Bram’s looking like himself again tonight. Freshly washed hair, no eyeliner, black jogging bottoms and a white T-shirt with Snoopy on it. There might be something about him when he’s playing Hatter, but there’s even more about him when he’s his natural quiet self, and I’m thoroughly enjoying our evenings in his kitchen, no matter the quality of the resulting bakes. And some of them could barely be termed that, and definitely shouldn’t have the word ‘quality’ attached to them.
We both work our way towards the middle of the loaf tin, no matter how much resistance the cake puts up. ‘Why are we eating this?’
‘Comfort food,’ he says with a mouthful.
I suck on my fork thoughtfully because it’s an ideal opening to bring up Tabby, a topic he has meticulously avoided so far tonight. ‘Does that mean you’re in need of comfort after today?’
He glances at me. ‘No comment.’
I sigh. ‘Come on, Bram. How long are you going to avoid telling me about Tabby? All of tonight or a good chunk of the next two and a half months that’s left of our trial too?’
Our trial. I didn’t mean to say that. There’s a growing feeling that Bram and I are in this together, but it’s me who’s ultimately accountable, and I need to remember that.
‘It’s still early, why don’t we make something else?’ He looks up at the clock on the wall to avoid looking at me.
‘Never mind the elephant, you’re avoiding the Jabberwock in the room.’
‘I vote for making something else. I have a great idea for Alice-themed cookies to serve in the shop. Shall we try them? You can be my sous-chef. Watch and observe to avoid any more sponge misinterpretations.’ He digs his fork into the lemon drizzle again and shoves a huge piece of cake into his mouth, undoubtedly to fill it up so much that he can’t talk.
‘Bram!’ I say in frustration. ‘Your ex has just turned up in my tearoom. The least you can do is give me an explanation. I didn’t know you’d ever been engaged.’
‘We’ve never talked about stuff like that. I see no reason to start now.’ He puts a hand up to cover his mouth and his words are muffled around the cake he’s still chewing.
‘Do you want to get back with her?’ I clear my throat because my voice breaks as I say it. I hadn’t realised how nervous I am about what his answer might be. What if he’s being so coy because he wants her back? It shouldn’t matter to me. It doesn’t matter to me, but the thought of Bram with someone so condescending is an uncomfortable one.
‘No! Crikey, no. Are you as mad as the March Hare?’ He can’t chew the cake up fast enough to answer properly. ‘There aren’t enough variations of the word “no” to cover that one.’
‘I get the impression things didn’t end happily…’ I prod at the cake like I’m trying to prod at him.
‘Cleo…’ he mutters, drawing my name out as though he’s asking me not to push any further, and when I fix him with a stern, unrelenting look, he sighs and swallows the last of the lemon drizzle mouthful. ‘Fine. I can bake and talk.’
The kitchen scale is still on the unit, the bags of sugar and flour haven’t been put away yet, and he dries up the mixing bowl and gets another one out of the cupboard. Whatever these cookies are, they’re complicated enough to need two mixing bowls. He weighs out two lots of butter and sugar and starts creaming them with the electric whisk.
‘Tabby never wanted to date me.’ He speaks over the noise of the whirring whisk. ‘She wanted to date my father.’
‘That strikes me as quite an age gap…’
‘Not literally.’ He laughs, but it’s a taut laugh. ‘My father is… He’s kind of a big deal around here. Someone with a lot of sway on his side. If he gets behind your business idea, you’re unlikely to run into any problems along the way, if you get my drift. A lot of people would like a way of getting “in” with him, and Tabby fancies herself as a bit of an entrepreneur. The wellness retreat is just one in a long line of “bright ideas” that she wanted my father’s backing for. And I was just a means to that end.’
He adds salt and vanilla extract to both bowls and starts mixing flour into one gradually with a wooden spoon.
‘Did your father know that?’ I prompt.
‘I don’t think my father much cared. We have a… complicated relationship. I’m not the corporate ladder climbing type, and Tabby is, and he thought her influence would be good for me. Between them, they tag-teamed in an attempt to turn me into what my father has always wished I was. Some kind of businessman who wears boring suits and talks about businessy things like profit margins and loss leaders and carries a briefcase and wears a tie.’
He puts one bowl of dough in the freezer to chill, and then starts mixing flour into the second bowl, but also adds cocoa powder to this one.
‘It’s got all the hallmarks of a really healthy relationship so far.’
He lets out a sarcastic bark of a laugh. ‘It was always two against one. Three, when we got together as a family and they got my sister involved too. Also a corporate ladder climbing solicitor. We’re the most unalike two siblings have ever been.’
I watch him adding flour and cocoa powder gradually, folding it in as opposed to beating it in, which is what I’ve been doing. ‘You said your father isn’t happy with your career choice…’
‘My father isn’t happy with anything about me. You know when you’re feeling criticised from all angles? Some people would withdraw, but it made me even more determined to be the opposite of what they wanted me to be. I leant further into my eccentricities. I grew my hair out. Dyed it dark. Got my ears pierced. Put eyeliner on. Did a card trick instead of listening whenever anyone tried to talk to me about my life choices. Used humour to laugh off spiteful comments, rather than let anyone see how much they hurt. Things I knew would drive them mad. I wanted to make them realise that I was never going to be like them.’
It reminds me of when he first arrived at the tearoom. The obnoxious Hatter act – a shield to hide this softer, quieter side of himself that not many people get to see.
When the cocoa powder is mixed in with the flour, he puts the second bowl in the freezer too, cracks two eggs into another bowl and separates the whites, and then cleans and dries the unit and sprinkles flour on the surface, ready for rolling out the dough.
‘Were you and Tabby together for long?’
‘Five years.’ He goes over to get the vanilla dough out of the freezer.
‘Five years?’ I’d taken another forkful of cake and I promptly choke on it. Which is marginally more appetising than eating it. ‘She doesn’t seem like the kind of person you could spend five years with. To be honest, five hours at work was more than enough today. She doesn’t seem like your type at all.’
He scoffs as he rolls out the dough. ‘Doesn’t seem like the type who’d put up with me, you mean.’
Judging by his sharp movements and the way he thwacks the dough around, I’ve touched a nerve with that comment. I think before answering. ‘She seems like the type who’d make you think that people have got to “put up with you” rather than just liking you and enjoying your company.’
His hands go still on the rolling pin, and he looks into the distance through the window, like he needs a moment to think it over. ‘I don’t know if that was a compliment or not, but it made me feel really nice.’ I’m still sitting on the unit and he sidesteps and nudges his elbow against my knee and looks up to meet my eyes. ‘Thank you.’
I like his openness. Most men don’t say things like that, but Bram wears his heart on his sleeve in an endearing way.
Once he’s rolled the vanilla dough into a rectangle, he gets the chocolate dough out and starts rolling that into the same shape.
‘It didn’t start off bad.’ He pushes the rolling pin like a pro. Every time I try to roll anything out, the dough clumps up and sticks to the rolling pin. ‘Things were great at first, as relationships usually are. She was the first person I could really see a future with. But things started to change – slowly at first, then faster. I started to feel like her child rather than her partner. Every time we left the house, she had something to scold me for.’ He does an impression of her haughty voice. ‘“Do you have to wear that? Why don’t you cut your hair? Ugh, the eyeliner again? Two earrings, what will people think?”’ He brushes the egg white across the top of the rolled-out chocolate dough and then lays the vanilla dough on top of it, and I still haven’t worked out exactly what he’s making. ‘After I moved in here, she wanted me to propose because she thought my father would give us this house as a wedding gift. I did because… I thought things might change if I gave her what she wanted.’
‘Didn’t work?’ I ask gently because he sounds humiliated, and it’s easy to tell this isn’t something he talks about often.
