only teasing. You aren’t really thinking of leaving already, are you?’
‘No,’ I swallowed, ‘not just yet.’
There was a part of me that was beginning to think about it though, in spite of my tipsy request to stay on. Not that I wanted to go, of course, but now, having decided that I was quitting my job, I needed to tell Dad and I also needed to clarify a few things that I had discovered in Mum’s diary because I just couldn’t get some of them to add up.
‘Well, that’s a relief,’ said Joe, bypassing the fork and taking a massive bite straight from the slice. ‘Oh, my god,’ he groaned, after chewing for a few seconds. ‘Oh. My. God.’
‘Oh my god, stop,’ I sniggered, before taking a bite myself, ‘if anyone walks by, they’ll be wondering what the hell’s happening in here.’
‘You have tasted this, right?’ he asked, clearly offended that I thought his reaction was over the top.
‘Oh. My. God,’ I mimicked as I swallowed the sweet, moist mouthful down.
‘Exactly,’ he grinned. ‘Thank you.’
‘It’s so good,’ I laughed.
‘So good,’ he agreed.
We sat in silence for a few seconds, chewing, smiling and swallowing until all that were left were a few tiny crumbs that even Bruce would have been hard pushed to sniff out.
‘You know,’ said Joe, picking up his tea, ‘over the years, I’ve been trying to convince myself that Sophie’s cooking and baking wasn’t really as good as I remembered it, but . . .’
‘It is?’
‘It’s better,’ he sighed. ‘If anything, even better than I remembered!’
‘I’m guessing you used to eat at Hope’s place a lot when you were together?’
‘Yeah,’ he replied, ‘all the time and Hope used to come to the farm too, whenever she could get a lift out of the village.’
It was really sad to think that him, Hope and Sam, who had once shared so much, couldn’t now be a part of each other’s lives because of what had happened the night of the crash and because Hope was now in love with Sam. Don’t get me wrong, I did understand how difficult it all was and that it wasn’t a situation you could tie up with a neat bow and hand back fixed, but it was still sad, especially now they were all living in such close proximity again.
‘You know,’ Joe ruefully smiled, ‘the taste of that cake makes me want to go back to the café.’
‘You should go,’ I told him. ‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t.’
‘No way,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘it’s not worth the hassle. I wouldn’t want Sam to think I was talking to Hope or even trying to see her behind his back.’
‘She’s not in the café half the time,’ I said, ‘because she’s in the pub and, even if she was, I’m sure Sam wouldn’t think that.’
That said, given that I had seen Joe and Hope talking pretty furtively in the lane, he might be justified in jumping to that very conclusion if he also saw them with their heads together like that.
‘No,’ Joe shrugged. ‘I couldn’t do it. I know how it feels to have a mate muscle in on your other half and I wouldn’t want him thinking I was doing anything like that. Even if he has already done it to me.’
I didn’t point out that, if what I knew of the situation and the timings were correct, then Sam had still been in a coma when he and Hope split up and consequently capable of doing very little.
‘That’s something you might want to think about, Tess,’ he then floored me by adding.
‘What?’
‘It’s not nice when a so-called pal makes a play for your other half.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘You and Sam after hours in the pub Saturday night . . .’
‘What about me and Sam in the pub after hours Saturday night?’
‘You kissed, didn’t you?’
‘No,’ I snapped, ‘we didn’t, of course we didn’t.’
‘You’ve gone a bit pink,’ he said, raising his eyebrows.
‘Well, so would you, if I’d just accused you of doing something you hadn’t done. I’m angry, that’s why I’ve gone red!’
I couldn’t believe the turn the conversation had taken. Here we were eating cake, drinking tea, bathed in the scent from the beautiful and fragrant roses and he was accusing me of pinching someone else’s man!
‘I haven’t brought this up to make you angry, Tess.’
‘Then why have you brought it up and, more to the point, who told you about this non-event in the first place?’