Chapter 17
Everyone had an opinion on the imminent arrival of Garden Warehouse. Unsurprisingly, most of the business owners were worried, but some could see a plus side to having a big store so close to home.
‘It will be nice to have somewhere nearby to go for a mooch on a rainy day,’ said Dad, cheerily, rubbing his hands together, until I glared at him.
‘I’ve been to the one in Derby,’ Doreen admitted. ‘Alan bought me a lovely solar-powered light-up gnome for my birthday.’
‘Which is reason enough for me never to set foot in the place,’ Juliet muttered.
‘What always worries me about these chains,’ Biddy fretted, brushing dog hair off her crocheted tunic, ‘is who looks after the pets when the shops are closed? All my animals come home with me.’
Except the rats and chicks in the freezer, presumably, I thought.
‘Fearnley’s was a bit pricey,’ whispered the vicar when he came in for a toasted teacake and then blushed for being disloyal.
‘Expertise comes at a price,’ said Nonna, glaring at him. ‘Like Jesus.’
‘Right,’ said the vicar, looking baffled.
‘I’m with you, Vic,’ said Barry. ‘I want something cheap and cheerful along my back wall. Does anyone know when they’re opening?’
We didn’t have long to wait to find out; the following Monday, every person in the village woke to find that a leaflet had been pushed through their door (including all the shops, which we agreed was a bit below the belt) advertising the reopening of the garden centre in a week’s time, and job vacancies for part-time staff.
I invited every one of the businesses, plus Stella Derry representing the Women’s Institute, to a meeting to discuss tactics at eight o’clock that night in the café.
Mum was the first to arrive at half past seven. She tapped on the door and let herself in.
‘Only me!’
I looked up from setting up the conservatory for our meeting and felt quite underdressed in my jeans and hoodie. She was wearing a soft jersey dress and boots and her wavy hair framed her face, which was free of make-up except for a slash of nudey-colour lipstick.
‘You look fantastic,’ I said, lifting my cheek up for a kiss.
‘Ditto,’ she said, taking my chin in her hand and scrutinizing my face. ‘I think this new job suits you. And Nonna seems to be taking to retirement very easily. You were right about her and Stanley; they do seem to really care for each other. It’s so nice to see her with a male companion. It’s a first for me.’
She shook her head incredulously as she helped me push two tables together to make one long one.
‘Gosh, yes, of course,’ I said with a pang of guilt for not thinking of it sooner. ‘And you’re all right about it?’
‘Absolutely,’ said Mum fervently. ‘It’s not as though I knew my father. And you know how frugal Nonna has always been with details. Lorenzo worked in the lemon groves in Naples, both young when they fell in love, killed in an accident when I was only a baby. And that’s it. All I know.’
I nodded. ‘Poor Nonna. And poor you.’
‘I’d love to have met him, even talking about him with her would be something, but she claims it upsets her too much to rake up the memories,’ said Mum with a sad smile. ‘I’ve never even seen a photograph of him; Nonna said she was only able to bring the essentials from Italy, which mostly meant my baby stuff. There’s nothing to remember him by.’
‘Oh Mum, I can’t imagine that.’ I abandoned the cups and saucers I’d been laying out on the table and gave her a hug. ‘I’m so lucky to have you and Dad.’
A thought struck me with such force that I felt my lungs contract. What if there was something to remember him by? What about those black-and-white photographs in the envelope marked privato in the filing cabinet? Although I hadn’t had a chance to study them before Nonna had burst in on me and thrown me out of the café, I felt sure that there must be one of my grandfather in amongst them. And if that was the case, why had Nonna kept them from Mum?
My eyes flickered to the cupboard where the filing cabinet was; it wouldn’t hurt to sneak a quick look at that envelope while no one else was here, surely Mum deserved to see them?
I glanced out of the café windows; there was no one to be seen.
‘I can’t be sure,’ I said nervously, ‘but I think Nonna might be hiding some pictures in there.’
I nodded towards the cupboard. Mum followed my gaze and gasped.
‘Really? Why would she do that?’
‘No idea. Shall we take a look?’
Mum swallowed and nodded. The two of us crept over to the cupboard and I switched on the light. I’d had a clear-out of this cupboard, under Nonna’s watchful eye, and most of the clutter had gone. This time the path to the filing cabinet was clear. I stepped forward, feeling my stomach flutter with nerves.
‘You keep watch,’ I whispered.
She nodded. She looked even more anxious than me.
I took the key from the top shelf, unlocked the drawer and slowly opened it.
‘Can you see it?’ Mum hissed, looking over her shoulder.
It was empty. I shook my head, frowning. ‘It’s gone, perhaps—’
‘Rosie,’ she stammered, ‘quick, someone’s coming!’
Oh hell! The last thing I wanted was for Nonna to catch me prying again. My fingers fumbled as I shut the drawer and replaced the key just as I heard the ding of the bell and voices enter the café.
I grabbed the nearest thing to hand – a large glass jug – and darted out of the cupboard.
‘This will do,’ I said brightly, not catching Mum’s eye. ‘It will be perfect for water.’
‘I’ll give it a wash,’ said Mum, grabbing it from me.
It was Ken and Nonna who had arrived. Nonna’s eyes narrowed at seeing me appear from the cupboard, but luckily Stella Derry came in bursting with news of a snake escaping from the pet shop. Everyone was hanging on Stella’s every word wondering where the snake had gone. Everyone except me; I was more concerned with what had happened to that envelope.
By eight o’clock everyone had arrived and was tucking into the plates of sandwiches and cakes that Doreen had prepared.
‘We can’t compete with Garden Warehouse on price, so let’s focus on quality, quirkiness and our quaint village appeal,’ I said, aiming for a positive start to the meeting.
‘Well said,’ Ken agreed in his unhurried thick Derbyshire accent.
Ken had kindly offered to chair the meeting on the grounds that, as Garden Warehouse posed the least threat to his business, he was less likely to get overemotional. Although looking at him, slumped in his chair, with his striped hand-knitted tank top, flared jeans and open-toed sandals, it was hard to imagine him getting worked up about anything.
‘Before we begin,’ said Clementine, eyes blinking rapidly, ‘this is all my fault so may I apologize for this whole debacle?’
‘No you may not,’ said Nonna fiercely. ‘You victim of this same as anyone.’
Clementine’s chin wobbled. ‘But if we hadn’t made such mistakes—’
Lucas reached forward and took her hands in his. ‘Don’t dwell. The hardest times in life are the ones that make you stronger. My divorce lawyer told me that when he handed me his bill.’
‘Thank you,’ said Clementine uncertainly, sliding her hands out from his.
‘And I haven’t forgotten about my promise to help you sell your seedlings,’ I added. ‘Hopefully tonight’s meeting will kill two birds with one stone.’
‘Whatever we do, we need to do it soon,’ she said with a worried frown. ‘They’ll be getting ready to pot on. Leave them too long and they’ll outgrow their trays. Mr Beecher has already had a few problems with the mangetout.’
Adrian, the pub landlord, poured himself a glass of water from the jug on the table.
‘Listen, folks, I feel like the cuckoo in the nest here; I might actually benefit from having a Garden Warehouse down the road.’ He winced and ducked as if expecting us to all throw sausage rolls at him. ‘People will be stopping in for a quick drink or a pub lunch on a Sunday. So I’m sorry too. But I’m on the village’s side; anything you do, count me in.’
The pub and café had a symbiotic relationship: they only offered lunch on Sundays when we were closed and, of course, we didn’t open in the evenings. They did do coffee and tea all day long, but quite frankly, you couldn’t tell which was which, so we didn’t worry about it.
‘Thanks, Adrian, but nobody need apologize,’ I reiterated. ‘We are all on the same side. We can’t stop Garden Warehouse, but what we can do is put up a united front and make sure we preserve our villageyness. Garden Warehouse is going to put us on the map whether we like it or not. It’s up to us to make sure that people don’t overlook our businesses for their cut-price offerings.’
‘Found it!’ Biddy bounded in, red-faced, and chose an empty chair next to Stella, resting her handbag under the table. ‘Little blighter had snuck into my bag.’
Stella clutched at her throat. ‘I presume it’s not in there any more?’
‘Oh Stella,’ Biddy laughed, helping herself to a sandwich. ‘You are funny.’
Mum and I exchanged looks; Stella didn’t look like she was finding it very funny at all.
Ken coughed to call the meeting to order.
‘I’ll probably get more customers too,’ he admitted. ‘Not that I want ’em. I like my Mini Mart as it is: steady trade and no surprises. I don’t want to be running out of stuff all of a sudden and have to start restocking shelves every five minutes.’
I wasn’t sure Ken’s wife would necessarily agree with that sentiment; she was in here yesterday looking at holiday brochures with her sister and I overheard her say that if only Ken would pull his socks up they could afford Benidorm instead of Blackpool again for the fifth year on the trot.
Everyone started talking at once then about how Garden Warehouse was going to ruin everything: Lucas mithering that he’d lost his best card supplier, Nina complaining about the inferior quality of their cut flowers, Stella declaring that none of their cakes would be freshly baked and Biddy saying that she couldn’t move for extra-large rabbit hutches and Garden Warehouse only sold hutches that were too small to swing a cat in.
Ken banged a spoon against his mug.
‘The thing is,’ he began, ‘we all have to move with the times. It happened to me years ago. Once upon a time people came to Ken’s Mini Mart for a week’s worth of shopping. Now I see home-delivery vans driving into the village on a daily basis and people getting off the bus staggering under the weight of supermarket carrier bags.’
Adrian, Mum and Stella shifted in their chairs awkwardly.
‘So they pop in for the one thing they’ve forgotten. And that’s just the way it is. So look for your niche.’ He sat back and folded his arms. ‘That’s what works for me. In my case, I carry the everyday essentials. For all of you, it will be different.’
I smiled to myself. Ken’s definition of essentials must be huge; his catchphrase was ‘I’ve got one of those somewhere’, and he’d start burrowing into the back of shelves and invariably find what you were looking for. He stocked everything from, well, just everything …
‘Good long-term advice,’ I said. ‘We specialize. Focus on making our businesses stand out. Food for thought, everyone. In the short term, we need action now. This week. They’ll be planning a big PR campaign to reopen the garden centre with a bang. I suggest that we get in there first and hold a Barnaby Spring Fair this weekend.’
‘A Spring Fair!’ Biddy clapped her hands and there were interested murmurs that I took to be a positive response.
‘My granddaughter,’ Nonna beamed round the room. ‘Such a clever girl. Went to university.’
‘They know, Mamma,’ whispered Mum, patting Nonna’s hand.
Mum and I smiled at each other, both pleased to see Nonna in a better mood. Stanley had gone away to visit his daughter and she’d been fractious and grumpy ever since. His daughter lived, unsurprisingly, in Bristol …
‘If we all join together,’ I continued, ‘the Spring Fair will be able to offer a lot of what Garden Warehouse can but with the added bonus of being set around our lovely village green. It won’t stop them running their own opening event but if we go first, people will have already spent their money with us.’
‘But we don’t have any plants,’ said Nina.
‘We have five thousand bedding plants, including flowers, fruit and vegetables, and that’s what most people will be buying at the moment, isn’t that right, Clementine?’
She nodded. ‘I could set up a little stall.’
‘Stalls. Plural,’ I said. ‘And perhaps not run by you. I thought the Women’s Institute might be able to help there?’
‘Oh yes!’ said Mum and Stella together.
There was a moment of awkward silence; on the whole Mum was coping well with not running every committee in the village, but sometimes she forgot she’d abdicated her roles to focus on her home life.
‘Sorry,’ said Mum, going pink. ‘Go ahead, Stella.’
‘We’d love to be involved,’ said Stella. ‘I mean, usually we’d run a cake stall but—’
‘Cakes are rather our domain,’ I pointed out.
‘Jam and chutney?’ she asked hopefully. ‘A sort of fruit and vegetables “before and after”?’
We all agreed that would work well. Mum suggested setting up some games for the children on the green too and Lucas came up with the idea of a teddy bears’ picnic. I found myself wondering whether Noah had got any teddy bears or would he bring one of his dinosaurs instead …
‘And what about me?’ Clementine frowned, looking put out.
‘I’ve got other plans for you.’
I outlined my idea to make Clementine’s plant sale the central focus of the Spring Fair, covering the village green with marquees, and to make Clementine our resident gardening expert both on the day and in the local press. I thought she might be resistant to that, but on the contrary, she loved the idea.
We chatted then about spring-themed promotions, giveaways, little competitions and Adrian suggested that, weather permitting, he could set up a mini-beer festival on the village green too.
Biddy raised her hand. ‘And how will we attract visitors?’
‘Leave that to me,’ I said, tapping my nose. ‘But in the meantime, I want you all to set up a Twitter account and get as many people to follow you as you can in the next forty-eight hours.’
‘Are we nearly done?’ asked Adrian, checking his watch. ‘Only we’ve got the meat raffle in the pub in ten minutes.’
I nodded at Ken and he brought the meeting to a close. Nonna, Mum and I cleared up between us and a few minutes later, the café was neat and tidy and ready for tomorrow.
‘Who wants a lift home?’ said Mum, rummaging through her bag for her car keys.
‘Actually, Nonna,’ I said, slipping my hand through her arm, ‘I thought you and I might walk back to your cottage. If that’s all right with you?’
Nonna narrowed her eyes. ‘Why, what you want?’
‘Information,’ I said, leading her to the door, ‘about Bristol.’
Nonna tutted. ‘Nothing interesting about Bristol.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ I said, jerking my head out into the blustery night. ‘Let’s go.’
It was too blustery to chat much on the short walk through the village to Nonna’s cottage, so we kept our heads down and concentrated on getting there as quickly as her seventy-five-year-old legs could manage.
I breathed in the familiar smell of Nonna’s home as she unlocked the old oak door and ushered me in. The aroma reminded me of the almond biscuits she’d baked for us when we were little and took me straight back to my childhood.
‘Coffee?’ she asked, taking off her headscarf and shoving it in her coat pocket. Apart from a few strands at the front, her hair was still in its neat bun.
‘And biscuits please,’ I said, grimacing as I ran my fingers through my own knotty bob.
Nonna led the way through to the kitchen. I’d always loved this cottage. It had been the village bakery a hundred or so years ago. There was a room at the back which used to house the old ovens, a tiny door in the side through which flour deliveries would have been made, and – my favourite feature – a trapdoor under Nonna’s bed, for lowering supplies to the ground floor.
I sat at the table, covered as ever with a plastic cloth, and watched as Nonna spooned coffee into an ancient coffee pot and sat it to boil on the hob. There was a pile of post in one corner and it reminded me of the missing envelope from the café. It must be here in the cottage somewhere. I reached a finger out to the pile and surreptitiously lifted up the edge of one or two, trying to find that thick Manila one.
‘It’s lovely to have company, especially as Stanley is not here,’ said Nonna.
She gave me such a big smile that I felt instantly guilty about snooping. Right, no more. I reached for the biscuit tin instead.
‘So Stanley’s gone to visit his daughter?’ I said, shaking some biscuits on to a plate. She’d got some almond ones. Hurray. ‘That was a bit sudden, wasn’t it?’
One minute he was contentedly doing his crossword, the next he was off to book a train to the south-west.
‘He suddenly decide he should let his family know.’ She took her glasses off and polished them on a tea towel and sighed. ‘About me.’
Not much bothered Maria Carloni, but tonight she looked fearful and worried.
‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ I said encouragingly. ‘I think he’s being gentlemanly and respectful.’
‘His Winnie only died five years ago. What if they think I some floozy after his money, eh?’
She sat down heavily at the table, knees wide as usual, her thick tan tights wrinkled at the ankle, and folded her arms over her bosom. Floozy was not the word I’d use. Feisty maybe or full of life …
‘Then they’d be wrong because you’ve got your own money.’ I picked the almond out of a biscuit and crunched on it. ‘And what if they’re glad he’s got some company again? Which is far more likely.’
The coffee pot started to boil. Nonna began to get up but I beat her to it and placed the pot on the table.
‘And what he going to tell them, eh? I been to dinner with old lady, I hold her hand, I buy her flowers? There is nothing to tell. I think he make big thing out of nothing.’
‘Maybe he’s planning a big thing,’ I suggested.
‘Yeah, well.’ She banged cups on to the table and gestured for me to get some milk from the fridge. ‘That’s another problem.’
‘Oh?’ I poured the coffee and passed her the sugar and waited for her to elaborate.
She dumped two large spoonfuls into hers, stirred it roughly and slurped.
‘He wants to …’ Nonna paused and then mumbled into her cup, ‘… sleep over.’
I choked on my coffee. Nothing in my previous thirty-two years on the planet had prepared me for a conversation like this.
‘It is a long time since I been with a man. I have admirers in my day, but I always stop before it gets, you know …’
‘Yes I know,’ I said hurriedly, not wanting too much information. ‘But why? Why stop?’
She cast her eyes down to the table and to my horror I saw a tear drip on to the plastic cloth.
‘Oh Nonna, I didn’t mean to upset you.’
She shook her head and wiped her eyes with a handkerchief. ‘Don’t be sorry. I need you to hear this. I stop because last time it end badly. Since then I scared to try again.’
I frowned. Was she talking about Lorenzo? She couldn’t blame herself for his accident, surely?
‘But Stanley is adorable,’ I pointed out. ‘What can go wrong?’
‘I know that. I silly old woman. Don’t make my mistakes, cara. Always afraid to share your heart and show other people how much you care.’
‘I’m not afraid,’ I said defensively.
Nonna raised an eyebrow.
I felt my cheeks colour, wondering how much she noticed about the lack of men in my life.
‘So what are you going to do?’ I asked. ‘About Stanley?’
‘Do you think I should let him stay over?’ She blinked at me.
‘Um.’ I swallowed, feeling unqualified for the job of relationship advisor. ‘Yes.’
She mulled that over for a moment.
‘OK, but if he snores,’ she jerked her thumb, ‘I open that trapdoor under my bed and get rid of him.’
‘I like your style,’ I said with a grin.
‘And you?’ She peered at me over the top of her glasses. ‘What you going to do about Gabe? He is adorable too.’
I blinked at her and felt my face heat up. ‘Pardon?’
‘Come on, Rosanna, I might be old, but I not blind.’
‘He’s just arrived in the village,’ I said, flustered, ‘and I’m so busy with the café and then there’s Noah to consider …’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ Nonna reached for the limoncello bottle and poured us both a shot. ‘If I can take risk at my age, so can you. Be brave, cara.’
Was she right? I wondered, as I walked home minutes later, hunched up against the cold wind. Should I take the risk? Maybe if Nonna could take a chance with Stanley at her age, so could I.
Back home, I made a mug of tea, created the best social media plan of my career and then fell into bed and had the loveliest dream about a man with soft grey eyes and a smile that warmed my heart like summer sun …