really get a buzz out of the baking, don’t you?’
‘More than I ever expected,’ Lottie replied with a smile. ‘So far I have made eight versions of that cartoon–racing car cake you saw this morning for little boys aged four to eighty-four and they all love it. Everyone is so different. Take next week, for example. The baking club want me to demonstrate how to make a chocolate birthday cake for one of our regular customers. Ninety years young. She wants loads of soft gooey chocolate icing. And three layers of chocolate sponge in the middle. Eat with a spoon. Whipped cream on the side. Delish.’
‘Oh, yes, I remember what it was like to have my hands in sticky icing sugar and chocolate all day. Don’t miss it a bit. But let me tell you—’ he tilted his head closer to hers and half whispered ‘—for a working baker, you look fabulous.’
‘Thank you, kind sir. My pleasure. You clean up nicely yourself.’
Rob exaggeratedly tugged with one hand at the lapel of the same dinner jacket he had worn for the gallery opening, while dodging the other pedestrians on the busy west London pavements. ‘Oh, this old suit? Thought I had better make an effort as the star pupil.’
Lottie gave his arm an extra squeeze before snorting out loud. ‘Shameless! Make that one of the many star pupils! How is your mum’s cold?’
‘She’s feeling a lot better today and went to the gallery this afternoon before heading off to tea with her pals,’ Rob replied as he negotiated around some dog walkers. ‘So I am officially off duty for a couple of hours and, unless you are desperate to get home, I think this calls for a small delay! Look across the street. What do you see?’
He slipped his dinner jacket around her shoulders and held her within it for a few seconds, bringing up the collar so that he could flip the ultra-soft fabric around her smooth neck.
She pretended not to notice as his fingertips gently moved against her skin to flick the ends of her hair back over the collar.
‘Thank you.’ She smiled back in reply, conscious that the hard cheekbones of Rob’s face were highlighted too sharply by the streetlight outside the swish, glossy shopfronts. He was too lean, but she knew that he had eaten something from every tray of the buffet at the hotel.
Maybe she could do something about that, if he stayed around long enough.
He smiled and surprised her by sliding around behind her, so that his arms were wrapped around her waist, holding her tight against him. She felt the pressure of his head against the side of her face as he dropped his chin onto her shoulder, lifted his left arm, and pointed.
Lottie tore her eyes away from Rob, and stared across to a very familiar sunlit stone building. Then laughed out loud.
‘It’s the old grand entrance to the catering college. We’ve come around in a circle.’
Rob nodded and looked up into the high carved stone entrance to what had been a 1930s art deco school of architecture before it was taken over by the catering school.
‘The first time I walked through those doors I was seventeen, angry, bitter, and furious with the world and myself. I was a mess, Lottie. And maybe not someone you wanted to be around.’
There was something is his voice that compelled Lottie to look over her shoulder into his face. This was the young man, so full of hope and dreams.
‘Why do you think that you were such a disaster?’ Lottie replied with a smile, looking into his face. ‘From my experience, most seventeen-year-olds feel that way.’
‘Oh, girl, if you only knew the truth of it.’
Then something shifted in his eyes as though a darker memory had floated up to the surface.
And in that moment the mood changed. His brow was furrowed with anxiety, his mouth moved back to a straight line, and his body almost bristled with tension.
‘Then tell me. Tell me the truth about why you were such a mess, because I really want to know.’
‘That’s one hell of a long story.’
‘Then let’s sit down and look at the college and reminisce together.’ She looked around and spotted an old and not very clean wooden bench, which she covered with Rob’s expensive jacket, liner side up.
‘Ah. This is perfect.’ Lottie shuffled back on the hard seat and folded her hands neatly on her lap.
‘It is June. It’s a relatively warm evening and I am sitting on your jacket, so there is no possible escape. I suggest that you start at the beginning and go from there. That usually works.’
‘Are you sure that you’re not an art critic? Because you are being damn nosy.’
‘One of my terrible character flaws; nothing I can do about it. Once I take an interest in something I have to find out everything there is to know. So fire away. Because I am not going anywhere until I find out why you were so very angry with the world the first day you walked through those doors.’
‘A-ha. So you are interested in me. At last she admits it.’
‘I want to know what kind of family my best friend is getting herself into. So far Sean has been great, but are there skeletons in the Beresford family cupboard which will burst Dee’s bubble? Not going to happen.’
‘Skeletons? Lottie, there is a whole pirate ship of skeletons moored offshore all armed to the teeth and ready and able to cause mayhem at any minute they are released. The problem is most of them are about my side of the family. Not Sean’s.’
‘I don’t understand. Sean told me that your mum and dad get on just fine even though they’re divorced.’
‘They do. I am lucky. Tom Beresford met my mother when he opened up the first Beresford hotel in New York City. She was living a bohemian life in an artists’ colony in the Hamptons most of the year, and holding exhibitions of her work in the city when she needed funds. Well...’ Rob smiled. ‘You’ve seen my mother. Gorgeous, fun, and so talented it’s criminal. I don’t blame my dad for falling for her one little bit. She was even more stunning back then and she must have really adored him to settle in the city. In the end they had six great years in New York before we had to move back to London to open the flagship hotel here. That was when things started to change. It was my mum who decided that she could not tolerate living here.’
‘Did she hate London that much?’
‘Not particularly. It was the sudden change in her routine that she hated. Mum likes her day and her life all laid out, nice and simple and familiar. London was too much, too fast, and she couldn’t get used to it. In the end the only way she could work was to go back to the Hamptons for a couple of months at a time with frequent trips back to London to see me. I was only a toddler so I stayed here with my dad and got used to airports.’
‘That must have been tough. But there are people who lead their whole lives like that. My dad used to boast that one year he spent a grand total of fifteen days sleeping in his own bed. The price of modern life.’
‘It might have worked for your family but it didn’t work for mine. My dad made plans to move back to New York but then my grandparents in Suffolk needed him and Mum was staying away for longer and longer periods...and they simply drifted apart. I was way too young
