42
Perfectly Poised
The day the newspaper article came out, I went out early to buy a copy – and narrowly missed bumping into Dr Collins, who came out of the shop and got into her car as I walked along the street. She drove off the other way, though, so I don’t think she saw me.
On the way back to the teashop I felt exactly like a snail without its shell, though I don’t suppose many people had read the paper yet, or if they had, were interested.
Would my birth mother see it? And if she did, how would she feel? I hoped she’d be happy that I was searching for her and eager to meet me, but there was a current of pessimism running through me (probably caught from Nile) that suggested an alternative scenario.
I was so engrossed in these thoughts that I only came back to reality when I caught the sound of a loud altercation as I turned into Doorknocker’s Row – a shrill female voice and the more familiar deep tones of Nile’s.
I stopped dead at the sight of Nile and an enormously fat woman engaged in what looked like a heated argument outside The Fat Rascal.
It was unmistakably Mrs Muswell, but either she’d used an old photograph on the internet, or she’d put on a lot of weight recently, because her beady dark eyes were sunk deep into her doughy face.
‘I’m not listening to any more of your cheek!’ she told Nile.
‘You’re not going anywhere before you’ve paid me for those antiques of mine you sold.’
Mrs M opened her eyes as wide as they would go – not far – and said innocently, ‘I told you, I just I forgot to put that cheque through your door before I left.’
‘Yes, just like you forgot to answer the letter I sent you through your solicitor.’
‘I’ve been moving around,’ she said evasively. ‘I haven’t caught up with my mail yet.’
‘I reported what happened to the police,’ he told her grimly.
‘There wasn’t any call to do that – it was just an oversight!’ she said indignantly. ‘And what’s more, I didn’t sell everything and I can’t be held responsible for any that were left.’
‘Alice – the woman you sold the café to – found them and has given them back to me. And here she is,’ he added pleasantly.
Mrs M whirled around as fast as her bulk would let her and stared at me.
‘I sent you a letter through your solicitor, too,’ I said. ‘It concerned the small matter of every item of any value that was listed on the sales agreement when I bought the café having been removed before my arrival.’
I think she’d have tried to flee at that moment, if I hadn’t been standing in front of the only exit, but instead she rallied and brazened it out.
‘Now, that’s exactly what I’d come to see you about, only you were out,’ she said.
‘I caught her peering through the café window,’ Nile explained.
‘I came over from Spain yesterday and I’m staying with friends – the Vosses at the guesthouse – and Jim told me you’d got hold of the wrong end of the stick about the things I’d got rid of, so I thought I’d just pop round and explain.’
‘Right, explain away,’ I told her. ‘And we’d better go inside while you do it,’ I added, unlocking the door and ushering her in.
Nile brought up the rear – he obviously wasn’t letting her go anywhere until he’d got his money.
She came in reluctantly and then stood looking round in surprise. ‘You wouldn’t think it was the same place! The Vosses told me about your grand plans and that you stand to make a mint out of this upmarket teashop of yours, so you don’t seem to have done too badly out of our bargain. Had the place at a snip, you did.’
‘I haven’t opened yet, so who is to say how it will go?’ I said. ‘And when I arrived, it looked like an entirely different place from the one in the photographs you showed me before I bought it, too.’
‘They were the only ones I had and I didn’t tell you it still looked like that.’
‘Perhaps not, but you did sign an agreement stating what equipment, furniture and fittings were included in the sale, and practically none of them were there.’
‘Ah, that’s where the misunderstanding came in,’ she said mendaciously. ‘I thought that was just a list of what was there at the time, but of course I threw out the old things when I started renovating. If you remember, I explained I’d only put the café on the market to see if anyone wanted to buy it and do it up themselves, before I spent any money on it.’
She had said something like that, but still, she knew she’d cheated me.
‘I left you all that lovely willow-pattern china too,’ she said, managing to sound aggrieved.
‘You can’t give that modern stuff away, these days,’ Nile put in. ‘It’s worthless.’
‘So you say,’ Mrs M told him rudely, then swung round to face me again. ‘I don’t think you’ve got a leg to stand on, dearie. And while I’m here, I’ll take away that old tea set of my mother’s that was in the cupboard with the willow pattern. I can’t think how I came to forget it.’
‘Nice try, but no deal,’ I said. ‘I’ve already told Jim Voss that I’m keeping it – and I know it wasn’t your mother’s, because Nell told me it was left in a will to the people who owned the Copper Kettle café, and she has photographs to prove it.’
Mrs M’s doughy face was suffused with a flush of fury. ‘You’re a liar, just making that up because you know it’s valuable!’
‘You know very well that you’re the liar, and I’m going to sell the tea set to make up for some of the equipment you cheated me out of.’
‘And if you pay me now for those antiques you sold, I won’t have you arrested for theft,’ Nile put in, and Mrs M made a gobbling noise.
‘Like you could, when it was all a little misunderstanding!’
‘Want to try me?’ he offered.
‘There’s no call to be like that about it. I’ll write you a cheque when I get back to the guesthouse.’
‘You’ll give it to me in cash before I let you out of my sight,’ he insisted, and told her how much she owed him.
The flush faded into a shocked pallor. ‘It can’t be that much!’
‘It certainly is – and think yourself lucky I deducted your commission.’
Since he was still standing in front of the door, after a moment she gave in, pulled a fat wallet out of her handbag and peeled off some high-denomination notes from a fat wad. ‘I’ve only got euros,’ she said sulkily.
‘I’ll take anything except Monopoly money,’ he said, and counted it when she thrust it at him.
‘That looks about right,’ he said at last.
‘Then perhaps you’d like to move over and let me out?’ she suggested. ‘I’ve never heard so many accusations – and me only coming here out of the kindness of my heart to explain things to Alice when she got hold of the wrong end of the stick.’
‘It was the right end,’ I said. ‘Goodbye, Mrs Muswell. I hope we don’t meet again.’
She made a noise curiously like a kettle coming to the boil and flounced out. From the teashop window we watched her blunder off in a blind fury down the alleyway and, we hoped, out of our lives.
Nile turned to me. ‘Funnily enough, when I caught her looking in your window I was on my way to tell you that the Sèvres set was a very rare design and the last one to go up for auction fetched nearly eight thousand pounds.’
Then we looked at each other and burst out laughing.
The newspaper did circulate, for I had my first telephone booking after lunch – Eleri, who, like Sheila, insisted on paying rather than coming as my guest.
‘I only hope Henry approves of my baking,’ I said nervously, and she laughed and said she’d forbid him to say anything that wasn’t totally complimentary about it.
George left a message turning down the invitation I’d sent him, but adding that any time I was passing and wanted to drop off a cake, I’d be welcome. I think he really meant the cake would be welcome, not me.
And I must get into the habit of saying ‘Fat Rascal Teashop’ when answering the downstairs phone and not just announcing ‘Fat Rascal!’ which was open to misinterpretation.
The moment all my cupboards, fridges and freezers were full right up, I felt as happy as an autumn squirrel with an overflowing nut hoard.
I’d spent an entire afternoon making fruitcakes, too, which were wrapped in greaseproof and stored in tins, because they keep so well.
Then later that same day, when I checked for telephone bookings again, I found a second message from George Godet, who had completely changed his mind and was coming to the opening tea after all! I decided I’d put him at the same table as the newspaper reporter, so he could give him the uncut version of how his father had found me.
On the Friday, Lola drove herself up in a new, smart little van with ‘Dolly and Lola’s Perfectly Pickled and Preserved Company’ emblazoned up the side.
She’d brought the first consignment of preserves, as well as a modest stock to be displayed for sale in the glass cabinet on the counter. Tilda had now polished it to an eye-dazzling sparkle, along with the mirror behind.
Since she’d got the whole place so clean that you could eat off any surface, there wasn’t much to challenge her until we opened, but if she steam-cleaned the loos any more with that hand-held device she’d persuaded me we needed, I was convinced they’d shrink.
Nile suggested that we meet up with Bel and Thom at the nearby pub that evening for dinner, which was enjoyable, though Lola said afterwards, when we got back to the flat, ‘I like your Nile, but what with Thom and Bel obviously pairing off too, I felt a bit of a gooseberry!’
‘What do you mean, too? He’s not my Nile, so you needn’t feel like a gooseberry on my account.’
‘Oh, come off it,’ she said. ‘It’s time you both stopped pussyfooting around and got together. He’s in love with you and you’re in love with him – what’s preventing you getting together?’
‘Do you really think he’s in love with me?’ I asked. ‘I think he’s attracted to me, so perhaps he thinks he is … but it wouldn’t last. I told you, he’s a commitment-phobe.’
‘And you’re only going to commit if you get the gold-plated guaranteed happy-ever-after,’ she said with a grin. ‘It’s a stand-off!’
‘It’s got even more complicated lately,’ I said, then gave her the full, unabridged version of the Zelda and Robbie weekend, including what Nile had said about our ‘serious relationship’.
‘I don’t know where I am with him,’ I finished. ‘Or even where I want to be.’
‘He’s probably as confused as you are; but it does show him in a nice light, that although he’s attracted to you, he’s been taking things slowly because he thinks you need time to get over Dan.’
‘Or so he says. And anyway, I explained ages ago that although I still thought about Dan a lot, I was ready to move on.’
‘Men can never take a hint,’ she said.
‘Lola!’ I exclaimed, and she grinned.
Then she insisted on going across to Small and Perfect to say goodbye to Nile next morning, before setting off home.
‘He says he’ll be glad when your head isn’t exclusively occupied by bad fairies and teashops,’ she reported, when she returned. ‘So now we know what he’s waiting for.’
‘If he’s waiting for anything … and I suppose I have become a bit of a bore on both counts lately,’ I said, ‘though once the tearoom has opened Tilda will run it and I can take a back seat.’
‘That’s what I told him, but I warned him you’d always been away with the fairies and he’d just have to get used to it.’
‘I do keep wondering how the characters from the book I’ve just finished are getting on now,’ I admitted. ‘I’m sure there’s a sequel gathering itself together somewhere in my head.’
‘Let’s hope this one has a bit more happy-ever-after,’ she said, but I told her not to get her hopes up.
When I’d waved her off, I went back indoors. Although I was going out to Oldstone for Sunday lunch next day, I had too much to do this weekend to stay over. There was now less than four days to go till we opened!
But after I’d marzipaned one of the fruitcakes, so I could ice it later, I made the mistake of having a scroll down through my email inbox to see if anything needed answering urgently – and there was one from my editor saying Senga had forwarded the manuscript of my new book and she loved it!
The next bit wasn’t quite so good: the edits for it would be with me in a couple of weeks.
I could see the pace was going to be relentless … and shortly, the telephone messages booking tables began to be relentless, too. I don’t know if it was the draw of my having been the abandoned baby of the moors, or the lure of a teashop promising to feature the rudest waitresses in Yorkshire, but by afternoon, the phone was ringing off the hook with bookings, and there were more by email, too.
I’d begun to check for email hourly anyway, just in case my birth mother chose to communicate that way, but there was nothing from her then or later.
I knew it was still early days, yet with every hour that passed, the faint hope of her contacting me died a little.
Finally, it was the evening before The Fat Rascal opened and we were as ready as we’d ever be.
Tilda, Nell and Daisy had come in that afternoon and laid the tables ready with snowy white cloths and napkins and gleaming cutlery. The float was in the till, the reserved signs put out on every table, and a healthy number of bookings for the rest of the week written into the ledger behind the counter, next to the phone extension.
The beautiful blue and white jug in the bow window was now full of flowers presented to me earlier by Nile, along with a bottle of champagne, and when the others had finally gone home, we retired to my flat with fish and chips and swilled them down with glasses of bubbly … as you do.
‘Have you heard anything from Robbie?’ Nile asked afterwards as he bagged up the greasy wrappers, ready to put in the bin.
‘No – but then, I haven’t really had time to think about him since he went back to London with Zelda. I’ve been way too busy. Have you heard from Zelda?’
‘Well, that’s just the thing,’ he said, a glint of something that looked very like amusement in his grey eyes. ‘She’d gone quiet again and wasn’t picking up her phone, so I checked her Facebook status earlier and … she says she’s in a relationship.’
I stared at him. ‘You can’t possibly mean …?’
He nodded. ‘Yes – it’s now the Robbie and Zelda Show. I finally got her on the phone and she said Robbie was everything she’d ever looked for in a man.’
‘If she was looking for someone big, good-natured and stupid, then she’s certainly found her match – but I have to say I didn’t see that one coming.’
‘Nor me: it seems a very unlikely pairing.’ He looked at me more seriously. ‘Do you mind?’
‘What, about Robbie? No, of course not!’ I said. ‘I hope it works out well for both of them.’
‘That’s how I feel. And now she wants us to sell the antiques stall and she’s putting her houseboat on the market, because they’re going back to Australia. They’re talking about setting up some kind of white-water rafting adventure centre, or something like that. It’s so un-Zelda, I think she must have had a personality transplant.’
‘Well, I hope she’s soon got a little Joey in her pouch, too,’ I said generously, then suddenly yawned.
‘I feel boneless with exhaustion – but excited at the same time!’ I said.
‘I think you need an early night, ready for your big day,’ Nile agreed, ‘so I’d better leave you to it – but just tell me if you need my help with anything in the morning and I’ll be right across.’
Then he smiled, cupped my face in his hands and kissed me lingeringly on the lips, before going off downstairs to let himself out. Despite my best intentions, there may have been a bit of reciprocal lip action going on there. I was starting to think my attempts at resistance were futile.
Despite my exhaustion, I didn’t get to bed immediately because both Lola and Edie rang to wish me every success the next day.
I wished they’d been able to come for the opening, but at least I’d have Nile and the rest of the Giddingses to support me. And even if my natural mother never came forward to claim me, I had a new family, for the Giddingses seemed to have absorbed me into the clan by some kind of osmosis.
As I finally drifted off to sleep, I felt as if I was at the top of a helter-skelter, about to get on my mat and slide off into an unknown future.