‘Yes. She’s much faster than me on the till and doesn’t need to use the calculator. She can do all the maths in her head. I’m jealous, I wish I could be that fast.’
‘And I reckon Alice wishes she could make a raspberry pie as good as yours. We all have different skills. The world would be boring if we were all the same.’
‘Joe said that to me also; you and him have the same ideas about some things,’ Rachel said. ‘You’re both so smart.’
Clara smiled at Rachel. She was so sheltered and so abused that anyone who had normal views of the world was considered a genius in Rachel’s eyes.
She noticed Rachel mentioned Joe more often than not lately.
‘How is Joe?’ she asked casually, remembering Tassie’s words about not making any sudden movements around Rachel lest she scare her away.
‘He’s well. He dropped off some lovely middle bacon last night and stayed for a cup of tea. We had it with a Hobnob, which was perfect.’
Rachel left for the tearooms, pie plates in hand and a dreamy look on her face.
Clara watched the tearooms and bakery from the kitchen doorway, as the customers chattered to each other and Rachel and Alice served them pots of tea with Earl Grey cupcakes or coffee and pistachio cake. The pies for the day were an egg and bacon open pie or the leek and sweet potato, with a pretty lattice crust. They really were a work of art, thought Clara as she went into the kitchen and plated up some of the orders for the guests in the tearoom.
And that’s when she knew what she had to do.
Rachel walked into the kitchen with some empty plates and put them on the bench.
‘Can I see you after work today?’ asked Clara. ‘I have to go and do a few errands. A branch fell on the van and so Pansy and Henry are sleeping in the spare room, and I’m having some beds delivered so I need to be home.’
‘Are they all right?’ Rachel’s hand was over her mouth in shock and her eyes wide. ‘That’s terrible.’
Clara touched her arm to bring her out of her panicked state. ‘They are fine; they weren’t in the van at the time, absolutely fine, just homeless.’
‘Thank God.’
Clara paused. ‘Can I come back around five? I have something I want to talk to you about.’
‘Okay,’ said Rachel, as Joe’s sister Alice popped her head around the corner.
‘More customers.’
‘Coming,’ said Rachel quickly and she rushed back into the shop.
Clara slipped out the back door and drove back to the cottage.
Henry was talking on the phone when she arrived, and Pansy was sitting on the grass by the fence watching him.
‘Everything okay?’ she asked Pansy as she walked up to her.
‘Daddy said shit, fucking joking and get off it three times,’ Pansy reported.
Clara stifled a laugh, sat next to her and picked a daisy from the grass.
‘Do you know how to make a daisy chain?’
‘No?’ said Pansy looking interested.
‘My mum used to make them for me. When she was a little girl, her grandmother told her that wearing a daisy chain would protect her from lightning and from the Goblin King who liked to steal fairy children.’
Pansy’s eyes widened. ‘Can you make me one? I don’t want to be taken by the king.’
‘I will make you one and I will teach you how to make one, so you can be safe from all storms and evil kings.’
She thought about Rachel, who needed more than a daisy chain to protect her from that cow of a stepmother.
She deftly picked the daisies and made a slit in the stem and threaded another through and on and on until it was long enough to go around Pansy’s head like a crown.
‘You make one,’ said Pansy. In the distance, Henry was pacing and still talking on the phone as Clara made herself a daisy crown and put it on her head.
‘Now you’re safe from the Goblin King,’ said Pansy.
Henry walked over to them. ‘You two look very pretty,’ he said and Clara knew she was blushing.
‘Who were you yelling at?’ she asked, trying to be nonchalant.
‘The insurance company. I have to wait to take the branch off till an assessor comes and sees the damage. But the assessor could be a week or more as there was a lightning storm in Trowbridge, which caused all manner of havoc.’
‘They needed one of these,’ said Pansy to Clara, touching her daisy crown.
‘They did,’ said Clara as the sound of a truck rumbled down the laneway and stopped.
‘What’s this?’ Henry asked. ‘Are you expecting anything?’
‘I bought a few things in Salisbury,’ she said. She got up from the grass and brushed her jeans of grass then went to the cottage and opened the door for the deliverymen to carry the beds upstairs.
Henry helped them, and then came down to Clara who was opening the bedding in the living room while the men put the bed bases together.
‘You didn’t have to do that.’
‘I did and I have, so that’s that.’ She unfolded a red gingham duvet cover and held it up. ‘I hope you won’t feel like you’re sleeping under a picnic blanket.’
‘I don’t mind what I sleep under as long as it’s not on the floor. Pansy completely kicked me out of bed last night.’
Clara smiled as Pansy came in as she pulled out a kitchen chair.
‘Daddy, I want to live in the cottage now. I’m over the van.’
Henry’s face made Clara burst out laughing. ‘You’re over the van? Who taught you what being over something is?’
‘I saw it on TV.’ She sighed.
‘I hate to break it to you, Pansy, but the van is our home.’
Clara picked up the linen and left the room for the living room, but she could still hear Pansy negotiating the change in housing.
‘We can live here and I can go to school and we can plant Mummy in the with the vegetables.’
She heard Henry
