The Cornish Cream Tea Wedding

‘It was so weird,’ Ellie said, as she laid the table in the dining room of Rose’s end-of-terrace house. ‘It would almost have been better if he wasn’t so friendly. Or maybe I shouldn’t have been,’ she went on, wafting an empty wine glass around before Rose glared at her through the hatch between the kitchen and the dining room, and she put it on a coaster. ‘It felt like I was showing him my house and then leaving him to squat in it.’

‘That is basically what you’re doing though,’ Rose observed. ‘Except that he’s paying you for the privilege.’ Ellie turned to look at her sister. She was slightly taller, slightly broader, her hair kept to its natural dark brown and always tied back neatly on a work day, even once she’d changed out of her tunic. ‘You’ve not let go of Cornflower Cottage.’

‘I don’t want to let go of it,’ Ellie said. ‘This is temporary.’

‘Of course it is,’ Rose said soothingly, ‘but you don’t want to give him that impression, do you? How would you feel if you were moving to a new place, excited about your fresh start, and the owner was breathing down your neck, constantly pointing out that you were on borrowed time?’ She lifted a saucepan off the hob and drained spaghetti in a colander.

‘I should have put in a clause about the garden,’ Ellie said. ‘It’s going to go to rack and ruin without any attention.’

‘He’s a mechanic, good with his hands, practical. He might be a better gardener than you.’

Ellie gave her a look, which Rose parried with a sweet smile. ‘I didn’t mention it,’ Ellie said.

‘You could,’ Rose replied. ‘Give him a few weeks to get settled in, then go back with a bottle of wine and bring it up in conversation, see how he feels about it. And what I’m not talking about,’ she added, ladling the pasta into bowls, ‘is turning up on his doorstep with a list of all the things he needs to do and when he needs to have done them by. He’s not house-sitting, even if he is cat-sitting.’

Ellie tipped her head up to the ceiling. ‘I should never have rented it out,’ she groaned. ‘I didn’t think it through properly.’

‘All you needed to think about was how to get your business and your life back on track, and this was the best way. You and me, baby. We’ll change the world together.’ She said the last words in a fake American accent and Ellie couldn’t help grinning. ‘Anyway, tell me about this new wedding you’ve picked up. Is it really the woman who owns the Cornish Cream Tea Bus? God, I love her scones. Are you going to have them as part of the wedding breakfast?’

‘I doubt it,’ Ellie said, coming into the kitchen to fill a jug with water. ‘Her cousin brought me in so that Charlie and Daniel wouldn’t organize the whole thing themselves, so I can’t schedule in Cornish Cream Tea Bus cream teas, and if I do cream teas that haven’t come from there, then either they won’t be as good, which would be disappointing, or they will, which would be embarrassing.’

‘She must have other chefs,’ Rose scoffed, ladling a delicious-smelling bolognese sauce on top of the pasta.

‘I don’t think so,’ Ellie said. ‘I get the impression that she’s a one-woman whirlwind.’

‘Just like you, then,’ Rose replied.

Ellie smiled. Her sister might be bossy and intrusive and sometimes altogether too much, but she could always be counted on to back Ellie up, and boost her ego when she needed it. That character trait forgave all the other ones a thousand times over.

‘Oh,’ Rose said, as Ellie walked past her with the jug and a couple of tumblers, ‘don’t think that this is the end of the conversation about your new tenant. I didn’t miss the way you talked about him, and I need to know everything. Has he got a chapter in the Elowen Moon young, fun and single chronicles? He sounds like ideal spring-fling material.’

‘He’s my tenant,’ Ellie said stiffly, ‘so no way. I am not mixing pleasure with landladying. I’ve already made it far more awkward than it needs to be.’

‘You’re not denying you think he’s cute, then?’

Ellie rolled her eyes. ‘I’m forty years old, and he’s about the same. Cute is not a word I should be using, unless it’s about babies or puppies.’

‘All this protesting,’ Rose said gleefully. ‘We are definitely continuing this over dinner.’

Ellie looked at the bowls of spaghetti bolognese, which her sister was sprinkling with parmesan. Even a conversation she really didn’t want would be worth it for Rose’s home-cooked food. She waited until she was in the dining room before letting out a sigh. She loved her sister, and she was beyond grateful that she could stay with her, but she hoped that this new wedding, and renting out her cottage, would help her set a new course for success. She needed to get on top of her life.

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