Chapter 23
‘Hannah, c’mon, we’ve got to go! And would you fetch my laptop for me while you’re at it?’
‘Could you not have taken yourself up the stairs, Grace, instead of standing there bellowing?’ Kitty Kelly bobbed out from the cleaning press under the stairs, broom in hand, startling Grace, who jumped. She closed the door behind her only for it to creep open and muttered about broken latches and how telling Liam to fix it was akin to talking to a brick wall.
‘Nan, don’t be jumping out at me like so. My heart’s pounding, like.’
Kitty Kelly didn’t apologise as she bustled past, and Grace caught her mumbling something about how if she hadn’t been standing there shrieking like a fishwife in the first place, she’d not have got a fright.
Everybody was on edge this morning, despite Nan’s best efforts with breakfast, Grace thought, frowning as she disappeared into the kitchen. Dad’s mood had well and truly upset the family applecart, with things not being as they should around the Kelly breakfast table confirmed when he hadn’t even tried to steal an extra bacon rasher when their mam’s back was turned.
Grace had one foot on the bottom step, ready to go and drag Hannah out of their room when she heard a door bang on the landing, followed by her sister’s heavy Doc Marten stomp. She moved back into the kitchen, eyeing the pub door through which Nan must have disappeared.
‘I told Mam it was only me who slept in the bed the last time I was here and that she was wasting water washing them, but you know what she’s like. Clean sheets are next to Godliness,’ Hannah said as she appeared.
Grace grinned. At least Mam hadn’t gone off script, although Hannah had. ‘It’s knickers she says that about, not sheets.’
‘She’ll have a lot more to say about knickers when she finds that mystery pair Napoleon dragged in,’ Hannah pointed out as she thrust Grace’s laptop case at her.
‘Well, we won’t be here when she does.’ She hooked the case’s strap over her shoulder.
‘What do you need that for anyway?’ Hannah bent to do up her lace that had come undone.
‘I don’t know. Just in case I need it, like.’ Grace wasn’t about to say it made her feel business-like having it with her. And business-like equated to professional, and as a professional, she’d not be having impure thoughts about her colleague. Never mind she was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. She’d pretend it was casual Friday or something. She made her mind up to concentrate on the festival and not the way Chris filled out his shirt and jeans. Or how intense the blue of his eyes was.
‘C’mon.’ Grace slipped the sunglasses perched on her head down over her eyes and opened the back door, and they stepped out into the sunshine.
The Kelly girls were outside the Bus Stop corner shop with five minutes to spare before Chris was due to collect them. Hannah was reading a headline from the cover of the latest shiny magazine on the rack outside the shop aloud – ‘“Kate’s Summer Style Secrets” – I mean, who cares?’ – when Grace nudged her. She was about to suggest her sister duck inside the shop and hide, because Mrs Tattersall, with her trolley bag trundling behind her, was barrelling down the road with surprising speed for someone of her dotage. What their dad had said about her being on the warpath where the beehives down the back of the garden were concerned sprang to mind, but it was too late. She was nearly upon them.
‘I’ve a bone to be picking with you, Hannah Kelly,’ the village bite announced, screeching to a halt in front of them. She was resplendent in her summer floral housecoat with her customary headscarf knotted under her chin to protect the weekly wash and set Nessie Doyle did for her.
Grace, not wanting a showdown on Main Street between her sister and Mrs Tattersall, decided the best course of action was to step in and kill the disagreeable old woman with kindness. ‘Hello there, Mrs Tattersall,’ she said, beaming. ‘Sure, you’re looking well. Isn’t she looking well, Hannah?’
‘Very well, Mrs Tattersall. That housecoat’s fetching on you,’ Hannah replied, catching on to her sister’s tactics.
‘’Tis a glorious day, and aren’t you a smart woman wearing your scarf like so to keep the sun off your head.’ Grace thought perhaps she’d gone a tad too far as the older woman’s mouth twitched and her eyes narrowed, giving her the look of one of those cowboys from a Hollywood Western about to do a quick draw.
‘You’ll not be winning me over with flattery, Grace Kelly.’
Then Mrs Tattersall turned her lemony looks on Hannah. ‘I believe it’s you, young Hannah, I’ve to thank for having to take my life into my hands each time I’m trying to enjoy my Sunday tipple in the sunshine out the back of the Shamrock there. Not to mention the poor mister with his bad knees having to leg it inside the pub when one of your bees took a liking to him.’
‘They don’t want to sting you, Mrs Tattersall. Sure, they’ll die if they do,’ Hannah stated placatingly, but it fell on deaf ears.
‘It’s a word with the health and safety people I’ll be after having, so best you start thinking about finding a new home for those hives,’ Mrs Tattersall snipped.
Grace cut Hannah off before she could begin delivering a lecture about how the bees played a vital role in the production of the food that passed the poor ‘mister’s’ lips by stepping in front of her and on her foot. There was no point riling the disgruntled old woman further. ‘Hannah will take that on board, won’t you, Hannah?’
Hannah yelped as Grace pressed down on her sister’s foot with the heel of her trainer. So much for her Docs being steel tipped.
At that moment, Mr Kenny puttered out of the corner shop on his mobility scooter with a newspaper and a pint of milk in his basket. His protest flag hung forlornly behind him, in need of a stiff breeze to set it flying. Spying Mrs Tattersall, horror crossed his kindly old face, and he hit reverse, but in his haste to escape his nemesis, he knocked over the magazine rack Hannah had been perusing and managed to get himself caught on it. Poor Kate’s summer style secrets were a crumpled mess by the time he’d finished driving back and forth over the fallen magazines, trying to get the rack out from under his wheels.
A holy to-do ensued with the Bus Stop’s owner, Mrs Gallagher, running out of the shop, her arms waving, thinking the shop was being vandalised by the hooligans Mrs Tattersall was always on about. Meanwhile, Mrs Tattersall was making loud noises about Mr Kenny being a menace to society on that scooter of his, which only resulting in more revving forward and reversing.
‘Janey Mack, they’re mad, the lot of them!’ Grace cried to Hannah as Chris’s car pulled up. Pointing to the back, she bossed, ‘Quick, get in. You’re in the back, Hannah.’ Then she slipped into the passenger seat, closed the door on the street scene and said, ‘You’re our knight in shining armour, so you are, Chris. Good timing. Get us out of here, would you.’