Chapter 3
Absolutely bloody nothing, as it turned out.
Not one single customer in nearly three hours.
Unless you counted Maeve, who came by to wish us well on her tea break.
After the first half-hour I was slightly embarrassed, watching Richard sit at the till, swinging from side to side on the stool.
After another hour had passed, it was downright humiliating.
By the three-hour mark, I could feel sweat prickling down my back in my desperation for someone, anyone, to please visit the shop.
Richard didn’t say anything but I could see him thinking, ‘This is what she did with all that money? We could have been renovating properties and making a fortune right now.’ The worst part was that he was right.
My inheritance could have got us a project terrace house at auction.
With the time and effort I’d spent on the shop, we could have easily flipped it for a great profit.
Property prices around Leaford were rising exponentially and even the modest terraces were selling for over three hundred grand.
But I felt guilty taking a starter home from someone who might want to do it up themselves.
The shop was meant to be the better option.
Well, that was blowing up in my face.
Standing in the empty aisles, I was starting to think I’d made a massive mistake.
The cooked breakfast I’d eaten was congealing into a hard lump in my stomach and my heart was doing panicky little flutters every time I checked my watch.
The golden sun moving around the dial seemed to mock me.
Every tick of the second hand sounded like a pound coin hitting the floor.
At the three-and-a-half-hour mark, Richard sighed and slid off the stool.
‘I think, if it’s okay, I’ll head back to the apartment – I’ve got some things I could be doing. You know how it is,’ he said, stretching his back out. ‘Calls to make, investors to lock in.’
‘Sure, that’s fine.’ I didn’t have it in me to ask him to stay. I mean, he’d promised to help me out for the whole day but there wasn’t exactly anything to help with. Since he’d taken the day off from working for the estate agents, he could at least get some stuff done for his own business.
For a real business, I thought miserably. The one I could have invested in, for us and our future.
‘See you later, okay?’ He stopped for a kiss on his way out of the door. ‘Don’t stress, all right? You’ll do fine.’
I gave him what I hoped was a convincing smile and waited until the bell had sadly chimed behind him before rushing to the back room.
‘This is a disaster.’ I collapsed onto a stool and looked at the array of gorgeous stitch markers Emma had made – which no one was coming in to buy.
‘It’s only been a few hours – it’s still the morning. You just wait until everyone’s had a chance to wake up and get into town. We’ll be swamped.’ Emma looked up and her smile was so confident and unwavering that I couldn’t help but believe her.
Still, I wasn’t above having a little whinge.
‘I just thought it would be, you know… this big event. There’s no other shop like this within a forty-minute drive.’
‘I know, hon, and it is an event. I mean, we’re open – we did it, you did it! We have built it and so they shall come.’
‘Are you quoting the Bible? Can witches do that?’
‘We can, but it’s actually from Field of Dreams,’ Emma laughed. ‘Now sit your arse down and get to work on your jumper and I’ll go out on the floor for a bit. Give you a break.’
‘A break from nothing,’ I muttered, and Emma swatted the back of my head as she passed by.
She had a point, though. Richard wasn’t around and it was the perfect time to put some serious work into his jumper.
I’d only half finished the body and still had a whole other sleeve and all the edges to do afterwards.
I dug my project bag out of my locker and stroked the insanely expensive cashmere wool.
It was kitten-soft and so very snuggly. I’d even picked out colours I knew Richard would be able to put with everything in his wardrobe – oatmeal, camel and coffee, with navy in the edges for contrast.
With my crochet hook in hand, I found my stitch marker and carefully removed it, re-inserting the hook into the last stitch.
The pattern was quite complicated and was designed to mimic a more traditional cable-knit style.
As much as I loved crochet, I’d never really been fond of knitting.
I could do it, but it didn’t relax me. It wasn’t as effortless as crochet felt.
With crochet I could just zone out and get into a good rhythm, knowing I was doing something I was good at. It was like meditation for me.
I stopped checking my watch and the time seemed to fly by, stitch by stitch. It wasn’t until I heard Emma talking to someone that I realised there was a customer in the shop. I stopped working and listened. Customers, plural.
I quickly put the jumper away and slipped through the bobbin curtain. There were three customers in the shop, two young women browsing and one older lady chatting to Emma at the till. I flashed her a smile.
‘I was about to call you,’ Emma said, looking pleased with herself. ‘Those two ladies over there are looking for recommendations on yarn for a baby blanket.’
‘Perfect,’ I beamed, and then turned my smile on the customer at the counter. ‘Did you find everything okay?’
‘Mostly,’ she said, eyes crinkling as she smiled. ‘I was looking for one of those light-up hooks too.’
I laughed. ‘Can’t have that. I don’t think we have any in stock right now but I can definitely find one for you and order it in if you leave your details. Are you local?’
‘Oh, yes. I’m here all the time – meeting my friend for coffee.
Catching up on the gossip.’ I slid her a form to put her details down on and she printed them carefully in clear, Biro capitals, her sugar-almond nails catching the light.
‘She’s been on the phone to me already today, telling me all about that squatter up by the viaduct. ’
‘Squatter?’ Emma finished placing the woman’s balls of angora into one of our brown paper bags and frowned. ‘Are there even any buildings up that way? Aside from the houses in Riverside Park but, if anyone tried to squat in one of those, the police would be there within five minutes.’
I nodded in agreement. Riverside was the posh part of Leaford, even more so than the old high street.
Famous people were said to live in the gated homes there, as well as Leaford’s rich and powerful, like Carmel Gould, who headed every charity committee in town and had Harrods deliver to her home weekly.
The woman shrugged. ‘Squatter, river person, drifter, whatever you call them. There’s a boat up there – not as far as Riverside. An absolute wreck, she said. Saw it while she was out walking her dog in the small hours. It’s not safe, is it, having God only knows who lurking around like that?’
My smile had gone a bit stiff. It wasn’t that I had a particular kinship with people living on boats but I’d never liked the small-mindedness that came with living in a small town.
I still remembered how people had whispered about Aunt Lou and her ‘friend’, Gail.
I’d only been about seven the first time another kid told me my aunt was a ‘lezzer’ and asked if I was one too.
Other people’s lives were their own business, and what they didn’t want to share was theirs to keep.
‘That’s all ordered for you,’ I said, gently forestalling any further comments about the boat. ‘I’ll just go and help these ladies.’
I excused myself and went over to the other women, who were comparing colours of yarn.
I directed them to the ‘supersoft’ baby range and the double-knit baby yarn in acrylic.
Something that would stand up to a lot of washing without losing its vibrancy and softness.
By the time they’d selected six skeins of pastel rainbow yarn and a pattern book, the woman from before was gone.
Emma rang up the sale and even managed to upsell one of the women one of the page spreaders we had at the front counter. A sort of weighted, arched piece of wood with a sliding number scale on top, so you could use it to count stitches while it held your pattern book open.
Once they were gone, Emma turned to me and raised one of her perfectly shaped dark brows. ‘Told you we’d have customers – that’s three! And an order!’
‘That is good and, yes, obviously you were right, as always,’ I joked. ‘Even if she was a bit…’ I pulled a face.
‘NIMBY?’ Emma filled in, then shrugged. ‘You know it’s always been like that round here.
This place is just a bit old-fashioned. Not everyone – just, you know, some people.
Remember when they wanted to build that wind farm and suddenly everyone and their dog was an expert on bird migration and ultrasonic waves that made your ears fall off, or whatever it was. ’
I giggled, remembering the heated town-hall debates and the leaflets that had come through the door at the apartment block.
The ones showing a landscape dominated by a wind turbine several times larger than any I’d ever seen, the pristine pasture below littered with photoshopped kestrels and hawks, mown down by the scything blades of the dreaded windmill.
Sadly, the campaign had worked. Though the new bypass announced later that year had cut right through that pasture anyway.
It was a shame, aside from the woods by her cottage, it had been one of my aunt’s favourite places to forage for wild dyes for the wool she’d bought from local farms. I could still remember the smell of the blackberry dye, and the way it had stained my nail beds.
Mum had despaired of it ever coming out.
I still had a scarf Aunt Lou had made for me with that yarn.
I didn’t dare wear it out in case it got lost. I kept it for when I was sick at home.
‘Still, we don’t get a lot of boats coming through,’ Emma said, tidying up the little baskets on the counter. ‘We’re not exactly a tourist hotspot.’
‘Maybe they’re just living on it. People do now – there was a bit about it on Gardeners’ World. Someone with a roof garden on their narrowboat.’
Emma chuckled. ‘Since when do you watch Gardeners’ World?’
‘I was at Mum and Dad’s for Sunday lunch a few weeks ago. Dad had it on in the shed – I think mostly for background noise, not because he suddenly has an interest in gardening. He paved ours over ten years ago and, as far as I know, he’s never looked back.’
It was admittedly meant to be a sort of minimalist, modern garden at the time.
Stone slabs, gravel, a fountain and a grand total of three spiky plants in a triangle around the garden.
Only said plants had perished in their first frosty English winter, and had never been replaced.
So now the garden was giving less ‘zen’ and more ‘abandoned quarry’.
Mum didn’t seem to mind, as long as she had access to the whirligig washing line and a place to tan or have barbecues in summer.
‘It’s like this new trendy thing, right?’ Emma said. ‘Like those people that spend half a million quid on a van with a king-size bed and a bidet and then try and park it down tiny lanes.’
‘I guess,’ I said. ‘Kind of cool, though. I mean, being able to travel around but always having your home with you.’
‘Like a snail,’ Emma said, pulling a face. ‘I mean, I love travelling but I know you’re more of a creature-comforts girl.’
‘I just like my own stuff, you know? Nothing like a cup of tea made in your own mug at the end of the day.’
Emma laughed. ‘Hint received, I’ll go and stick the kettle on.’
I chuckled as she went. I hadn’t been kidding, though.
Not really. Leaford had been my home since birth.
Mum and Dad lived just outside of it, in a 1950s prefab painted shell-pink and studded with plastic butterflies.
I’d gone to school here and spent one or two school holidays a year living with Aunt Lou in her cottage on the outskirts.
Mum liked to throw dinner parties and cocktail nights, and her sister was more than happy to babysit me on weekends too.
Her house was my idea of heaven – full of books and craft projects and quiet evenings with just the radio on.
Compared with the blaring TV at home, with Mum and Dad shouting questions to each other from different rooms and their friends and extended family stopping by to shout and laugh along with them, it was bliss.
If Aunt Lou had lived on a boat, I’d have asked her to trundle it off to Bristol, where I went to university.
It would have been wonderful to be able to shut myself away in that haven of peace and quiet to escape from the city.
Even if the idea of being a snail wasn’t exactly flattering, I couldn’t deny the idea had appeal.
If home was where the heart was, why wouldn’t you want to take it with you wherever you went?