Ashley Lister - Turning Up the Heat

Trudy blushed and nodded. ‘Perhaps,’ she admitted.

‘Does the research and development involve this damn flavour you’re trying to identify?’

‘You can read me like a book, can’t you?’

They hugged with a promise to catch lunch together. Then Charlotte was heading back to her home at Eldorado and Trudy jogged back towards Bill’s house, through the city centre, and taking a detour via the old market.

She made her way to Finlay West’s premises at the rear of the old market. It was an ancient spice shop. The sign above the door said the company had been in business since 1870. Bill often joked that Finlay had been there on the day the shop first opened. Whenever he made the joke in Finlay’s earshot, Finlay said that Bill had been his first customer.

Inside the air was perfumed with the memory of a thousand exotic spices. The wall behind the counter was a collection of drawers and jars, each labelled in West’s fussily neat handwriting. Trudy knew that the stockroom was even more copiously stocked and she doubted there were many spices in existence that Finlay West couldn’t locate in seconds. She was certain that, when it came to identifying and understanding spices, there was nothing that Finlay West didn’t know.

‘Trudy McLaughlin,’ West sighed cheerfully. ‘You’re here early, aren’t you? Would you care for a drink?’

He was elderly and grey. His smile shone through the silver wisps of his beard as he beamed at her and called her by her name. His eyes, hidden behind wire-framed spectacles, sparkled with bright enthusiasm.

‘Are you making the drink?’ she asked. ‘Or will you be bullying Imogen into making this one?’

It wasn’t really bullying, she conceded. When Imogen was working with him West had an abrupt way of shouting, ‘Shop girl – make yourself useful for once and put the kettle on.’ Trudy supposed it was part of the banter the pair shared throughout the working day. But she still didn’t like the idea that Imogen might resent being treated as some sort of lackey, expected to provide beverages for the benefit of West’s customers. She supposed, if she was being honest with herself, she didn’t like the idea of Imogen having any further reason to resent her.

‘Imogen doesn’t start for another hour,’ West said, checking his watch. He shrugged and added, ‘If you’d said yes to the offer of a coffee, I was going to send you over the road to buy two cappuccinos from that new shop.’

Trudy shook her head and laughed softly. ‘I’ll buy the coffee,’ she said, ‘if you’ll do me a favour with this.’

She took the muffin from the pink bag on her hip and placed it on the counter in front of him.

West regarded it with suspicion. He made no move to approach the muffin. He thrust his hands into his pants pockets and frowned down at the counter. It was like watching a police detective studying the scene of a crime.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘It’s a muffin.’

He glanced up from the muffin and considered her with a disapproving frown. ‘You’ve been hanging around with Hart too long. Sarcasm is never a becoming feature on a young lady. Please tell me what I’m looking at here.’

‘It’s a coffee and pumpkin-pie-spice muffin,’ she explained. ‘I think it’s lacking something. I want you to tell me what you think it needs.’

‘Pumpkin-pie spice and coffee?’

He lifted the muffin gingerly and sniffed the risen crust. In the morning light of the spice shop the sponge looked like dark gold. She could see the sprinkling of golden sugar crystals on the top and watched them sparkle brightly.

‘Pumpkin-pie spice and coffee is an adventurous combination, isn’t it?’

Trudy said nothing. She didn’t want to influence his opinion. She simply arched an eyebrow, turned and went over to the coffee shop.

She returned ten minutes later with two cappuccinos.

It pleased her to see that West had consumed half the muffin but she couldn’t bring herself to smile. He was shaking his head and she understood that something was wrong with the flavour. Something was clearly troubling him.

‘Where did you get the pumpkin-pie spice?’

‘Get it? I made it.’

‘That’s good. We can probably correct the error from there.’

If anyone else had told her she’d made an error in the kitchen, Trudy would have indignantly bristled and asked what qualified them to make such a bold statement. But no one knew spices better than Finlay West. If he said she’d made a mistake, Trudy was prepared to consider what he had to say and likely bow to his experience.

‘Are you telling me the error’s in the pumpkin-pie spice?’

She tore a piece of the muffin away and sniffed doubtfully. It had all the component parts she expected to encounter. It was fiery and sweet from half of the ingredients with a suggestion of something medicinal and bitter from the cloves.

‘What do you think is missing?’

‘It needs more cinnamon. It needs much more cinnamon.’

‘That’s all that’s missing?’

He shrugged. ‘At the moment you’ve got an even blend of allspice, ginger, cloves and nutmeg. But you’ve only got a similar amount of cinnamon in there too. Admittedly, your nutmeg could be fresher – but I know how difficult it is to get hold of fresh nutmeg. More importantly, most importantly for pumpkin-pie spice, there needs to be a greater cinnamon content.’

‘How much greater?’

He shrugged. Reached for a pen. Jotted down notes. He was shaking his head as he wrote and, when he broke away from writing to sip his cappuccino, she noticed he sluiced his mouth with the drink as though he was trying to remove the taste of the muffin.

Had it really been that unpleasant? She didn’t dare ask the question.

‘The recipe I’ve always used works with these quantities,’ he told her. He pointed at the scrap of paper as he reiterated the items. ‘You’ll need two teaspoons of ginger, two teaspoons of nutmeg, two teaspoons of allspice and two teaspoons of cloves.’ He paused to study her through the clear lens of his spectacles and said solemnly, ‘Added to that you need three tablespoons of ground cinnamon.’

The words sat between them like a challenge.

‘Three tablespoons?’ That was more than double the amount of cinnamon she’d been using. It was a ridiculous amount. ‘Won’t the cinnamon overpower the flavour of the spice?’

‘It’s cinnamon. Cinnamon never overpowers. It only ever sweetens.’

She studied him doubtfully as she sipped her coffee. It wasn’t that she doubted his judgement. But she felt sure that such a large quantity of cinnamon would only serve to dominate the mixture.

‘Try it,’ West insisted. He weighed a paper bag of ground cinnamon, twirled it once to seal the corners and then handed it over. Setting his shoulders into their usual confident pose he added, ‘Come back here and pay me for this once I’ve been proved right.’

Trudy took the note with West’s recipe and reread it slowly.

She trusted his judgement and ordered a couple of essentials for the recipe, whole nutmegs and allspice, which she knew were running low in the kitchens of Bill’s cottage. As soon as Finlay had organised them she placed the packages in the bag on her hip and finished her coffee. She was about to leave when the bell over the door rang.

A pretty young woman holding a baby stumbled into the shop.

‘Trudy,’ Imogen grinned. ‘You always look so good in your running gear.’

‘Imogen and baby Bill,’ Trudy returned. She plucked the baby from the young woman’s arms and cuddled him affectionately.

Baby Bill was a lively handful.

Large for his age, and blessed with painfully bright-red cheeks, he wriggled in Trudy’s arms and then tried to pull at the brim of her pink running cap. He giggled loudly whenever Trudy moved his hand away and pretended to scold him. As soon as he thought the punishment was concluded he would slap his hand back on the brim. She chastised him with mock ferocity and took satisfaction from the sweet sounds of his amusement.