The Traveller’s Daughter. Michelle Vernal

knew too that the latest fad was to frown upon sugar but hadn’t those sugar free converts ever heard the phrase, ‘everything in moderation’? That was her motto. She’d even heard mutterings that cupcakes were passé and that it was all about the sickly sweet macaron these days, but Kitty wasn’t swayed. In her opinion there was something so marvellous about the look of pleasure on a customer’s face when they bit into one of her cakes, swirled high with a piped frosting finish. It reaffirmed her belief. Sugar might be bad for the waistline, but it was oh-so-good for the soul!

      Now, Kitty yawned as she spied the row of shops at the end of the road she had just turned onto. Baintree & Co.’s office sat in the middle of them with a Cancer Research Shop somewhat aptly, given the reason for her selling her mother’s house, on one side of it. There was a travel agents on the other. Her eyes watered, and her body ached with weariness as she tottered along dragging her case behind her. The couple of hours’ sleep she’d grabbed before her usual ungodly Saturday morning start had been fractured. The temptation to ignore her alarm when it shrilled had been strong. She knew, though, that if she was going to get her cakes baked and iced as well as catch the first train up to Wigan, then she needed to get up and get moving.

      It was a nuisance having to go all that way just to sign off the last of the paperwork for the house and to hand the key over but needs must. It was simpler than trying to arrange it all by proxy. So, she’d switched the alarm off and grudgingly thrown on the closest thing to hand, a T-shirt and her jeans before padding through to the bathroom. She washed up and tied her hair back in a tight ponytail. A stray hair in a red velvet Pink Lady cupcake would be a recipe for disaster.

      She had only got as far as cracking the eggs into the kitchen aid, her one splurge since she’d begun selling her wares at the market, when Yasmin had appeared in the kitchen doorway.

      “You’re mad, Kitty do you know that?” she’d said rubbing her eyes and moving across the tired old lino floor in a swish of pyjama satin. Her practised hand picked up the cup of flour resting on the bench, and she began to tip it slowly into the mixer as Kitty had demonstrated time and time again.

      “Three teaspoons of baking powder,” Kitty mumbled, measuring out the first and adding it to the mix before looking up at her friend; Yasmin was as tall as she was short. “I know, but you don’t need to be. Go on back to bed; you’re going to have a busy enough day as it is.” Yas would never cope with the pace of the market if she were on anything other than top form, she thought, turning the speed up on the mixer a fraction.

      The first time Kitty had shared a shift with Yasmin she had thought her like an exotic flower with her penchant for 1950s style frocks. She was studying fashion design at a local college and used her wages and tips from Bruno’s to supplement her meagre student allowance. She was willowy with olive-hued skin and bobbed ebony hair that played up her flashing brown eyes. For her part, Yasmin had confided when they knew each better, she’d thought Kitty was like a dainty pixie. She had felt gangly and ginormous next to the petite blonde with the dancing blue eyes offset by unusually dark eyebrows and a big smile.

      Opposites attract, though, and once Kitty had gotten used to Yas’s way of going on, it hadn’t taken many snatched coffee breaks for the two women to establish common ground. They were both new arrivals to the city in need of permanent accommodation. Adrift in Britain’s capital, they’d been grateful to find one another, and they had been firm friends ever since.

      “Thanks for doing this Yas, I’m sorry to land it on you.”

      “It’s no biggie, all I ask is that when you open your café, you let me design the uniform. I think it should be something that’s short and sweet, now should I add the melted butter?”

      Kitty startled back to the present as a car horn tooted at another driver’s indiscretion, and she realized she was there. As she pushed open the door of Baintree & Co., a bell jangled announcing her arrival. She stepped inside and shut the door quickly behind her not wanting to let in a blast of cold air. A girl of no more than eighteen shoved something in the drawer of the front desk she was sitting behind. Her phone Kitty was guessing, not caring if that was how she wanted to pass a quiet day at work; Mr Baintree might not be so easy going about it, though. She looked up at Kitty guiltily before affecting what she must have thought was her professional face. How she could get her facial muscles to move underneath the layers of powdery foundation slathered on her face was a wonder.

      “I love your shoes – oh my God are they Alexander McQueen’s?” she asked, standing up to peer over the top of her desk and at the same time waving Kitty over to the two-seater couch against the wall. A stack of realty magazines was on the table beside it, and she sat down to await Mr Baintree’s imminent return.

      Kitty crossed her jeans-clad legs lifting the top one up to allow the girl a closer inspection of her shoe. “I wish, they’re a Spitalfields special.”

      The girl looked at her blankly.

      “Knockoffs.”

      “Oh right.” Disappointed, she sat back down and decided this client didn’t look the type to dob her into her boss, so she fished her phone back out of the drawer and resumed her frantic texting.

      Kitty’s phone went at that moment, and she answered it knowing it was Yasmin even before she said hello. She was grateful she was not going to have to while away the minutes flicking through the magazines on offer.

      “Okay, so you have to go to France, Kitty. I don’t even know why you are thinking about it. That picture was incredible. I Googled it and apparently it is quite famous. How could you have not known that you had a famous model mother? It’s called Midsummer Lovers and has been reprinted thousands of time. Gosh, she was beautiful. I can see where you get your looks from and as for the stud muffin she was gawping up at, well I don’t blame her for having such a daft look on her face.” Yasmin paused then huffed. “My God, Piggy Paula and Slimy Steve are going at it today. It’s disgusting. It’s put me right off my Mars bar.”

      Kitty doubted this was true; she could tell Yasmin was talking with her mouth full. “Why don’t you bang on the door and tell them to keep the noise down. Or, better still run in there with a water pistol, all guns a blazing, that should dampen their ardour.”

      Yasmin laughed. “Not a bad idea, but it could also put me off sex for life. Maybe that’s it, maybe I am just jealous. It’s been so long.” She sighed and then brightened. “Did I tell you about the guy who came into Bruno’s for lunch on Thursday? Talk about tall, dark and handsome. Honestly, Kitty he was gorgeous – I just about dropped his Spaghetti Amatriciana in his lap I was so busy gawping at him. My luck though, he was dining with an equally stunning female companion, but he did leave me a nice big tip, so I suppose that’s something. Where are you now the Estate Agent’s?”

      Yas talked a million miles an hour, Kitty thought with a fond smile. “Yep, I am waiting to hand the key for Edgewater Lane over to the Agent, who should be back in the office any minute and then my work in Wigan is done. I reckon I will make the six o’clock train back to London.”

      “No, you won’t, Kitty because you are going to do what this Mr Booba has asked you to do.”

      Kitty frowned looking up at one of the many framed sales and marketing certificates adorning the agencies walls. They didn’t hide the fact the place could do with a paint job and with the daylight robbery commission Baintree & Co commanded on their house sales you’d think they could afford to liven up the office bit. “It’s Beauvau, and I can’t go, Yas, I have responsibilities.”

      Yasmin made a snorting sound and Kitty held the phone away from her ear knowing she was about to be on the receiving end of a rant; she was right.

      “You are making piss-poor excuses, Kitty Sorenson. You’ve told me that you have spent your whole life wondering who your mum used to be, and now you’ve been given a golden opportunity to begin unravelling the mystery. Not to mention an all expenses trip to this Uzés place in the south of France no less. Abandon ship, go! I can cover your shifts at Bruno’s, and you’ll be back well before next Saturday.”

      Kitty chewed