The Hopes and Dreams of Lucy Baker: The most heart-warming book you’ll read this year. Jenni Keer
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heart sank to the bottom of her flip-flops. The Hobbycraft centre would be closed by then.
The suit cast his eyes around the few remaining items of furniture and returned to the house, closing the front door firmly behind him.
Manhandling the wobbly mattress down the ramp, the removal men momentarily rested it on the pavement between them. The older guy looked over to the closed door and sighed, just as another front door was flung open. They heaved it up again and walked towards the house.
‘Okay, what’s going on?’ asked Brenda, the elderly lady who lived between Lucy and the new arrival. ‘Honestly, Lucy, your aura is all over the place. I could sense your frustration from the pantry.’
Not exactly a conventional pensioner, Brenda’s purple-streaked, silvery hair fell down her back in a tidy plait, and her slightly hunched body was swathed in a rainbow of cotton garments. A silver locket was swinging from her neck but she tucked it out of sight as she walked towards the road. Her sharp eyes focused on the young lad and he wriggled uncomfortably. Juggling mattress and doorknob, the pair wrestled their way into number twenty-four.
‘You told me you were going to the retail park this afternoon, Lucy. Have you been waiting for the van all this time?’ Brenda ran her fingers back and forth through the purple buds of lavender growing in the narrow border down her path. Lucy caught the aroma and felt calmer.
‘It’s not a big deal. I can pop over after work next week.’
‘Nonsense. It would have taken them two minutes to shift the van across and let you out. Honestly, I do believe you wouldn’t have said anything if they’d parked it in the middle of your living room.’
The family from across the road tumbled out their sunny yellow doorway; the harassed mother clutching a baby to her hip, and the little girl giving Brenda and Lucy a cheery wave. They waved back with equal enthusiasm.
‘I must finish those crocheted flower brooches for the preschool fête,’ Lucy said. ‘Chloe came over with her mother last week asking for tombola prizes. I have so many scraps of wool to use up, I feel I’m killing two birds with one crochet hook.’
Brenda chuckled. ‘She’s not easy to refuse, is she? With that cheeky grin. She’s cleared me out of blackberry and apple preserve.’
The family piled into their people carrier and Lucy couldn’t help but feel slightly jealous at the ease with which they pulled away from the kerb and trundled into the distance. If only the stupid removal van had parked three metres further down.
Brenda peered over the low wall as the front door to number twenty-four finally clicked shut. ‘I glimpsed our new neighbour walking past earlier – quite the stud muffin. Good enough to eat and go back for seconds.’ Her hand went to her throat and she played with the silver chain. ‘A bit of male companionship would do you the world of good, young lady. Knitting needles and assorted buttons do not a fulfilling life make.’
‘Oh no you don’t.’ Lucy crossed her arms and stared at her dear friend, a woman most locals considered something of an enigma, but whom Lucy adored unreservedly. It wasn’t that people didn’t like Brenda, they loved her, but she made them feel uncomfortable. They would happily stop by for one of her herbal remedies if they had a migraine coming. Or the lotion from the doctor couldn’t clear up their intimate rash. But they didn’t like to stop for tea. It didn’t taste quite right… ‘I don’t need you to start matchmaking, and I certainly don’t want you chanting incantations at midnight in a potato sack in the hope the universe shifts slightly to the right and lots of non-existent chakras align – or whatever it is you do.’ Brenda was prone to floating about and pretending to be mysterious, and Lucy happily indulged her friend. It was harmless enough and Lucy suspected Brenda was playing out an elaborate theatrical charade purely for her own amusement. ‘You’ll make me drink something from a glass vial and three days later I’ll wake up with a headache, naked in a wheat field, surrounded by journalists.’
‘Tish. You do talk nonsense sometimes. I’m merely an enabler. And if we search deep enough inside ourselves, it’s amazing what can be summoned from within.’ She closed her eyes, her body rising as she inhaled slowly and put out her hands, palms upward. ‘Anyway, it’s pointless to protest, because things are afoot without any intervention from me. He’s already arrived,’ Brenda said, opening her eyes and looking serious.
‘Yes, we know all about his arrival: three hours blocking the road without so much as a note through our doors,’ said Lucy.
‘Not the sexy neighbour. The cat. I had a feeling there was one on its way.’
‘How on earth…’ began Lucy, but she had given up trying to find answers for the mysterious things that happened around her friend. Because if Brenda Pethybridge had been expecting a cat, Lucy suspected the universe wouldn’t dare fail to deliver.
Lucy spotted the stray in her tiny square of garden later that evening, weaving its way in and out of the assorted pots of straggly begonias and half-stacked piles of bricks. The poor little thing was all jutty-out limbs and tufty black fur, and had no more meat on its bones than a Lowry matchstalk cat.
Her efforts to coax it out were met with catty indifference and the nonchalant wipe of a chin along the edge of the battered metal watering can, so she changed tactics and five minutes later the nervous scrap was in her kitchen, peering up from the edge of a saucer of tuna.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ Lucy begged. ‘I’d give you a home if I could.’
There it was again, the feeling her stomach was doing a series of inelegant roly-polies. Realistically, there was no way her landlady would drive all the way out to Renborough for a spot check on a mid-May Monday evening, but Lucy couldn’t escape the nagging possibility, even if statistically it was more likely that the Prime Minister would stop by for a Jaffa Cake and a quick chat about the state of the NHS.
As the tiny creature licked up the last flake, Lucy swiped open her phone and googled local cat rescue centres. Renborough Animal Rescue was the nearest, but it was overflowing and under-resourced. There was a heartfelt plea on the website for people to consider offering a forever home to one of their twelve black cats as they were either considered unlucky or boring; the cute kittens and striking ginger toms were always chosen first. If the centre took Lucy’s neighbourhood stray on, it would be number thirteen and that made her feel even more uncomfortable.
Reluctantly, she dialled the number as the cat halted its post-banquet ablutions, cast her a catty glance and attempted to meow in protest. A pathetic squeak came out.
‘Sorry, sweetheart, I don’t have a choice.’
The centre was closed but the answerphone invited her to leave a message or dial another number if it was an emergency. Lucy looked over to the cat, who was strutting up and down the kitchen and sniffing the stretcher rail of a chair. It hardly qualified as an emergency so she hung up.
Fetching a hand-crocheted blanket through from the living room, she folded it to make a temporary bed on one of the mismatched pine kitchen chairs, but the curious cat had wandered into the hallway, so she scooped up the creature and returned it to the kitchen. Carefully closing the door behind her, she went into the living room to pick up her knitting. Not a skill mastered by many twenty-five-year-olds but the only real talent Lucy believed she had. Such a shame there wasn’t a great deal of demand for it in a professional capacity, knitting Shreddies for Nestlé aside, and she was fairly certain you had to be a nana for that.
Later that evening, in the middle of a complicated bit of shaping, there was a genteel knock at the front door, followed by a cheery ‘Co-ee!’
Lucy’s heart didn’t exactly sink but it certainly didn’t do a joyful skip as she opened the door to reveal her elegant mother; the sort of woman who coordinated everything from her soft furnishings to the contents of her fridge and expected everyone else to