Page 5 of The Little Teashop of Lost and Found
The day before the funeral we reopened the café while I baked up a storm in the kitchen, for I expected all Dan’s climbing friends to come back there after the ceremony and some would have travelled a long way – he was very popular.
I was still moving through a miasma of despair and grief, but was a little assuaged and comforted by the familiar smells of allspice and dried citrus peel, the sound of the springy metal whisk beating eggsinto a yellow froth and the feel of the butter and flour between my fingers as I rubbed it into tiny, light golden crumbs.
I’d just taken the last of the baking out of the oven when Jen, the café manageress, said there was someone who wanted to speak to me. I thought it might be Edie. She’d rung when she’d seen the news on the TV, but it would be like her to just turn up when she had a moment. Or possibly it was a friend of Dan’s, returned from a climbing expedition and hotfooting it over to offer condolences.
But the woman sitting at one of the café tables was none of these things. She was at least a decade older than me, about Dan’s age, and with a hard, salon-tanned face, eyebrows plucked to thin threads and blond hair that showed an inch of dark roots along the parting. I’m never quite sure these days if that’s a Look or not.
But whatever it was, I was certain she wasn’t one of Dan’s climbing buddies and if she was a rep trying to interest me in her firm’s latest line of meat pies, she’d chosen the wrong day (and anyway,Imade them all).
She didn’t get up when I approached, so I slipped into the chair opposite. I hadn’t really meant to sit down, but I’d been on my feet for hours and I couldn’t remember the last time I wanted to eat anything, so my knees suddenly went wobbly and the room spun round.
‘I’m Alice Rose. You wanted to see me?’ I asked her. ‘Only if you’re selling something, this isn’t a good time and—’
‘Oh, I’m notsellinganything,’ she said, eyeing me with curiosity. ‘I’m Tanya, Dan’s wife, though I went back to calling myself Tanya Carter after we split.’
Something clicked in my brain. I knew Dan had been married long ago but they’d both been very young and it hadn’t worked out. There had been no children and they’d separated by mutual consent.
‘Of course, you’re his ex-wife, aren’t you?’ I said. ‘I—’
‘Wife,’ she broke in firmly, ‘and now widow!’
I stared at her blankly as this pierced the fog of grey misery that hung around me, my own permanent wet blanket. ‘But … you can’t be, because we were engaged! We were getting married.’
Or eventually we were … for now I remembered all the times he’d put off setting the date.
‘He’d need to divorce me first, and although it’s been more than ten years since I evensawhim he knew where I was and he never got round to asking me for one. So when it said on the telly that famous rock climber Dan Carmichael had died in an accident – bit of a shock, to hear the news that way, actually – I thought he’d probably not bothered making a new will either. In which case,’ she added triumphantly, ‘everything he had would come to me. And when I rang our old solicitor, he confirmed I was right.’
‘That can’t be true!’ I cried, but even as I said the words I remembered that Dan’s solicitor, Mr Blackwell, had called only yesterday asking me to search Dan’s papers to see if I could find a newer will than the one he held. I’d been too dazed by grief to get round to it – or even wonder what the old one might say.
‘When we got engaged, Dan told me he’d always look after me, no matter what happened,’ I heard myself saying. I think I was having an out-of-body experience. Or possibly an out-of-my-mind one.
She shrugged. ‘He’d never get round to doing anything unless you made him. I mean, I’d heard on the grapevine that he was living with someone, but any normal man would have asked his wife for a divorce before he got engaged again, wouldn’t he?’
I didn’t reply. I couldn’t, because this final blow felt like theultimateabandonment of my life, shrivelling my heart and hopes like an arctic blast. Recently we’d discussed finally setting a date for the wedding, talked of starting a family … and all the time he’d known he was still married to someone else.
And now, after all the work I’d put into his café and creating a lovely home, I had no claim on any of it. It would all go to the woman sitting opposite, tapping acquisitive turquoise talons on the table as she looked round the room.
‘We used to live in a hideous old rented cottage about forty miles from here, but he seems to have done well with this business – and I understand the house next door was his, too?’
She didn’t wait for an answer, or even any response, which was just as well because I was frozen right to the heart. It wasn’t just a house shewas talking about, but my home and somewhere I’d finally begun to put down tentative roots.
‘The café can stay open, so when I get probate I can sell it as a going concern. I expect my turning up has been a bit of a shock to you,’ she added, flicking an impatient look at me as I continued to remain silent and stunned.
‘I’d better take an inventory of everything now, though, and then I’ll know what’s what.’
You’ll know what’s missing after I’ve gone, you mean, I thought.
She took a notebook out of her large and expensive handbag. ‘You can show me round and tell me what’s your personal stuff,’ she suggested.
‘Over my dead body!’ I exclaimed, fury finally waking my tongue into action. ‘I’ve no proof you’re even who you say you are, let alone have any claim on anything. Dantoldme he’d make sure if anything ever happened to him I’d be all right, so—’
‘Oh, you’ll find it’s all true. I just thought I’d save myself another long trip up here to do an inventory and note down anything of any value,’ she said, and then, glancing at one of my paintings, which hung on the wall nearby, she added disparagingly, ‘I don’t think much of Dan’s taste in art these days.’
The picture had been a particular favourite of his. He’d loved the strange goblin-like kitemen who whirled in the sky on paper wings, unaware that below them a white she-wolf had gathered up the kite strings in her mouth and was running away with them.
That pretty well summed up my present situation, I thought, and then, as if the she-wolf had jerkedmystring tight, I stood up so suddenly that the heavy pine table overturned, pinning Dan’s wife to the floor.
Pausing only to unhook my painting from the wall and tuck it under my arm, I walked out into the cold dusk, still wearing my chef’s whites.
