Jane Linfoot - A Cornish Cottage by the Sea

‘That’s Barney.’ He’s already running.

She calls after him, ‘Come around the back. Tell Barney he can come too. We’ll make some tea.’ She turns to me. ‘That must be the window cleaner.’

I clamp my sunnies firmly back on my nose. ‘Barney? Really?’ If that’s the same guy from the lane he’s the last person I’d want to serve tea to. Unless it was green. ‘And, by the way, he doesn’t actually clean windows.’

‘Like you say, it’s good to get to know people.’

‘It is.’ Anyone other than him.

Day 137: Sunday, 18 thMarch

At Periwinkle Cottage

Epic Achievement: Discovering a carrot patch in the vegetable rack.

I’m not sure if it’s the thought of guests or the excitement of an all-you-can-eat day, but as soon she’s delivered my new colouring book Aunty Thing rushes off and starts crashing around the kitchen. As she clatters the cups and plates onto a tray and gets out a gigantic teapot, she’s dancing around so fast her gold pumps are leaving light trails.

She waves at the next room, snaps out another order. ‘Get the cake, Edie, it’s in the vegetable rack.’

That’s not a place I’ve visited yet, but moments later I’m back in the kitchen sliding a square cake out of the box, eyes popping at the creamy topping and bright orange knobs of icing carrots sprouting green sugar leaves.

She’s tutting critically as she watches me unwrap it. ‘It’s an M&S carrot patch cake – the milkman picked it up for me from Penzance.’

‘It’s pretty fab.’ Even though I’m reeling from being bossed about, I have to hand it to her. In my other life with Marcus I might even have tucked the idea for that away in my mental recipe file and pulled it out later as a cute sweet to take round to his friends’ for a weekend barbie. My desserts were the sole trick I had to impress them with. Marcus’s mates in creative media – and he had a lot – took male bonding to a whole new level. The kind where, if they weren’t away on some kind of wacky adventure, they were incapable of making it through a weekend without meeting up on someone’s patio. Mostly they swilled back craft beers with odd names and incinerated choice lumps of cow from the craft burger shops while they tried to channel their younger selves. Even though they’d graduated from flats to houses, due to soaring Bristol property prices and the burst of the dot com bubble, no one had yet made it to the stage of owning a full-blown flower-filled garden. So we chewed on our chargrills in back yards, sitting on stacked-up railway sleepers listening to Wonderwall against backdrops of reclaimed brickwork.

At the time it felt like we’d be twenty-something all our life, and be doing that for ever. Then the inevitable happens, someone forgets to take their Pill, someone else thinks ‘Why not us?’ And, before you know it, baby bumps aren’t just trending, they’re exploding under every Nicole Farhi silk T-shirt. And whatever people say about not letting kids change their lives, they’re kidding themselves. I had an aunt’s-eye view when Tash had Tiddlywink and Wilf. It was like a hurricane upended their home and then came back through for seconds. Put it this way, once you shell out more on a Bugaboo Cameleon pushchair combo than a Vera Wang wedding dress – and there were plenty of both among Marcus’s friends – nothing’s ever the same again.

But, getting back to Aunty Jo’s carrot patch, even for a cake-face like me, it’s huge. I’m also impressed at how obliging the door-to-door people are around these parts. I’m counting the sprouting carrots in my head and I get all the way to eleven before I falter. It could be the sea air, or Aunty Jo making me count along with her when she does her before lunch Stay Young stretches. But that’s the most I’ve reached for a long time, so in my head I’m giving a silent cheer.

‘We could have tea in the conservatory? As we have company.’

‘Great plan,’ I say. It’s warm in the garden room, even on cloudy days, and this way we sidestep the visitors seeing we live in what looks like a rainforest theme park.

By the time the boy is kicking his way across the courtyard we’re settled onto basket chairs, marvelling at how the gunmetal paint on the window frames matches the shine of the distant sea. Aunty Jo pushes the door open, points at the mat and, after a frenzied foot wipe, the boy wanders over to where my pens are spread out on the low table next to me.

He’s giving my felt tips a hard stare. ‘Aren’t you too old for colouring in?’

I smile. ‘You think so?’

He shrugs. ‘I don’t like colouring. I go over the lines.’

I get that. ‘Same here.’

His hands are deep in his pockets. ‘Making up your own pictures is better for your imagination.’

Why didn’t I think about that? He could be right. ‘Anyway, I’m Edie Browne with an ‘e’, and this is Aunty—’

She’s straight in there, filling the gap. ‘Jo. Aunty Jo. Jo like ‘joker’, because I laugh a lot. Let’s see how that one works?’ From the look she gives me she knows I’m liable to forget.

I turn to the boy. ‘So do you have a name?’

‘Cam. Except at school I’m Cameron Michael Arnold, but that’s so long to write.’ He sounds despondent. ‘I’m really slow at writing.’

‘Me too.’ I’m not actually getting how Aunty Jo is any fun at all, but I can sympathise with the slow part. Even so, I bet if we had a race he’d win. If he’s here because he’s a sponge fan too we could have a lot in common. ‘But I’m fast at eating cake.’

His eyes pull back into focus. ‘Barney said to hurry, we’re going to see a customer.’

Aunty Joke’s tone hardens. ‘He will still have time for tea?’

‘Nope.’ Cam’s shaking his head.

‘That’s a shame.’ Not. I’m mentally punching the air with relief as I reach for the knife. ‘I’d better go fast then.’

His brow furrows. ‘What are those orange things?’

Do six-year-olds understand irony? ‘They’re icing carrots because it’s carrot cake. They’re meant to be funny.’

He wrinkles his nose. ‘I don’t like vegetables.’

That’s another thing we have in common. I prise off a carrot top and pass it to him. ‘Try one, they’re delish.’ Not that I could taste them myself, but if they’re M&S they have to be. As I watch him chew, his frown melts. ‘Good?’

‘Yep.’

Aunty Joke isn’t giving up on her teapot. ‘Well, you can always have tea another time. Next weekend, maybe?’

I slice through the buttercream. ‘One for now and one for later?’ I pass Cam the first chunk in kitchen roll, then wrap up the second.

Aunty Jo prompts me, ‘Don’t forget – do some for Barney too, he’s here now. I just hope he doesn’t look at how dirty our windows are.’

Damn. People like him don’t deserve cake. And I’m giving up on the window cleaner thing.

When Barney finally slides his shoulder up against the frame, he fills the doorway. Then my worst nightmare happens and his eyes lock with mine. I clutch at my stomach as it lurches into some kind of cartwheel, spectacularly fail to stop it as it slips into freefall and somehow lose my grip on the cake knife, which arcs through the air and clatters onto the tiles next to Barney’s feet.

He stoops to pick up the knife and as he stands up his lips twitch. ‘Hey there, butterfingers.’

I roll my eyes. ‘You again? So soon.’

Then, as his eyes slide down to the cake, they widen. ‘Nice carrots. Is that homemade?’

Why the hell would I even care he’s noticed? As for the pang of disappointment that I can’t claim the cake as mine, that’s bonkers too because he’s the last person I’d want to impress. That little pool of wide-eyed awe of his isn’t one I’d want to bask in. Honestly.