All That She Can See(11)
The Tranquillity Teacakes went down a treat. Mrs Brewer’s Anxiety melted a little more with each bite she took. It didn’t disappear entirely, but its limbs became thinner, shorter and less entwined with Boredom than they had been before. So, with less anxiety about going outside and with more drive to cure her boredom, Mrs Brewer left the house more often than she used to. She now felt more able to stand up for herself when the grumpy woman in the corner shop tried to short-change her. Usually, Mrs Brewer was so eaten up with angst that she would have just left without a word and beaten herself up later on about not saying anything. Instead, this time, Mrs Brewer took a breath and said, ‘Excuse me, but this isn’t right. You’ve short-changed me by fifty pence.’
‘And?’ sniffed the grumpy woman.
Mrs Brewer walked up to the counter and looked her in the eyes. ‘And, I’m not leaving until that fifty-pence piece is in my hand.’
Several people in the shop looked over in astonishment and the grumpy woman (not wanting an uprising among the elderly whom she often short-changed), reluctantly opened the till drawer and slammed the fifty-pence piece down on the counter with a grunt.
Mrs Brewer couldn’t have known that it was the teacakes making her feel less anxious but something in her steady heart told her she should order some more. She turned up on Cherry’s doorstep a few days later with a five-pound note in her hand, asking if Cherry wouldn’t mind making her some more.
The Humble Pie that Cherry made for Mr Datta changed him for the better too, and the other residents noticed the difference in him. Mr Datta had always considered himself a very big fish in a very small pond. He was a tailor by trade and owned an elegant shop on the high street. Each morning he slicked back his hair, donned his hand-made suit and walked to his shop, his journey twice as long as it should’ve been because he couldn’t help but stop to admire himself in shopfront windows several times. Although he was an incredibly talented tailor, no one entered his shop unless they really had to because they couldn’t bear to hear any more about his latest female conquests or the offers to travel abroad to work with the most top-end designers, nor could they stand to watch him admiring himself in the mirror, combing his hair and licking his teeth.
Cherry left the pie on Mr Datta’s doorstep with a note from a ‘secret admirer’, knowing he wouldn’t be able to resist. The is dotted with hearts would massage his ego enough to convince him to eat it. Two days later, Cherry smiled to herself as Mrs O recounted, with some astonishment, how Mr Datta had walked down the entire length of the high street without stopping to look at his reflection. Not even once. It was a good start but Cherry made a note to up the dosage a little in the next pie.
Cherry didn’t know Miss Kightley very well but they lived three doors down from each other so Cherry thought it wouldn’t be too odd if she popped over with her Patience Profiteroles. Impatience was constantly prodding the small of Miss Kightley’s back so she came across as tightly wound but she had a good soul. Cherry had seen her wheel Cherry’s bins to the front of her drive when Cherry had forgotten it was collection day, and she was always grateful for these small acts of kindness.
Miss Kightley was in her late forties and was happily unmarried. She’d had several partners over the years but she just didn’t enjoy long-term companionship. ‘The men I find only end up getting in the way,’ Cherry had once heard her say to Samuel.
She owned the local florist, and because she was a clever woman who knew how powerful a tool the internet was, she now ran most of her business online and had employed Felicity and Fawn Seymour to run the store itself. Felicity and Fawn were a married couple whose front garden was full of colour and wildlife, and they were the perfect people for Miss Kightley to entrust with her livelihood. Their valuable help left Miss Kightley free to spend most of the year in Spain, and work from there, and when she did return to the town, she returned with glamour and her kind heart. But Impatience was never far behind either.
One evening, Cherry rang the bell after dinner and knowing that Miss Kightley didn’t like to be kept waiting, she kept her delivery short and sweet. ‘Profiteroles. For you. Just… because.’ Cherry handed Miss Kightley the bowl. ‘And thank you,’ she called over her shoulder as she quickly left, not giving Impatience the time to get riled.
‘Thank you,’ Miss Kightley said, eyeing the profiteroles keenly through the cling film. She had just been berating herself for not getting any afters while she’d been at the supermarket earlier so Cherry’s appearance couldn’t have been better timed.
She pierced the cling film with her fingernail, speared it straight into a profiterole, which she then popped into her mouth. As the cream oozed out of the sides and melted on her tongue, Impatience’s prodding fingers began melting until they were nothing more than tiny little stumps.
Cherry had never felt so alive. She was helping people, really helping them. Perhaps now was the time to help herself, too.
‘Are you OK?’ Mrs O asked one evening, noticing that Cherry’s hands were twitching and shaking. ‘A little bit of calm would do your jitters some good.’
Mrs O was right. She needed some calmness. Cherry hopped off the sofa without a word, poked a hole in the foil that was covering the next batch of Mrs Brewer’s teacakes and took a bite out of the smallest one. Would it help her? She chewed and swirled the sweet bread around her mouth, hoping to get a hit of serenity, but it was no use. It wasn’t working. She could taste lavender and the beauty of the cold side of the pillow but her hands still shook and every nerve ending was crackling. She had thought it might be too good to be true. Cherry could help everyone but herself. Although she was happy to have a purpose, a reason to wake up each morning, this felt like a cruel twist to her strange gift. She had hoped that in helping other people reach their full potential, she would eventually feel like she was reaching her own – but curing her own ills with her gift wasn’t going to be the way to do it.