On the morning of Bottoms Up’s opening, Olive went with Veronica for their usual morning swim.
But neither of them ended up going in the water because of all the activity by the old café. Rather than no one being there, like they were used to, the new bar had a footfall never seen before at that time of day.
‘What are they up to?’ Veronica asked.
They’d set out the deckchairs so they had a perfect view of everything that was going on. It was handy that the café was at the point where the promenade curved towards them, giving them the ideal vantage point. From the looks of it, they’d taken receipt of some early-morning deliveries and were in the midst of ferrying them inside, and there was someone else scrubbing at the frontage where they’d taken all the posters off, leaving marks on the building.
‘Cleaning off those posters by the look of it. That’ll teach ‘em for putting up such scandalously made-up statements. Best bar, my arse!’ If Olive ever came face to face with the owner she’d teach them about manners.
‘Do we know who’s taking over?’ Veronica asked, sipping the hot chocolate they’d normally enjoy post-skinny-dip.
Olive shook her head. ‘Tony and Richard haven’t heard anything. It’s all a bit of a shock. I think I’m most upset about the fact we can’t get fish and chips there any more.’ It had been a regular treat for as long as Olive could remember to have a fish supper from the beach café. She was really rather upset to see it go and for the previous owners to have neither let them know nor say goodbye.
‘Maybe they’ll serve food as well? We might still be able to have some dinner from there to enjoy here.’
It was a possibility. They obviously had all the kitchen equipment in there unless they’d ripped it all out to make more room for the bar. ‘Look, they’re taking the bum off. Maybe the real sign will tell us if they do.’
At either end, two gents on ladders were climbing up to take the sign off. It reminded Olive of the night when it had originally been put up and they’d caught whoever it was doing it. Perhaps it had been these two guys, now doing the reverse.
Olive also noticed that, leaning against the building, was the new business sign ready to go up. If that stated they were the best bar in town, she might end up vandalising it before it got put in place.
‘Do you think we should go and take a look?’ Veronica suggested and Olive wondered if her friend was also able to read minds, adding to the spy theory.
There was a choice between Olive whizzing past on her Segway for a quick recce or them both wandering over and playing the dithering old ladies who just wanted to know what was going on.
‘Let’s walk over and pretend like we don’t know anything.’ Olive realised that if by any chance they’d seen her playing chase on the Segway, they’d soon know she was involved with the gang that chased them. If, indeed, they were the same people. If they weren’t, she was worrying unnecessarily.
Finishing off their hot chocolates, the two women headed over as inconspicuously as possible.
It was quite a hard process, remembering how to walk naturally when, really, it was for the purpose of snooping. Olive developed a walk not unlike the one she’d adopted when she’d been with Tony and had been attempting to appear like she belonged in the boys’ gang.
Apparently, spying on workmen who might also be vandals required Olive to have a swagger as well. She wasn’t entirely sure why, but once she’d started it was a hard thing to give up.
‘Why are you walking like that?’ Veronica asked, aware of the change in gait pattern.
‘Don’t even know. I just figured they wouldn’t beat us up or anything if we went with being two vulnerable old ladies.’
‘I thought we were two vulnerable old ladies? I didn’t think we needed to play-act the whole business?’
‘You can never be too careful.’ Olive knew it was ridiculous. She didn’t even know why she was trying to convince Veronica of the fact, but it was one of those things… once she was committed, she was committed, whether it was a good idea or not.
Sccccccrrraaaaaappppppppppppee.
Olive stopped her exaggerated limp to see what the noise was. At first she thought it was from the old café, but then the noise happened again and it was right next to her. ‘What are you doing?’
The noise was coming from Veronica. ‘Joining in,’ she said, as she scraped her shoe along the concrete of the promenade.
Olive continued, making sure her friend didn’t leave her behind. ‘Don’t we look stupid, both having a limp?’
‘I did make sure mine was on a different side to yours.’
‘Well, that makes it look completely normal then. We would have looked like total freaks if we’d matching limps.’
‘Stop it. I blame you for this.’ Veronica scraped her way through another step.
‘Well, we can’t stop, can we? They’ve looked in this direction now. We can’t start unlimping like some modern-day miracle has occurred. We’ll just have to carry on until we get there.’
‘And back,’ Veronica pointed out.
So, as if they were trying out to be extras in the cast of Walking Dead, Olive and Veronica continued the painfully slow limp along the prom to see if they could find anything out.
It turned out their very poor acting efforts weren’t really worth it at all. They found out very little by walking past the old café. The new sign held no information other than what they already knew. The two blokes putting it up had nothing to do with the new business – they were just sign writers doing their job. And because Olive had seen so little of the person responsible for the bottom sign, she had no clue as to whether either of these two guys had extended their sign skills to include craft-fiti.
‘We can walk the long way back,’ Olive said as soon as they were out of earshot of the two more-than-likely innocent gentleman.
‘But… oh.’ Veronica didn’t say any more, obviously realising, as Olive had, that the longer route meant they didn’t have to continue walking like idiots.
The wine bar seemed to have lots of activity going on within, but as the boarding was still up, they wouldn’t get to see more of how they’d changed the inside until later.
Once the pair were on the slope, out of view, they both started walking like normal.
‘Why on earth did we think that was a good idea?’ Veronica rubbed her side, having put out her own equilibrium.
‘I’m not sure it ever was a good idea. It did slow us down, though, to take a proper look at things.’
‘Did you see anything then?’
‘Not a sausage. Nothing more than what we already knew. What about you?’
Olive shook her head. For what had turned out to be a particularly tiring walk, they’d not really benefitted in terms of what they’d wanted to find out. At least it had kept them occupied and given them some exercise in the absence of their usual Tuesday-morning skinny-dip.
‘Drat.’ Veronica stopped in her tracks.
‘What’s the matter?’
Veronica nodded her head towards the road. ‘I guess we limp to the next bench until they’re gone.’
The two sign guys were walking along the path towards their van, so the mysterious limps were going to have to reappear.
Falling into the same walking pattern as before, Olive and Veronica slowly made their way to the next bench and plonked down with some relief.
‘They’ll be asking if we need wheelchairs to get us back if we’re not careful.’
‘Hopefully they won’t notice us.’
‘Yeah, cause there’s loads of other people about to distract them from the two old ladies with walking issues.’
Olive and Veronica cast their eyes to the view of the sea as the two blokes passed them again with more signs.
Once they’d gone, Olive peered back at their van, trying to work out whether the coast was finally clear and they could head back to Oakley West for breakfast without being seen by anyone who might think they had a limp. The van belonging to the sign guys was very obvious, what with it being covered with… signs. Its door was closed and there was nothing outside, so there was every hope they were done with going up and down, giving them a chance to escape.
‘Let’s go,’ Olive said, not wanting to hang about any longer.
Veronica started off, about to head along the cliff path that ran along the top of the promenade.
‘This way.’ Olive wanted to head along the path to the road. She had no real reason to other than there was a chance they might be able to see them from the café if they took that path.
The sign guys hadn’t been particularly careful with their parking. They’d obviously tried to make things as easy as possible by giving themselves as short a carrying distance as possible. In doing so, they’d stopped pedestrians from passing along the path as they usually would.
It was a good job their limps weren’t real, because if they had been, they might have struggled with having to walk along the grass and squeeze their way between two vans. There must have been lots of equipment to unload, ready for Bottoms Up’s opening, if there were this many vans.
It was as she was shuffling between the two vans so as to be able to cross the road that Olive noticed. The second van, which she’d barely paid attention to before, was a white transit. Paying more attention, she saw the license plate started with a C.
Of course, there were probably hundreds of vans that would meet that description. But was it such a long shot to think this was the one from the other night, when it was sitting outside the place the bum had been attached, and when the business was opening tonight.
Olive knew Richard would tell her not to jump to conclusions, but she was pretty certain if they found out who drove that van, they’d know who had carried out the craft-fiti attacks. And if that person was linked to Bottoms Up, they’d know for certain whether it was the kind of business that was prepared to play dirty.