Chapter 4
T he kitchen behind the bookshop had seen better days.
Daisy stood in the middle, one hand on her hip, the other holding an old tea towel that was on its last legs, and surveyed the space with a mixture of affection and mild exasperation.
It had been perfectly serviceable when she and the girls had moved in, especially because it had made itself known in her life rent-free.
A bit of a scrub, some elbow grease, and a few of her bits and bobs had done the job.
She’d cleaned and disinfected everything that didn’t move, added strings of lights and stuck up a chalkboard on the far wall for her lists and the twins’ scribbles, and had called it done.
It had worked well enough, but really, now in the cold light of day-to-day life, it left a lot to be desired.
The place could do with a bit more than just a wipe over and tidy up.
Really, it needed some thought, a fancy pot of paint or two and a bit of a sprinkling of Annabelle’s style and a good few of her well placed cast offs.
Flicking on the kettle, Daisy moved about the space, straightening the tea towels, wiping a few crumbs off the worktop and opening the window to let in some of the cool evening air.
The sea breeze swept in, definitely carrying the smell of impending rain and the ever-present hum of Pretty Beach doing its evening shuffle; the ferry in the distance honking its horn every so often, the shop next door locking up for the night, waves crashing in off the sea and the odd seabird calling out.
Lighting dozens of little battery-operated tealights, Daisy distributed them liberally throughout the kitchen and smiled at the thought of a nice night in and a takeaway.
The tealights, some in little jam jars she’d saved, others tucked inside metal and glass lanterns and a few in old candle holders, hid a multitude of the kitchen’s battered old sins.
With them all lit, the room looked cosy, not perfect, but comfy in the way Daisy liked.
Warm, low light bounced off the slightly wonky cupboards and the tiled floor that had definitely seen a fair few feet over the years.
She pondered and let her mind decompress from the day as she cleared the little table in the corner, added a tablecloth, folded up a pile of tea towels, put unread post to be dealt with another day in the drawer and wiped the windowsill clean.
Plonking a jug of flowers from her mum Susannah’s garden in the centre they were a bit lopsided and leggy, but pretty all the same.
Once the last lantern had been lit, she stood back, hands on her hips again, and looked around.
‘It could be worse,’ she said out loud as she shook her head.
It could, and it had been, but still, the idea had started to root in her brain that the kitchen was crying out to be more than just a pass-through space and that it needed a serious makeover.
It could be nice and not just functional, but actually lovely, too.
It could be a kitchen like the ones in the interior books Annabelle always left lying about or the ones she’d saved on a Pinterest board on her phone marked Dream House Stuff.
All muted tones, open shelving, baskets of vegetables, pots and pans and giant mugs hanging from neat rows of hooks.
Taking a few steps across the room, she opened one of the cupboard doors to have a closer look and the bottom hinge creaked like it had done since the day she moved in.
The inside was perfectly fine; stacks of mismatched plates, a few princess mugs that the girls loved their hot chocolate in and a stock pot that she mostly used in winter.
But it was all crammed in, cluttered and overall, the kitchen and its contents were tired and teetering on the edge of grubby looking.
Opening her Pinterest board, she studied an eclectic-looking kitchen where the caption told her it was owned by a writer who lived in a small country town in Somerset.
The image had an old-fashioned sink under a window, saucepans hanging from a rod, kitchen cabinets with their doors removed, hooks galore and floral fabric skirts obviously covering all sorts of not-so-nice issues.
Daisy enlarged the image with her finger and thumb, studied and then peered up at the kitchen with her eyes squinted.
The more she peered, the more she realised it would be fairly easy to bring the image to life and give her, while not the kitchen of her dreams, at least something less resembling the ghost of her Uncle Dennis.
Examining the door hinges on a row of cupboards behind her, she realised it would be simple to whip off the doors, paint the shelves, add pretty knobs and hooks and if her budget could stretch to it, invest in a few appliances.
She pulled out a pen and started noting lists and ideas as she leant against the worktop with her mind going nineteen to the dozen.
With the Pinterest image open, she noted what she would need to do to get the look of the eclectic Somerset writer-owned kitchen.
Her list included, but was not limited to, removing cupboard doors, sanding and painting interior shelves, adding mug hooks, finding nice baskets for onions, garlic and lemons, sourcing a cheap way to get a hanging rack for pans, hunting for a stand-alone dresser style unit for plates and glasses, new knobs and checking the hospice shop in the Old Town for old stools.
Pausing, Daisy looked around again, trying to visualise the tiny kitchen barely big enough to swing a cat as a version of the Pinterest board in her hand.
She could see it if she really squinted and used her imagination; open shelves with her crockery on show, a row of her favourite mugs dangling above the kettle.
She chuckled as she imagined her saucepans hanging on the wall like she lived in a cookery show and maybe if she really pushed the boat out, a new light fitting instead of the sad old one with the dusty shade that had definitely been there since the eighties, if not before and had Uncle Dennis written all over it.
Feeling quite pleased with herself as she scanned her list and realised that what she was proposing was doable, she tried to ascertain the amount of work and a timeline.
In actual fact, if she got her head down, it wouldn’t take too long at all.
Flipping the page on her pad, she jotted down a rough budget, guessed at prices she’d seen in the little hardware shop near the Spar and wondered how long it would take her to find what she wanted second-hand on Marketplace or on clearance.
Mulling over the list, Daisy tucked it just beneath the jug of flowers and made her way over to the little alcove by the back door where she kept string bags and the boot tray.
Giving the tray a nudge back into place, she moved a pair of sandy flip-flops to the side and crouched to straighten up a pile of thrifted books and recipe cuttings that had built up on the shelf above and pottered around thinking about updating the kitchen on a minuscule budget.
Musing suchlike was exactly the sort of thing she’d never had time to do since opening the shop, working her other two jobs and looking after the twins.
But with Miles on his way with dinner, the girls safely deposited at Annabelle’s, and a bit of quiet in the house and that thing they called her brain for once had a spot of breathing space.
Time to think about getting the place looking halfway decent and a plan on how she was going to spruce it up.
Her stomach grumbled at the thought of the Thai food on its way and she shook her head at how nice it was to be having takeaway at all.
Opening the fridge, she scanned the shelves out of habit; a bottle of tonic water, a lonely half cucumber, a bottle of half empty Hendricks, half a dozen eggs, wine, a jar of chutney she didn’t remember buying and the yoghurts Margot and Evie were obsessed with.
All classic signs that she needed to do a proper food shop, but also a reminder of how far she’d come.
There’d been a time not all that long before when the fridge had been a place she’d avoided both looking into too closely and knowing its precise contents at any given time.
Back before the chandler property, making her food shopping stretch had been a full-time sport.
Now, she felt as if someone had loosened that noose from around her neck.
The worry was nowhere near as bad, she could allow herself not to meal plan down to the last egg and even revel in the pleasurable laziness that came from a takeaway. Oh, how things had changed.