Chapter 4
4
Five minutes later the bell above the door chimed and Karl the postman appeared. Lovely man, like me born and bred in Driftwood Cove and always cheerful with a beaming smile when he was out and about.
‘Just a few for you today, Nancy.’ He handed over four letters, a couple of them in brown envelopes and both looked quite official. I thanked him but I wasn’t in the mood to open them. Yesterday my latest bank statement had arrived and it was quite depressing to see all the withdrawals and hardly any credits. I knew that you had to speculate to accumulate but I was getting worried at the way business had slowed now the summer trade had died down. I’d cut back on everything I could and made sure that my minimum payments were as minimal as they could be. Luckily, living with Mum helped a great deal. It was lovely that she didn’t mind me being back home.
When I left school, armed with my excellent exam results, I’d been lucky enough to be accepted by Exeter University where I studied art history, and I lived in a shared flat, but the costs of living away from home had way exceeded what we ever thought they would, so when I finished my education there, I moved back closer to home and found a brilliant teacher training college in Truro. Mum and Dad had been amazing but it had nearly crippled them. The guilt I felt at hating my job ate away at me and I became quite depressed having to get up and go to a job that I didn’t want to go to. The money that had been gifted to both Mum and Dad and me, in Aunty Theresa’s will, had more than replaced the money that I’d been paying them back, and meant I could take a step back and evaluate what was important to me. And now I was standing here in my very own bookshop.
I shoved the brown envelopes under the counter and tried to forget about them as I removed my paints and a bag full of scallop shells, which were still a bit whiffy but they’d be fine once they’d been painted and varnished.
As I looked out of the window to the bay beyond, I saw that Dennis was meandering round the harbour, heading in the direction of the shop, and my heart fell a little.
I thought back to Dennis’s words about wanting to be friends at my open day. It had been a lovely event, people popping in and out all day long. Sadly, that only lasted that weekend; a week later most of the holidaymakers had gone home and it was back to normal here in Driftwood Bay, and I was left wondering whether opening a bookshop in a small seaside town had been a good idea after all.
When I originally bumped into Dennis in the harbour for the very first time, there had been a little frisson between us. The fact that he was a bit of a dish hadn’t passed me by, and if truth be told, there was a little bit of me that thought there may be something more than friendship between us, but instead of that spark igniting, the more I got to know him the more I grew less fond of him. Being a business consultant, big in London apparently, he was very matter of fact and to the point. He certainly didn’t fawn over my shop. He couldn’t help himself passing on opinion after opinion, even when it wasn’t asked for or required. And everything about him was about money: his car, his clothes, his demeanour. He just exuded wealth.
Couldn’t be more opposite to me in fact. Yes, I knew that Aunty Theresa’s money was the catalyst for me opening the shop, but as long as I could get by that would be enough for me. I didn’t want to be rich. What I wanted to be was happy.
The next time I looked up, the harbour was as quiet as could be. Not a soul around. The turquoise sea before me twinkled in the early morning sunlight and I sighed, hoping that I would never forget to be grateful for where I lived and where my business had been born. I laid out my acrylic paints before me and removed a seashell from my handbag, and for the next hour or so, lost myself in creating a gorgeous beach scene with a little red and white lighthouse in the distance inside the shell.
I’d been so immersed in what I was doing that the bell above the door made me jump.
‘Hey, Nancy.’
‘Dennis.’ I nodded, and then moved my head from side to side to stretch. Stooping over the counter painting really did make my shoulders ache.
After he’d told me that I lived with my head in the clouds and that this fluffy little world that I lived in wasn’t reality, I still wasn’t completely over it. I’m not sure he was even aware of how his frankness came across as offensive but my sensitive little soul had been really hurt. I couldn’t really bring myself to be overly nice to him right now, but he smiled as if he’d forgotten the way he’d treated me last time. He probably had.
‘Nan asked me to pop in and see whether the book she’d ordered had come in yet?’
‘It has yes. It’s just under the counter. I’m just going to go and wash my hands if you don’t mind hanging on a minute or two. I’ve got paint everywhere.’
I nipped to the small bathroom at the back of the shop and had a quick wee before washing my hands, wiping them down my apron as I walked back into the main shop. Dennis stood with the book his nan had ordered in one hand and I was horrified to see that he had a pile of brown envelopes in the other. We both yelled at the same time.
‘What the hell are you doing, Dennis…?’
‘What the hell is going on, Nancy…’