Page 19 of The Little Teashop of Lost and Found
‘Both of us were on minimum wage and seasonal contracts, so we’d never know from one year to t’ next if we still had jobs or not. Looks like we’re out of them now, though …’
She looked at me assessingly. The first shock had passed and she’d clearly begun to wonder what I intended. ‘So … you’ve bought the place. Do you have any café experience, blossom?’
‘Yearsof it,’ I assured her. ‘Ever since my late teens I’ve worked in hotel kitchens, cafés, restaurants and even a specialist cake shop. Baking’s my thing, especially pastries and cakes. I … recently came into some money and when I saw the Branwell Café for sale online, it seemed too good to be true.’
I smiled ruefully. ‘It was! The pictures Mrs Muswell showed me must have been taken years ago when it was a different café entirely.’
‘It was probably the Copper Kettle. Two sisters had it and you’ve never seen the like for starched gingham tablecloths, spider plants in macramé pot holders and vases of plastic flowers,’ she said. ‘But it’s all been downhill since then and I told her, if she didn’t replace the kitchen flooring and put in new worktops, we’d be losing our hygiene rating, however hard I worked to keep the place clean. You’ve bought a right pig in a poke.’
‘I realize that now and, of course, all my friends and my solicitor warned me not to rush into buying it without looking at it first. But I wasn’t thinking straight, because of a recent bereavement,’ I explained.‘I’m not usually so trusting, but I exchanged emails with Mrs Muswell and talked to her on Facebook too, and … well, she seemed really nice.’
‘It’s all put on. She fools lots of people that way. And now youhaveseen it, I suppose you’re going to sell up again?’
‘I could, of course, but I’ve got one or two ideas,’ I said. ‘Look, I was just about to make some tea in the kitchen, so why not have a cup with me and talk things over?’
‘All right. I usually make a brew first before I start cleaning,’ she agreed, following me through the swinging door. ‘And come to think of it, Mrs M still owes me for cleaning the café and kitchens right through before we shut up for the season. Who’s going to pay me now?’
‘I was struck by how everything looks spick and span, except the flat – that’s filthy,’ I said.
‘She didn’t ask me to go up there. It was never used for anything that I recall.’
‘Do you have her address in Spain and phone number?’ I asked hopefully. ‘She vanished off the internet and her solicitor won’t give me her contact details.’
‘No, when she was in Spain I had to tell a friend of hers at a local guesthouse if there were any problems and they’d ring her.’
‘The Gondal Guesthouse? I stayed there last night and they denied knowing where she was.’
‘Well, they would, wouldn’t they, if she’s taken you in over buying the café? Thick as thieves, they are, and they’ll be closing up come October and going out to stay with her, like they do every year.’
‘The solicitor will forward mail for me, but that’s a fat lot of good, isn’t it? I had a whole list of things she was supposed to be leaving behind as part of the sale, all the kitchen equipment and the furniture in the flat, and most of it is missing.’
‘Kettle’s still here, though,’ she said, switching it back on. ‘And I’ve got a little flask of milk in my basket so we won’t be needing those pots of weird stuff you’ve got there.’
‘I stole them from the guesthouse,’ I confessed. ‘It says on the sides that they taste like milk.’
‘Nothing tastes like milk, except milk,’ she said. ‘Why not just have milk?’
There seemed no answer to that. I let her ‘wet the tea’, as she put it, in a white china teapot and fetch thick white mugs from the café.
‘So, you hadn’t seen the place till this morning?’ she asked.
‘I got the keys and came here yesterday afternoon, though it was such a dark, rainy day that I couldn’t see clearly and the electricity was off – there was a power cut, I found out later – so I didn’t stay long.’
I sighed. ‘I’d meant to move into the flat, but it’s been stripped bare, it’s dirty and it needs repainting.’
‘Just as well you’d booked the guesthouse then,’ she said.
‘I only booked one night, because I expected to find the flat habitable. Someone’s driving my car down from Scotland with all my stuff on Sunday.’
‘Scotland’s all right,’ Tilda commented grudgingly. ‘I had a holiday in The Trossachs once, and except that it rained the whole week and they gave us fried haggis for breakfast, it was fine. Probably a sight better than the Gondal Guesthouse.’
‘I’m not going back there, because apart from the owners lying to me about Mrs Muswell, it wasn’t very nice. They seemed so pleasant on the surface too, just like she did.’
‘You don’t seem the type to be taken in so easily,’ she said. ‘What made you do a daft thing like buy a property without seeing what you were getting first?’
I explained about my fiancé being killed and the insurance money. ‘I was looking for a cottage when I stumbled across the café. I thought it would give me some income and I could live in the flat – it seemed quite a sensible thing to do at the time.’
‘But why Haworth? You’re not from Yorkshire, are you?’
