Belle - Lesley Pearse [222]
Garth stepped behind the bar and rang the bell for silence.
‘This is the day we’ve all been waiting for,’ he said, his voice booming out around the bar. ‘It’s time for celebration with our Belle home safe and sound. I only really know her through Mog and Jimmy, but I’m looking forward to getting to know her as family. Before I give the order for drinks on the house for everyone, I just want to offer very special thanks to Noah. Without his help and tenacity Belle would have been lost to us for ever.
‘He isn’t family, he hadn’t even met Belle before she was snatched. But Mog asked him for his help, and he gave it willingly. For two years he’s been our rock, comforting Mog, supporting Jimmy, advising, writing articles, badgering the police and God knows what else. We consider him family now too. And he’s brought our Belle home. So let’s give him a Seven Dials salute that can be heard right back in France.’
The cheering went on and on, so loud that Belle and Mog put their hands over their ears. Noah looked embarrassed, but Jimmy and Garth grabbed him, lifted him up on to their shoulders and joined in the cheering.
For Belle it was both heaven and hell. While it was wonderful to see her return creating such joy, and for Noah to have the appreciation he deserved, what she really wanted was to be alone with Mog, and Jimmy too, to sit down comfortably and talk. Not to be trapped in a smoky bar with a whole lot of strangers making such a din.
Noah was put down, Garth went behind the bar to hand out drinks, and suddenly Jimmy was there, putting one arm around Mog, the other round Belle.
‘Go on through the back,’ he said. ‘You’ve got two years of catching up to do.’
Mog did exactly what Belle had imagined all the way home. She made a pot of tea. The noise from the bar was only marginally quieter in the kitchen but she appeared not to notice it.
‘It feels so strange,’ she said as she got a fruit cake out of a tin and put it on a plate. ‘Since I’ve known you were coming home I rehearsed everything I would say, thought of all the questions I wanted to ask, but now you’re here I can’t think of anything to say.’
‘It’s the same for me,’ Belle admitted. ‘There’s not even the familiar things around from the old house to prompt me.’
‘Don’t you like it?’ Mog sounded so anxious Belle couldn’t help but laugh.
‘It’s much, much nicer,’ she said. She was speaking the truth. The old kitchen had been the only home she’d known, but it had been too big to be cosy, and it had always felt gloomy because it was a semi-basement. It was now dusk outside, but there was still light coming through the large window by the sink, and it looked as if the lemon-coloured walls had only recently been painted. There were yellow checked curtains at the window and a tablecloth to match. By the stove was a rag rug and two easy chairs with patchwork cushions. The dresser was full of pretty china, and even the shelves that held rows of glass jars containing everything from flour to brown sugar and rice had a little scalloped edging that had been painted yellow too.
It was clearly all Mog’s work. Belle remembered she was always titivating things back in the old place for she was a born homemaker, but perhaps because Annie was reluctant to spend money on anywhere which wasn’t seen by her ‘gentlemen’, there could only be small improvements.
‘It was a hell hole when I first came here,’ Mog said. ‘Men living alone are such pigs!’
‘So tell me about the fire and even more importantly about Garth. Noah tells me you are getting married.’
With that the ice was broken, and Mog talked animatedly about coming here to live, cleaning up the place and finally falling for Garth and his proposal of marriage.
‘We’re two of a kind,’ she said with a loving smile that showed how happy she was with him. ‘Or maybe I should say that we were both only half a person until we met and became one. He isn’t the bad-tempered thug people used to claim, and I’ve found that I’m not the doormat I used to be. I never thought I’d ever find love, I just assumed it wasn