The Friends We Keep(113)
Maggie was wearing an old smock, touching up the paint around the windows. Topher had finished the painting, but was useless at cutting in, which she only discovered when he finished. It was such a small job that it got put off until now, which was irritating only because they were opening on Sunday morning, and it would have been lovely not to be on a ladder, painting in corners at the last minute.
They learned that Topher was very good at starting jobs, and not very good at finishing them. He had gone into a digging frenzy when Jack first arrived, digging two and a half beds in the garden before getting bored, tired, or some combination of the two, and leaving it looking like hell for the next two months. He refused to bring anyone in to finish it off, saying he was determined to do it himself, but the garden design course then ate up all his time.
Eventually he found a gardening team, and now the garden was exquisite, not to mention the clipped hedgerow down the lane that had made all the neighbors so happy, they were now invited over for cocktails on a regular basis.
In fact, Emily Sullivan had proved something of a godsend in letting the world know about the diner. Because she was in PR in a former life, and ran a local mums’ group on Facebook (“like mumsnet,” she said, “only hyperlocal”), she tapped into every young mother for miles. She featured the diner and got them to offer a kids’ special during the week—smiley-face chocolate chip pancakes and an organic fruit juice for every harried mother who didn’t know how she’d get through the mornings, and a clown who walked from table to table entertaining the young guests. Emily organized a series of “experts” who gave weekly talks to the mums on, essentially, how to stay sane during those early years. She also came up with the idea of renting the space out in the evening for mums’ nights out. Maggie and Evvie had no idea what they would have done without her.
Maggie finished the last of the dodgy paint areas and stepped down.
“What do you think?” she called out. “Does it look okay?”
Evvie came out from the kitchen, where she’d been making the batter for the pancakes and waffles and soaking the saltfish for the fritters. She stood in the doorway, hands on her hips, and looked around the room. That dark old tearoom, with the beams that were almost black, and the popcorn ceiling, had been transformed into two open-plan, light, bright modern rooms, leading into a conservatory at the back. One wall was horizontal planking; another was chalkboard paint with a low shelf filled with chalk to keep children occupied while their parents ate. The ceiling was now beadboard, the original old beams limewashed, with retro black-and-white photographic prints hanging on the walls.
There was bench seating along one side, the cushions covered in retro red vinyl, with thick modern shelves above, filled with kitsch Americana food items, flour packages, and cookie tins, many from the fifties and sixties with the distinctive type, all of it sourced by Evvie on eBay.
On the other side were diner-type booths, and in the middle, on the wide-planked floor, now limewashed, were tables and red metal chairs. It was part fifties diner, part modern café, and every time Evvie walked in here, she felt a surge of pride at what she and Maggie had created.
Particularly because it so nearly didn’t happen. The day after Maggie decided to forgive Evvie, they both came to see the tearoom, and Maggie had looked at Evvie after five minutes and said, “I’m in, if you still want a partner.”
With that partnership came their friendship. It started slowly, a little more formal than it had been previously, but they worked well together, and they understood each other, their strengths and their faults. And they shared a love of Jack, for Maggie and Jack had become close, and Evvie found that she no longer worried about being replaced, was happy for Jack that he had found the family she had never been able to provide on her own.
Three months ago she moved back into the manor house, into her old bedroom, and although she never would have believed this, coming through the betrayal had made their friendship stronger. These people weren’t just her friends, thought Evvie, standing in the doorway of the kitchen, looking at the tearoom and at Maggie, blinking tears away; they were her family.
“You’re not getting sentimental on me, are you?” Maggie laughed from the other side of the room, noticing the tears.
“I’m sorry. I can’t help it. Look at what we’ve done, Maggie. Who would have thought?”
“Especially given the history we’ve had over the past year.”
“Especially because of that, but it’s not just that, it’s all of it.” Evvie shook her head in disbelief. “I feel like I’ve lived fifty lifetimes, and none of them fit me, none of them have felt right, until this one. I left college thinking I would make my home back in the States because that’s where I started, and I ended up in Connecticut, trying so hard to make it feel like home, but it wasn’t. I always felt displaced. I kept thinking that even though I missed England, I missed the England I lived in when we were at university, not the England of today, and I didn’t think I could ever go back. But when we all found each other again . . . it was the first time in my life that I felt like I’d found my home.”
Maggie walked over and put an arm around her waist, laying her head briefly on Evvie’s shoulder. “I know. I feel the same. Not about being displaced, but nothing in my life went the way I expected it to. I can’t say Ben wasn’t a good man. He was ill. He was an alcoholic, and I carried the secrets for him. We did have some good times, when he wasn’t drinking, but there was no way I could adopt children and bring them into that. I never told him that was why I was so anti-adoption. Maybe if I had, he would have stopped drinking. I just don’t know. I’ll never know, but I forgive myself for that. I honestly didn’t think I would ever have any color in my life again. And now I have all of you, and I have Jack.”