Free The Bluebird Café by Rebecca Smith Page A

bread!’
    â€˜Remember those watermelon ice creams we had in Geneva …’ And they were off again. They had eaten the whole of Europe.
    The first time Lucy met the Clouds, she thought, My God. Perhaps I have completely the wrong idea about him. Paul became subtly different; but she got used to it, and saw the ways in which he was a different sort of Cloud and had detached himself from his parents. He managed not to carry a thermos of coffee on all car journeys or clean his shoes
every
Sunday night. He recklessly patted strange cats.
    After lunch, Paul’s parents visited Vir and Vir to stock up on spices, curry paste and cheap peppercorns.
    â€˜So much cheaper than Salisbury’s,’ said Maggie. Her real name was Magnolia.
    â€˜Why on earth doesn’t she insist on Magnolia?’ Lucy wondered as she peeled off her Marigolds. She’d just done all of the clearing up by herself, having decided to give the family outing to Vir and Vir a miss.
    â€˜I do go there every day,’ she told them.
    The Clouds bought themselves a large sack of meat samosasand heated them up under the grill while Lucy dried the last of the lunch things. Then they all drove to the New Forest to visit a deer sanctuary.
    â€˜I’m thinking of joining a contemplative order,’ Lucy told Paul as they queued to get on to the wooden deer-viewing platform.
    â€˜Me too,’ said Paul.
    â€˜Oh, look! There’s a whole flock of them over there!’ cried Maggie Cloud.
    â€˜Not a flock, a herd!’ James corrected her. He had a keen interest in collective nouns. Everyone ignored him, including the deer who were sleeping in the sun or audibly grazing, oblivious to the fact that every middle-class child in Hampshire had come to visit them.
    On the way home they stopped in Lyndhurst so that James could buy a tub of New Forest Venison Pâté. Lucy bought a postcard of some dreary New Forest ponies standing around looking cold.
    When at last they left, Maggie squeezed Lucy’s hand and said, ‘It’s so lovely to have you coming into the family.’
    Lucy nearly said: ‘WHAT?’ but instead she said: ‘Oh, thank you,’ and kissed Maggie on the cheek. When they’d gone she asked Paul what ‘coming into the family’ might mean.
    â€˜She must be expecting us to get married,’ he said. ‘She asked me if we were thinking about it.’
    â€˜Oh?’
    â€˜I said we might think about it.’
    â€˜Might we?’
    â€˜Oh, Lucy, you know I’d like to marry you.’
    She said nothing. Paul opened a can of lager.
    â€˜Give us a swig,’ said Lucy. ‘There wouldn’t be meat on the menu at the reception.’
    â€˜Reception?’
    And then the phone rang.
    A ‘thank you for a nice day’ present from Maggie Cloud arrived in the post. It was a special roly thing for massaging tired feet. It looked like a medieval torture implement, and was made of wood from sustainable forests. Lucy was pleased with it, but Paul said, ‘Things like this don’t need to exist. There should be special licences that people have to obtain before they can go making any more crap. There’s too much
stuff
in the world already. People shouldn’t be able to manufacture something unless they can prove that it is really necessary, that it will add to the sum of global happiness and well-being.’
    There was no more talk of weddings for quite some time.
    That night, in the privacy of their own bed, back home in Sussex, Maggie Cloud said: ‘I really do like Lucy, but I must say that for someone who runs a restaurant, or would you call it a café, or a bistro, she doesn’t seem very interested in food.’
    â€˜They call it a café,’ her husband told her.

Chapter 21
    The Bluebird Café was the only shop in the street that lacked a security grille. John Vir was raising his, but Lucy and Paul were asleep and didn’t