Chapter 7
The hangover was not worth it.
My mouth was like flypaper – complete with rancid insects – as I stumbled out of the bedroom and flung the crumpled cashmere jumper at the rubbish bags.
I was done being pathetic and done crying.
I just wanted to take some paracetamol, drink a pint of orange juice and try to make my head stop banging.
While I was nursing myself through a cup of tea and a slice of dry toast, Emma texted me. I can handle things today – have a rest and let me know if you need anything xXx.
I was tempted, sorely tempted, to slink back to bed and emerge six hours from now for a Tesco meal deal and a few episodes of Bake Off. But I wasn’t an employee any more. I was a business owner. That meant dragging myself out of the flat and off to my place of business to… do business.
I’d get a coffee on the way. I needed it.
God, what if Maeve asked me about Richard?
That thought stopped me dead. I shook it off – without actually shaking, because that would have been a mistake in my condition.
I couldn’t just hide away forever to avoid talking about him.
I loved Leaford but that meant sooner or later everyone in town was going to know about the break-up. I just had to live with that.
Wrangling the bulging black sacks of crochet into the lift nearly made me cry. The weight of them only reminded me of how much I’d given to someone who didn’t care about me at all. To top it off, my hangover was making everything seem so much harder than it needed to be.
Downstairs I hefted one bag over each shoulder like an old-timey farm worker and wobbled down to the one charity shop in town – Lilac Lawn Hospice Shop.
A tiny, warren-like space full of chipped Cadbury Creme Egg mugs and yellowed paperbacks.
The stock was in constant rotation but always seemed to be exactly the same – the sort of things you only ever see in charity shops, like ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ signs and books by Jeremy Clarkson.
The bell jingled as I backed in through the door, catching a waft of vodka from my own pores.
I looked up and saw Margaret, the only shop assistant, standing by the till.
God, I hoped she wouldn’t smell the booze on me.
I hadn’t woken up with time for a shower and my body spray wasn’t doing much to help me out.
‘Morning, just a few bits for you,’ I felt the need to say as I flopped the bags down by the counter.
Margaret offered me a pursed-lipped smile.
A long time ago she’d been the young, mean receptionist at my primary school, before sweet-shop Sally took over.
She’d shushed me aggressively when I was babbling away to her, as kids do, and she’d been my nemesis ever since.
She probably didn’t know she was my nemesis.
I’d never been anything but polite to her, but I’d once seen her slip on a dog poo and privately cheered.
‘You still running your little shop?’ she asked, as she nudged open the top of one bag and frowned at the contents so aggressively that, for a moment, I feared I’d grabbed a bag of recycling by mistake.
‘Yup… it’s only been a few weeks.’
‘Hmm… well, I suppose it takes all sorts. Those don’t look very practical for shop work.
’ She was pointing a frosted pink talon at my shoes.
A pair of Irregular Choice cowboy boots inspired by My Little Pony – pastel rainbows and silver glitter all over.
I’d needed some of that energy in my life today.
Something a little bit fun to make me feel less like smacking my head into a wall.
‘They’re very comfy actually,’ I said – which was a lie, as they were new and I was already regretting not putting pre-emptive blister plasters on my little toes – and turned on my heel to leave.
I walked straight into a tower of Inbetweeners DVDs and had to scramble to stop them cascading to the floor.
I left the shop red-faced and burning up under my ‘Be Happy’ yellow jumper.
Perhaps I’d gone a bit hard on the whole ‘dressing to cheer myself up’ thing.
I caught sight of myself in the window as I was passing and winced.
I looked like a Blue Peter presenter having a nervous breakdown.
I popped into the bakery and ordered two coffees, thankful that Maeve wasn’t working.
I didn’t have it in me to chat today and the part-time teenager on the till didn’t say a word to me.
‘Tabitha!’ Emma huffed as I walked into the shop. ‘I said to take the day off. You look wretched.’
‘Cheers,’ I sighed and dragged myself to the counter to sit down on a stool, handing her coffee over. ‘I feel it. But I can’t just sit at home being sad all day in the flat.’
The little surge of vindictive joy at calling the ‘apartment’ by that name pushed the hangover misery back a little. A tiny placebo but I’d take it.
‘I suppose it was sort of the scene of the crime,’ Emma said, chewing on her lip. ‘Okay, but hand over that muck – the last thing you need is caffeine. Let me make you some mint tea. That’ll sort your hangover out.’
I didn’t have the energy to fight her as she took my coffee, even though mint tea was like drinking unsweetened toothpaste spit. My stomach flipped over. Ugh, that was not a safe thought.
For the first time I was glad we didn’t have any customers in.
I leant on the counter and tried to sip the disgusting tea while Emma worked around me.
She, I noted somewhat resentfully, had claimed my coffee as well as hers.
I didn’t have the energy to do anything, and for the first time I didn’t even feel like flicking through a pattern book or checking the wholesaler’s website for new yarn.
I just felt empty, scraped out and numb.
At eleven, normally the time we’d take a little tea break, Emma nudged me out of my seat. ‘Why don’t you go for a walk and get some fresh air?’
‘And something from the bakery?’ I said, seeing through her ploy.
‘If you like.’ Emma patted my shoulder. ‘But the walk might do you some good.’
A strong coffee and a muffin would probably help more. I’d just have to finish the coffee before I came back to the shop. Emma could be rather militant about her herbal cures.
Annoyingly, the fresh air was quite nice.
Now that I wasn’t weighed down with bags of crochet or Margaret’s stare, the autumnal breeze was refreshing.
My little toes had lost all feeling and it was actually quite a nice walk, all told.
The sound of my heels on the cobbles never failed to make me feel whimsical and light.
I went to the bakery and bought some muffins and a coffee from the mercifully silent teenager, then wandered down a side street and peered into the window of Gilly’s Gallery.
All the pictures were of woodland animals in party hats.
She couldn’t be selling a lot of those, surely?
Though, as I eyed a trio of hedgehogs in Christmas-cracker crowns, I had to admit they were sort of cute.
As far as I knew, all the art in there was done by Gilly and the shop hadn’t turned a profit, ever.
She was keeping it afloat, though, and no one knew how.
I wondered which picture she’d put in the harvest-festival display this year.
As I moved on and dallied outside the window of the estate agent’s, I wondered what to do about my housing situation.
I’d have to move out of the flat and I couldn’t afford to rent anywhere around town on my own whilst also paying rent on the shop.
I imagined moving back in with Mum and Dad and their regular parties and groaned.
I was an in-bed-by-eight sort of person, born into a family that saw sunrise as a challenge. I couldn’t see that working.
Maybe I could get into a house share or something.
Emma would probably offer to put me up for a while, but she was in a studio and there wasn’t space for another person for longer than a few days.
If that. Irritation at Richard bubbled up from the chasm of heartbreak in my chest. Yesterday my life was sorted, practically on rails.
Now he’d ruined everything and I wasn’t even sure where I’d be living next week.
I returned to the shop with a little black cloud floating over my head. The look on Emma’s face as I entered didn’t perk me up either. I’d expected her to be happy I was back and bringing her baked goods, but her eyes were round with alarm and darting about, avoiding me.
‘What is it? What’s happened?’ I asked, my hands tightening on the bakery bag and my empty coffee cup as Emma just looked at me in mingled panic and awkwardness.
‘Is it Richard, has he come in? Is it Mum and Dad, has something happened? Oh God, it’s moths, isn’t it?
’ I felt horror run down my spine. ‘We’re infested with moths eating their way through all our stock.
That’s it, I’m finished. My boyfriend cheated on me and now I’m being eaten out of business… ’
‘No, it’s not that,’ Emma finally managed to get out, holding up her hands to urge me to calm down. ‘Sorry I was just… I’m not really sure how to tell you without you freaking out, but you’re already freaking out, so that’s my bad…’
‘Just tell me!’ I begged, thinking that if it wasn’t moths or something wrong with my parents, I could handle it. It couldn’t be that bad. Not ‘walking in on a squeaky-bummed vixen on your leather sofa’ bad anyway.
‘A man came in while you were gone,’ Emma said, wincing.
‘A… was he weird, or creepy – what happened?’ I hurried over to the counter and dumped my stuff on it. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine. He wasn’t weird or anything. He was just… he was wearing the jumper. As in the jumper. And he had um… two black bags with him.’
‘Black… you mean rubbish bags?’ I said, a horrible realisation twisting up my insides. ‘My rubbish bags? The ones I handed over to Margaret this morning?’
‘Yep,’ Emma squeaked. ‘Look, I don’t want you to get upset but…’
‘But that awful woman didn’t even unpack the bags, did she? She probably just slapped a price tag on them and shoved them on the floor with the sticky Duplo and the VHS tapes of fucking… Taggart.’
Emma was tense and looked miserable. She obviously didn’t want to be the one telling me all this.
I couldn’t blame her. I’d already had my heart broken once in twenty-four hours and now it was happening all over again.
My gorgeous crochet, treated like someone’s old baby clothes, all stained with strained peas and musty from the loft.
‘How much?’ I asked, dropping onto my stool behind the counter. ‘How much did she sell them for?’
‘I’m… not quite sure this is healthy,’ Emma protested. ‘I mean, at least it’s all gone, right? That’s what you wanted?’
My stomach squirmed, threatening to reject the giant coffee I’d just downed. ‘I wanted it gone-gone. Not walking back into my place of business on a stranger. How much, Emma?’
Emma wriggled as if trying to contain the awful secret, but she gave in quickly under the weight of silence. ‘Ten pounds.’
‘Ten pounds!?’ I was going to burn that charity shop down with Margaret inside it.
‘Each!’ she said quickly, as if that would soften the blow.
‘Ten pounds wouldn’t cover the cost of the ends I snipped off that lot!
’ I buried my head in my hands. My one solace had been that the crochet Richard had never appreciated would at least make some money for charity.
It was worth over a thousand pounds, even second-hand.
Margaret had woefully undervalued it but, then again, so had Richard.
‘I know, I’m sorry.’ Emma put her arm around me. ‘Can I get you a cup of tea, or a hug or… go down there and give Margaret a piece of my mind?’
My head shot up. ‘God, no, she’d eat you alive.’
Emma sagged in relief. ‘Good because I am so scared of her, have been ever since she practically forced those Lilliput Lane figurines on me. I only went in to ask her to put up a poster about tarot readings.’
I couldn’t help but giggle and it broke some of the awful tension. Still, I felt as if I’d had the stuffing pulled out of me by a cruel toddler. All that crochet, all that work, gone for a paltry twenty quid. My talent was worthless. I was worthless.
‘He’s probably going to sell it all on eBay,’ Emma said, as if trying to make me feel better. ‘He’ll flip the lot and make hundreds more. That’ll show her.’
I groaned in annoyance and rested my elbows on the counter, defeated. ‘I know I shouldn’t care but it just feels really shitty. I did all the hard work and I was okay with the profits going to charity but not to some scummy reseller. What did he even look like?’
‘Um… I wouldn’t say “scummy”,’ Emma said, evasively. ‘But he was a little… shabby. Around the edges. Sort of like that dog that’s sometimes tied up outside the library – cute little sausage dog, one of the hairy ones? Sort of scruffy, three legs, tartan bandana…’
‘More about the guy, less about the dog,’ I sighed, now face down on the counter.
‘Right, um… maybe late thirties. Going grey already, bit beardy and stubbly and… he had a shopping bag with him, from the everything shop down the way. Scissors, bin liners and candles. Which I thought was odd. Maybe he was getting ready for Halloween?’
‘Scissors?’ I sat bolt upright. Oh my God – was he going to cut the crochet up? Repurpose the yarn, or sell it on as scrap fabric?
‘I don’t think he was going to use the scissors on the stuff,’ Emma soothed, clearly guessing my train of thought.
‘He came in to ask me about washing everything. Didn’t want to shrink stuff or have it unravel.
I gave him a list of temperatures and stuff for the different fibres.
’ Emma looked quite proud of this display of customer service, and I was pleased she’d been able to give advice.
Or would have been if it had been doled out to anyone else but the knitwear bandit.
‘He probably just wants to sell it and then, you know, it’ll be with people who really appreciate it,’ Emma said hopefully. ‘And he was wearing the jumper. The cursed one, so… it isn’t going to waste.’
‘Well… that’s that then, I suppose,’ I managed to say, trying to sound adequately soothed and not at all like I was having a crisis over some crochet. ‘Nothing I can do about it now.’
Emma patted my arm and went to make tea. I sat on my stool and stewed. First Richard, now this. How many more unpleasant surprises did the universe plan to spring on me?