‘Yes.’
Fleur nodded. ‘You should make those gorgeous red velvet cupcakes you brought in last week – they’d go down well.’
‘I thought about those too. I’ll probably make a few different things – what do you reckon?’
‘Everything you bake would get a thumbs up I would imagine.’
‘I hope so…’ Cathy paused. ‘I wondered if you might come with me.’
Fleur reached for a pair of scissors with a frown. ‘To the coffee morning?’
Cathy nodded.
‘What for?’
‘I don’t know… I thought it might be fun.’
‘I’m sure it would but I’ll be here, won’t I?’
‘But couldn’t the Saturday girl… Jade, is it? Couldn’t she cover for an hour? Didn’t you say earlier she’d be off college that day?’
‘I also said she’d be off college all that week; she’ll be in Corfu – remember?’ Fleur said with a half laugh. ‘I think someone needs to go back to bed and start again this morning.’
‘Oh.’ Cathy smiled and twisted a gerbera so that its head faced the same way as all the others. The vase looked like a sunny little choir in the middle of the drab wintry building, and Cathy thought vaguely that Fleur was right – they would bring customers over to have a closer look because their little orange faces couldn’t fail to cheer. ‘I think I do – I clean forgot about that bit. Must have gone in one ear and out the other.’
‘Don’t worry about it, love. But I’m sorry I won’t be able to come.’
‘That’s OK. Ignore me; I was being silly.’
‘It won’t stop you from going, will it?’
‘No… of course not.’
Cathy forced a smile. It wasn’t that she was particularly shy, but sometimes social situations could overwhelm her, particularly when she was faced with lots of new people at once, and for some strange reason she had become particularly sensitive to this since her mum died. She could only imagine that it was perhaps because her world had changed so drastically now that she was on her own and it had made her so much less certain of herself than she used to be. Or perhaps it was because she had nobody to fall back on in the same way she did when her mum was around; even though her mum was physically disabled she’d always been able to offer moral support, encouragement and love whenever Cathy had needed it.
‘It’ll do you good,’ Fleur said with a shrewd look.
‘I’m alright, you know.’
‘I know,’ Fleur replied with very deliberate carelessness. ‘But even so. And they’ll love your baking.’
‘You think so?’
Fleur laughed. ‘You’ve tasted your cakes, right?’
Cathy’s smile was genuine now. ‘I know, but I don’t think… I mean, they’re quite nice, I suppose, but I don’t think they’re all that special, and if they are then it’s down to what Mum taught me, not any talent I have.’
‘Honestly, accept a bit of praise from time to time,’ Fleur said with the barest edge of impatience in her tone. ‘Take it where it’s due – it wouldn’t kill you to feel good about yourself for once.’
Before Cathy had the chance to think of the right reply Fleur was across the stall greeting a customer she’d just spotted approaching. ‘Alright, love, come to pick up that birthday arrangement?’
Cathy left them to it. Her gaze caught that of the woman on the cake stall across the aisle and she gave her a guilty smile. Cathy would never admit it but her own cakes were pretty good, and perhaps they were even better than theirs, as Fleur kept saying. Hopefully the people at the coffee morning would think so too.
Three
Though Cathy had some recollections of attending church services at St Cuthbert’s with her dad, she couldn’t recall ever being inside the adjoining church hall. Those dim memories (along with the desire to do some good and share her baking) were part of the reason she’d been drawn to come today, because she recalled feeling happy and content during those visits. Even if they were false memories, she’d take happy and content right now over feeling lost and lonely.
It was funny, though, because her mother had forsaken religion completely soon after Cathy’s father had died and so Cathy shouldn’t have felt any kind of pull to this place at all, but strangely, today, she did, and it was strong. If there was a God, her mum had said, then why would he make people suffer like she was forced to? Why would he or she (probably he, she said) take husbands so suddenly and before their time and curse the grieving widow with a horrible illness?
Cathy had taken a more philosophical view of things – some people were just unlucky, God or no God – but she could understand why her mum would think that way. And even though she now found herself alone with no parents and no siblings and precious little other family, she still didn’t feel like she could blame anyone, least of all someone she couldn’t see or hear or prove the existence of in any way.
The church itself was fairly standard – a dark old building of grey stone and tall, heavily leaded windows in need of some repair, just like many churches in many towns across Britain. So Cathy had walked into the more modern church hall tagged onto the back in a separate building, expecting some draughty old space with peeling window frames and paint that had been on the walls since Margaret Thatcher had been in power. But the room she was sitting in now had a pink carpet with pretty handmade rugs strewn across it, lots of squashy armchairs and a pair of huge beige sofas. All the furniture was clearly old, but it would have been expensive when new and was still quite serviceable and very comfortable.
She was fairly certain that all church halls weren’t like this, but then, she hadn’t set foot in one for a very long time, perhaps twenty years or more. Perhaps churches had cottoned on at some point in those twenty years that people didn’t want to sit in freezing old rooms being stared down on by a tatty Jesus on a dusty crucifix; no, they wanted to be in a homely room where they felt welcomed and comfortable. Or maybe it was just this one.
On her way through she’d seen another, bigger room with a wooden floor and high ceilings. The lady who’d shown her and her groaning basket of cakes in had informed her that that was where the Brownies and Scouts met weekly. Cathy had been to Brownies once. She couldn’t remember where the meeting had been held and how old she’d been when she’d tried it out, but she’d never really settled and had spent the evening longing for her mum to come and pick her up. The other girls had all known each other and seemed so much more confident and clever than her, with badges for this and that achievement crammed onto every spare inch of tunic space. They’d played some elaborate game with beanbags and a whistle and Cathy had been awful at it, and then they’d discussed at length a camping trip that Cathy wasn’t altogether sure she wanted to go on. When her mother had finally come to reclaim her, Cathy had announced that she didn’t want to go back the following week.
Balancing a chintzy cup and saucer on her lap and longing for a good solid bucket of a mug, Cathy gave a polite smile to the woman who had just spoken to her, dredging her recent memory for the woman’s name. So many had been fired at her as she’d sat down and everyone had introduced themselves that she could hardly recall which one belonged to who – apart from Colin, who was the only man present, possibly in his seventies, with a thick head of white hair and the only person she’d ever seen in real life wearing a cravat. This was… she wanted to say Iris, but she couldn’t be certain.