Page 26 of The Little Teashop of Lost and Found
‘Yes, do you know it?’ he asked, surprised.
‘No … it’s just an odd name,’ I said weakly, and he gave me a considering look as if wondering whether taking me home with him was a good idea after all. Then he seemed to make up his mind.
‘I’ve got a few things to do first, so I’ll come and collect you around half five or six. Be ready.’
‘But dinner—’ I began, feeling railroaded and even surer I didn’t want to go with him.
‘Oh, she’ll feed you, don’t worry,’ he assured me. ‘She always cooks enough for an army anyway, though she’s part Scandinavian, so you’re never quite sure what’s on the menu. Do you like Norwegian food?’
‘I’m not sure I’ve ever had any.’
‘It’s good, except for the time she produced a whole sheep’s head for dinner. It’s a Norwegian delicacy, but all those teeth and the eyeballs are too off-putting.’
‘Eyeballs?’ I echoed faintly.
But he was gone, leaving me feeling totally unsettled. Not only was I about to be marooned on the moors with the unknown family of the strangely unnerving Nile Giddings, which might be all tooWuthering Heights, but the house was called Oldstone, the name I’d been registered under on my birth certificate!
Might I be connected to the place? I could have been given that surname because I’d been found near it (in which case Ihadn’tbeen found miles from habitation, like Nessa had said), or perhaps I had been found further away, but by a member of that family?
Now I was actually here and Sleeping Beauty had woken up, it was hard to understand why I’d never checkedout all the available details of where and by whom I was found, though I had sort of pushed it all away to the back of my mind after Nessa’s revelation, following on from losing Dad …
But, I thought, there must be lots more information out there than my birth certificate, and once I had an internet connection I’d be right in there looking for it.
Princess Beauty woke up after the best sleep of her life, to find herself bound tightly in a cocoon of silk and unable to wiggle even her smallest finger.
A mouse was sitting on the end of the couch, washing his whiskers.
‘Hello,’ said Beauty. ‘Can you help me? A friendly spider wrapped me up warmly before I fell asleep, but now I don’t seem able to move.’
‘You’re very stupid,’ the mouse said witheringly. ‘It’s a silk shroud – you’ve been asleep for aeons and so has the huge spider in the other room. He’s wrapped you up to eat later and he’s stirring now, so he’s probably ready for a snack.’
I closed the lid of the laptop with a snap.
There wasn’t much more I could do at the café by then and, having already snipped through the first ring of briars and freed myself from my self-imposed imprisonment, I went for a walk around the village.
I passed several better and more established cafés than mine and, despite the time of year, there were still plenty of visitors about.
I found the church and the graveyard, which lay before the Brontë Parsonage, exactly as it looked in photos, but I didn’t go inside that or the museum. They’d have to keep for another time, as would the moors that tantalizingly beckoned beyond.
I paused by the Parsonage steps, though, remembering Dad’s fairy-tale description of how the young princess had crept up and left me there late one night.
I thought he’d have been happy I was there now …
After a while, the cold breeze wandering around my legs got me moving again back down the hill. No one at all stopped dead and exclaimed at my resemblance to someone local that they knew, as I’d thought, hoped, or even feared that they might. In fact, no one had given me a second glance, probably because in a place as popular with visitors as Haworth, tall strangers with long copper curls and pale green eyes were nothing out of the ordinary.
By the time Nile reappeared I was waiting by the café door with my baggage, the lights off and the key in my hand. I hadn’t until thatmoment wondered where he’d left his car, but he wrested the case out of my grasp and set off down the passageway to the parking area at the back of the café. I should have guessed.
‘This ismyland,’ I said indignantly, catching up with him.
‘Well, that side certainly is,’ he said, pointing. ‘But this patch I bought from the people who had The Butty Box, before Mrs Muswell took over, so I’d have somewhere to park. I’m afraid you’re going to have to share it.’
‘I’m sure that didn’t come up when my solicitor did the searches on the property,’ I said suspiciously.
‘Maybe not, but I had a deed of the sale signed in front of my own solicitor, and Mrs Muswell knew about it when she took over,’ he said. ‘I’ve no idea why it didn’t come up in your searches.’
‘Well, Isupposeit’s legal then, and I can’t do anything about it,’ I said grudgingly.
‘Gee, thanks!’
