The Little Bakery on Rosemary Lane: The best feel-good romance to curl up with in 2018

AVON

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Copyright © Ellen Berry 2017

Ellen Berry asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008157142

Ebook Edition © July 2016 ISBN: 9780008157159

Version 2018-11-26

Dedication

For Tania with love, hugs and sufficient fuss xxx

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Ellen Berry

About the Publisher

Prologue

Something peculiar had happened to Marsha Kennedy.

She had found herself editor of Britain’s most popular fashion magazine. While she had already edited several publications, they had been in the diet and fitness markets, promising taut bodies and rapidly shed pounds; she knew virtually nothing about fashion and had even less interest in it.

‘Don’t you worry about that,’ Rufus had said when he had first suggested she step into the role. ‘In fact, view it as a positive. You’re commercial, Marsh – you know how to sell copies and that’s what this lot need. A kick up the backside, a wake-up call. They’ve had it too good for far too long, floating about and creating their … pretty pictures.’

As publisher at Walker Media Inc., Rufus was in charge of a whole raft of magazines, and as he said the words ‘pretty pictures’, his nostrils seemed to flare in distaste. Unconcerned by the creative aspects, his job was to ensure that his magazines raked in maximum profits. He was also Marsha’s married boss with whom she was having a somewhat frenetic affair.

‘We need to be radical if the magazine’s going to survive,’ he’d added, twitching as Marsha traced a finger through the reddish, sweat-dampened hair on his slightly paunchy stomach.

They had been lying on plastic sun beds on the rectangle of Astroturf that covered her south-facing roof terrace in Dalston in East London. It was an uncharacte‌ristically hot April day, and the pair had spent most of it massaging sunscreen into each other. Rufus had muttered that he would have to shower it off so as not to return home to his wife smelling of sickly shea butter. (His rather sunburnt hue would be a trickier matter, he realised, glancing down in alarm at his chest. He was supposed to be visiting his mother at her care home in Stroud, so how would he explain why his chest was the colour of bacon?)

‘I want to put you in there,’ he’d said, ‘like a heat-seeking missile. If anyone can sort things out it’s you, Marsh, sweetheart.’

‘You really think so?’ She’d twisted her shoulder-length chestnut hair into what she hoped was a cute little braid.

‘Yes, why not?’

‘Because it’s not my market, darling.’

‘Oh, come on. I know what you’re like. You can do anything when you put your mind to it.’ He winked, and she laughed. ‘And believe me,’ he’d added, pulling her close to his clammy chest, ‘I’ll make it worth your while.’

He had, too – financially as well as in other, more immediate ways. Marsha had now been installed at the helm of Britain’s best-loved fashion magazine for two weeks. Although sales had dipped over the past couple of years, she was confident that this would soon be rectified. Rufus had been right: of course she was capable of running a glossy fashion magazine. She just needed to scare everyone senseless. And, so far, this was working a treat.

First up, she had established a new start time of 9 a.m., instead of the more relaxed ten o’clock kick off. She had also introduced daily yoga classes, which were to be held on the office’s scratchy grey carpet. ‘It’s optional, of course,’ she had explained, baring her eerily white teeth at everyone, ‘but I think you’ll all benefit and I’ll be very disappointed if you don’t at least give it a chance.’ Jacqui, the PA Marsha had insisted on bringing with her, had ordered in mats and bolsters for everyone, and booked two teachers to take classes on alternate days. To Marsha, who could conduct an important phone call while assuming a full headstand, there was something intensely amusing about watching the facial contortions of the less supple members of the team.

People like Roxanne Cartwright, the fashion director and longest-serving staff member, who had just this morning hurtled in, slurping coffee from her takeaway cup. Typical, Marsha thought. Everyone else was ready to start the session with their legs neatly crossed and eyes closed.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ Roxanne blustered, placing her coffee on the edge of Zoe the beauty director’s desk, where it sat for a moment, half-resting on an eyeshadow compact before tipping over. ‘Oh God!’ Roxanne gasped, running to the kitchen and returning with a wad of paper towels. ‘So sorry, Zoe,’ she added.

‘Rox, it’s fine,’ Zoe murmured from her mat on the floor. ‘Calm down, darling …’

However, it wasn’t fine, as far as Marsha was concerned. She sighed irritably as, with the coffee lake now blotted, Roxanne rushed off to change in the loos into her yoga gear. Apparently, she couldn’t bring herself to travel to work in it as everyone else did. Finally ready for class and back in the main office, Roxanne assumed the required seated position on a mat next to Marsha. Funnily enough, that space was always the last one taken.

Whilst pretending to sit completely zen, Marsha snuck a glance at Roxanne, who was still panting a little. Marsha had already spent an awful lot of time observing her over the past fortnight. She was always running, Marsha had noted – off to appointments and shoots, cheeks flushed, hair askew, phone clasped to her ear. And she was in some state this morning. Her cheeks were bright red and her casual topknot was tumbling loose, with strands of fair wavy hair flapping in her face. However, although it pained Marsha to admit it, Roxanne was still striking for her age (when you were a mere thirty-three, ‘late forties’ sounded geriatric), her natural beauty quite captivating. Her light blue eyes were stunning and she was blessed with the kind of delicate bone structure that gave a person an air of elegance and dignity.

On top of this, Roxanne had a casual, bohemian way of dressing that Marsha could only hope to emulate – just how did one throw a perfect outfit together, seemingly without effort? Whenever Marsha tried to do that, the ‘quirky’ accessory – even something as innocuous as an Indian scarf – had the appearance of being flung at her by a passer-by as a cruel joke. As a result, Marsha tended to stick to the safe territory of fitted shirt in cream or white, plus black trousers; a uniform, really, which eliminated the hassle of thinking about what to wear every morning. Rufus had assured her that the editor of a fashion magazine was there to drive sales, not appear as if she had just stepped off the catwalk.

There was something else about Roxanne that Marsha had noticed, apart from the natural beauty and effortless style, damn her; she had a childlike enthusiasm that drew people to her and commanded fierce loyalty. Marsha had already had informal chats with Zoe and the other department heads, all of whom had been pleasingly compliant about the direction the magazine should take. Where Roxanne was concerned, she suspected things might not be quite so simple. Marsha’s intention was to put a stop to the stunning fashion photography for which the magazine was known, and instead feature hundreds of cheap-as-chips outfits, promising figure-shaping miracles. Miracle knickers, bum-slimming trousers, boob-hoisting bras: that was what Marsha wanted to see. Of course, Roxanne would hate that. It hardly fitted in with her romantic aesthetic of achingly beautiful girls on horseback, swathed in chiffon – but who cared? Marsha’s job was to sell more copies, reversing the circulation decline, and maximise profitability. This would secure her not only a whopping bonus but may also be the trigger for Rufus to leave that dreadful wife of his, and be truly hers. She loved the man deeply, and her favourite pastime was picturing the two of them – London’s media power couple – scooping every accolade going at all the industry awards.

Whilst holding a perfect downward dog pose, Marsha glanced around at her team. All were obligingly trying their best, although she caught the odd anxious glance at the wall clock. Poor Tristan, the art director, was trembling visibly, a vein protruding from his neck. She caught a whiff of cigarettes from Grace, the beauty assistant, and Kate, the fashion assistant, let out a groan.

Meanwhile Marsha held the pose firm – muscles taut, wobble-free bottom hoisted high in the air – as she glanced at her potentially troublesome fashion director. She would have to be tough with Roxanne, but Marsha wasn’t fazed by that. In all areas of life – such as achieving a tightly honed body and stratospheric career success – she had a clear end goal in sight, and she wasn’t about to let Roxanne Cartwright stand in her way.

Chapter One

Gently melt the butter, sugar and golden syrup in a small saucepan …

That sounded simple enough. This was a children’s cookbook – a gift from her older sister Della, and intended as a joke. Roxanne was no cook. She couldn’t see the point of baking anything you could quite easily buy from a shop. However, if a seven-year-old could manage it then surely, at forty-seven years of age, Roxanne could follow a simple step-by-step recipe without setting her kitchen on fire. Couldn’t she?

Roxanne had chosen to make brandy snaps, her attention caught by the photograph in the book. As fashion director of YourStyle, she liked things to look pretty, and what could be more eye-pleasing than lace-textured biscuity curls? She opened her fridge, averting her gaze from the clear plastic sack of kale, which she had bought with the intention of throwing it into smoothies – to boost her energy and make her ‘glow from within’ – and which was now slowly decaying whilst awaiting a decision to be made regarding its destiny. Throw it away, like last time, and endure the wave of disquiet that was bound to follow? (‘I can’t even get it together to use up my kale!’) Or just leave it sitting there, quietly rotting? Deciding to pretend it wasn’t there, she grabbed the butter, checked the use-by date on the packet and shut the fridge door. It was still edible – just. As Roxanne lived alone, a single packet could last her for weeks.

Not being in possession of kitchen scales, Roxanne estimated quantities, all the while picturing Sean’s look of surprise and delight when he came over later and saw what she’d made for him. An edible love offering for his fiftieth birthday! How sweet was that? In the nine months they had been together, she had never made anything more complicated for him than toast, a coffee or a gin and tonic. ‘My undomesticated goddess,’ he called her, fondly, often teasing her about the kale supply: ‘Why not just stop buying the wretched stuff?’ Well, that would have been far too logical, and would have highlighted that she had given up on self-improvement. It would be like accepting she would never again fit into those size eight jeans stuffed in her bottom drawer and donating them to charity.

You kept them, just in case. Surely any woman understood that?

Anyway, never mind that right now. With all that syrup and fat, brandy snaps hardly counted as ‘clean food’, but on a positive note, an unusually delicious and heady aroma was filling her small, cramped kitchen.

While Roxanne might not exactly be glowing from within – a spate of late nights with Sean had dulled her light blue eyes and fair skin – she still experienced a flurry of anticipation for the evening ahead. Pushing back her long, honey-coloured hair, she smiled at the unlikeliness of the situation: Roxanne Cartwright, actually baking! She owned just one saucepan, one frying pan and a single wooden spoon with a crack in it. As children, her big sister Della had been the one to potter away contentedly with their mother in the kitchen; she now owned a quaint little shop back in their childhood Yorkshire village of Burley Bridge, which sold nothing but cookbooks. Initially stocked with their mother’s collection after she’d died, the shop was now thriving, a real hub of the close-knit community up there. Yet to Roxanne, that kitchen back in Rosemary Cottage had never felt welcoming. If she’d tried to help, she had botched things up and been snapped at by her mother: For God’s sake, Roxanne, how hard is it to chop a few onions? Oh, just give me that knife. Might as well do it myself! At the sound of a bicycle approaching along the gravelled path, Kitty’s expression would brighten. Ah, that sounds like Della. Thank goodness someone around here is capable of helping. Off you go, Roxanne. You’re just getting under my feet …

‘Getting under my feet.’ How those words had stung. I won’t, then, Roxanne had vowed. I’ll get well out of your way – as soon as I possibly can. She had dreamed of escape and adventure; of stepping onto a London-bound train and never looking back. Her mother smacking her bare arm with a fish slice – ‘Go on, scarper, can’t you see I’m busy?’ – had been the final straw.

Right here, in North London, was where Roxanne had landed at eighteen years old, having talked her way into the lowly position of fashion junior on a women’s magazine. From her Saturday job in the newsagent’s back home, she had saved up enough for an overnight coach fare to Victoria station and so was able to attend the interview without having to ask for money. Kitty had taken a dim view of the capital and all that she imagined went on there; ‘That London,’ was how she always referred to it. The intimidatingly chic magazine editor could hardly believe a fresh-faced teenager from a sleepy West Yorkshire village could be so keen to learn, so passionate about photography and fashion. She had gazed in wonder as this eager girl had spread all her sketches and scrapbooks over the desk. The fish slice incident had propelled Roxanne into action, and thankfully the editor offered her the job there and then. And here she still was, on a different magazine and fashion director now, with almost three decades of hard-earned experience to her name. Not that she was entertaining any fashion-related thoughts right now. She hadn’t even considered what to wear tonight for dinner with Sean. Right now, she was focusing hard on the job in hand:

Allow to cool slightly, then sieve in the ground ginger and flour. Stir in the lemon juice. Line a baking tray with a sheet of parchment and drop on teaspoons of mixture …

Parchment? What was this, Ancient Egyptian times? Of course, they probably meant greaseproof paper or something along those lines. She remembered that much from her mother’s kitchen. As she didn’t have such a thing – and Sean was due in less than an hour – she made do by liberally buttering her sole baking tray, then blobbed the mixture onto it and slid it into the oven. The used cooking utensils were dumped in the sink, and a tea towel draped over them for concealment purposes. That hadn’t been too difficult, she reflected with a smile. Really, it had just been a matter of mixing a few ingredients together. Why did people talk about baking as if it were some mysterious art?

In her windowless bathroom, with the fan whirring noisily, Roxanne pulled off the indigo shift dress with pretty crocheted Peter Pan collar which she had worn to work, followed by her plain black underwear. She stepped under her rather feeble shower, sluiced herself down, then wrapped herself in a scratchy towel before making her way to her bedroom, where she flipped through the rail in her enormous antique French wardrobe.

A common assumption was that a woman in her position would live in a truly beautiful home, as photo-shoot-worthy as the models who trooped into her office on castings for shoots. Yet, perhaps because Roxanne lived and breathed her job, her domestic surroundings had always held little interest for her. Much of her furniture was, frankly, pretty scabby, having been hauled from flat to flat and more befitting her younger years as an impoverished fashion junior. In lieu of a proper bedside table, she still had a crate.

In fact, this wardrobe was the only item in her home which she truly cared about. With four doors and swathes of lavish carving, it was adorned with rococo swirls and carved angels picked out in gold. It was outrageous, really – an overblown folly crammed into the bijou top flat of a three-storey Victorian conversion in Islington. It was more befitting a French country home, somewhere with powder-blue shutters and gardens filled with lavender. It had been the flat’s previous owner’s, and once Roxanne had set eyes on it, she hadn’t been able to focus on anything else. How could she possibly formulate sensible questions about boilers and council tax banding when she had fallen headlong in love with a piece of furniture? ‘They did mention that they’re quite happy to sell it,’ explained the estate agent, catching Roxanne fondling it lovingly. ‘It was a nightmare to get in – had to be hoisted through the window by a crane, apparently. You’ll see a small chunk out of the left side. That’s where it smacked against the window frame.’ Poor injured thing; she couldn’t bear the thought of it being hoisted back out again, and possibly ending up being dumped. She had to have it.

With her wet hair bundled into a towel now, Roxanne pulled on her prettiest lingerie – scalloped indigo lace – followed by a simple bias-cut dress in charcoal linen. She blow-dried her hair upside down for maximum fullness, although, in reality, fullness was proving a little trickier to achieve than it used to. Where was all the volume going to? Perhaps it was time to consider subtle extensions? Her hairdresser, Rico, had already suggested she try some, in a way that had made it sound like a fun thing to do, rather than an emergency measure to compensate for middle-aged thinning. ‘No woman has the thickness of hair in her forties that she had in her twenties,’ he remarked cheerfully.

Now for make-up, with underplayed, natural eyes and strong red lips being her default look in a hurry. Forty-seven wasn’t that old, she reassured herself. It was just that the glossy world she inhabited revered youth and made her feel quite ancient sometimes; she suspected that in fashion years, she was something like 167. However, she still scrubbed up okay as long as the light was right, and the restaurant she had chosen was enhancingly dim. Just last week, she and Isabelle, her seventy-five-year-old neighbour from the ground-floor flat, had had lunch at the local Italian Roxanne had booked for tonight, and barely been able to read the menu – which was a good thing, she decided, even if they had had to ask the waitress to read out the tiny print.

As she blotted her lips on a tissue, the intercom buzzer sounded. Was that Sean already? Roxanne frowned and checked her phone. Time had run away with her; it was 8.26 p.m. and their table was booked for 8.30. She scampered through to her hallway to buzz him in. She had seen him two days ago but still, her spirits rose like champagne bubbles as she heard the front door close behind him two floors down. No one else had ever had that effect on her. All the terrible boyfriends, the compulsive liars, drunks and narcissists (impressively, some of Roxanne’s lovers had combined all three qualities): how joyful to be free of all that.

Once, her sister Della had joked that she had a talent for choosing men whose job titles required quotation marks: ‘DJ’, ‘record producer’, ‘design consultant’ – and, at one particularly unhappy point, ‘socialite’, which just meant he went out every night and could often be seen with cocaine-speckled nostrils, draped over models. Still, Roxanne had reassured herself: at least these men made life interesting – and what was so great about feeling safe and cared for and loved? Who really wanted a man who would cook for you and cuddle you when you were feeling down? Who’d show up when he’d promised to and didn’t sleep with anyone else? What was so great about that?

Roxanne’s own father, William, had plodded along, finally leaving her mother years after it had come to light that she’d had an affair with an artist from Mallorca. In fact, just a couple of years ago it had transpired that this artist, a man named Rafael, was Della’s real father. Although shocking, the revelation had explained the perpetual tensions between their mother and William at Rosemary Cottage when the three Cartwright children were young, and the simple fact that Della, with her dramatic dark colouring, looked strikingly different to the fair-skinned and blue-eyed Roxanne and their brother Jeff.