She had one day off a week where she had to do all the week’s washing and do the hoovering and order for the shop. She had to mop the floors downstairs with bleach and soap flakes and then she had to go through the accounts and make sure everything added up.
Maths was never her strength as a child and still now, numbers made her head fuzzy unless it was in direct relation to a recipe. But she had to get the accounts right, or she would be punished and the bruise on her cheekbone was testament to this fact.
Rachel pushed that memory out of her head and thought about the little girl who had come into her shop with her dad. She was so sweet, and Rachel wondered where her mother was, but she looked happy and well with her russet-coloured curls, sweet denim pinafore and green shoes. Rachel wished she could have shoes as pretty as the little girl’s.
At twenty-five years of age, she knew she looked older than other girls she had gone to school with. She hated the drab clothes she was told to wear, and the way her hair was lank and thin and pulled into a tight bun because it was how she was told to wear her hair, even though her scalp ached at the end of the day.
She hated the shoes she wore. Mother ordered them for her from the pharmacy because she had flat feet and was susceptible to heel spurs. They were rubber-soled and they sometimes made a squeaking sound when she walked and then she was yelled at for being too loud.
She hated the bakery and the tearooms, which no one ever really visited. They could be so much more, but no one ever listened to her ideas. It was plain and dull now but, in her mind, it could be charming and fun and somewhere people wanted to visit.
Rachel baked because that was her job, but she didn’t like the things she was told to make. Sometimes she went off-plan, like today when she had made the rabbit pie after getting the fresh rabbit meat from the butcher. She had used cider and fennel seeds and French wholegrain mustard and double cream. It was a triumph but only possible because she was alone and there was no one to question the scent coming from the kitchen.
The man and his daughter had bought the last pie, with Joe the butcher buying two, and promising not to tell Mother. Mr Toby, the bus driver, had also made the same promise after buying one. People were happy to make that promise because Mother was so nasty. Rachel had saved a pie for herself because she wanted to taste her success and also because she needed to rid the bakery of the evidence.
She touched her cheek; her fingers were cool on her skin. The bruise was older, and it looked worse than when it was still waiting to erupt into the green and blue that it was today.
Rachel knew the stages of the rainbow from a bruise and this was day five. It would turn an unfortunate shade of yellow, and then it would be gone, and it wouldn’t be mentioned again until the next one started to show.
Arnica cream helped bring out the bruising quicker but lately, she had stopped putting on the cream. Why should she try and make the bruises disappear faster? It wasn’t as though she put them there herself. Or did she want someone to ask more questions?
At night, in her single bed with the small bedside table holding a copy of The Joy of Cooking, she would wonder if anyone thought about her. If anyone ever thought about how they could help her. If anyone out in the world worried how long she could go on like this for, or if anyone knew what her life was like.
But Joe the butcher didn’t seem to talk to her unless it was about the gravy beef or fresh rabbit he had caught and minced. And Mrs Crawford told her she was clumsy, had always been clumsy, even as a child in the village. She told her she was clumsy as though it was an accusation, as though Rachel deserved the rainbow of bruises because of her heavy step and careless movements. She was sure Mrs Crawford from the post office knew what was happening to her but didn’t help, which had made her not want to give her a vanilla custard tart, but she knew then, she would have been told on to her mother.
Then other times Rachel would lie in her bed reading the recipes in the book and imagine turning the tea shop into the restaurant she had seen in the magazines at the library in Chippenham. Wooden tables and comfortable chairs where people could sit and chat and hold hands and smile and laugh and eat delicious food. She would have gorgeous painted walls in either peacock blue or Indian pink – she couldn’t decide – and she would have lamps and bookshelves filled with the books she loved, the books that had kept her company through her young life. All the characters in the books who were her friends and enemies and who taught her that she was worth more than what she had been told so far in her existence.
A tourist bus arrived, and Rachel waited for them to come to the tearooms. They would be disappointed. Everyone was. The tearooms were cold and so was the tea as it took a while for her to serve all the customers by herself.
A plate of pinwheel sandwiches and a plate of iced fancies were included in the deal with the tour company. Rachel sighed and started to make the tea as the tourists shuffled into the tearoom.
She had three hours of freedom left and she was spending it serving disappointed people a disappointing
