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"So the kitchen all works but don't worry, until you are settled you are on the roster for the meals on wheels. Every afternoon your tea will be delivered in a hot box, so you don't have to cook until you are finished unpacking and ready to. If you like it, you can just stay on the list. Then you just do breakfast and lunch as you like. A lot of the village people are on the roster. Some are too old to cook, not confident enough or simply too busy with their lives. We have a big kitchen and staff that cook the meals, then deliver them all over the village. Over two hundred a day, can you imagine? We have a lot of people at the studio, they get lunch too. Some also get lunch outside the studio but I know you can cook and will want to make your own. So … explore!"

Evan asked Ton softly "How much does it cost?"

"Nothing. The village cares for itself" Ton replied with a smile "We have money ya know. Also … the studio makes money and puts it back into the village and we all work together. As long as you want to live here, you can. Taddy sez there is a job going at the library for a helper if one of you wants it, another at my cake shop for a server a few hours a day. It means you can always be here when Freddie gets home from school and make your own money too. Once a week there is a free bus to the city too, you can go shopping for the day and come home in the afternoon. There is an information pack with everything in it and you can ask me again because this is a lot to remember all at once. Taddy is the only one that can do that ... remembers everything at once. His memory is like that."

"We could stay forever?"

"Why not? I am" Ton shrugged with a nod of his head "This is our village, full of our family. We are all family here. Blood does not make a family, love does. Come on, wanna meet Carlos? He's from Mexico and speaks with a funny accent. Has a mean moustache too … I wish I could grow a moustache but my face looks like the dog shed on it when I try."

Evan laughed as he took Ton's hand, as another likeminded cat loving, cake infused, village imbibed person might, walking dowe the main street totally forgetting that he is shy.

Everyone got to say hello gently and quietly, some even making him smile as his wife eagerly ran to each set of outstretched arms, her heart remembering such affection as a child, even as her husband never really knew it.

Ton was opening their eyes and their hearts as he helped them become 'real' instead of what they were scared to be.

They became villagers.

All special here.