh. My. God!’ Posy said gleefully, clasping her hands over her bump. ‘No! It can’t be true.’
‘But even if it is true, it’s Tom’s business,’ Verity said, and now she had no trouble looking Mattie straight in the eye with an unwavering and yes, slightly condemning stare. ‘If he’d wanted us to know then he’d have told us.’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ Posy agreed somewhat unwillingly, eyes flitting from Mattie to Verity and to the open door that led to the counter where Tom was serving – he was strangely and unnervingly silent, now that his dastardly secrets had finally been revealed.
And Mattie, far from feeling triumphant, felt the same way as she had when she was a small child and had been caught shoplifting pick’n’mix from Woolworths by Sandrine, who’d promptly marched her over to the nearest assistant and demanded to see the manager so that she could report her own daughter for stealing. The white-hot and yet cold and clammy feeling, which now enveloped Mattie was strangely and yet horribly familiar.
‘I was just pointing out that Tom isn’t as perfect as you think he is.’ Mattie wished that she could stop talking because every time she opened her mouth, she just made things a hundred times worse than they’d been a minute before when they’d already been pretty bad. Although to be fair, both Posy and Verity had asked for any intel Mattie could give them on Tom, so it was very hypocritical of them to now act as if Mattie had betrayed the Official Secrets Act.
She managed not to tell them that, though. ‘You should probably get back to the tearooms,’ Verity said coolly, picking up the plate of pastries. ‘And we really can’t accept these.’
‘No, we really can’t,’ Posy chimed in, staring at the plate hungrily. Then she turned her head towards Mattie, but couldn’t quite look her in the eye. ‘Maybe it’s time to put things with the tearooms on a more formal basis.’
That sounded ominous. Currently, Mattie paid rent to Posy and the tearooms were very much her own domain, but it was a very relaxed, loosey-goosey arrangement. Verity helped out on the admin side, arranging permits with the council for all sorts of things, from serving alcohol at shop events to Mattie having tables and chairs outside in the summer months. Mattie supplied the catering for all the Happy Ever After events and had happily provided free misshapen baked goods that she couldn’t sell in the tearooms or were early prototypes, plus tea and coffee when people were buying something else.
Not to mention the fact that Mattie lived rent-free and at Posy’s pleasure in the flat above the shop. Although that might all change. Posy would be well within her rights to chuck Mattie out, as she wasn’t the sort of person who could be trusted. Not to mention that the rent Mattie paid on the tearooms was very competitive for central London. Very competitive indeed.
What a stupid idiot she was. She’d had right on her side, Posy and Verity had admitted as much. But Mattie couldn’t just quit while she was ahead. Oh no! She’d opened her big mouth and made everything worse. Turned Tom into the victim and she’d whacked her own moral compass off its stand while she was at it. Nobody liked a telltale, which was why Mattie didn’t like herself very much at this precise moment.
She picked up the plate of flaky pasties, smiled so feebly that trying to lift up the corners of her mouth was as hard as bench pressing her own weight, and backed out of the office, only to be confronted by Nina, who was standing behind the counter with her eyes blazing.
‘How dare you betray Tom’s trust like that?’
Mattie felt herself bristle: like the others, Nina had been quite beside herself when Mattie had the opportunity to dig some dirt on Tom, but now that dirt had been well and truly dug, she wanted nothing to do with it. But then Mattie’s bristles subsided – she’d said from the start that she wouldn’t dish anything, and now look what she’d gone and done.
‘Sorry,’ she whispered and whether the apology was aimed at Nina or Tom, she didn’t really know. She simply wanted to escape the shop for the sanctuary of the tearooms and the inner sanctum of her kitchen.
‘Sorry!’ Nina snorted. ‘Sorry doesn’t even begin to cover it.’
Mattie risked a sideways look at Tom but he was resolutely tackling a pile of customer orders as if the future of the world depended on him successfully completing the task.
This was dredging up a painfully familiar deja ewww. As she scurried back to the tearooms she was reminded of how every time she and Steven rowed, by the time she arrived in class at L’Institut de Patisserie the next morning, Steven would have got there first. Even if he’d been the one in the wrong, he would always paint Mattie as a vengeful, hysterical, over-reacting harpy that made his life utter hell.
No wonder she hadn’t made many friends at L’Institut. But then Steven had always said that she didn’t need friends because she had him. But when Steven was angry with her, which happened more and more often, she felt like the loneliest girl in the world.
‘You don’t hate me, do you?’ she demanded of Cuthbert as soon as she was safely back behind her own counter. ‘Over the whole coffee thing with Tom?’
Cuthbert paused from steaming organic milk to look at Mattie as if she’d just turned turquoise.
‘Of course I don’t hate you. “Hate” is a very strong word. I don’t think I hate anyone,’ he mused, which wasn’t the answer Mattie had hoped for.
‘What about “dislike”? Do you dislike me?’ she persisted.
‘I like you very much,’ Cuthbert said, turning his attention back to the steamer. ‘And I would even if you didn’t pay my wages. Do I think the situation with young Thomas could have been handled better? Yes, but as my Cynthia says, it will all come out in the wash.’
Mattie sighed. It probably would have, except for the fact that she had somehow managed to turn the situation with young Thomas into a major incident.
