Page 16 of The Secret House of Honey and Hope

“You think about it. At £300 holiday rent per week, on ten apartments per block, we stand to make thirty-five to forty thousand each summer.”

They are idiots.

Amateur property developers would be my guess.

I might hate my job, but it’s taught me a lot. There is an art to investing in holiday rentals. La Canette isn’t the Costa del Sol, and holiday makers who come here will be looking for something better than a flat in a cramped, ugly block.

“But you need to find out about the other owners,” Dandelion-man is saying.

“They’ll all be at this public meeting this morning. If you talk to them before anyone else, we might be able to get all four houses.”

“As long as Hedge sells, it’s no good if we get the properties to left and right and he holds on like an eyesore in the middle of the development.”

“Leave Hedge to me,” Paisley-Tie says laughing confidently. “I’ve got him where I want him, trust me, he’ll have to sell.”

The man checks his phone. “I’ll go ahead and find a good place to sit.”

Chapter Eight

Elodie

I give Grandad his breakfast, but I don’t have time to eat with him. The seigneur of La Canette has invited everyone on Catcher Lane to a meeting at the town hall. I had better start calling it the Municipalité as everyone here does. But first, I want to look in at the honey shop.

Grandad was very excited when I told him I would stay for a few weeks and look after his shop while he recuperates. He patted me on the top of my head in the awkward rough way of someone who hasn’t touched another human being in ages. Not for the first time, my heart twists for him. I know he only got married in his late forties and my grandmother died six years later.

What a shame the neighbourhood is so neglected. I had hoped the man I ran into yesterday might live nearby, but when I came back from the village No lights were on in any of the windows in the lane.

I bring my attention back to the present. First things first. The shop.

It’s not there.

I walk up and down Lavender Lane, but nothing. Finally, the man from the bakery points towards a narrow door at the very end. After the bicycle repairs, after the ironmonger, and after the grain-storage warehouse. There is indeed a two-story narrow building about the size of a tall white van, the kind you hire to move furniture.

“Are you sure?” There is no sign on the front.

“Yea,” he says. “That’s Hedge’s place.”

I thank him by buying a couple of rolls, fresh from the oven. He adds a large loaf wrapped in cloth. “For Hedge. Tell him the village isn’t the same without him.”

“Thank you so much. You must let me pay for this.” I can’t help offering. The bread smells warm, yeasty, and delicious.

He dismisses my offer with a careless hand wave. “Everyone knows Hedge. Hopefully it won’t be long before he’s back in business.” He nods up the alley.

If the shop looked small from the outside, it looks even smaller from the inside. There is hardly any space to move around all the boxes.

Dust lies on the top shelves where I suspect Grandad has struggled to reach. The place smells damp, and a little fungal.

I look around the shelves and the boxes behind the counter. I can’t find the till, just a cash box with some change.

It’s very tidy, a place for everything and the everything in its place, but nothing makes sense. Most of the stock is not even labelled or displayed properly. It looks as if Grandad uses the shelves to store the honey jars rather than show them off to customers.

The upstairs is a no-go area; after climbing up the tight corkscrew stairs I find a room stuffed to the ceiling with boxes full of jars of honey. There is a leak in the corner where the rooftiles must have fallen because the wall is stained, and the room smells damp.

This is not a shop. It’s a dungeon for scaring people. It’s certainly scared me.

What I know about running a business could be written into a Twitter post with room left for 10 hashtags. But even I can see that Grandad’s business must have been struggling for ages.

His way of trading seems to go back to the 1950s when people came in and asked the shopkeeper for what they wanted. There’s nothing to inspire people to buy. Only the determined shopper would come here.

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