Chapter 22
It would have been easy to spend the rest of the journey pleasurably daydreaming about the future, but there were practical
things to address. Jules wondered, with everything else that was going on, whether it was worth the time and energy pursuing
more information about Bridget. Surely it would make little difference to the value of the grimoire, and did it really matter
how much it was worth, with business going so much better? Although perhaps it would be a relief of sorts for Flo to know
more about what happened to her and why information around her death seemed so elusive.
When she got back to the shop, having said goodbye to Charlie at the station, Jules was perturbed to find the shop door wide
open to the street. Weirder still, the shop was in darkness, with no sign of Flo there or even in the office behind. Her heart
accelerating by the second, she called, hearing a faint reply coming from the flat upstairs.
“Aunt Flo!” she exclaimed, when she found her, sitting bolt upright in a chair, not reading, not having a cup of tea, just
sitting. She looked deathly pale. “What is it? What’s wrong?” She knelt in front of Flo and grabbed her hand. It was freezing
cold, despite the sunshine outside.
“Oh, darling,” said Flo, her mouth trembling, “I am so sorry, but I have made the most almighty mess of things. Will you ever forgive me?”
“You could never do anything I would need to forgive you for, but of course I will,” said Jules, her eyes filling with tears
at Flo’s distress. “Whatever it is, we can make things right. But first I am going to make you a cup of tea to warm you up.”
In the little kitchen, her mind whirling with all the disasters that might have occurred, Jules made them both a cup of tea
and also filled a hot water bottle for Flo to have on her lap.
Settling Flo with the water bottle, a blanket over her knees, and a steaming mug, Jules sat in front of her, in the little
window seat where she had spent so many hundreds of hours.
“So...?” she said.
Flo took a deep, steadying breath: “So I went to see our lovely solicitor, and he had got the paperwork out of the files for
me—the deeds and the lease for here.”
“And...?” said Jules into the silence.
“And it seems there is more to it than paying this ground rent thing... So, it appears—and this is something I failed to
understand, for which I feel an utter fool—the Montbeau family owns the ‘freehold.’” She said the unfamiliar word carefully.
“But the shop, this flat, it’s yours, surely?” said Jules. “It’s been in our family for hundreds of years, you said so yourself.
Since at least the time that Bridget Capelthorne was living here.”
“Ah, yes, so I was right about that, in a way,” agreed Flo. “We have owned the building for hundreds of years, but as of a hundred years ago, we no longer own the land it sits on. And now our lease is coming to
an end. It was basically a hundred-year-long permission to use the building, but the land is the Montbeaus’, and, well, in
just a couple of months, they will own the lot: the land, the building—everything.”
“No,” Jules gasped, her heart starting to pound. It couldn’t be... “But like you say, we’ve been paying rent. Surely, at worst, we can just keep doing that?”
“Ye-es,” said Flo, “but only if we set up a new hundred-year lease.”
“Okay, so...?” Jules could read, by Flo’s face, there was a “but.”
“But we have to buy a new lease from the Montbeaus. And they aren’t allowed to refuse us, providing we do it before the lease
expires at Christmas.”
“Okay, well, galling as that might be—having to give money to the Montbeaus—we’ll just have to do that.”
Jules sat back against the cushions and breathed a sigh of relief. She had to show Flo that everything would be all right.
At least business had been good, in response to all her extra marketing work. They could afford a couple of grand. That was
the kind of figure Flo had mentioned before. It was fine.
Then she looked back at Flo, and her heart sank. “How much do we have to pay for a new lease?” she asked.
Flo wrung her hands miserably. “A small fortune. It’s half the value of the building with a new lease, although we still won’t own it outright again. Buying out the freehold would cost even more. Essentially, now,
our stake is worth practically nothing.”
“So, half the value of the building. What would that be?” Jules’s heart was beginning to pound. This was bad. Real estate
in Portneath had quadrupled in value over recent years. It was a feverishly discussed issue, particularly among young people
wanting to buy.
“Well, we would need to involve a chartered surveyor to get a formal valuation, something we could start negotiations with,”
said Flo faintly, “but the shop, plus the flat? Three stories in the middle of Portneath High Street? The building three doors up—the gift shop, you know? That
sold for more than six hundred thousand last year.”
Jules gulped. “But it’s just half of that, right?” she said, as if some three hundred thousand were a less crazy, reachable sum to produce from thin air.
Flo nodded.
“Okay, so what happens if we just don’t. If we refuse to pay?” Jules was clutching at straws.
“Then, at the end of this year, the whole building becomes the outright property of the Montbeaus. They could do what they
like with it, including selling it from under us and keeping all the proceeds for themselves.”
“But that means you would have nothing,” Jules sputtered.
“Indeed,” said Flo quietly. “The shop would be gone. I’d be homeless—God forbid I should have to move in with Maggie, but
I can’t see what else I would do. And, my darling, I would have nothing to leave you when I’m gone.” At that, Flo started
to quietly weep, fumbling for the tissue she always kept up the sleeve of her cardigan.
Jules was aghast. She had never seen Flo cry. Never. She was paralyzed for a few moments, and then she leaped up and gathered
Flo into her arms, squeezing her tight, feeling her fragility, her frailty, and telling her everything would be all right,
although in her heart she didn’t see how that could conceivably be true.
Then, as Jules desperately tried to gather her wits, the anger and the anguish tore at her mind. So, this was what Roman had been preoccupied with. This was the reason for the shadows in his eyes—his insistence they should run
away and never return. As if. As if she would ever give her life to a man who could be a part of a plot so damaging to her own dear family members.
As if she could ever have truly loved a Montbeau.