Page 59 of The Little Shop on Silver Linings Street
Daisy was still lost in thought when Kit found her with a cup of tea.
‘I wondered if I might find you in here,’ he said.
She looked up, a query on her face.
‘I thought you must be a big reader,’ he explained.
‘Well, yes I am… How did you know?’
He smiled. ‘Call it an educated guess.’
Her brows drew together but Kit shook his head and would say no more.
She cleared her throat. ‘I’ve seen you so many times with a book in your hand at Buchanans but…’ She broke off, pulling a face. ‘But I always thought they looked incredibly boring, sorry. I never imagined all this…’
Now it was Kit’s turn to take a book from a shelf. ‘I probably had my head stuck in the mysteries of…Wind-Powered Water Pumps… a playful little number if I remember rightly.’ He slid the book back where it belonged. ‘But it’s amazing how if you pick the right book, no one will talk to you.’ He grinned at her, a knowing smile that saw right to the heart of Daisy’s own subterfuge on occasion. She blushed, but there was something rather lovely about their shared similarities.
She replaced the book she had been looking at and held out her hand for the mug. ‘I’ll come through, shall I?’
He nodded and she followed him through to the kitchen, her jaw dropping not only at the size of it but the skill with which Kit had put it together. Fitted kitchen it was not, but all the better for it in her opinion. Beautiful old tables and cupboards ranged around the room together with a painted dresser which held crockery of all shapes and sizes. A multitude of pots and utensils hung from a length of chain above an enormous range.
One thing was very clear upon looking around the room.
‘You obviously like cooking?’
Kit followed her gaze. ‘I like growing, I like cooking, and I like eating,’ he replied. ‘The three seem to follow a natural progression.’
Daisy narrowed her eyes. ‘Growing, I’m okay with…’
He looked back at her. ‘You know, if you and food don’t exactly get on, the best way around that is to learn to cook. That way you get to eat things you like, cooked just the way you like them. And you can be adventurous in your own home too – try things you never normally would, because who’s to know if you spit something halfway across the room because it’s disgusting. I started growing my own vegetables for all sorts of reasons, but mostly because I didn’t want to keep eating processed foods. I didn’t plan it that way but the more I cooked, the more I realised I loved food.’
The way Kit described it made it sound the simplest thing in the world, and Daisy wanted to believe him but… She looked around his kitchen. Maybe itwasthat simple. Daisy had a big garden, and she liked to grow flowers and shrubs, why not vegetables? She had thought that her biggest barrier to eating was that she didn’t like many of the things you could buy, but perhaps that was just it; perhaps she just hadn’t found the things she liked yet, because they weren’t things that could be bought.
‘I can teach you, if you’d like?’ offered Kit. ‘Sometimes it’s more fun that way. Or I can just be on hand to ask me anything you want to know.’
She thought for a moment. ‘Actually, there is one thing I’d like to know,’ she replied. ‘And that’s quite how you’ve managed to get inside my head. There seems to be an awful lot about me that you know, and yet I don’t remember telling you.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m observant, that’s all.’ And when she pulled a face, he continued. ‘Daisy, you bring your own lunch to work every day, and every day you eat the same things. Cheese sandwich, carrot sticks and a yoghurt. It’s not that hard to work out.’
She gave a sheepish smile. ‘Maybe I’m just not used to people being observant,’ she said.
‘Of course, it also helps that I’m interested,’ added Kit.
She looked up, catching Kit’s eye as her heart added in an extra beat somewhere. She hadn’t a clue what to say.
‘So I thought, today, that I’d start you off gently with something I know you like. Well it has cheese in it, and carrots, so I’m hoping it’s a goer, otherwise it may well be a sandwich after all.’
His smile was so warm, Daisy wondered if she might actually melt, but she was incredibly touched that he had put so much thought into what to cook for her.
Daisy took her tea across to the table and sat down. She couldn’t trust herself to say anything, but instead busied herself watching Kit’s back as he prepared their food. He was still turned away from her when he spoke again.
‘Actually, I also wanted to apologise for something, or rather explain about it. When we were out the other day, I mentioned that I’d walked past your house before but never said anything about it to you. I know you weren’t aware I even knew where you lived and I wondered if I had made you feel uneasy. It came across as if I was stalking you or something.’
Daisy smiled. ‘You’re not really the stalkerish type, are you?’
Kit turned quickly and flashed her a cheeky smile. ‘I might be,’ he said, and then his face grew serious again. ‘No, not really… The thing is, though, when I mentioned it I also said how odd it was that we never really spoke, but we didn’t finish the conversation. It wasn’t until I’d been home a little while that I realised why that was.’
‘What, that we didn’t finish the conversation? Or why it’s odd that we never really spoke much before?’
