The Beachside Sweetshop

by Karen Clarke

  ‘I think Isabel has a point.’ The camera swung to Donal’s co-presenter, a broad-shouldered woman in a zig-zag patterned top that made my eyes burn. ‘We shouldn’t be stuffing our gobs with sweeties, and I for one will be checking out Isabel’s blog and buying her book for suggestions about how to replace sugar with something healthier.’ Her tone was reproving, and Donal dropped his head like a scolded schoolboy.

  ‘Thank you so much, Norah.’ Isabel made cow-eyes at the woman, eliciting a smile of solidarity. ‘I don’t like to think of myself as a crusader,’ she said, her martyred expression suggesting the exact opposite. ‘I think once people read the book of my blog – a book deal is imminent, by the way – they’ll see that I’m an ordinary mother, wanting the best for families and, and people, everywhere.’

  ‘And this book will be called?’ prompted Norah.

  Donal glanced at his watch and swallowed a yawn.

  ‘Busy Izzy … my Transition from Model to Model Mum,’ she obliged, adding, ‘One Woman’s Mission to Make the Nation a Healthier Place. To Live. In.’

  ‘She made that up!’ I shouted.

  ‘By closing every single sweet shop in the country?’ Donal suppressed a smirk. ‘That could be your tagline.’

  He shot up in my estimation again.

  ‘I really want to get my message out there,’ Isabel said, darting him a filthy look.

  Donal caught her look and returned it. ‘And what is your message, in a nutshell?’

  For a fleeting moment, Isabel seemed flummoxed. She opened her mouth, closed it again, then quick as a flash, said, ‘You’ll have to buy the book and find out!’ She gave an evangelical smile that brought my hackles up, and the section cut away to a weather report.

  I logged off and sat for a moment, staring at my hands.

  Whether she really believed in her ‘mission’ or not, Isabel had managed to have the last word, and that was what people remembered.

  And, to be fair, her book title was pretty good. Apart from the bit she made up.

  I clicked on her blog, but was reassured to see it was no more well-written or informative than before, though she’d written a new post about how she hoped her protest about The Beachside Sweet Shop had resulted in fewer people shopping there.

  My blog to book is shaping up nicely

  she gushed.

  I’ll be very much focused on eating clean, as well as being a good mummy to my baby boy, and a good wife to my darling husband, Gerry.

  Her mother had commented,

  That’s all very well, darling, but WHEN can we see Fitzy?? And as I recall, you were always in the sweet shop as a girl, you used to spend all your dinner-money on Galaxy Counters.

  Isabel hadn’t responded.

  I checked my emails, half-expecting a barrage of hate mail, but there was nothing of note. I switched off the computer and pushed my hands through my hair, dislodging my hair slide. In a sudden frenzy, I dived into the office and grabbed the scissors off the desk. Snatching a handful of fringe I sawed at it, letting the hair fall in clumps to the floor. There was quite a lot of it. I’d be avoiding my reflection for the foreseeable future.

  I jumped with fright when the phone rang, almost stabbing myself in the eye. I looked at the clock. How was it only eight-thirty? I felt like I’d been up for days.

  ‘Yes?’ I barked into the handset, flinging the scissors into the desk drawer for my own safety.

  ‘Ah, this is Radio South-West, Ms Appleton, sorry to phone you so late on a Saturday. We tried your home, but couldn’t get hold of you there.’

  ‘Radio who?’

  ‘South-West. I’m Jeremy Taylor.’ The soothing voice continued, ‘We’re covering local affairs on our show tonight, and wondered whether you had a quote for our listeners, in response to the uproar following your recent award?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ I couldn’t seem to quite grasp what he was requesting. ‘A quote?’

  ‘After Isabel Sinclair’s interview on Morning, Sunshine! We thought you might have a response.’

  I pressed my fingers to my temple. ‘Not really.’

  A heartbeat passed. ‘I read you were going to create a low-sugar brand of your own.’

  ‘Mmm,’ I said. I couldn’t muster the energy to sweep up my fringe, never mind embark on another sweet-making spree. And I still hadn’t prepared the shop for Harry and his helpers.

  ‘So, you’re clearly taking the public’s concerns seriously.’

  ‘S’pose so.’ I scratched my nose. My face felt hairy from my snipping session. ‘Yeah, I guess.’

  ‘Is that your quote?’ The voice grew sarcastic. ‘You suppose so?’

  I caught my grandfather’s eyes, smiling from his photo above the desk, innocent of the campaign to ruin his sweet shop.

  ‘Well of course I’m going to respond,’ I said, straightening my shoulders. ‘The Beachside Sweet Shop has been through a world war, a battle with a developer in the eighties who wanted to build a casino, and a small fire in a bin that could have been a disaster if my grandfather hadn’t had an extinguisher to hand. It’ll take more than a bunch of,’ frustrated bitches ‘protestors to close me down.’

  ‘That’s the spirit.’ His voice warmed up. ‘Thank you so much, Ms Appleton. I have to say I’ve been in your shop before, but I wish you’d bring back Spangles, they were always my favourite.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t have that power.’

  ‘No.’ Jeremy Taylor cleared his throat. ‘Well, anyway, the show goes out at nine and we’ll be sure to include your quote.’

  As the owner of the voice hung up, I fought off an image of Alex’s eyes, and Bobbi-Jo’s engagement ring. I wondered if he’d intended to tell me when he phoned my mobile the night I spoke to Mum, but I’d cut him off before he could muster the courage.

  ‘Bloody HELL!’ I said out loud.

  I thought about phoning Beth, or Phoebe, but couldn’t face their sympathy. And they’d been so supportive when Alex left. It wasn’t fair to put them through it again.

  I wandered into the stockroom, switched on the light, and stared at the coffee-stained pallet. I wondered what would have happened if Doris hadn’t burst in on Josh and me. Maybe a no-strings attached fling was what I needed. Only I wasn’t very good at ‘no-strings’.

  On impulse, I rushed back to the computer and found a website for wannabe gap year travellers I’d looked at hundreds of times. I scrabbled my debit card out of my bag, and within minutes had booked a one-way ticket to Thailand at the end of July. I had no idea what I’d do when I got there, or where to go after that, but would somehow figure it out.

  I had plenty of time to find a new manager for the shop, and teach him or her how to make my healthy sweets. Once I’d learnt how to make them myself.

  Feeling slightly better, I made a mug of coffee, and helped myself to a handful of fruit pastilles for energy. I tuned the old transistor in the office to a dance station, and set to work clearing the shop floor, starting with the pick and mix sweets, then heaped the jars in a trolley and wheeled them into the stockroom. I’d thought it might feel weird – like displacing history – but as I worked a sense of optimism took hold.

  It would be much easier to attract a manager, once the place didn’t look like a throwback to the fifties.

  I carried on as dusk fell, keeping the lights off as I didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that I was alone in the shop. And anyway, the moon had risen, throwing enough brightness in to see what I was doing.

  It sounded fanciful, but I had a feeling Gramps was with me, keeping a watchful eye on proceedings, and I hoped he would approve.

  I tried not to think about Alex and Bobbi-Jo, smooching at his parents’ party, drunk on champagne and each other. I remembered the time we’d smooched, at a leaving do for one of his colleagues at the TV station, when he pulled me into the hotel garden, and told me he loved me by the ornamental fountain.

  I blinked away tears, and when ‘Uptown Funk’ came on the radio I turned
the volume to maximum. I moonwalked behind the counter, then violently pumped my hips and swung my arms above my head to the pounding bass. After attempting a slut-drop that almost dislocated my knee, I switched to some Beyoncé-style krumping, which felt wanton without my Spanx on, and concluded by karate chopping the air, and executing a couple of kung-fu kicks. My shoe flew across the floor, so I kicked off the other, and as one tune segued into another, shimmied up and down doing jazz hands. As I unfurled my fingers above my head, stamping my feet like an angry bull, endorphins flooded my brain. I wondered if it was possible to dance myself happy.

  I continued to boogie, until disco lights danced across the ceiling. Closing my eyes I spun in a circle, faster and faster, head tipped back, arms outstretched …

  Someone was thumping on the window.

  I stopped twirling and crashed against the counter, shielding my eyes from the glare of a torchlight shining in. A figure was peering through the window, hand cupped over his eyes.

  ‘Please open the door!’

  My heart crashed against my ribs, as my spinning head registered a vehicle parked outside. The disco lights were the flashing blues and reds of a police car.

  Breathing like someone in the final stages of emphysema, I staggered to the door, unlocked it and peered out.

  ‘We had a call that there was a burglary in progress, and someone was fighting him off,’ said a lanky police officer, urgently scanning the empty shop. ‘Madam, are you hurt?’

  Still high on endorphins, I was overcome with a wild desire to drag him inside and attempt a jive, but as he swept his torch around, taking in my demented appearance, and the Spanx lying on the floor, his expression changed to alarm.

  ‘I own the shop,’ I panted, wiping an accumulation of dust and sweat off the back of my neck, suspecting my fringe looked a lot worse than I suspected. ‘Just preparing for a paint job tomorrow.’

  He didn’t bother asking to look around. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d vaulted over the bonnet of his car like a seventies TV cop, such was his haste to get in it and drive away.

  It wasn’t until I’d locked up behind me and was scurrying home, barefoot, in the moonlight, that I realised I hadn’t tuned in to Radio South-West and, what’s more, I didn’t care.

  Twenty-Three

  I set my alarm to go off early the following morning, keen to be at the shop before Harry turned up.

  As I stumbled downstairs I heard voices in the kitchen. Spotting a suitcase in the hall, a memory stirred of being roused from sleep in the early hours by the sound of a key in the door. I’d quickly sunk back into a dream, where Bobbi-Jo was listening to my heart through a stethoscope as I tried to pluck out her nose-stud with a pair of tweezers.

  ‘Marnie, what on earth happened to your fringe?’ Mum greeted me, as I entered the kitchen.

  ‘I gave it a trim,’ I mumbled, blinking sleep from my eyes. I’d got showered and dressed without troubling the mirror.

  ‘Well, it looks quite … avant-garde,’ she said, which was mum-speak for terrible. ‘Very Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction.’ She got up from the table and pulled me into her arms. She smelt of her usual patchouli oil, with a tang of train carriage.

  ‘More like Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber,’ I said, tightly returning her hug and breathing her in.

  ‘Silly.’ She cuffed my arm. ‘You do look tired though.’

  ‘So do you.’ I stepped back to study her face. She didn’t look as robust as usual, her eyes too big in her heart-shaped face, her tumble of hair escaping its tortoiseshell clip. It was a shock to see strands of grey among the black. ‘What are you doing here?’ I said, looking around for a swarthy Italian. ‘Where’s Mario?’

  ‘Not here,’ said Celia, who was perched on the arm of Chester’s armchair in her dressing gown. ‘Your mother’s left him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I haven’t left him,’ Mum corrected, huddling deeper into her woollen cardigan, even though it was warm in the kitchen, weak sunlight already streaming through the window. ‘I needed some space to think about things, that’s all.’

  ‘I thought he was The One; the earthbound guide to your free spirit.’ I crossed to the fridge and took out a carton of orange juice. ‘What about the Tuscan villa, the sunshine, the wine, the pool …?’ the chest hair I saw you winding your fingers through. It was when she’d managed to get Skype working, not realising I could see a lot more than just her face. She’d been sprawled on Mario’s lap on a leather sofa, absently fondling him. He’d thrown back his head in apparent ecstasy, an indecent bulge in his boxer shorts, and I’d wanted to scrub my eyes clean afterwards.

  ‘It’s just stuff, darling,’ Mum said. ‘You know it doesn’t matter to me.’

  It was true she didn’t care for material things; hence her having none of the trappings most women her age had. No home, no car; even the chain she wore round her neck she’d inherited from her grandmother, and her slim-gold watch was a gift from me on her fortieth birthday, bought with money I’d saved from my job at the sweet shop.

  ‘I was planning to visit you,’ I said, disappointment flowing through me.

  She came over and squeezed my waist. ‘Well, now you don’t have to.’

  ‘She’ll be wanting to stay here,’ Celia said, directing her words to me. She often did when we were in the same room, as though Mum required an interpreter. ‘It’s a jolly good job she has a home to return to.’

  ‘Oh, stop it,’ Mum said mildly, crouching to gather Chester in a hug, her dove-grey chiffon skirt pooling around her bare feet. Chester adored Mum, much to Celia’s annoyance. I had the feeling she’d prefer him to chew Mum’s hand off. ‘It’ll only be for a week, or two,’ she murmured into his fur. ‘While I work out what I want to do.’

  Celia widened her eyes at me in disbelief, but for some reason I didn’t believe she was that horrified. For a start, they’d been chatting before I came downstairs, and she’d gone to the trouble of making Mum’s favourite peppermint tea in a pot, which she didn’t bother doing when anyone else dropped in. Even Paddy got a tea-bag dunked in a mug.

  ‘Woke me up, crashing about,’ she grumbled, getting up and tightening the belt of her dressing gown.

  ‘That might have been me,’ I confessed. ‘I tripped over the mat when I came in, and fell against the wall.’

  ‘I need to move back up to my bedroom, now my leg’s better.’

  ‘We can sort that out today,’ Mum said, with unusual eagerness. ‘Your gran’s been telling me your plans for the sweet shop,’ she added to me, shoulders scrunching around her ears. ‘Sounds exciting!’

  I returned her grin, my disappointment yielding to pleasure that she was back. ‘It’s just a lick of paint,’ I said, checking the time. ‘Actually, I need to go in a minute.’

  ‘And you’re going to be making your own sweets, like we used to?’

  I looked round from buttering a slice of burnt toast. ‘I thought I’d give it a go.’

  ‘I was telling your mum about that blogger,’ said Celia, opening the back door to let Chester out. ‘Doris reckons it’s that woman down the road, who has the dog with the silly name.’ Turning, she gave me a hard look. ‘Is that true?’

  Damn Doris, and her sleuthing ways. ‘Possibly,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Why didn’t you say so?’ Celia’s brow furrowed. ‘I’ve arranged another training session. She’s still whining at night and waking up the baby, and she dug up the vegetable patch.’

  ‘Isabel?’

  Celia sighed. ‘The dog.’

  Mum’s head twitched from Celia to me. ‘What’s the story?’

  ‘Oh, one of our neighbours is on a bit of a crusade about unhealthy eating,’ I said, trying to make light of it. ‘I thought I’d try something different, that’s all.’

  ‘Sweets aren’t unhealthy, unless you eat them all the time,’ Mum said, with more verve than I’d heard since Mario invited her to Italy, and she bought some art books from a charity shop and said she was goin
g to ‘get cultured’.

  She crossed to the recipe books with none of her usual languor. ‘I can help you make sweets, it’ll be fun.’

  As she found the red book and started flicking through the pages, Celia and I exchanged looks.

  What’s with her? she said with her eyes.

  Beats me, I said with mine, but I was secretly pleased by her interest.

  ‘Coconut ice!’ she cried, glancing up with a Cheshire cat grin. ‘I can start with that.’

  I daren’t look at Celia as I recalled my smoke-filled error. ‘That’s lovely of you, Mum, but I’ll need to make some adjustments.’

  ‘Adjustments?’

  ‘The thing is, I have to use sugar alternatives,’ I said. ‘It’s … complicated.’

  Mum looked mildly aghast. ‘Sugar alternatives?’

  ‘I’ve promised,’ I said, rather desperately. ‘I need them by tomorrow, so once I’ve been to the shop and Harry’s started work …’

  ‘Harry?’ Mum said, returning her attention to the recipe book.

  ‘Beth’s husband,’ I reminded her. ‘I thought I’d use some of my winnings to give the shop a facelift.’

  ‘Can I come and have a look?’ she said.

  ‘Of course you can, but maybe when it’s been painted,’ I said, wanting her to see it at its best. ‘I’ll be going to Beth’s later, to make the sweets,’ I added. ‘The cooker there’s a bit more reliable.’

  ‘Charming,’ huffed Celia, pulling on her wellies, ready to clear up in the garden after Chester.

  ‘They’re in their new place?’ asked Mum.

  ‘Not yet. They’ll be at his parents’ for a few more weeks at least.’ I gave her a hug and planted a kiss on her cheek, then picked up my bag and headed for the door. ‘I’m not sure what time I’ll be back.’

  ‘Alex called a couple of times last night.’

  I wheeled round to face Celia. ‘What?’

  ‘He wanted to speak to you.’

  Mum’s hand hovered, in the act of turning a page. ‘I thought he was in America.’