Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Flick had just had a shower and was getting dressed in her room the next day when the phone rang. She saw the Australian country code and quickly answered it, sitting down on the bed to talk to her nan.
‘Hello lovely, how’s it all going there?’ her nan asked.
‘Brilliantly. We had our grand reopening, which was a huge success, we were even featured on the local news.’
‘I saw it online. It looked fabulous and the café looks amazing. You’ve really done something incredible there.’
‘We had a steady stream of visitors all day and a few days ago we held our first workshop for those with acquired brain injuries. We only had one person, Frank, who lost the ability to talk and walk in an accident last year. He and Luke made birdboxes and he loved it. I can’t tell you how happy I am, everything is going wonderfully. ’
‘I knew you’d do something brilliant with it… However, I… umm, have some bad news.’
Her heart leapt. Nothing good could come from hearing those words.
‘What’s the news?’ Flick said.
‘I’ve decided to stay out here in Australia and to do that, and apply for permanent residency, I have to have some money in the account, a lot of money in fact. So I’m going to sell the house, I’m afraid.’
Flick’s heart dropped into her stomach. ‘Nan, no.’
‘I know, I’m sorry, I really am. But that house has been like a millstone round my neck for several years now and I’ve come to resent it.
I tried to keep it going, for Tom’s sake – he loved the studios and what they meant to the community and I wanted to honour that for him.
For fifteen years I tried my best and failed miserably to do that.
For fifteen years I lived my life for a man who’s dead rather than living my life for me.
I always wanted to live in London or travel the world but I stayed because of your grandfather’s legacy.
And now, I’ve fallen in love again. Maxwell has been like a breath of fresh air and I feel like a young woman when I’m with him.
And he told me he loves me too. And maybe it’s too soon to change my whole life for a man I’ve only met a few weeks ago and maybe it’s silly, impetuous and hasty but at my time of life I can’t hang around for years before I make a decision.
I need to grab life with both hands. And even if things don’t work out with Maxwell, I’ve fallen in love with Australia too.
I can buy a camper van and travel all the way round the coast, or I can use the money to travel, to see New Zealand, Thailand, Japan.
But one thing is for sure, I don’t want to come back to that house. I’m really sorry.’
Flick wanted to cry. ‘But all our hard work, starting the café, the workshops… I’ve got new artists who have moved in, Luke’s spent a fortune on Polly’s utensils and new machines for the café and we spent ages creating the gift shop. All that was for nothing.’
‘I know, but I can’t keep that house for you either, I’m sorry.
And it hasn’t been for nothing. As agreed, I’ll give you six months before I put the house up for sale.
If you can build it up to a successful, thriving business, maybe I can sell it to someone who will take on the business as it is, who will be happy to leave the artists in situ and run the workshops. ’
Flick didn’t think that was likely, letting the artists continue to stay there rent free was not an attractive selling point.
‘I need to go,’ Flick said.
‘I really am sorry,’ her nan said.
‘I am too.’
She said her goodbyes and hung up, staring at the phone in shock.
There was a knock on the bedroom door and she looked up to see Luke looking at her with concern. ‘You OK?’
She shook her head and tears spilled over her cheeks.
He quickly moved into the room and sat down on the bed next to her, wrapping her in his arms. ‘What’s wrong? ’
‘My nan is selling the house.’
‘No, wait. She can’t do that, she gave you six months to make it a success and you’ve already done so much in such a short amount of time, it’s doing so well.’
‘I know, but she says she doesn’t want it anymore and was only keeping it going for my grandad and now she wants to live her life for her. She’s fallen in love and says she isn’t coming home.’
‘Oh crap.’
‘She says she’ll still give us the six months to make a go of it and will try to sell it as a successful business.
But who in their right minds would take this place on with the current terms?
We’re making some money but it’s twenty-five percent of twenty or thirty pounds here and there.
It’s hardly going to set the world on fire. ’
‘But the workshops are important, I saw that with Frank, what a difference they can make to people. I saw it in my mum when she came home from attending them, they really help.’
‘I know, I think that’s the part I’m most sad about, that’s the legacy I wanted to save.
And the money from the café, the gift shop and the artists’ work meant that we could offer those workshops for free.
The new owner isn’t going to continue doing that.
’ She wiped a tear away. ‘Frank lit up after months of hell and I can’t face taking that away from him again.
And think of all the other people we could help in the same way. I don’t want to walk away from that.’
‘No, I don’t either.’
‘And selfishly, I don’t know what this means for me.
I was loving my new life here, I love working in the gift shop so much, I love walking around the town and beaches, I love our clifftop walks as the sun sets.
’ She didn’t tell Luke that it was him she loved spending time with the most on those walks.
‘Once the studio is gone, I lose my home, my job, the whole reason I came down here in the first place. I guess I can try to get a little flat somewhere in the town, if I can find a job to fund it, but jobs in coastal towns are few and far between.’
‘Let’s not give up yet, I’m sure we can think of something,’ Luke said. ‘Let’s round everyone up and have a meeting, maybe we can come up with a plan.’
He left the room and she quickly finished getting dressed although it was hard to find any hope. She wasn’t sure what anyone could do to save the studios.
Flick walked into the café a short while later to find everyone there waiting for her – Luke had obviously rounded everyone up.
She was so nervous about telling them. If she thought they’d been annoyed before, about changing the studios and making cheaper items, it was going to be so much worse now they’d all agreed to get behind it to save it.
Everyone had worked so hard. How was Flick going to tell them that in a few months they would probably have to pack up and leave and that all their hard work had been for nothing?
And while she understood her nan’s reasons for selling, she was also annoyed that Audrey had left it to her to tell everyone the bad news. She really had washed her hands of it.
Flick sat down and cleared her throat. ‘I just wanted to start by saying thank you all for your hard work over the last few days, creating smaller items, transforming your studio spaces and helping with the wonky tree. And thank you Polly, your hard work and delicious food has brought people through the doors. I think we’ve created something wonderful here and the importance of the workshops in helping those with brain injuries is something very close to my heart, and it seems, for many of you too. ’
She swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘I’m afraid there’s no easy way to say this, but my nan has decided to sell regardless of what we’ve achieved.’
Predictably, there was an outcry, with everyone talking and shouting over each other, moaning about the work they’d put in, how it had all been a waste of time.
She held her hands out to try to get them to be quiet and after a few moments they all stopped talking, obviously hoping for some chink of light in this dark cloud.
Although Flick couldn’t give them that. She explained her nan’s reasons why and that she was still giving them six months and that her nan then hoped to sell the house as a successful business.
They were all quiet for a moment before they started speaking again.
‘Well, that’s rubbish,’ Aidan said. ‘Who would buy the studios as it is when they can make far more money by converting it into a hotel or B&B? ’
‘We’ve all worked so hard,’ Ethel said.
‘The café looks amazing,’ Polly said. ‘And I’ve just given up the lease on my van.’
‘OK, OK,’ Luke said. ‘We’re all upset by this and understandably so but this isn’t Flick’s fault. And I do understand why Audrey is doing this, this was Tom’s dream, it was never hers. But rather than moan about it, we need to do something constructive and come up with a plan to save it.’
They were all quiet as they thought.
‘I could ask everyone in the Wonky Tree Facebook group to donate to save it,’ Ethel said.
‘I think it’s great that we raised enough money to resurrect the wonky tree, but that was thousands. We’d need over a million pounds to buy the house and I just can’t see that we’d ever raise that kind of money,’ Flick said.
‘What about getting a local business to sponsor it?’ Rose said.
‘There’s one in a nearby town, Pet Protagonist, who make personalised books for people’s pets and donate a percentage of their profits to a local animal shelter.
Maybe we can find a company who would be willing to help us in the same way? ’
‘But it’s one thing a company giving us, say, a thousand pounds a month to go towards our workshops, but a company isn’t just going to buy a million-pound house,’ Flick said.
‘What about asking a brain injury charity to buy it for us?’ Aidan said. ‘If they can see the importance of what we are doing here, they might help. ’