now, with the empty shop at her disposal and more free time than she knew what to do with, on the second night in her new abode, Mattie found herself drifting to the boxes of books in the back office behind the shop counter.
These books weren’t for sale but were proofs, or advance copies, sent out by publishers to booksellers and reviewers. The staff were allowed to take anything that they fancied, which Cuthbert had really leaned into, taking armfuls of sassy office romances home to his beloved Cynthia.
‘Even read a couple myself,’ he’d confessed to Mattie, his eyebrows waggling. ‘Gave me quite a few new ideas, let me tell you.’
Mattie didn’t need any new ideas and she certainly didn’t want any romance in her life, much less to read about it, but that night she felt as if she’d read all her cookery books a thousand times over and, nestling on top of one of the boxes was a novel called Passion and Patisserie at the Little Parisian Café.
‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ she muttered, picking it up and, half an hour later, she was tucked up in her bed reading about the heroine Lucy’s adventures as she opened what was actually a boulangerie rather than a café and resisted the charms of a hunky French pastry chef called Pierre because she was wedded to her career.
Though Mattie didn’t think much of the recipe for macarons in chapter two, she was nevertheless enjoying Lucy’s exploits when she heard a noise outside.
Although the mews felt as if it was its own little oasis of calm away from all the hustle and bustle, it was still in the centre of London. It wasn’t even eleven o’clock, so on Rochester Street, No Plaice Like Home would only have just finished serving, and The Midnight Bell and the fancy new bar in what used to be the undertakers would still be open. So there was no need for Mattie to stiffen just because she’d heard a noise outside.
After all, she used to live in Hackney, where she’d often been woken up by sirens or a police helicopter overhead. But this was a different kind of sound; a frantic squalling, like an animal in distress. And was that … was that a rattling of the electronic gate that Posy and Sebastian had installed at the entrance to the mews? It was left open all day but Tom would have closed it when he went out earlier and you needed a code to get through. Was someone trying to break in?
Mattie cowered for a second and then she remembered that she was made of much sterner stuff than that. She got out of bed and padded over to the window so she could open it and peer out into the darkened courtyard below.
‘Is anyone there?’ she called, but if someone were trying to break in, then they’d hardly reply with a ‘Yoo hoo! Over here!’
Instead, the squalling noise got louder. Was it foxes having sex? Even in the centre of town, there were plenty of foxes who’d take their chances for the rich pickings outside restaurants and shops, or for discarded and half-eaten fast food. Mattie had once seen a rat on Rochester Street, bold as brass, proudly carrying a chicken drumstick in its mouth.
The gates rattled again, and the squalling got even louder.
The best thing to do was to go back to bed, maybe put in some earplugs and … wait to be murdered in her sleep.
But Mattie was far too sensible to allow herself to be murdered in her sleep. With a resigned sigh, she turned away from the window so she could dig out her Ugg boots. She shrugged her big puffa coat over her pyjamas and before she left the flat, she grabbed one of her really heavy cast-iron pans.
The empty shop was no longer a comforting, warm space but full of terrifying shadows, and Mattie felt like the cliché in a horror film as she unlocked the front door. Instead of staying inside, she was going out towards who knew what fresh hell?
As soon as the door was open and Mattie heard the noise again, it chilled her bones. Because now she recognised the sound, which was why she broke into a run towards the electronic gates where, oh God! There was Strumpet trapped between the railings and very unhappy about it.
‘Strumpo! What on earth are you doing here?’ Mattie exclaimed and poor Strumpet gave her side eye, as much as he could, and yowled again as if to say, ‘What does it look like I’m doing, you foolish human?’
‘What on earth are you doing?’ echoed from the shadows beyond the gate, and Mattie tore her gaze away from the distraught cat to see Tom on the other side. Then he looked down too. ‘Oh God, you idiot!’
‘You are talking about Strumpet and not me?’ Mattie clarified sharply.
‘You’re not the one who’s trapped in the railings, are you?’ Tom took off his glasses so he could scrutinise Strumpet (which also kind of proved that he didn’t actually need glasses at all), who tried to turn his head to look back at Tom, but instead just meowed unhappily. ‘How did he manage to get here, all the way from Canonbury, when the furthest afield he ever used to get was as far as Stefan’s smokehouse?’
‘I have no idea,’ Mattie replied, crouching down so she could take stock of the situation. Strumpet had managed to get his head and his front paws through the railing of the gate on the right, but was stuck at his fattest part, his Buddha-like belly. ‘How about you push and I pull?’
‘Well, I haven’t got any better ideas,’ Tom admitted. Mattie gently took hold of Strumpet under his armpits and Tom grabbed hold of his hind legs but, despite their gentle wiggling, which Strumpet took in remarkably good grace, the cat was stuck fast.
‘You stupid beast,’ huffed Tom. ‘My old cat could wriggle through the tiniest gaps, like she was boneless, but Strumpet has far too much blubber. Should I come over to you?’
‘No! Don’t! Stop!’ Mattie screeched as Tom’s index finger paused over the keypad. ‘What if you electrocute him?’
‘I don’t see how,’ Tom grumbled but he stood back. ‘Well, what else could we try? Could we lubricate him? Have we got any butter?’
‘Yes! Good thinking!’ Mattie yelped. ‘I always have spare butter. Wait here!’
‘I’m hardly planning on going anywhere,’ Tom shouted at her back as Mattie took off towards the shop because, even in the middle of a dire emergency, Tom couldn’t resist having the last word.
But she was far more upset to realise that the only butter she had, ahead of tomorrow’s delivery, was her precious unsalted butter from Normandy, which you couldn’t even get in the UK. Every six months or so, Mattie and her mother made a trip across the Channel to stock up on all the French provisions that they couldn’t live without, mainly butter in Mattie’s case. And now she was going to have to donate it to a greater cause. She didn’t even have any vegetable oil left, she thought sadly as she put the butter in the microwave for a few seconds just to warm it enough for optimum cat manhandling.
When she returned, Tom was squatting down, his hand reaching through the gate to scratch Strumpet behind his ears. ‘I know that it seems like the end of the world right now, Strumpet, but I promise you one day we’ll look back on this and laugh.’ It was the nicest thing that Mattie had ever heard him say.
Then he saw Mattie standing there and he straightened up.
‘Let’s
