The Tea Chest

by Josephine Moon

  ‘Are you the caretaker or something?’

  ‘My name is Lady Heavensfield and this is my establishment.’ She pointed above her head to a tasteful sign announcing Heavensfield House. ‘We will open in another hour if you care to come back then.’ She proceeded to back away and pull the door shut.

  ‘Wait,’ Leila said, grabbing the doorframe. ‘Let’s start again. This is Kate Fullerton and I’m Leila Morton. We’ve come to arrange the opening of The Tea Chest. Kate’s the owner.’

  ‘What has this to do with me?’

  Kate was indignant now. ‘This is my store.’

  ‘It most certainly is not.’

  ‘It most certainly is too. I have the paperwork here.’ Kate rifled through her handbag. She extracted her passport, purse, boarding pass, comb, an old packet of Gummy Bears and tissues before dragging out the battered lease agreement. She turned to the page that listed the shop’s address and thrust it at Lady Heavensfield.

  ‘See?’

  Lady Heavensfield cast a reluctant eye over the page. ‘I think you’ll find that number is a six, not a five, and your tea shop is over there.’

  Kate and Leila spun their heads to gaze across the road to where Lady Heavensfield’s knobbly finger pointed and saw a boarded-up shop front with graffiti, a broken window above the paint-peeled door.

  ‘If you’ll excuse me.’ Lady Heavensfield pulled the door shut behind her, leaving Kate and Leila alone on the footpath to consider the decaying metal over the window frame of their new shop, orange flakes of rust falling to the ground before their eyes.

  The lettings agent resided in a tiny one-room office at the top of a long stairwell in a converted warehouse in West London. He wore red braces and dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief in his overly warm room.

  Kate and Leila were breathing hard when they reached the top of the building, not only because of the many flights of stairs but because they were still dragging their luggage. Mr Clive Evans stroked his braces.

  ‘Good flight?’ he said, edging back behind his stainless-steel desk. A dinosaur computer whirred uncomfortably on the edge, its lights reflecting in the shiny steel.

  Apparently, the rich people who owned the shop in Kings Road liked to save their money when it came to agent fees.

  ‘What’s happened to the tea shop?’ Kate demanded, pressing her hand to her flushed face. ‘It’s a wreck. A disaster. Where are the contractors?’

  ‘I’m afraid I have no idea,’ he said. ‘Simone signed the lease with an agreement to accept the shop as it was—subject to a building inspection, of course, which it must have passed because she went ahead.’ He adopted a meaningful expression. ‘The rent was reduced on account of its need of repair.’

  ‘Repair? It looks like it should be condemned. And the rent we’re paying for that shop could feed a third world nation.’

  ‘It’s Kings Road,’ Clive said, his neck wobbling like a turkey’s. ‘What do you expect?’

  Kate flopped down in an overstuffed faux-leather armchair. She was woozy. She wasn’t sure what day it was, not really, not if she was thinking Australian time, and she hadn’t slept for more than an hour or so during the long flight. Judy was right. Mark’s first instinct had been right. It was a disaster.

  Leila gave her a sympathetic grimace then turned to Clive. ‘Mr Evans, do you by any chance know who Simone contracted to do the refurbishments on the tea shop?’

  ‘Hmm.’ He looked off into the distance and intertwined his fingers on top of his belly. ‘Now, she may have mentioned it. I’ll have to think.’

  ‘Please try to remember,’ Leila prompted, smiling. ‘It would mean a great deal. We’re a little lost, you see, with Simone’s unexpected passing.’ She placed emotional gravity on the phrase.

  ‘Yes, quite,’ he said. ‘I am sorry for your loss, by the way.’ He looked at Kate.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Leila waited a beat and then pressed on. ‘Would she have left you any paperwork, or would the contractors themselves not have come to you for a key?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, can’t say they did.’ He flicked through some piles of paper on his desk. ‘Never turned up for the key.’

  Kate groaned. They’d never find another contractor at this late notice.

  ‘Would there be an email?’ Leila said.

  Clive stopped and looked at the ceiling. ‘An email. Now that’s a possibility.’ He turned to face his groaning computer and tapped single-fingered at the keyboard. Leila and Kate waited in silence, exchanging looks.

  For goodness’ sake, one of my boys could do it faster.

  Eventually, he spoke.

  ‘Ah, now, there is an email from Simone.’ He looked up briefly to smile at them.

  Kate leaned forward in the armchair and Leila rested her hands on the desktop, craning to see the screen.

  ‘What does it say?’ Leila asked.

  Clive read in silence, tapping the arrow on the keyboard to scroll down the page.

  ‘Golly, look at the time,’ he said suddenly. ‘I’ve a meeting to get to. I’ll tell you what, I’ll print out this email for you and you can take it with you.’

  ‘Fine,’ Kate said. ‘And we’d like the keys while you’re at it.’ She shocked herself with the forcefulness of her voice. Within seconds she’d swung from feeling like she was twenty feet under and a complete failure, to feeling huge and bossy and wanting this man to do exactly as she asked.

  Clive’s printer whirred and he fished through a huge filing cabinet for a set of keys.

  ‘Here you are,’ he said, handing over a normal small silver door key with a standard plastic key ring. ‘And here’s your email.’

  Kate took them both and shoved them into her handbag. ‘Thank you.’ She made moves to leave, but Leila put a hand on her arm.

  ‘Just one other thing,’ Leila said. ‘In respect to our circumstances, we’re wondering if there might be a clause in the contract allowing for compassionate grounds for breaking the lease without penalty.’ She smiled sweetly at Clive.

  Kate was startled. She hadn’t even considered that. In the wake of Simone’s passing and all the pressure Judy had put on her to dissolve the company, and Mark’s reluctance for her to go ahead with the business, she hadn’t even thought there might be an escape clause in the contract. Her emotions rapidly ran from being grateful and excited there might be a way out of this, to irritated and betrayed Leila could suggest such a thing. Even Leila. Was there no one who thought she could do this? Then her anger dissolved and she acknowledged the enormity of the situation of a five-year lease with a huge price tag and disappearing contractors leaving them even further behind. She turned her eyes to Clive hopefully.

  He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Kate deflated.

  ‘I’m no lawyer,’ Leila said, still smiling, ‘but surely the lessor has some power to grant an exit without penalty. That just seems like common sense to me.’

  Clive shuffled. ‘Only the owner could grant such an exemption.’

  ‘Could you ask them?’ Kate said, sliding down an imaginary rabbit hole.

  Clive began packing up the papers on his desk and then reached for his coat, slipping it on over his broad shoulders. ‘Certainly. I’ll phone you as soon as I get a response.’ He picked up a battered brown briefcase. ‘It’s been a pleasure to meet you but you’ll have to excuse me, I have an appointment to make.’

  He walked to the door and opened it, smiling at them with the same false warmth Leila had been using on him.

  Kate and Leila looked at each other and then popped up the handles on their suitcases to wheel them to the door.

  ‘Good day,’ Clive said as they exited to the landing. Then, realising they all had to go down the stairs together, he pushed past them with a forced chuckle and scooted ahead. Kate and Leila followed slowly, their luggage thumping down each step behind them.

  For the third time that day, they hopped into a black cab and directed the driver to
take them to their hotel. They dropped their bags with relief inside the calming earth tones of the twin room, flicked on the television, raided the minibar for peanuts and crackers, flopped onto a bed each and promptly fell asleep.

  When they woke, it was nearing six o’clock in the evening and their ravenous stomachs protested loudly.

  ‘Come on,’ Leila encouraged, pulling Kate to her feet. ‘What we need is some stodge. A really traditional English pub meal with a pint or two of beer.’

  ‘Beer?’ Kate grimaced.

  ‘Or lager or vodka. Something to wash down your bangers and mash.’

  ‘Bangers and mash?’

  Kate rolled the words around her mouth. At home, Mark normally cooked Asian stir-fry and she cooked soups and vegetarian quiches and pies. They tried to eat healthily and set a good example for the boys. (Well, she did. Mark’s recent chocolate confession was something else.) They would never eat bangers and mash. But suddenly, tired and hungry and in a different country, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. More than that, it actually sounded healing, as though it would soothe her depleted soul.

  Elizabeth and her sister found themselves in The Victoria, not far from Hyde Park Gardens.

  ‘We have to go there,’ Victoria had said. ‘You’ve been away forever. I wasn’t even legal drinking age last time you were here. The pub’s named after me. And that’s, you know, fate or something.’

  Elizabeth had spent the better part of two weeks hiding in the unicorn room, living in her pyjamas, sleeping most of the day and crying most of the night. Occasionally she watched crime shows in silence with her father. She didn’t allow herself to think of anything, feel anything. The world might as well have stopped while she hovered in a bubble of nothing.

  Finally, Bill had come and sat on the edge of her bed and said, ‘Well done, kitten.’

  ‘What for?’ she said.

  ‘You didn’t die. Good job. Now it’s time to start again.’

  So she’d had a long soak in the peach-coloured bathtub. She shampooed her hair and put a colour rinse through it that Victoria had picked up for her. Shaved her legs. Put on a face peel. Allowed her sister to do her nails with a simple French polish.

  The place was packed wall to wall with after-work drinkers and the jovial ambience was familiar and homey. Elizabeth suddenly realised how much she’d missed the tradition and architecture of English pubs.

  She wanted to get drunk. Fast. She fished in her purse for pounds. It was so strange to be searching for English pounds rather than Australian dollars. Her insides swirled, as if they’d been affected by the magnetic pull of the earth and were spinning the opposite way, just like water down a drain in the northern hemisphere.

  ‘Are you alright?’ Victoria said. ‘Looked like you were about to keel over and you haven’t even started yet.’

  ‘Mind my purse. I’ll go for drinks,’ Elizabeth shouted above the din.

  She was three-deep from the bar and being jostled from behind. She smiled amicably as a man who’d just left the bar with three pints slopped a little on her boots.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, winking.

  ‘No worries,’ she replied—a phrase she’d picked up since being in Australia.

  She took a moment to bask under his open stare and assessment of her body. She was wearing a black velvet skirt that came to just above her knees, revealing black tights and the latest knee-high boots with silver buckles. Well, they were fashionable in Australia at any rate. Her outfit was probably a season behind here in Europe. A figure-hugging wrap top made the most of her silhouette.

  She was confident she looked good, but made a mental note to hit the shops and update her wardrobe to European standards, courtesy of John’s credit card. Then realised, with deep shock, that she’d have to go and find another job in London. She gazed at the harassed bar staff, wondering if she could get a job here.

  She’d have to start all over again.

  Or would she? Didn’t the wronged woman in these situations get a good divorce settlement?

  Divorce. Divorce? The word spun her further off balance.

  She stepped forward in the queue, inching her way to the bar. She squeezed in next to a pretty young woman with a gold and diamante ‘L’ around her neck. Elizabeth smiled as their bodies were pressed together in the heaving crowd and rolled her eyes good-naturedly.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  The woman smiled back. ‘No worries.’

  ‘You Australian?’

  The woman nodded. ‘From Brisbane.’

  ‘Me too. What part?’

  ‘New Farm.’

  ‘Oh.’ A small shudder snaked its way up Elizabeth’s spine as she remembered the humiliation of the news story about her on the bridge.

  ‘You?’ The woman moved closer to be heard above the noise.

  ‘Rosalie.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘What?’ Elizabeth asked, her heart trotting.

  ‘It’s just that you look familiar.’ She squinted at her, clearly trying to remember where she’d seen her.

  Elizabeth forced a laugh. ‘People say that all the time. I must just have one of those faces.’

  They reached the bar and Elizabeth leaned against the damp edge of the polished wood.

  ‘I’m Leila,’ the woman said.

  ‘Elizabeth.’ She held out her hand and they shook. ‘Are you here alone?’

  ‘No. My boss is over there.’ Leila turned and pointed to Kate, who was craning her neck around the pub looking for a seat.

  ‘We were hoping for a feed but it doesn’t look like we’ll get a table,’ Leila said.

  ‘We’ve got a table,’ Elizabeth said. ‘You’re welcome to join us.’

  ‘Really? Great.’

  They sorted their drinks, collected Kate, and navigated their way back to the table where Victoria was busily tapping the screen on her phone. She looked up at their new friends and waved. ‘Hiya.’

  Elizabeth made the introductions and got everyone seated, then they ordered food, Kate choosing bangers and mash and Leila a pie with extra chips to share.

  ‘Bugger the food,’ Victoria said. ‘Bring on the drinks.’

  Victoria set the rules for the night. Each round of drinks was to be a surprise, all four drinks were to be the same, and they had to drink whatever was put in front of them. Victoria kicked off the first round and brought back four pints of Kilkenny.

  ‘You’re mad,’ Elizabeth said. ‘That stuff will knock us over for the night. We won’t even make it to the next round.’

  But maybe this was the perfect way to finally forget that she’d lost everything, including her beautiful modern home in a warm, sunny city she’d grown to love, and now lived in a damp, musty, aged terrace house, in her childhood bedroom with her father’s unicorns.

  Yes, on second thought, a pint of Kilkenny was exactly what she needed to send her past packing.

  8

  Kate boiled the little kettle in the hotel kitchenette and took deep breaths. What had got into her? Here she was, halfway around the world, trying to lead a company into a new phase of growth, and instead of behaving like a leader, she’d played follow-the-leader and downed drink after drink.

  The kettle clicked off and she poured the water over a diffuser of Glowing Skin tea, one of the teas from her Rejuvenate line. It was full of calendula flowers, mostly, and was a mild detoxifier.

  Across the room, Leila stretched across the starched sheets and groaned and rubbed her eyes. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Eight fifteen. You want some tea?’

  ‘Mmm. Thanks.’

  Leila sat up in bed nursing her mug while Kate sat in the chair at the polished executive desk.

  ‘Is it just me, or did we sing a bad version of ABBA’s “I Have a Dream”? Or was that, by any chance, a dream?’

  ‘Sadly, no. You also led a chorus of “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” and had several solid offers of a ride home.’

  Leila groa
ned again. Then giggled. ‘I haven’t had a night like that in a long time.’

  ‘I’ve never had a night like that,’ Kate said.

  ‘Really? Not even when you were young-er?’

  Kate shook her head. ‘I was never really into alcohol. Never liked the way it made me feel. Now I know why. I won’t be doing that again. My kind of night out was going to the beach with Mark to walk in the moonlight, listening to the waves. I really must call him,’ she said suddenly. ‘He’ll be wondering what’s happened to me.’

  Elizabeth had ignored her mother’s early knock on the door calling her to breakfast and shoved her head further under the pillow. But now the thirst was so bad she couldn’t ignore it any longer. She sat up on the side of the bed and waited for her head to stop throbbing before she risked standing. The smell of bacon still wafted under the door, which had a huge unicorn poster taped to it.

  She reached out to steady herself on the bedside table, knocked over a white and gold porcelain unicorn, breaking it in two, and just managed to reach the metal bin under the desk. The retching roused her mother’s batlike hearing.

  ‘Elizabeth,’ she said, knocking loudly on the door. The knob turned and she entered, her hair in rollers. She screamed when she saw Elizabeth hunched over the bin.

  ‘It’s alright,’ Elizabeth managed. ‘I’m just a bit hung-over, that’s all.’

  But her mother rushed past her to the night table where the unicorn lay in two. ‘This was your father’s favourite piece,’ she said. ‘He’ll be heartbroken.’

  She carried the pieces in her hand as though they were that of an injured animal, and disappeared out the door again.

  ‘Tsk, tsk,’ Victoria said, now standing in the doorway and chomping on some toast. ‘You’re going to have to toughen up, old girl. Last night was just the beginning. I’m not near finished with you.’

  Elizabeth stared at Victoria and flashes of the night reeled by. Dancing on a chair because there was nowhere else to go. Singing ‘I’ve Never Been to Me’. And—oh no—flirting with the man from the bar who had slopped beer on her boots. She shuddered.