Page 44 of The Little Teashop of Lost and Found
‘Because I’ve built up a good client list of collectors and know what they’re looking out for. I study the auction catalogues, go to country house sales, and scour antique’s shops … and I have all kinds of contacts. That’s where most of my income comes from. The shop is really more a base and somewhere to sell off the bits and pieces I buy in job lots.’
‘Sounds fun,’ I said, ‘more fun than working in a café, anyway.’
‘Oh, I get the feeling you’re enjoying yourself, planning out your tea empire.’
‘Emporium,’ I corrected him, and he gave me that sideways glinting smile again, then swung the car through a pair of mossy stone pillars into a yard and stopped in front of a large barn that proclaimed over the double doors: ‘World’s End Antiques’.
It certainlyfeltlike the world’s end; I’d never have found it by myself, even with directions.
‘Rick’s got delusions of grandeur, as it’s mostly junk, not antiques,’ he said. ‘Still, there are usually some solid pieces mixed in and I’ve found the occasional gem.’
The building was stacked floor to ceiling with furniture and bric-a-brac and, surprisingly, we weren’t the only customers rummaging round in there. I spotted two huge willow-pattern serving dishes, both cheap because they were cracked and had been mended with old-fashioned metal rivets, but they would look lovely on display in the café. Then I moved on to the furniture and found a pair of white-painted bedside cabinets, a worn but still beautiful old rug for the living room, a Victorian wooden towel rail and a Lloyd Loom ottoman with a padded top. Nile haggled the prices down and then, with practised skill, he and Rick managed to insert all of them into the back of the estate car and we set off home.
‘Thank you so much for taking me,’ I said gratefully. ‘I seem to have bought tons of stuff for amazingly little money, but I feel guilty because you didn’t get anything.’
‘I often don’t find much there but, actually, I did today. I’ll show you when we get back.’
And when he’d helped me carry my purchases into the café, where I put them in a corner until I’d finished painting upstairs, he produced from his pocket a small ivory parasol with a fist-shaped handle into which was set a little glass window.
‘It’s called a Stanhope. If you look through the glass, there’s a magnified view inside. This has St Paul’s Cathedral but there all kinds of different ones and they’re very collectable. I have a client who’ll snap it up straight away.’
‘It’s small and perfect in all ways,’ I agreed, thinking how interesting it would be if you could peer through a bit of glass into the past, or into a parallel universe.
Or maybe not, depending on what you saw …
I got that thought down for a future book, before I forgot it.
My life continued pleasantly in this fashion, interspersed with golfing holidays in Portugal whenever I felt the need for a little change.
Mum died from cancer when she was only sixty, though Father, despite being many years her senior, continued with his voluntary medical work well into old age, until he began to manifest the first symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. When this also eventually prevented him playing golf, a passion we’d shared, he rapidly deteriorated to such an extent that I arranged for live-in help until I could settle my affairs and move back to Upvale.
It wasn’t what I wanted, but I knew my duty.
19
The First Cuckoo
With some faffing around, I managed to get my router working early next day and there was an email from Edie, asking me how I was getting on with my ‘little Brontë café’. She’d be sorry for that ‘little’ when I started deluging her with requests for advice!
I emailed her back saying my afternoon tea emporium would probably merely be the start of a world-wide chain of Fat Rascals. Then I told her all about what I’d found out in the newspaper articles. I’d already given Lola a quick phone update last night after dinner and she’d been fascinated by all the details and supportive about my intention of trying to track down the two witnesses and, if possible, my birth mother.
‘That’s not what Nile says – he thinks I shouldn’t attempt to find her,’ I’d told her.
‘Of course you must attempt to discover everything you can,’ she’d said. ‘I expect Nile is only afraid that if you find your mother and she doesn’t want to meet you, you’ll be terribly upset. He sounds such a nice, caring man.’
I don’t know what I could have said to give her that idea!
‘I suppose he has his moments,’ I’d agreed reluctantly, and then it had occurred to me that for a man I’d only known for a matter of days, I must already have mentioned him so many times that his name was familiar to my oldest friend!
But he had been really helpful and I’d repaid him with spiky defensiveness … even more so since that moment in the Oldstone kitchen whenI’d suddenly realized that if I let myself, I could fall for him hard and be abandoned all over again: my own little Groundhog Day of the heart.
For the next couple of days I focused on getting the flat ready to move into.
Sheila, with experience gained from renovating Oldstone Farm, was an invaluable source of information on things like where to find the cheapest good-quality carpets and vinyl,and I got her handyman, Jack, to come round and give me an estimate for what work needed doing in the flat – mostly new worktops in the kitchen end of the living room, but there were also a couple of other odd jobs.
I liked him straight away: he was a man of few words, but those were all to the point and his on-the-spot estimate was very reasonable, so after we’d agreed terms I took him over the café, too.
Until he’d run his expert eyes over the premises, I don’t think I’d quite grasped just how much needed doing and how little of it I’d actually be able to manage myself. Plumbing, flooring and electrics all needed to be done in the right order and by professionals, so when he suggested he site-manage the refurbishment between his other jobs, it seemed to me that it would be a practical move.
