Page 34 of The Midnight Bakery
Frankie tipped her head on one side. ‘Okay then, we’ll keep thinking. There’ll be a way to sort things, I know there will. And meanwhile…’ She crossed to a counter on the other side of the room and returned with a cake box which she placed on the table, directing both men to take a seat with a wave of her hands. ‘I wondered if this might help.’ She took the lid off the box.
‘God in heaven,’ muttered William, leaning closer. ‘That smells amazing. What is it?’
‘Toffee apple crumble cake,’ replied Frankie. ‘I thought I might, you know, make something a bit different. What do you think?’
‘To the idea or the cake?’ said Tam. ‘Because my initial thought is that both are wonderful. I would need to confirm that though…’ He eyed the cake with a grin. ‘And I would probably need a very large slice to be absolutely sure.’
Frankie smiled back. ‘I’ll get you a knife.’
‘What do you reckon, Tam,’ said William. ‘Half each? That ought to do it.’
‘Excuseme…’ Frankie stood with her hands on her hips.
‘Sorry, make that a third each,’ said William, catching Frankie’s eye.
‘That’s more like it,’ she said, pulling a knife from a drawer and handing it to Tam. ‘Now, you know that long story?’ she added. ‘Would now be a good time to tell it?’
19
William
It was bizarre how those two minutes of William’s day had become his favourite, developing into something he really hadn’t been expecting. It wasn’t even two minutes, just a few seconds, the time it took to walk past the bakery window, but it was there, and it had meaning. Nothing much in William’s life did any more. There was something about Frankie which intrigued him – vulnerability mixed with determination. It was an odd combination.
She’d been hugely wary of him when they first met, and he couldn’t blame her –he’drun a mile if he met himself down a dark alley, too. But then the next time he managed to catch her eye as he passed by, and she had looked up and waved. And smiled. The connection was so slender, it almost didn’t exist, and yet he found himself looking forward to his walk home from work far more than any other time of the day. Sometimes she was dancing, and it struck him that he’d met precious few people who could hold that kind of joy inside them. It made something inside of him ache, and that complicated things.
He had come back to this town to keep a promise, but he hadn’t reckoned on Frankie, or Tam for that matter. And it put him in an impossible position. Listening to the way Tam had been betrayed by his best friend had made William’s deception feel even more poignant. Even if hewastrying to do the right thing, the truth still mattered and lying hurt. He just hadn’t bargained on how much.
So now William was in a quandary. He needed Tam’s help this morning, but William had hidden his past for so long that allowing the ties that bound it to loosen wasn’t easy, so, much to his shame, he did what he always did and only told Tam as much as he needed to know and no more. Tam had readily agreed to help, but that didn’t make William feel any better.
William had no transport, that was the problem. But if he wanted to follow through with his plan then he also needed to follow Stuart, which was why he and Tam were both currently sitting in Curzon Street – far enough away from Stuart’s house not to cause alarm, but close enough to keep an eye on his grey van. It hadn’t been difficult to find out where Stuart lived. Several of the waitresses at the club had been happy to chat, and Stuart clearly wasn’t as popular as he thought he was.
Just as William had suspected, the grey van opened its doors to customers on almost all of the regular club nights, but William had also spotted it on a couple of other occasions too.
‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ said William to Tam after a few minutes. ‘But the less you know about what’s going on the better. I’m really grateful for your help, but I don’t want to get you involved any more than you are already.’
Tam slid him a sideways glance. ‘In other words, don’t ask questions,’ he said, smiling at William’s sheepish expression. ‘Don’t worry, I don’t want to know what’s going on. My ex-wife used to laugh at me for being so naive about the ways of themodern world, and I readily admit to being a confirmed wuss. So, I shall drive you where you need to be driven and that’s it.’
‘Fair enough,’ replied William, somewhat relieved. ‘I’m hoping that sometime fairly soon, Stuart will be paying somewhere a visit in his van and all I need to know is where that is. I can take it from there.’
Tam nodded. ‘Are you going to say, “follow that van”?’
‘I can do, if you like.’ William slid him a look, smiling at the amusement on Tam’s face. ‘You really don’t get out much, do you?’ he teased.
Frankie had plied them with the remains of the toffee apple cake for the journey and William was halfway through his when he spotted Stuart leaving his house. He was wearing his trademark black jeans this morning but had swapped his usual black shirt for a hoodie and baseball cap, jammed on his head the wrong way round. William imagined he thought it made him look super cool and his dislike for the obnoxious man grew.
Tam started his engine as they waited for the van to pull away and, at William’s signal, he began to follow at a safe distance. William had been worried he’d never be able to follow Stuart’s van on foot, hence the need for Tam’s car, but ironically, they only travelled the length of two streets before Stuart turned into a small industrial estate which William knew of old. It had been scruffy when William was a kid; now it looked virtually derelict – the forecourt choked with weeds and littered with abandoned planks of wood and rusted metal signs.
Asking Tam to wait in the car, William picked his way across the scarred ground and began to skirt the edge of the nearest building, hugging the stained and blackened walls. Behind it was another yard which had once served as a car repair shop, and beyond that were three smaller lock-up units and a row of garages, all of which were hidden from the main road. William peered around the corner, holding his breath, but Stuart’s vanwas easy to spot. It was the only vehicle there, the trade in car repairs having long since dwindled to nothing. There wasn’t another soul about, but William only waited long enough for Stuart to climb from his van and open the roller shutter of one of the garages, before he retraced his steps. He didn’t need to know any more. Not yet anyway.
Tam’s eyebrows were raised as William climbed back inside the car. ‘That was quick.’
William nodded. ‘No point hanging around. I was just interested to see where Stuart went, that’s all.’
‘So that’s it?’
‘That’s it,’ William agreed.
‘I might not want to know what’s going on,’ said Tam. ‘But I did think it might be marginally more exciting.’
