I found the estate agency representing the sale on a side street. The agent I spoke to – Ian – seemed far more willing to have a chat and eagerly handed me a copy of the sale particulars. He confirmed that there were only three storeys but the top floor was double-height as I’d suspected and, while not used as accommodation now, previously had been. He also told me that the owner was desperate to sell because his family were emigrating to Australia in August. There’d been a couple of viewings when it had gone on the market at the start of the year, but nothing since and definitely no offers.
Clutching the particulars, I wandered up and down Castle Street a few more times, my heart racing and my head spinning with ideas. I felt almost dizzy with excitement and had to sit down in a small park at the end of the street to calm myself down. This was it! I’d found my café. I’d found my home.
Ian arranged for me to meet the owner, Jed Ferguson, for a full tour the following day. I arrived just before the café closed. Jed was in his mid-to-late twenties, with thick blond hair and green eyes shielded by ridiculously long lashes. Let’s face it, he was gorgeous… and boy did he know it. As he shook my hand, he looked me up and down – hate that – and said, ‘You’re younger than I expected.’
A feeling of instant dislike powered through me and I gave him my hardest stare. ‘What’s age got to do with anything? Are you going to show me round or should I ask the estate agent?’
The shocked expression on his face was priceless. I suspected nobody had ever put him in his place like that before. Ha! If he’d hoped to go on a charm offensive, he’d picked the wrong woman. No man was ever going to charm me again.
With a shrug, he reached past me, turned the shabby cardboard sign round to ‘closed’ and locked the door.
‘Welcome to Ferguson’s.’ He indicated that I should sit down. ‘I’ll give you a bit of background then take you for a tour, if that’s okay with you.’
Nodding, I sat down opposite him.
‘It’s a family business. It was originally a carpet shop but my parents bought the building and re-opened it as a café in the eighties. They ran it together and I had a part-time job here throughout school and college. When they retired, I somehow ended up working here full-time, although that was never the intention.’
He paused and looked at me expectantly but I wasn’t going to ask him to expand. I was here to fact-find and make another enormous life-changing decision – not to listen to his life story.
‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘My wife, Ingrid, is a sun-worshipper and can’t stand the English weather. She’s been keen to emigrate to Australia for ages and I’m running out of excuses to say no. Our daughters are aged two and four so, if we go now, there’s loads of time to get settled before they’re ready to start school. It’ll be weird, though. I’ve only ever lived in Whitsborough Bay. Are you from—?’
I scraped the chair back and rose to my feet. ‘How about that tour?’ I knew where that question was heading and I wasn’t about to share that information with anyone.
‘Oh. Okay.’ He stood up too. ‘Kitchen first?’
I followed him behind the serving counter into a cramped but clean kitchen. From the dimensions on the particulars, I knew it was a good size but it was so badly organised, I felt sorry for anyone who worked in there. Some of the equipment looked as though it might have been there since Jed’s parents started the café.
I followed him up the wooden staircase to the first floor.
‘The top two floors aren’t connected,’ he said. ‘You access the top floor from a private staircase at the back of the café and this is the only access to this floor, although both floors have an external fire escape, of course.’
The first floor was a large but cluttered space. Broken tables and chairs were piled up by the windows along with an old rusting fridge. Who in their right mind would haul a fridge up all those stairs instead of taking it outside and disposing of it properly?
Jed’s cheeks coloured as he clocked my stunned expression. At least he had the decency to look embarrassed.
‘Erm, it’s…’ He shuffled on the spot. ‘I’ve kept meaning to clear it out.’ He cleared his throat. ‘There are toilets up here but most customers use the disabled one on the ground floor. As you can see, it’s a good space. It would provide plenty of extra seating if you needed it.’
Clearly they’d never needed it at Ferguson’s, or at least not over the past few years, which would make it easier for me to put my offer to him. It was obvious that he was running a failing – or should that be failed – business and there was no way I was prepared to pay for a business that had no decent assets and no goodwill. With the dilapidated exterior and tired interior, Ferguson’s didn’t exactly scream, ‘Amazing business opportunity’ but I could see through it. There was massive potential but I’d be starting completely from scratch and therefore I only wanted to buy the premises, not the business.
‘How many covers do you have?’ I asked.
He frowned. ‘Covers?’
‘How many people can you serve at once?’
He shrugged. ‘There are twelve tables downstairs. There used to be thirteen but…’
I opened the door to check out the two unisex toilets while he rabbited on about removing a table because a member of staff was superstitious about having thirteen. I still wanted to know how many covers they could do but he obviously didn’t have a clue. The footprint was similar to one of the branches of Vanilla Pod so I could make a good guess myself.
‘What are the business rates?’ I asked as we made our way back downstairs.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Turnover?’
‘Erm…’
‘Utility costs?’
‘I think Ian has those details,’ Jed said, heading towards a door at the back of the ground floor.
Perhaps it was mean of me to quiz him, especially when the rates and utilities were on the particulars, but a good business owner should have details like that at their fingertips so, for me, it was more evidence of a failed business.
As we walked up the two flights to the top floor, Jed started wittering on about his move to Australia again. ‘Have you ever been there?’
‘No.’
‘Neither have we. Is it crazy to up sticks and move to somewhere you’ve never visited?’
Not crazy at all. I’d just done it myself. But I wasn’t going to share that with him. ‘Depends on the circumstances.’
‘The thing I’m most worried about is taking my girls away from both sets of grandparents. It’s not right, is it? Would you move away from your family like that?’
Family. I stopped dead on the stairs, trying to steady my racing heart. I’d tried so hard not to think of them all week but now my foster parents were so vivid in my mind that I could almost smell Kirsten’s perfume. They’d be back from their holidays and would hopefully have found my letter. What would they have made of it? Had they been upset? Angry? What lies would Leanne and Garth have told them? I’d done the right thing by leaving but, at that very moment, I missed them so much, I could barely catch my breath.
‘Are you okay?’ Jed asked, turning round.
I clung onto the handrail. Act normal. ‘Yes, erm… dust in my eye.’ I swiped at the ready tears and took a deep breath. Focus. ‘Ian tells me it used to be a flat upstairs?’
‘It was but that was a long time ago. The previous owner turned it into a load of small storage rooms and we never got round to changing it. My parents didn’t want to live at work and neither did Ingrid.’ He unlocked the door and flicked on a light. ‘Are you thinking of living here?’
I didn’t get a chance to answer because I stepped into the ‘flat’ and gasped. Oh. Definitely not what I was expecting. But he hadn’t lied. He’d said it was a load of small storage rooms and that was exactly what it was. It looked like somebody had been handed a pallet of wood, some plasterboard, a nail gun and been issued with the challenge to fit in as many stud walls as was humanly possibl
e.
‘It’s big,’ Jed said. ‘I know it might not look it but you could probably convert it into a two-bedroom flat.’
‘It’s like a storage unit,’ I muttered, wandering down the first of several narrow corridors and looking into the door-less entrances to each room. Some rooms contained crates of paperwork and others stored old furniture but the ones furthest from the stairs were empty.
‘There’s a bathroom,’ Jed called to me, his voice muted by the mass of plasterboard. ‘And there’s the fittings for a kitchen although I can’t remember where. I never come up here.’
I placed my hands on my hips and took a few deep breaths. Downstairs was good. I could work with downstairs. But the flat? It would need completely gutting and it would need a heck of a good builder with major vision because seeing a way of converting this shambolic storage unit into a home was a stretch too far for my imagination. Although it did give me another bargaining chip.
‘I didn’t come across a bathroom,’ I said, returning to Jed.
He pointed. ‘You have to go round that way to get to it. It’s in the corner.’
I followed another narrow corridor to a room in the far back corner and nearly laughed out loud. There was an avocado-coloured toilet, a matching sink hanging off the wall, and ancient-looking pipework where a bath had once been.
‘Seen enough?’ Jed asked when I made my way back to him again.
‘Plenty. I can see why you and your parents never got round to doing anything up here. That’s a hell of a project for someone.’
His face fell. ‘But not you?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘So you are interested?’ His eyes twinkled and he gave me what I’m sure he thought was a charming smile but it just wound me up.
‘I need to do some number-crunching. If I did make you an offer, it won’t be anywhere near the asking price because of the amount of work needed.’ I opened the door and started to make my way downstairs.
Jed was hot on my heels. ‘I’ll admit it needs work up here but there’s nothing wrong with downstairs.’
I paused on the first-floor landing, turned and raised an eyebrow, but I managed to stop myself from verbalising my thoughts. The business probably meant a lot to his family and I wasn’t going to insult him but if he thought there was nothing wrong with the café part, then he clearly had blinkers on and that probably explained why the business had failed.
Stepping through the door and into the café, a flutter of excitement made me smile. This was definitely the place. I could feel it. I wiped the smile from my face before I turned to face Jed, adopting a strong, confident business-like tone. ‘I’ll do some thinking tonight and get in touch with the estate agent tomorrow either way.’
‘Can you give me any indication?’ he asked, sheepishly.
I sighed. ‘I’ve already given you it. If I offer, it won’t be at asking price.’
‘Why not? It’s a good price.’
‘It isn’t.’
‘It is.’
‘No it isn’t,’ I snapped.
His expression hardened. ‘What would you know about the price of businesses round here? You’re obviously not local with that accent and you look like you’re barely out of college so—’
‘You can stop right there.’ I fixed him with a hard stare and injected every bit of strength and maturity I could find into my voice. ‘I may be young but I was brought up in a family business running a chain of bistros so I know what this business is worth. It’s basically a greasy spoon café that’s barely ticking over so, if I do decide buy, I’ll be buying the premises only.’
‘You can’t do that,’ he cried. ‘It’s the business that’s for sale.’
‘And I’m really sorry but it’s not a viable business.’
Suddenly, he could quote facts and figures, trying to convince me it was a good going concern.
I cut him off again. ‘I have to go. You need to sell and I’m looking for premises but If I make an offer, it will be for the premises only and nothing will sway me otherwise. It will be up to you whether you accept that or not but bear in mind that I’m a cash buyer ready to go immediately. Would you risk walking away from that when you’re emigrating in about three months’ time? I certainly wouldn’t in your position. But, it’s your choice. I’ll see myself out.’
‘It’s the business that’s for sale, not the premises,’ he called. ‘The business.’
‘And the premises are the only thing of value,’ I snapped back. It took every ounce of self-control to stop me from slamming the door behind me. I stormed down to the park at the end of the street and flung myself onto one of the benches overlooking the sea, muttering under my breath. Viable business, my arse. But as the sea breeze cooled my flaming cheeks and I felt the anger ebb away, I wondered if I’d been rude. Yes, I probably had been but he’d pushed me. He was trying to pull a swift one by selling a duff business and he’d tried that on the wrong person. No man was ever going to dupe me again. Ever.
I spent the evening in my room at the B&B scribbling sketches of how the downstairs of Ferguson’s could look when I got my hands on it. I didn’t need to do any number-crunching. I already knew what I’d offer.
Ian didn’t flinch when I called into the estate agency the following morning and presented my decision.
‘I think that’s a fair offer considering the state of the premises,’ he said. ‘If you want to take a seat, I’ll ring Mr Ferguson and put it to him right now.’ He headed for a desk at the far end of the open plan office.
I couldn’t stop fidgeting as I sat in the leather tub chair in the reception area, watching Ian’s facial expressions and trying to work out whether they meant good or bad news. Jed had to accept. He’d be an idiot not to and, as Ian said, it was a fair offer considering the work required.
‘He hasn’t accepted but he hasn’t said no,’ Ian said after an excruciating five minutes. ‘He needs to talk to his family. He wanted me to push you for more but I made it clear that it was a best and final offer, like you said.’
There was nothing I could do except wait it out. And wait I did. Not very patiently. I explored all the other streets in Whitsborough Bay, the surrounding villages and the nearby towns but nothing compared to Castle Street and what Ferguson’s could become. I found an empty one-bed flat to rent above a newsagent’s a few doors down on the other side of Castle Street and took out a six-month lease. It was a cheaper and more practical option than staying in a B&B and, even though I wanted to move into the flat above the café, I’d have to prioritise the retail side over accommodation so it could be quite some time before I’d be able to live onsite. Assuming Jed saw sense and accepted my offer.
Finally, a week after my tour, Ian phoned. My heart leapt seeing his name on my screen, then sank when I was told that Jed couldn’t accept. I could picture Ian cringing as he made a feeble attempt at further negotiation. By then, I’d done masses more research, sourcing a builder and equipment. I knew roughly how much it was going to cost to convert the café and I wasn’t willing to raise my price so I left the offer on the table, hoping Jed would snap before I did.
He did. It took him nearly a fortnight to finally accept but on Thursday 3rd June, halfway through the late half-term holiday, Ian called to say that Jed had reluctantly accepted my offer and hoped I appreciated what a bargain I’d secured.
‘What made him change his mind?’ I asked.
‘He says it was the arrival of June taking them that step closer to emigrating.’
I could hear the doubt in Ian’s voice. ‘And why do you really think he changed his mind?’
‘Strictly off the record, I think half-term has done it. The town has been heaving but the café has been quiet and I think it was a wake-up call that you were right about the business failing. It’s too big a risk for them not to have it sold and sorted before they go so, congratulations, you’ll soon be the new owner of Ferguson’s.’
Things moved quickly after that. A ‘sold’
sign appeared outside the café the following day and Ferguson’s officially ceased trading on the Saturday. I hadn’t expected him to close quite so soon but, if Ian was right about the poor half-term sales, there was no point in prolonging things, especially when the café was probably trading at a loss each day.
Via Ian, we agreed that I’d take over on Thursday 1st July to allow time for Jed to clear the café and for our solicitors to do their thing. From my vantage point in my rented flat down the street, I watched as a skip was delivered outside Ferguson’s on the Monday after they closed. Jed met a couple of builders there shortly afterwards and, over the next two days, the three of them steadily emptied the café of all the furnishings and equipment into the skip or a lorry. Every load took me closer to my dream and I was chomping at the bit to get inside.
On Wednesday morning, before any of the shops opened for the day, I made my way over to the café and peered through the windows. I couldn’t see into the kitchen but everything else had been stripped out including the serving counter and shelving. Had that been a conscious decision that I probably wouldn’t want to keep anything or had it been a case of sticking two fingers up to me, making sure I couldn’t have anything I hadn’t paid for. Either way, Jed had done me a favour, saving me the cost of having it all ripped out myself.
‘Imagining how it’s going to look?’
I jumped at his voice and banged my head on the window.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’
I rubbed my head. ‘It’s fine. No permanent damage.’
We both stared at each other for a moment. What could I say? I’m sorry your business failed. I did feel a fleeting moment of sympathy but, ultimately, I’d done him a favour. He’d sold up and had plenty of time to get his affairs in order before starting a new life on the other side of the world.
‘We’ve cleared everything out,’ he said. ‘It’s in the hands of the solicitors now.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Soon be yours. Are you excited?’
Starry Skies Over the Chocolate Pot Cafe Page 6
