The Traveling Tea Shop Read online

  Praise for the novels of Belinda Jones

  “Fast-paced, enthusiastic, good-hearted . . . [A] wise and witty read about the secret desires deep within us.”

  —Marie Claire (UK)

  “There’s something about Belinda Jones’s writing that takes you away to whatever beautiful setting she’s evoking and leaves you there right until you reach the last page.”

  —Daily Express (UK)

  “Great gags but undercut with genuinely moving emotion, this is a cut above most romantic comedies. A gem.”

  —Woman’s Own (UK)

  “Definitely worth cramming in your suitcase.”

  —Cosmopolitan (UK)

  “You’ll be laughing out loud from your sunbed.”

  —Wedding & Home (UK)

  “A glitterball romp.”

  —Glamour (UK)

  “Essential for that girls-only summer trip.”

  —Company (UK)

  “Deliciously entertaining.”

  —Heat (UK)

  “Fun, romantic, and set in various exotic locations, it’s the perfect escapist read.”

  —Closer (UK)

  “Perfect.”

  —B Magazine (UK)

  “A sparkling read.”

  —OK! (UK)

  Dearest Reader,

  What an utterly yummy experience it was writing this book for you—because of you I got to sample an abundance of sweet treats and call it work!

  My first experience of The Wonder of Cake was eagerly waiting for my mum to let me lick the mixture from the bowl as a kiddywink, so it seemed appropriate that I set out on the research trip with her. The only snag is that she really doesn’t have a sweet tooth, so as I would be marveling at all the exquisite fondant-swirled delights on offer, she would be ordering a bowl of carrot soup. (Though I have to say, she did succumb to the Boston Cream Pie!)

  Of course, there’s more to The Traveling Tea Shop than cake! With four leading ladies, there is an abundance of emotions to explore, as well as the idyllic setting of New England. I knew it would be leafy and picturesque but I was amazed how different each state was, though it was the littlest—Rhode Island—that captured my heart. That said, I look forward to hearing where you would most like to have afternoon tea!

  In the meantime, cozy up with a cuppa and a cupcake—you are welcome to leave little smudges of frosting on the pages as you turn them!

  Your author,

  Belinda xx

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  Copyright © 2014 by Belinda Jones.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-18791-7

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Jones, Belinda (Belinda C.)

  [Travelling tea shop]

  The traveling tea shop / Belinda Jones.—Berkley trade paperback edition.

  pages cm

  Previously published as The travelling tea shop. London : Hodder, 2014 and Hodder & Stoughton Canada, 2013.

  ISBN 978-0-425-27960-1 (paperback)

  1. Tour guides (Persons)—Fiction. 2. Television personalities—Fiction. 3. New England—Fiction. 4. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

  PR6110.O56T73 2015

  823’.92—dc23

  2014040139

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Hodder & Stoughton mass-market edition / May 2014

  Berkley trade paperback edition / March 2015

  Cover photos: cutting board © sprng23/Thinkstock; Chocolate lower case type © istarif/Thinkstock; Chocolate upper case type © istarif/Thinkstock; torte © Mi. Ti./Shutterstock; tea pot © grafvision/Shutterstock; cupcakes © Jane Rix/Shutterstock; whoopie pies © AnjelikaGr/Shutterstock; bus © Dario Lo Presti/Shutterstock.

  Cover design by Sarah Oberrender.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  To Kate Gordon

  (Every author should have such a fabulous champion—who also happens to be an ace baker!)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A bumper batch this year . . .

  My first book was dedicated to James Breeds, and in a way they all are. Thank you for the most splendid week in NYC, my sweet-toothed soulmate.

  Cream-swirled gratitude to this tasty bunch: Charlie Romano & David Garcelon at the Waldorf Astoria New York, Warren Brown of CakeLove, Paul Drumm at Kenyon’s Grist Mill, Amanda Bryan at The Newport Sweet Shoppe, Kim Houdette at AD Makepeace, Scott Cunningham of ScottCakes, Tuoi Tran and John Murtha at the Omni Parker House Hotel and Robert Alger, Jennifer Vincent and Sam Messer at the Trapp Family Lodge.

  A generous slice of appreciation to the travel experts: Andrea McHugh at Discover Newport, Andrea Carneiro at Newport Preservation Society, Tai Freligh of Visit New Hampshire, Charlene Williams of Nancy Marshall Communications and Kathy Scatamacchia at Discover New England. (And I highly recommend you do!) Thank you so much for guiding me to so many gems!

  The hosts with the most: Nancy and Bill Bagwill at Cliffside Inn, all at the Castle Hill Inn, Rauni Kew at Inn by the Sea, Mary Jo and Michael Salmon at the Hartstone Inn, Zorina and Larry Magor at the Omni Mount Washington Resort and Sam von Trapp at the Trapp Family Lodge.

  Cupcakes galore to my U.S. publishers The Berkley Publishing Group, in particular the exuberantly wonderful Jackie Cantor and lovely publicity mastermind Courteny Landi.

  My fabulous, inspiring new agent Madeleine Milburn and lovely assistant Cara.

  My dreamy mother Pamela (always) and character-inspiring Charles. You two were always worthy of a romance novel! Dad Trefor and Suzanne for their weekly Skype sessions, Brother G for summer memories at Dartington and Sam Adam for the ultimate teatime treat at the Wolseley!

  Special canine love to Bodie, who tagged along on the road trip to help me walk off the extra calories and relished every dropped crumb.

  And finally, my husband Jonathan, who no doubt is still wondering how I could spend a year immersed in baking and still be utterly without skill in the kitchen.

  I never really understood the appeal of Prince Charming. Yes, he has that flippy hair and a fancy line in epaulets but for me it was always The Candy Man.

  —Laurie Davis

  CONTENTS

  Praise for the novels of Belinda Jones

  Letter to the Reader

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Map

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3


  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  I look up at my clock. 1:30 P.M. My stomach flips like a pancake. Or should I say PamCake?

  In just ninety minutes I am meeting England’s most beloved baker, Pamela Lambert-Leigh. Can you believe it’s nearly twenty years since Babycakes made her a household name? Those mini fairy cakes were so whisper-light that I used to think of them as dandelion clocks—one puff and you’d send a flurry of vanilla sponge crumbs out into the ether. Her daughter’s cherubic face gave the packaging such an innocent, Shirley Temple vibe. Forget those sticky-sickly treats that made you groan and go cross-eyed, a Babycake was just a little kiss on your button nose, a butterfly in your tummy . . .

  You could eat six and barely even feel sick.

  I know because my mum once spelled out my name—LAURIE—one letter per cake on my birthday. I was rather miffed when she did the same three months later for my sister Jessica, especially since her name garnered an extra cake.

  I was wondering about telling Pamela this story, possibly leaving out the fact that my sister and I were teenagers by this point, but I don’t want to come off as overly fan-ish. Besides, what if she made a casual inquiry about my nearest and dearest? My response would only make her uncomfortable—“Both women are gone now,” I would say. “One to heaven and one to hell.”

  But no dwelling on that today. I mentally will the avalanche of emotion to retreat and hold off a while longer. I’ll get to you soon enough; for now I need to keep things bright and peppy and focus on the interview . . .

  Perhaps I’ll just make a joke about having a sweet tooth: “The amount of sugar I consumed as a child, it’s a miracle I have any teeth left at all!”

  Hmmm. That sounds a bit off-putting.

  What about, “We used to say that instead of blood running through my veins I had syrup, like a mini maple tree. With legs.”

  I tut myself. I’m not auditioning for a stand-up show.

  I just want to prove to her that I’m Cake’s Biggest Fan. Not some pretender who’ll toy with the slim end of the wedge, leaving a great bookend of frosting on the plate.

  Which reminds me, I’m sure I’ve got a childhood picture here of me taking a bite out of a cake that’s twice the size of my head. I could snap it and have it neatly to hand on my phone.

  I rifle through my desk drawer, I saw it just the other day . . .

  I hesitate as I locate it. My hair in pigtails, white Peter Pan collar on my red dress. I must have been about seven. Gosh. Thirty-one years ago.

  I didn’t know about calories then.

  I knew the truth about Father Christmas. I knew about divorce and that I couldn’t bear to see my mother crying—it would just scrunch me up inside and make me want to cry too—but I didn’t know any of those threatening phrases like:

  “A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.”

  Or “You can never be too rich, or too thin!”

  Or, the most insidious of all, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.”

  Whoever said that has clearly never been to Magnolia Bakery.

  Drrrrrinnnng!

  My phone ring startles me. But I smile when I see my best friend’s name on the display. I wouldn’t pick up for anyone else right now.

  “Krista!” I squeak.

  “I don’t want to hold you up, just wanted to wish you good luck!”

  “Oh thank you,” I pip. “I don’t know what to do with myself—this feels almost too good to be true!”

  “There is no one better suited to this job than you, Laurie. It’s like your greatest passions colliding!”

  It really is. Cake and travel.

  The travel aspect is my actual line of expertise. Before I met Krista, I was one of those all-but-extinct breeds: a travel agent. (RIP Lunn Poly, Marble Arch.) She’s a former magazine journalist and together we launched a girlie travel-planning website called Va-Va-Vacation!, custom-designing itineraries and offering bonus features such as “What I Packed versus What I Actually Wore” and the popular “Man of the World” eye candy section.

  We both firmly believe that life is too short and travel too expensive to waste a single coffee-stop in a strip-lit chain when you could be basking in a secret courtyard with a waiter who’s going to slip you a complimentary macaroon. I’m even picky about which airports I schedule a stopover in, because a cool bar with an innovative menu and a docking station at every table beats the congealed orange chicken and plastic forks at Panda Express every time.

  I remember Krista saying that if her magazine hadn’t just cut their travel section in favor of running more weight-loss stories, she would have written a column with all our tried-and-tested tips. I said perhaps she should start her own blog. She said she’d love to create an online travel magazine and she knew a designer who could make it really eye-popping, but she couldn’t figure out how to earn a living from it. Which is when we decided to combine our skills.

  We’ve done some pretty fun themes to our custom itineraries over the years—dance-themed, family tree, a Starbucks-free coffee tour of Seattle; I even created an entire schedule from Ryan Gosling movie locations for one superfan. (And who can blame her fixation?)

  I think one of the reasons the setup works so well is that we have clearly defined roles: I’m mostly in charge of logistics and wangling the discounts that give us a competitive edge. (I began with my personal travel contacts—“Go on, Yiorgos, give us an extra twenty percent off and we’ll give you the best October occupancy the Elounda Blue has ever had!”—and still today we favor privately owned boutique properties over the big chains.) Danielle the designer holds down the fort in London, where Va-Va-Vacation! was founded, and she does all the beach resort reports (even rating the flirtiness of the local bartenders), whereas Krista, our main writer, travels all over—Tahiti, Costa Rica, Argentina . . . She’s currently based in Quebec in Canada—she went there to research their epic Winter Carnival and in between ice-skating and snow-sculpting she fell madly in love with a husky-eyed dogsledder named Jacques. (The guy has a French accent, 112 canine children and can seemingly summon the Northern Lights at will, so she really didn’t stand a chance.)

  Around the same time, I got the opportunity to relocate from Maida Vale to Manhattan, and oddly that has worked out really well for our friendship since we are now only a ninety-minute flight apart, as opposed to eight-plus hours had either of us stayed in Lo
ndon.

  Not that anything could have persuaded me to miss out on a chance to live in New York; I have been coming here every couple of months for years, on a mission to keep our Va-Va-Vacation! city guide current and comprehensive. I may not have Krista’s pro writing skills, but I pride myself on knowing (and loving) the Big Apple pips, core and all.

  Which is why Pamela Lambert-Leigh has come to me. Well, technically her agent set up the meeting. And I’m not the only “travel professional” she is meeting with today. I have rivals. Which is why I am so ultra-keen to prove that no one loves cake as much as me.

  “So have you made your final selection for the Cheesecake Challenge?” Krista wants to know.

  That’s our big test—each of us has been charged with presenting Pamela with The Ultimate New York Cheesecake Experience. The winner will get the job. But we won’t know exactly what that job entails unless we are the winner. All the more reason to be the best.

  I’ve been really torn over my choice. Junior’s gets the popular vote and has all the right credentials: founded in 1950, now with a hub in Times Square offering at least twenty flavors (including Sugar-Free Low Carb!) but the design is a bit orange lino diner and it would mean subjecting her to the tourist crush, so I’m not sure it would be a good fit.

  I was fleetingly considering taking Pamela over to Brooklyn for a Moonstruck moment but the Cammareri Brothers bakery has since closed and its affiliate F. Monteleone (a bijoux box of old-school treats) has seating as limited as Pamela’s time.

  So that narrowed it down to two . . .

  “Remember Veniero’s Pasticceria in the East Village?” I prompt Krista. “The one where we took a snap under the vintage neon sign?”

  “Est 1894! It’s up on my board here!” she cheers, recalling the ceilings of pressed copper and stained glass. (Personally I was most struck by the never-ending parade of cannolis.)

  I had it in my head to wow Pamela with both their traditional New York Cheesecake and the crumblier, less sweet, Sicilian version, which is made using ricotta and looks a bit like a soufflé nestled in a deep-dish pie-crust.