Chapter 18
Three weeks after opening, the Marzipan Campervan Café has become something I never dreamed it could be.
Word has spread not just among walkers, but throughout the local villages, and I’m serving everyone from seasoned hikers on long round trips and families on days out to elderly couples who come on the gentle meander up from the village and stop here just to sit beside the river and enjoy tea and cake.
What started as a couple of chairs and tables in the car park has expanded to a lot more chairs and tables in the car park.
Reece has liberated more furniture from the pub’s storage and we’ve created a makeshift outdoor seating area.
On busy days like today, every space is occupied, and there’s a cheerful buzz of conversation that makes my heart feel like it’s belting out showtunes.
‘Dolly dear!’ Lettie calls over from her usual spot near the river’s edge. ‘Could we have another plate of those lovely petticoat tails?’
‘Coming right up,’ I call while a man comes to collect tea refills for his entire family who are occupying another one of the tables.
I arrange the shortbread triangles on a plate and take them across. Lettie, Madge and Wilma have become regular customers, arriving most afternoons for ‘quality control meetings’. Today they’re conducting an extensive evaluation of my shortbread.
‘Perfectly crumbly.’ Madge takes another one and announces her verdict loudly enough for everyone to hear. ‘Just the right amount of butter and not too sweet.’
‘So many commercial biscuits are far too sweet these days,’ Wilma grouches, but she takes another one too. Lettie has taken it upon herself to source only the best local ingredients for me in the shop, and they must be good choices if the resulting bakes meet even Wilma’s approval.
The van is free of customers for a moment, so I stop to chat, because I don’t want them to pull me up on poor customer service, and because I genuinely enjoy talking to them and seeing the friendship they share.
‘You look run off your feet.’ Lettie takes the plate out of my hands. ‘You should get that nice young builder to help out more often.’
They do, of course, know that Reece has been helping me out far too often, and this is just another way of wheedling for info about the pub.
‘Busiest day yet,’ I answer. ‘I need to start making double the amount every morning before the summer holidays arrive next week and bring even more tourists along with them.’
‘That’s wonderful, lass!’ Madge reaches over and pats my hand. ‘It’s marvellous to see so many people here again. A little community hub. People chatting, laughing, sharing tables. It’s exactly what the Kingfisher Arms used to be like on our quiz nights.’
‘Except with wine,’ Wilma adds. Clearly her approval isn’t long-lasting. ‘And less chance of getting wet if it decides to rain.’
It’s been a dry June and July so far and I’ve yet to find out how bad weather impacts on the number of walkers passing by, and I’m trying not to think about how sustainable this business will become in the winter months.
‘Those were such special evenings,’ Lettie continues wistfully. ‘The whole village all in one place, plus visitors from miles around. The atmosphere was electric. The friendly competition… The team spirit…’
‘The YouTube comments,’ Wilma chimes in. ‘People from all over the world playing along at home. It felt like we were part of something important, something that mattered as much to all of those people as it did to us.’
Bless them. Those 225 followers really did mean a lot to this village.
I glance up at the pub, where Reece says he’s working but it’s been so suspiciously quiet that I think he’s just waiting for it to get busier so he’s got an excuse to come down and help me.
Ever since he told me the truth about Zach and his reasons for buying the pub, I’ve noticed how he reacts when the ladies mention their quiz nights – like he wants the ground to swallow him up.
I know he’s struggling with guilt about it, and every one of their many, many mentions only serves to make it worse. ‘What made them so special?’
‘Oh, absolutely everything.’ Lettie’s eyes light up. ‘The questions were always good. A real challenge that made you feel clever for getting the answers right. And the format was just right – teams of four, multiple rounds on varied topics, plenty of time to chat between questions.’
‘And the prizes,’ Madge adds. ‘Nothing fancy, but everyone went home with something, even if it was just a tin of biscuits or a bottle of wine.’
‘I won a packet of Rich Tea once, it was quite the insult,’ Wilma says. ‘But the setting was perfect. That beautiful old room with the stone fireplace and the beamed ceiling. We’d sit beside the crackling fire in winter and take the quiz outside to the garden in summer.’
‘You’d have loved the team names, Dolly dear,’ Lettie continues. ‘Let’s see, we had The Thimblenouth Thinkers, Let’s Get Quizzical, The Red Hot Quizzy Peppers, Never Gonna Quiz You Up, and we went by The Agatha Quizties, didn’t we, ladies?’
Oh God, I was trying so hard to suppress my laughter, but The Agatha Quizties is my undoing and I let out such a howl that Wilma looks quite alarmed.
‘I wish I’d been here for that.’ I try to recover my composure, but I mean it. I’ve never been to a pub quiz before, and they make it sound a lot more interesting than I imagined.
I excuse myself and run back to the campervan when a lady goes up to the window to ask if there’s any of the Bakewell tart she had last week.
There isn’t, but it gives me time to stand in the van and look out, watching the conversations happening at tables all around the car park, and thinking about community, connection and what Wilma just said about taking the quizzes outside in the summer…
And The Agatha Quizties. Some puns are too good to stay lost forever.
* * *
‘So, you own this big old building and you don’t know how to fix any of it?’
Usually Reece comes down to the campervan every evening, but it’s been over a week now since he told me the truth, and tonight, I’ve finally persuaded him to give me the grand tour and I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t.
I suddenly understand why he wants to spend as little time as possible in the Kingfisher Arms.
I’ve been in the kitchen and the old bar a few times, and lugged tables and chairs into a storage room at the back of the building, but the upstairs is a maze of small rooms and tiny landings and what was once the landlord’s private quarters.
‘Only as far as YouTube tutorials will get me.’
The whole place is a graveyard for overly ambitious renovation projects.
I can see places where Reece has started stripping wallpaper, only to discover the wall underneath is in worse condition than he expected, and everywhere I look, there’s half-scraped walls and exposed patches of plaster that look like they might crumble at any moment, and telltale piles of plasterwork on the floor that suggest some have done exactly that.
‘It could be worse.’ I’m trying to be diplomatic, even though I’m wondering how anyone with no experience of building work could even consider tackling such an enormous project single-handedly. I can only imagine how overwhelmed he’s been feeling.
Half the electrics upstairs don’t work, and I know he still hasn’t been able to get the water working beyond the ground floor, but if those two big problems were fixed, I can see how it was a family home for the previous owners once, and it could be again.
‘And my optimism has clearly rubbed off on you,’ he says with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. It’s easy to see how much this place is weighing on him, and letting me look around is a big step in admitting just how deeply he’s out of his depth.
He’s eager to get back downstairs where he’s made it liveable and less run-down, but I can’t resist the temptation to see exactly what he’s dealing with here.
I see the half-ceiling that I heard him pull down weeks ago, but there’s something inspiring about his efforts too.
New bathroom tiles stacked in a corner. New floorboards still in their polythene wrapping.
Proof of someone who refuses to give up, no matter what setbacks there are.
We stop at a window overlooking the car park where my yellow van sits gleaming in the evening sunlight.
‘What are you going to do with it?’ I ask gently, because it doesn’t seem like he can go on like this.
‘I don’t know.’ He sighs and leans his elbows on my shoulders and his chin on my hair as we look out of the window.
‘I bought it with the intention of converting it into a family home, and I’ve stuck with that plan, even though it’s not realistic any more.
It would be too big a house for one person, and it’s too big a job for me.
I’m just trying to repair it, fix the things that need fixing, and then… sell it on, I suppose.’
‘Is that what you want?’ I ask, because his tone makes it sound like it’s the last thing he wants.
‘I don’t know,’ he repeats.
‘Where would you go if you sold up?’ I can feel my heart rate quickening at the thought. I love it here, but it would be a really, really different place if Reece wasn’t here, and not in a good way. The thought of him leaving sets off a clenching feeling of panic inside me.