by Nancy Warren
Everyone arrived early and appeared to be in good spirits. Teddy was so full of energy, I thought the cameraman might have a hard time keeping him in focus.
The students were allowed to sit wherever they liked, and the younger people naturally gravitated to sitting together, while the older ones settled closer to Teddy. Enid Selfe had arrived first and claimed the seat nearest the teacher. Teddy looked less than thrilled, and Molly pursed her lips but didn’t say anything.
Once again, Enid had dressed up. I suspected from the perfection of her makeup and hair that she’d visited a salon this morning. Her dress today was red, very eye- and camera-catching, and over it she’d wrapped a hand-knitted shawl in black.
A lace shawl.
This woman needed lessons in how to knit lace the way I needed lessons on how to eat chocolate.
Helen arrived next and I was so happy to see a familiar face and a woman I knew well. She was wearing a linen dress that was the color of mushrooms and a sweater the color of moss, if the moss had been dead for some time. She blinked at all the changes in the shop and all the people and equipment filling the small space. She glanced over at the table where Enid was already monopolizing Teddy and instead of joining her, walked over to the new display.
“This looks wonderful, Lucy.” I would have to tell Theodore of the compliment. “I remember my grandmother knitting with needles just like these,” she said. “I still have some of her old knitting patterns. Probably her wool, too.”
I suspected she did and was still knitting sweaters with the old, faded wool from decades ago. This woman seriously needed a knitting intervention.
Then Ryan and Annabel arrived and I went to greet them. Even as everyone greeted each other with friendliness and good will, I experienced the first niggle of dread.
I, naturally, as the teacher’s helper, gulp, sat at the foot of the table, while Teddy stood at its head. Behind him was a brag wall of Larch wools, his kits and his books. He wore a royal blue linen shirt that made his eyes shine like a couple of mischievous sapphires, faded blue jeans and soft brown leather loafers. He had one of his own hand-knitted sweaters tied around his neck as though it was giving him a hug.
Molly let everyone sit where they liked. In front of every student was a Larch Wools bag, and everyone had been told not to peek. This provided a birthday party atmosphere. Presents! Whatever was inside the bags was a surprise.
Molly came forward and instructed us not to look at the cameras or they’d have to edit that out, and it was a lot of work to do so. They wanted us to follow Teddy’s directions, knit, chat when there was a break and, most of all, have fun! This was fun!
I only hoped the cameras stayed far from my handiwork. When I’d moaned of my fears to Sylvia, she’d assured me the cameras weren’t going to follow my knitting. This was about the students learning from Teddy. “You’ll be there almost like the furniture. You own the shop. You’re young and pretty, and you’re part of the story that knitting isn’t for old ladies. But you’re not part of the lesson, so if you don’t draw attention to yourself, they won’t waste a lot of film on you.” She sounded so confident that I felt immediately reassured, even though the last time she’d been on film, her costar had been Rudolph Valentino.
Molly handed the floor to Teddy, and he immediately beamed at all of us students as though being here was the greatest delight he could imagine. Before he could say a word, Enid said, chiding, “Teddy, you naughty man. You didn’t call me. I was all ready to make you lunch. I’m a very good cook.”
His good mood dimmed as though his battery was running low. Helen looked hurt. “You gave Enid your private number?”
He wrestled with himself for a second then said, “Yes. And we should all have each other’s numbers. This shooting schedule is intense and you need to keep knitting when the cameras are off. If you’re really stuck on something, you can text me.”
“That’s so kind of you,” Helen said, immediately looking happier, especially since Enid was now scowling. She wasn’t so special anymore.
Everyone’s belongings were in the back room so Teddy went and retrieved his phone. He tapped away then said, “I’ve made a group. Add your name and mobile number. I’ll delete the group when this is over.” He glanced at Enid as he said it.
Once that was done, he returned his phone to the back room and came out again.
He looked at Molly who said, “Remember, class, you keep your eyes on Teddy, each other and your knitting. And one, two, three, action.”
“Good Morning, class,” Teddy said, smiling and opening his arms wide as though giving us a collective hug.
It was hard not to smile back with so much impish goodwill coming at us. He talked briefly about lace knitting and, naturally, referenced his new book. Then, he said, “You can open your surprise packages now.”
Honestly, a bunch of kids at Christmas couldn’t have ripped into the bags any faster than this group of adult knitters.
Annabel gave a cry of delight as a rainbow of wools spilled out onto the table in front of her. Teddy chuckled. Every bag contained a range of colors, but each was different.
“Look at those colors!” He went up on his heels and down a few times, not jumping, exactly, but not far off. “I don’t want any of you to be afraid to experiment. Lace is traditional. Knitting is traditional, but we don’t have to be. We’re going to push the boundaries.”
Enid spoke up sharply. “I don’t believe lace is meant to have its boundaries pushed.”
There was a tiny pause, and then Teddy continued, “When you think of lace, what do you think of?”
Before Enid could voice an opinion, he pointed at Annabel. She said, “Weddings.”
He nodded. Pointed at Ryan. “My gran used to edge fancy pillows with lace.”
“Right. We think of lace as staid and stodgy.” Teddy shot a glance at Enid’s black lace shawl, and Helen giggled softly. Hopefully too softly to be picked up on microphone.
“Lace is also the last refuge of the perfectionist,” Teddy continued. He waved his hand in the air. “I say to heck with perfectionism. It holds us back. Let it go. Get in touch with your creative side. The part of you that’s bold and wants to experiment with color and form and shape and texture. Be a kid again. Crayon outside the lines.”
Enid might be hating every second of this, and from her pursed lips and sour expression, she was, but oh, he was speaking my language. Someone who believed in color over perfectionism? Finally, I’d found my knitting guru.
“I’ve been knitting for years. Love it. But here’s a secret. Nothing I do is perfect. Nothing.” He lifted an item that had been on a lower table behind him. It was a gorgeous lace square. “This is a cushion cover. Isn’t it gorgeous?”
It was. It was Moroccan-looking with reds and oranges and yellows and threads of gold. He waited for the coos of admiration to die down and then turned the piece over. “Now look at the back.”
Seriously, in that moment I fell in love with Teddy Lamont. The back of his work looked familiar. It looked a lot like mine.
I loved that he’d made all his boo-boos and messes part of the creation. I felt myself relax as I looked at all the colors on the table in front of me, the blues and violets and reds and one yellow. I imagined they were crayons and I had a basic design in front of me with encouragement to make it my own. As Teddy said, to color outside the lines.
But not everyone wanted to color outside the lines. I glanced at Enid Selfe and watched her poke through her colors as though she were picking through weeds, looking for a flower. I felt reluctantly sorry for her. It was pretty obvious she’d come here to be the class show-off. The teacher’s pet who sits at the front and drinks in praise. She was clearly an expert lace knitter, but she was out of her element when asked to play with color and not bother about perfect stitches.
She was discovering, within half an hour of the class beginning, that she wasn’t going to be the best. She was the embodiment of everything Teddy Lamont wanted
us to change. She did not appear excited at the notion of trying new things.
Enid managed to keep quiet while Teddy taught the basics of the lace stitch. I discovered that when I wasn’t so frightened about getting everything wrong, I was able to relax, and that made everything go better. My tension wasn’t as tight. I didn’t feel like the knitting needles were my enemies. It was sort of fun.
We were all doing cushions, so the piece was a basic square. However, each of us had a distinct palette of colors, and while Teddy had provided the basic design, he really encouraged us to play. Maybe if we weren’t all aware this would be on television, we wouldn’t have been very daring, but knowing that knitters across England would be watching spurred us all on to try harder.
Ryan was doing something that looked vaguely like hot-air balloons. He’d sketched out a simple idea with his palette of primary colors, and I was instantly jealous that he’d thought of something so wonderful. I thought I’d honor my witch heritage by doing a version of a pentagram. I had an idea that I could make it with all these different colors and it would be silky and soft and lacy. But the hot-air balloons looked much more sensible.
After an hour, Teddy announced that he needed a coffee break. Everyone began to put down their knitting, and Molly rushed up and said, “No, no. You have to keep knitting. We’ll come back when you’ve got an inch or two knitted and talk about how you’re doing in your design ideas, and Teddy will come around individually to each of you. But you have to keep going.”
That seemed fair, and I thought poor Teddy needed a break. I’d told Molly and Becks about Elderflower next door and warned the sisters who ran it to expect a lot of TV people coming in to grab coffees and sandwiches.
Once he left, we began to chat amongst ourselves.
“I want to make my daughter a little lace sweater to wear when she starts university next year,” Enid said to us all. “She’s going to Oxford, of course. Or Cambridge. We haven’t decided yet.” She smiled at us all condescendingly. “She’s clever enough and well-rounded enough that she can get in anywhere. I made sure of it.”
Helen glanced at the woman with dislike and muttered, “She’ll look a fine sight wearing a cushion to Oxford.”
I tried not to laugh, but Vinod looked at Helen and grinned. “Poor Oxford,” he whispered.
“That’s a beautiful sweater you’re wearing, Gunnar,” Helen said. “Who taught you to knit?”
He seemed surprised to be addressed, but he answered readily enough. “It was the cook on my rig in the North Sea. I was trying to stop smoking but not so easily. I tried chewing gum, but I needed to fill my hands with something.” His hands were big and work-roughened, and it was easy to imagine him smoking. Also working with the thick wool and blues, grays and white that I associated with Norwegian knits like the one he was wearing. They weren’t delicate, and neither was Gunnar.
However, he’d been given a lot of greens, oranges and purples and was sketching out some ideas, not ready to commit to knitting his lace yet.
I was always interested in how people had learned to knit, and it was good market research for my shop, so I followed Helen’s lead and turned to Ryan sitting at my right and asked him who taught him. Before he could answer, Annabel said, “I bet it was your mum or your grandma. It’s usually the older women who pass down the love of knitting. It was my granny who taught me when Mum was at work.”
Ryan nodded. “You’re right. My grandma taught me. She’s Jamaican.” He said the words matter-of-factly, but I think we all stopped knitting to stare. Finally, Annabel said, “You’re part Jamaican?”
Ryan looked up and grinned at her obvious surprise. “No. I’m adopted.”
Enid Selfe overheard the conversation and asked him when his birthday was. In some surprise he said, “July 30, 1990.”
She smiled at him. “Have you ever found your birth mother?”
I began to feel uncomfortable, and I thought Ryan looked very much so. “No. My parents are my parents. I wouldn’t want to hurt their feelings.”
She put down her knitting and counted on her fingers, then nodded. “You could probably be my child. The timing is about right. I had to give a baby up, you know,” she said as though it were an everyday occurrence. “I was far too young to bring up a child on my own. It was a boy, I think.”
Who had a baby and didn’t even know whether it was a boy or girl? Ryan’s jaw bulged as though he was clenching his teeth, and then he asked, “Did you ever try and find the baby?”
“No. I’ve always thought one day I’ll probably come across him. Or her.” She put down her knitting and rose. “I’m well ahead of the rest of you. I think I’ll go next door and get a decent cup of coffee.”
When she’d left, Annabel leaned toward Ryan. “Looks like you might’ve found your mommy dearest.”
He rolled his eyes. “If that woman turned out to be my mother, I’d have to kill myself. Or her.”
Chapter 6
The next morning I arrived at the shop early, which was not that hard to do considering I lived above Cardinal Woolsey’s. I wanted to make sure everything was tidy and all the chairs arranged properly before the film crew arrived, before the students arrived, and most definitely before Teddy Lamont arrived. After getting off to such a bad start yesterday, I hoped he was still going to show up.
Things had started to such great promise. How had one woman derailed our class so thoroughly and so effectively? I felt guilty as though this was somehow my fault, when all I’d done was provide the venue. I hadn’t chosen the class participants. Still, I didn’t like the fact that my knitting shop was even vaguely associated with someone as unpleasant as Enid Selfe.
She’d made yesterday a nightmare. She’d argued with him, called his work substandard. She’d corrected the other students. Finally, an hour before we were scheduled to finish the class, she’d interrupted him again, and he’d thrown down his own work and snapped, “Maybe you should teach this class.”
Instead of being shamed, she nodded. “At least I can knit lace properly.”
And Teddy Lamont had walked out.
I’d slept badly, so badly that I’d clearly heard somebody moving around late last night downstairs. If Cardinal Woolsey’s was a normal shop and I was a normal woman, I would’ve called the police. But with a nest of vampires living below, many of whom liked to spend a few of their nighttime hours knitting, at Cardinal Woolsey’s we’d taken late-night shopping to new heights. The vampires came and went as they pleased and helped themselves to whatever they wanted from the shop, but they were very good about writing down what they had taken, and every one of them paid their bills on time. I wished all my customers were as conscientious.
I came down the stairs, fresh, strong coffee in my hand, hoping to caffeinate myself awake. I opened the connecting door between my flat and the shop. It was seven o’clock in the morning. The film crew were due to arrive in an hour, and class participants another hour after that, so I had some time to make sure everything was nice and tidy. I hoped I’d get the chance to catch up on some emails and see if I’d received any online orders, which I always tried to mail out quickly.
After that awful class had ended yesterday, Molly had asked Enid to stay behind. Molly had a key to the shop, so I left her to it, going out with everyone else instead of upstairs to my flat. I didn’t want them to know I lived up there in case they all came up to complain. I’d gone across the street and whined to Alice, who was a very sympathetic listener.
I hoped Molly had dealt with Enid and talked Teddy into coming back today. Teddy was a professional, and I was certain he’d show up. I half-hoped that Enid wouldn’t. In the meantime, I had mail orders to sort out.
That’s what I was thinking about, packing and mailing balls of wool and knitting kits to places around the corner and as far away as Australia and China, when I saw her.
Well, that’s not exactly true. First I struck my toe on her. I thought for a moment when my toe hit something solid that I’d
stubbed it on some spare equipment or a prop left behind by the film crew. I looked down. Enid Selfe was lying there.
She was staring up at me, at least that was what it looked like in the early morning light seeping in from the front window. She was lying on her back, staring up at me out of sightless eyes. Enid Selfe would never disrupt a knitting class again.
Enid Selfe was dead.
I didn’t know I’d dropped the coffee until I felt the scald as the hot liquid splashed my legs.
Things seemed to happen out of order. I felt the burning, then I heard the coffee mug hit the ground. Then I became aware that a pool of coffee was soaking the dead woman’s clothes and that I had just contaminated a crime scene. It was impossible to even separate the jumble of my thoughts and the way I saw and heard and felt and even smelled the catastrophe.
The smells of coffee and death mingled and threatened to gag me. I rushed to the door. I needed fresh air if I was to stop myself from heaving. Just as I moved to grab the door handle, I realized how stupid I was being. I’d already dropped coffee all over a dead woman. I was not about to mess up the forensics any more.
So I pulled myself together as best I could and backed away from the door, noting as I did so that it appeared to be unlocked. I saw no obvious signs of forced entry, not that I was any expert, of course.
Had I forgotten to lock the door? With all the expensive camera equipment in here? No. I was positive I hadn’t. And even if I had forgotten to lock the door, why had Enid Selfe returned? The day was over, we had said goodbye, and even she must’ve realized she wasn’t the most popular of the knitters. Molly wouldn’t have left her in the shop. Would she?
