Anything but Vanilla(67)
‘Maybe she should go back to school and get them. Knickerbocker Gloria could sponsor her.’
‘You are unbelievable, do you know that?’ She gave him a hug. ‘The loveliest man in the world.’
‘On the subject of lovely men,’ he said, ‘when will Alexander be back from the States?’
‘He won’t be.’ She turned away, so that he wouldn’t see how hard it was to say that. ‘He needs to get back to work and he’s travelling straight on to Pantabalik from San Francisco.’
‘Well, I suppose that makes sense. But Graeme is history?’ She nodded. ‘Well, that’s something, I suppose. I’ve nothing against him,’ he added quickly. ‘I’ll miss his advice. But he was never right for you.’
‘You didn’t say anything.’
‘Some things you have to find out for yourself.’
‘I must be a slow learner.’
‘No, my dear. There was no one else to show you how it should be.’
‘No...’ She swallowed, rather afraid that there would be no one else now she knew... ‘I suggested he take Ria to the opera,’ she said.
‘Did you now?’ He laughed. ‘Well, she’ll certainly shake the creases out of his pants. How’s the ice cream coming along?’
‘It’s just about perfect,’ she replied, offering him a taste.
‘That’ll put some heat into their tango.’
‘You think? Great.’ She swallowed. ‘And I’ve created an ice of my own to go with it.’ She took a fresh spoon and offered it to him. ‘What do you think?’ she asked, watching nervously as he tasted it.
‘Oh, well, that’s fun. What did you put in it?’
‘Popping candy,’ she said.
* * *
Alexander would have loved to find and name an orchid for Sorrel. But he wasn’t in South America so he was searching the Internet for Cattleya walkeriana ‘Blue Moon’, a rare, delicate pale blue orchid.
At the checkout he was asked if he wanted to add a message and typed, ‘I saw this and thought of you.’
A few days later he received a text from her. ‘Thanks, it’s beautiful. Did you know that the next blue moon is only a year away? Or three, depending on how you define it.’
‘Let’s go with the first definition,’ he suggested. ‘How’s the new project?’
‘Keeping me busy, but I thought of you and made this. I think it needs something else—any ideas?’
It was an ice-cream recipe. Milk, cream, sugar, popping candy...
He pulled out the T-shirt she’d been wearing that last night and held it to his face. Grass, fresh air, vanilla, strawberries swamped him with an overload of ideas, none of which he was prepared to commit to the Internet.
‘Passion fruit.’ He added a photograph of a huge blue butterfly sipping nectar from a tropical bloom and tapped, ‘Just so you know that it’s not all mosquitoes.’
* * *
Sorrel spread out Geli’s designs for the new retro-look Knickerbocker Gloria.
‘I’ve gone for classic nineteen-fifties Americana styling,’ she said. ‘Apparently they are the new “cool” in the States. I’ve sent you some URLs to check out.’
She’d put her phone on the table and when it pinged to alert her to an incoming message she stared at it.
‘Do you want to get that?’ Geli asked.
Yes, yes, yes... ‘It will keep,’ she said, turning to her laptop and clicking on the URL to a restored soda bar in New York.
‘They do alcoholic ones?’ she asked, a whole new level of opportunities opening up before her.
‘When I was in Italy last year I was taken to an ice-cream parlour that served up seriously adults-only ices.’
‘If we could get a licence, it would make a great venue for hen nights,’ Elle chipped in.
‘I’ll check it out.’
Once they’d gone, Sorrel read Alexander’s message, touched a silky blue petal on her orchid, held his T-shirt to her face.
She made herself wait two days before she replied. ‘The passion fruit was perfect. How do you do that, Postcard Man? Great butterfly, by the way. If the moths are that big, I’m amazed you have any clothes left.’
‘Let’s just say you wouldn’t want to grow cabbages around here. How is the franchise plan coming along?’