Page 11 of The Christmas Fayre on Holly Field

‘Here on your own?’

Owen bit back a smile. ‘I am.’ Pen was fishing, and he wondered whether it was Pen herself who was curious or whether her nosiness was on Harriet’s behalf. For some reason that he didn’t want to go into too closely, he hoped it was the latter.

‘On holiday?’ she asked.

‘Not really.’

‘Where are you from?’

Pen wasn’t backward in coming forward, was she? But he answered her readily enough. ‘Narberth, near Tenby, originally, but I lived in the south-east for a while.’

‘Down Merthyr Tydfil way?’

He laughed. ‘Not South-East Wales, the south-east of England.’

‘I see. What brings you to this neck of the woods?’

‘Nothing in particular.’

‘What do you do for a living?’

Owen was beginning to think that the price of the pasty which he was still holding in his hand was more than he wanted to pay.

‘A bit of this and a bit of that,’ he replied warily. If he did intend to go ahead with featuring Harriet on his blog, he didn’t want to let on that he was a writer, because he had the feeling Pen was part terrier, and she wouldn’t stop gnawing until she’d winkled out of him what it was that he wrote.

‘Ah, I see,’ she said. ‘I’ll ask around, see if anyone needs a hand. Sometimes one of the farms hereabouts can do with an extra body. Any speciality, like carpentry or dry-stone walling?’

‘Um, no.’

‘General labouring, then. I’ll put some feelers out. If you call in tomorrow around lunchtime, I can let you know if I hear anything. Bye.’

‘Er, Pen? Those directions?’

‘Yes, of course. Silly me!’ She gave them to him, then scuttled back into her cafe, leaving Owen feeling as though he’d just done a round with MI5.

Bemused and hoping he hadn’t given too much away, he returned to his laptop and the post he was writing. He had given Harriet a pseudonym to protect her identity, and had chosen the nameDawnfor no other reason than he hoped this series of blog posts would encourage people to see the light. But then again, he supposed he was preaching to the choir, because those people who read his blog on a regular basis were mostly already converted.

Maybe it would be an idea to cast his net wider? He often got a bump of interest if he posted something that caught the eye of an organisation or a publication. How about if he directly approached one or two who might be interested, and see if they would give him a bit of free advertising by tweeting about it or mentioning it on any of their other social media accounts?

It was a thought.

While he was on a roll, he had better consider the issue of images. It was a known fact that photos caught the eye and encouraged people to click on a link or to read on, and while he wouldn’t be able to take photos of Harriet (and certainly not of her children), there was nothing stopping him from taking the odd snap of any pre-owned items she might buy, and he could always pad those out with ‘finds’ that he’d hopefully spot in charity shops or the boot sale Pen had mentioned in the cafe earlier.

However, all this was pie in the sky at the moment, until he knew for sure that Harriet was definitely on board. Although he would dearly like her to keep her end of the bargain until Christmas, the most important thing was that she started it in the first place. Even if she packed it in after a couple of weeks, at least he would have been able to write about the difficulties she had faced and the issues preventing her from continuing with the challenge. Valuable lessons would be learnt, which he could pass on to his followers.

Owen realised that he was unaccountably excited about this.

But whether it was the prospect of seeing rather more of Harriet or writing about the challenge he had hopefully goaded her into accepting, he had yet to determine.

Chapter 4

Harriet hadn’t intended to go into the charity shop that morning. Or any other morning, for that matter.

It was simply a habit of hers to glance into shop windows as she walked along the high street on her way to work. It didn’t matter if the shop was the hairdresser’s or whether it was the convenience store with its ‘for sale’ board, she always had a gander. Her favourites were the antique shop (though the prices made her eyes water) and the soap and candle shop, ingeniously called Wash N Glow. She’d loved both of their Christmas windows last year, and she was looking forward to seeing what the owners would come up with this year.

It was only natural, then, for her gaze to sweep over the window displays of the double-fronted charity shop. The first window had two mannequins on stands, sporting clothes in autumnal colours, and her attention was drawn to a knitted hat in a nut-brown shade with a faux-fur trim. It looked cosy and warm, but she had a perfectly good bobble hat at home and didn’t need another.

However, she did need a casserole dish, and there was one sitting on a table in the second window. Harriet came to a halt and gazed at it. She had been anticipating buying the exact same glass dish with a lid as the one that had been broken, but this one looked as though it would do the trick. And the price wasn’t to be sneezed at.

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