Chapter 25
Pottering around at home after the swing incident, Tilly had looked around at the mounting list of jobs to do in the shed and more or less collapsed.
To be frank, the accident had knocked the wind out of her sails, and the last thing she was up for was more cleaning.
Sipping whisky-less tea on the sofa, she decided to check her finances for the millionth time and get the ball rolling on the linen bedding idea.
She’d drafted an initial email when the idea had first popped into her mind, but there it had remained.
The more she’d thought about it, the more she’d felt as if the linen idea might be a winner.
Her dad had always moved quickly on an opportunity or idea, and the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
Therefore, she got to work on drafting an email to Portugal.
It was much trickier than she’d thought it was going to be.
The trouble was working out what kind of email it even was.
Too business-y and it would land wrong or not at all.
This wasn’t a wholesale enquiry as such, more a dabbling really.
Making it a business-type proposal probably wouldn't even make it past a spam filter, and that would be that. Too warm was worse in a way. Remember me? Lovely. Can I have your linen for a great price? If Tilly played it too familiar, it would be just like those people who only ring you when they want to borrow something. Don’t we all know that person on the end of the phone?
Therefore, Tilly had spent a lot of time pondering, typing, and deleting, rinse and repeat.
Eventually, after a few attempts, she’d made more tea, gone outside and watched the ferry crawling across the estuary to give her brain a bit of a breather.
In the end, she’d decided not to try to be clever but to be honest and tell the truth.
Dear Inês,
I don't know if you'll remember me. Tilly, the English girl who looked after the quinta the summer the pool pump broke, the one you taught to make caldo verde the proper way. I have thought about you lots while I've been travelling.
I'm writing because I'm finally doing the thing my dad would have wanted me to do, which is thinking about my own business.
I'm in the process of purchasing an old boat shed on a little island off the south coast of England. I can hear you laughing from here. Anyway, my idea is to sell beautiful linen bedding, not the perfect kind. The kind you kept in the back room. Do you remember when you took me on the tour? I never forgot that room. I thought the cloth in there was the loveliest in the whole mill, and I never understood why it hid at the back. While I was travelling, I spent years making beds in my job, but also with a couple of your pillowcases that somehow made it into my laundry. Nowadays, they are so soft and lovely and almost like an old friend. They are now on my bed here in the Boat Shed. Basically, that’s the idea - soft, worn, loved bedding in lovely deep colours. Everything sort of imperfectly perfect.
What I am proposing is that your seconds are made up into UK-size bedding.
It would be a tiny run to start with. I am thinking of very small numbers.
I would set up a website and do ads on social media for marketing.
I hope you don’t find this too presumptuous.
Anyway, I’d love your thoughts. Obviously, it might not be worth your while.
Would love to hear from you and hope you are all well.
Regards,
Tilly
Four read-throughs later, Tilly couldn’t decide whether to send it or not.
It was very rambling and not really a business proposal at all, not that she really knew what one of those entailed.
Did it also sound rather presumptuous and cheeky?
An email out of the blue asking for something.
Her dad's words plonked into her head. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. The worst they can do is laugh.
Speaking to the empty shed, Tilly made a face and nodded. ‘Worst they can do is laugh. It really won’t be any skin off my nose. They can only say no.' Send.
Wondering if she’d even get a reply, Tilly raised her eyebrows and looked at the long line of tiny tabs on the top of her laptop signifying her deep dives into all things bedding and linen.
Where in the name of goodness had this whole thing sprung from?
Last time she’d checked, she knew nothing about starting a linen business or really any business, though for sure she’d spent a long time investigating them.
As she pondered, she realised that in a funny sort of way the idea had been sitting at the back of her mind for the whole time she’d been globetrotting.
Not the actual linen itself, more the fact that once the honeymoon period of travelling had worn off, she’d really missed the comfiness of her own bed.
Staring at her inbox, Tilly shook her head.
Funny old world. Here she was again, waiting.
This time for something that had the possibility of being really, really good. We shall see.