The Little Teashop of Lost and Found by Ashley, Trisha (25)

25

Flounced and Frilled

When I went back downstairs Nile had beaten me to it and, since he was his usual self in all ways, I told myself I must have imagined that moment in the kitchen … though I’ve no idea why I should, since I wasn’t sure if I even liked him most of the time, however attracted to him I was. And he was so not my type.

But it was as if I could still feel the brief pressure of his warm lips against my skin and the delicious shiver that had run down my spine, so when my eyes caught his cool grey gaze I looked away quickly, blushing.

All the family were there for dinner and later, after Casper had been put to bed, Nile, Bel and I went to Teddy and Geeta’s apartment and watched Bride and Prejudice, popped corn and, under Geeta’s direction, attempted some Bollywood dance moves. Teddy flatly refused, but Nile proved better at it than either Bel or I, though his expression of grave concentration reduced us to near-hysterical giggles.

He had many hidden depths and goodness knew what was swimming round in them.

After breakfast on Sunday morning most of the family trooped off to inspect the bedroom that was next on Sheila’s list of renovation projects and begin removing the furniture, but I was excused so I could finish off my edits in the peace of the library, and Teddy, because he had work to do in the Pondlife office.

When I got back to my flat after lunch – or, to be more accurate, after I’d snoozed off the sleepiness caused by eating a huge amount of roast chicken with all the trimmings followed by sticky toffee pudding and custard – I rang Lola and described the book launch party, my scary agent, and rather more than I meant to about how Nile looked in his shirt and breeches.

‘When I’m up for my flying visit on Thursday, I hope I get to meet this paragon of manly beauty,’ she said, with a laugh in her voice.

‘He’s not beautiful, but he’s certainly classically handsome,’ I said. ‘I don’t know if he’ll be here or not, because he goes off on buying trips all the time or … just off. And he has a partner in London called Zelda – he seems to stay there a lot.’

‘Partner as in personal or business?’

‘He says just business. Sheila, his adoptive mum, told me they’ve been friends since they were at university together, but I overheard a phone conversation between them and I have a suspicion there might be a bit more to it.’

‘Pity if so, because I’d like to see you settled with a nice man at last,’ she said regretfully.

‘I don’t think Nile is the settling kind, even if he was seriously attracted to me, which I’m certain he isn’t. And I’m not looking for Mr Right – I’ve got enough on my plate at the moment. If I get lonely, I’ll get a dog.’

‘That’s not quite the same thing,’ she said mildly. ‘But I realize how big a project the teashop is, especially now you have to juggle it with writing books for your scary-sounding agent.’

‘I’m enjoying it all – well, except for the dust, drilling and hammering – but I lie awake sometimes worrying that the tearoom won’t be a success and I’ll have to sell up again.’

‘I’m sure it will be and I’m looking forward to seeing it – and you. It’s been ages.’

‘I’ve organized you a bed,’ I told her. ‘Sheila’s loaned me a small brass one that was in the attic and Nile’s offered to dismantle it and drop it off here when he comes back this afternoon. I’ll order a mattress express delivery.’

‘That’s very kind of him, but I hope you aren’t going to too much trouble when I’m only coming up for one night.’

‘Only one night this time, but I hope you’ll come again and I meant to get the guest room sorted out ready anyway, so it’s just spurred me on a bit.’

‘Well, actually you might see me more often than you expect, if you decide to use our jams and relishes in your café. I’m bringing you some samples. But there’s no pressure to take them, because even if you don’t I can still claim this trip as a business expense to the accountant.’

‘That’s a great idea! I don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself,’ I enthused. ‘And I must find an accountant too, before things get in a tangle. I’m keeping my accounts and filing all the receipts for the teashop, of course, but it’s going to be quite complicated.’

‘Yes, it’s worth it,’ she agreed. ‘Perhaps Nile has one he can recommend?’

‘He might. I’ll ask him later,’ I said. ‘By the way, Sheila’s invited us out to Oldstone Farm for dinner on Thursday night – is that OK? I said I’d run it past you first.’

‘Of course and it’s very kind of her. I do adore old houses and they sound a lovely family.’

‘I’ll tell her yes, then, and we can have a wander round Haworth before we go out there. I’ll take the day off.’ Then I heard a noise from below and told her, ‘Either I have a very noisy burglar in the kitchen, or Nile’s carrying bits of bed in.’

‘He has a key?’

‘Yes, I gave him one ages ago, because he’s always in and out, though he hasn’t given me a key to his place in return. Perhaps he thinks I’ll sneak in and fondle his curios.’

‘Or he’s got a Bluebeard’s chamber in his flat?’

‘That’s a nice thought,’ I said, grinning, and then told her I’d better go and help Nile get the bits of bed upstairs.

I hoped he’d put it back together again for me too, but he seemed abstracted and left once he’d stacked it all in the small bedroom, saying he had calls to make, so I thought I’d get Jack to do it instead. Or perhaps it was time to augment my selection of screwdrivers and have a go myself.

I emailed the edits off early next morning, hoping the editor could make sense of them, because I certainly couldn’t. All those changes in different colours were terribly confusing.

Still, they were gone and after that there was nothing to stop me finishing my new book … apart from the teashop, as I discovered all too soon.

For although Jack was site-managing the project between his other jobs elsewhere, I was constantly being summoned to make decisions, give an opinion, or simply admire the glossy white paintwork on the kitchen cupboard doors, or the installation of a gleaming new toilet in one of the two customer cloakroom cubicles. I could see every day would be like that until it was finished!

The almost silent youth, Ross, had sanded and painted all the plate racks and shelves now and they were reattached to the café walls. I don’t think he enjoyed doing it, but he told me he was looking forward to sanding the café floor, once he’d worked his way all over it, hammering down any nails that were protruding.

What with the noise, the interruptions and organizing all the other things that needed to be filled in, ordered, sourced, registered or applied for before the teashop could be opened, it was dawning on me that most of my writing time would be at night, when I was tired. But since Senga was scarier than anything I’d ever thought up in my stories, I’d get on with it.

And once I was really into a novel, of course, I lost myself. The working title might be When Beauty Goes Bad, but in my head it was Bad-Ass Beauty – because she was.

Nile seemed to keep late nights too, because I didn’t draw my curtains until I went to bed and whenever I looked up from my desk the lights were on behind the blind of his flat and occasionally a tall, dark shape moved across it. I found this strangely comforting.

The previous day I’d remembered the white crockery that Tilda had stashed away in the cupboard, and quickly posted details of it on a free recycling website, hoping someone would take it off my hands.

I only had one taker, whose user name was the unpromising ‘MrMajestic’, but at least he wanted the lot and, when I gave my address, said he’d be right round to collect it and he didn’t need directions, so I assumed he was local.

With hindsight I should have asked his real name, because had I known it was Jim Voss, proprietor of the ghastly Gondal Guesthouse, I’d have said the china had already gone.

He arrived the back way, which showed a familiarity with the former owner he’d previously denied, and I think he might have shown a certain familiarity with me, too, except that when he walked right past me into the kitchen uninvited, he came face to face with Nell.

She’d dropped by with a piece of her own lardy cake for me to try, which she was just releasing from its greaseproof wrappings, and she regarded him with acute disfavour.

‘It’s you then, Jimmy Voss, is it?’ she said. ‘I might have known you’d be after something for nothing, for a little snirp you were as a boy and you haven’t changed that much since.’

‘Ha, ha!’ he laughed unconvincingly. ‘You will have your little joke, Nell.’

‘Miss Capstick to you, flower,’ she corrected him firmly.

‘The china’s all in those boxes in the back room you just walked past,’ I said pointedly.

‘Right,’ he said, glancing round at the chaos in the kitchen with beady-eyed inquisitiveness. ‘You’re certainly spending a lot of money on renovating the place. I suppose you’re buying new crockery too?’

‘There’s no need, when all the Misses Spencer’s lovely willow-pattern china, from when they had the Copper Kettle, was still sitting there in the cupboard,’ Nell said.

‘Oh? There was a lot of good china hidden in a cupboard?’ he asked quickly.

‘It wasn’t hidden, it was just under the basement stairs – and it’s about the only thing Mrs M didn’t clear out of t’ place, cheating poor Alice here out of what she’d paid for,’ Nell said.

‘Oh, well – I know nothing about all that,’ he said hastily.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything from Mrs Muswell?’ I asked. ‘I’d still like to talk to her – and so would Nile Giddings, seeing as she sold some antiques of his that she was displaying on the café walls, but didn’t give him the money.’

‘I’m sure he must be mistaken about that,’ Jim Voss said quickly.

‘No he isn’t, because either Tilda or me was there when she sold the things. It was when she was over here getting the place ready to close up early and Nile was away. She knocked them down at bargain prices and pocketed the cash.’

Jim Voss gave her a very unloving look. ‘But I’m certain she would have kept the money separately, so she could pass it on to Mr Giddings. And I’m afraid I still don’t have her current contact details, but then, now she’s sold the café, she has no need to stay with us, does she?’ He gave me an insincere smile, then looked at his watch, gave a stage start, and said he must be getting on and he’d fetch the boy, who he’d left in his car at the back, to give him a hand with the boxes.

‘Like I said,’ Nell remarked, once they’d finally gone, ‘a little snirp!’

When Nile texted late in the afternoon to say he’d come round later and put the spare bed together, I didn’t protest in the least.

To be honest, I’d had so much else to do that it had gone right out of my head and anyway, there’s independence … and then there’s sitting back and letting someone else do the tricky stuff.

It took him about fifteen minutes to put the brass bed together – I expect he was ace with Lego as a boy. Then he unwrapped the mattress, which had arrived earlier, and laid it down on top.

‘You look as if you’d like to fall on it and sleep for a year,’ he said, looking at me in amusement.

‘So would you, if you’d been running up and down a flight of stairs all day, while trying to work, answer the phone and chase up deliveries,’ I snapped.

‘I spent a quiet day going through sales catalogues and ringing contacts and clients, but that is my work,’ he said mildly. ‘I thought Jack was doing everything and the boy – what’s his name?’

‘Ross. Jack is organizing everything, but he seems to want me to go downstairs about every fifteen minutes – and then I had an unwelcome visitor earlier.’ I told him about Jim Voss and the way Nell had seen him off.

Then I yawned. ‘I’m too tired to do any writing tonight, that’s for sure.’

My legs suddenly felt a bit wobbly and I sat down on the edge of the pristine white mattress.

‘I think you’ve been overdoing it – and what did you have for lunch?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think I had any – though I ate a bit of Nell’s lardy cake this morning and I think that might be still clinging to my ribs.’

‘A piece of cake isn’t enough. Come on, get your coat and we’ll go round to a good pub I know and have a bit of dinner.’

I was too tired to resist and the pub was quiet, dark and warm, with good, plain food. I felt better once I’d got some steak and kidney pie and chips inside me.

‘You’ve got some colour back,’ Nile said approvingly, when I’d cleared my plate and, declining dessert, asked for coffee. ‘You’re doing so much already that you mustn’t let Sheila rope you in to helping out at Oldstone at the weekends too,’ he added. ‘She seems to think we’re all going to spend a jolly Saturday scraping off wallpaper in the bedroom opposite yours, and I, for one, will be out most of that day at an auction.’

‘She did ask me for the weekend again and I don’t mind pitching in with whatever wants doing. It’s fun planning out the pottery café with Bel, too.’

‘I hadn’t realized, until Bel told me, just how many health, safety and food hygiene rules even a small café has to comply with,’ he said. ‘I only hope they can recoup the cost.’

‘It’s quite a large initial outlay, when you’re creating something from scratch,’ I agreed, ‘but I’m sure it will bring more visitors to the pottery.’

‘I’m not sure about the waffle house aspect – I thought it was just going to be coffee and cake.’

‘Oh, I think that’s a stroke of genius!’ I enthused. ‘When tourists spot the sign they’ll be turning off in droves – and once they see Bel’s lovely work, especially the jewellery, they’ll buy that, too.’

‘I hope you’re right.’

‘I wonder if Henry Godet will be cross when he finds out there’s a rival for his Hikers’ Café only a few miles away?’ I said.

‘I shouldn’t think it would affect his business, because the Hikers’ Café has been there a long time catering for walkers, and now tourists are heading for it, because of the Brontë connection.’

‘Any tourists heading there from the Haworth direction will have to pass the Norwegian waffle house sign first,’ I pointed out.

‘Better not mention that when we go there for dinner, then,’ he said, to my surprise.

‘Are we going there for dinner?’ I asked, staring at him.

‘I told Henry we would and it’s already got a reputation for good food so I’d like to try it. Wouldn’t you like to go?’

‘Well … yes, I suppose it would be nice,’ I agreed, wondering exactly what kind of date this was – a friendly date, a bossy older brother date … or a date date?

‘Is this a date?’ I blurted, then felt myself going pink.

‘I suppose it’s a getting-to-know-each-other-better date – if you’ve no objection,’ he said, raising one dark eyebrow.

This didn’t really answer my question, but when he added casually, ‘I’ll book it for next week then and let you know when they can fit us in,’ I decided there was nothing romantic about the invitation.

This was just as well, given how the pretty barmaid had flirted with him while he was ordering our food and the way he’d smiled at the two leggy blonde backpackers in the corner, who’d been eyeing him more hungrily than their scampi and chips.

I relaxed a bit. In fact, I was by now feeling so relaxed and sleepy from warmth and food that even the surprisingly good coffee couldn’t wake me up.

‘It’s another strange coincidence that Henry should be related to the farmer who found me on the moors, isn’t it? My whole life is a series of strange coincidences,’ I said.

‘It’s not so strange when you think where you were found, because it’s all Godet sheep-farming land round there.’

‘I’ll go and talk to Joe Godet soon. He must be getting on a bit by now. His son doesn’t sound very pleasant, does he?’

‘I could always come and protect you, if you’re nervous,’ Nile offered.

‘I’m big enough to protect myself,’ I said with dignity. ‘I just need a little time to think things through first and then I’ll track him down … and Emily Rhymer.’

‘I can understand why you’d like to talk to them and hear the story of how they found you first-hand,’ he said, ‘but if you’re hoping they’ll reveal some clue to your identity, then I think you’ll be in for a disappointment.’

‘No … no, of course I don’t really think that,’ I said. ‘But they must have been on the scene soon after I was left, or I wouldn’t have survived, so they may have seen something.’

‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up. And the offer still stands: if I’m not away somewhere, then I’ll come with you,’ he said, which was very kind of him, though actually I thought it was something I’d prefer to do alone.

I sighed. ‘I do accept I’m unlikely to find my birth mother, it’s just an outside chance – though I could try Bel’s suggestion and contact the local paper to see if they’d like to do an article about me. How I was found on the moors and now have come back to open my own teashop in Haworth – that kind of thing. It would be good publicity even if she didn’t see it and come forward, but she might.’

‘I’d advise against it, but that’s only my opinion. I’d hate you to find her and then … be hurt because she doesn’t want anything to do with you.’

‘One final rejection,’ I agreed. ‘But perhaps then I’d feel I’d done everything I could and I’d be ready to move on with my life.’

‘I suppose there is that.’ His face had that brooding, dark, inward-looking expression again.

‘Did you never want to try to trace your real father, or any other relatives?’ I asked him curiously.

‘Dad – Paul – asked me that once. He was keen on family history research and he’d just taken a DNA test through one of the genealogy websites to see if he could link up with any other relatives on the database. He suggested I try it, too.’

‘I didn’t even know you could do that! Did you have a go?’

‘No, because I already knew my father was a Greek waiter. My mum told me once that he’d gone back to Greece soon after I was born, saying he’d send for her when he’d told his parents, but that was the last she’d heard of him.’

‘That’s so sad,’ I said.

‘I suppose it is, but I’m sure family pressure was brought to bear, once he got home.’

‘You tried to find him, didn’t you?’ I guessed, and saw by his expression that I was right.

‘Yes. I managed to trace the village he came from and went there … but he’d died a few years before in an accident. I’ve seen a photograph, so I know I look very much like him and I could see his family knew about me, but they denied it because they seemed to have the idea I’d come to claim my inheritance, such as it was.’

‘I’m so sorry, it must have been horrible for you,’ I said gently.

‘I was more curious than anything and it did show me the background my father had come from,’ he said, shrugging. ‘I didn’t tell Sheila and Paul what I’d done because they were my real parents and I didn’t want to hurt their feelings in any way.’

‘I won’t mention it then,’ I assured him. ‘And I can see now why you don’t think searching for my birth mother is a good idea – though not all experiences will be the same. If I go public with the story and she doesn’t come forward, then that’s it, I really will let it drop.’

‘Then I suppose you’d better go for it,’ he said.

‘Did your dad’s research throw up anything interesting about the Giddingses?’ I asked. ‘I didn’t even know you could trace your family history through DNA.’

‘You can if there are any matches on the database, and he found several. It’s a very old family, with lots of branches and several eccentric characters … like Teddy.’

‘Teddy’s lovely and not eccentric at all!’ I protested.

‘Wait till you’ve seen the scale of the model train layout he’s got in one of the attics, or caught him wandering round the house in his replica Victorian stationmaster’s uniform,’ he said with a grin.

I myself like to chill out in a long, voluminous, Victorian-style, flounced and frilled white cotton dressing gown, which I call Miss Havisham …

I decided not to mention it.

Now that Nile had opened up to me a bit about his childhood, I could see that in many ways we’d been shaped by the same forces: abandonment, redeeming love and the search for who we really were. I felt I understood him better and that despite the way we seemed constantly to strike sparks off one another, deep down, we had a real connection.