All-Butter ShortDead (Prequel: Oxford Tearoom Mysteries ~ Book 0)

by H. Y. Hanna

  “Don’t worry, Mother,” I said. “I’ll sort it out for you.”

  “Oh, thank goodness, because I’m becoming quite fond of my i-Tap. Do you know—you can play bridge on it and do crosswords… and Helen Green tells me that she even reads newspapers on it! You must show me how to do that on the i-Tap.”

  “I will—and it’s an iPad, Mother. Not an i-Tap.”

  My mother looked at me in surprise. “But I am tapping.”

  “I know you’re tapping but it’s called a pad. Like a writing pad—except you tap on it.”

  “I do tap on the i-Tap,” my mother insisted.

  “No, no… I mean, yes, you are tapping but the thing you’re tapping on is called a pad. You pad on the i-Tap… I mean… you tap on the iPad!” I growled, “Arrgh! Now you’re mixing me up!”

  “Don’t worry, darling. I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it. It can be a bit confusing in the beginning,” my mother said kindly.

  I ground my teeth and suddenly remembered why I went off to Australia in the first place. My mother chattered on, oblivious, as I followed her out to the car park. It wasn’t until we were on the motorway that I remembered Jenn’s scarf.

  “Oh bollocks!” I said in annoyance.

  My mother gasped. “Language, Gemma! Is that how you speak in Australia? A lady never swears or uses coarse language.”

  “Sorry, Mother,” I muttered. “It’s just that I picked up a scarf belonging to the lady sitting next to me on the plane. I meant to leave it at the airport Lost and Found, in case she called up looking for it. But I forgot and it’s too late to go back now.”

  “Well, can’t you post it to her?”

  “I don’t have her address. Although… I do know where she’s staying—at the Cotswolds Manor Hotel. I suppose I could ring up and leave a message for her there.”

  It was mid-afternoon by the time we got back to Oxford and I was itching to get out of my travel-stained clothes, have a hot shower, and just drop into bed. Somehow, although I had slept for much of the flight, I felt exhausted. Maybe it was the jetlag. However, I had barely got into the house when my mother said brightly:

  “Now you’ll just have time to freshen up, darling, before Mabel and the others get here.”

  “Who? Mabel who?”

  “Mabel Cooke, darling—you remember her! She used to live near us in Meadowford-on-Smythe. In fact, she used to babysit for me when you were very little and we still lived in the village. We had lost touch for a while but I’ve been seeing much more of her again recently, since I joined the Meadowford Ladies’ Society. Anyway, she has been dying to see you so I’ve invited her over for afternoon tea, together with her friends Glenda Bailey, Florence Doyle, and Ethel Webb. They’re lovely—in fact, you might remember Ethel in particular. She used to be the librarian at the village library. She always used to give you a special sticker for returning a book on time… do you remember? They are so excited to see you. And since I was baking anyway, I thought I might as well invite them round for tea.”

  I groaned inwardly. Yes, I remembered Mabel Cooke: a bossy, formidable woman with a booming voice and a no-nonsense manner. I had been terrified of her as a child—she used to swoop down on me, claiming that I had a spot of dirt on my cheek, then lick her fingers and try to wipe the smudge off with her saliva. Eeuuww! Why did parents and older people always do that to children? I used to squirm in revulsion but never dared to say anything or move until she had released me.

  Now, tired and jetlagged as I was, the last thing I wanted to do was sit and have afternoon tea with a bunch of old crones who had terrorised me in childhood. Mabel Cooke was probably in her eighties by now—but somehow, I didn’t think that she would have mellowed much.

  My worst fears were realised when the doorbell rang half an hour later and four little old ladies marched into the house. Mabel was in the lead—I recognised her instantly—and she had hardly changed. Her helmet of woolly hair might have been whiter, perhaps, and her skin more wrinkled around the eyes, but otherwise her voice was as stentorian as ever and her manner just as brisk and bossy.

  “Gemma, I’m glad you’ve finally seen sense, my dear, and come back to England,” Mabel said as soon as we all sat down in the living room.

  The coffee table was laid out with a full Royal Doulton tea service and a selection of freshly baked scones, hot buttered teacakes, little lemon curd tarts, and home-made shortbread biscuits. My mother was a fantastic baker. I helped myself to a piece of shortbread—beautifully rich and crumbly—and decided that the delicious baked treats almost made having tea with Mabel and her friends worth it.

  My mother poured the tea and handed the cups out, then passed around the plate of scones, still warm from the oven.

  “I told your mother a convict colony is no place for a nicely brought-up girl,” Mabel said as she cut a scone in half and slathered it heavily with jam and clotted cream.

  “Er… Australia isn’t a British colony anymore, Mrs Cooke,” I said. “And there haven’t been convicts sent out there since the 1800s. Sydney is actually a really beautiful, cosmopolitan city—”

  “Humph! Don’t get cheeky with me, young lady,” said Mabel. Then she leaned forwards suddenly, narrowing her eyes. “Is that a spot of dirt on your nose? Here, let me…”

  “GAH!” I jerked backwards as Mabel licked her thumb with a big wet tongue and reached out towards me.

  “Gemma!” My mother frowned at me.

  “Sorry, Mother,” I said as I hastily scooted a few inches farther down the sofa, away from Mabel Cooke. “I… er… it must be the jetlag.”

  “Ohhh—I’ve heard that flying does terrible things to your body,” said Glenda Bailey, her pretty wrinkled face screwing up in horror as she balanced a teacup on her knee. “One gets swollen joints and horrible dry skin and even…” she dropped her voice to a delicate whisper, “…bad breath!”

  “Yes, it is from being up so high and having so little oxygen,” said Florence Doyle with a shudder which shook her plump body.

  “It’s not quite as bad as that,” I protested.

  “I read a book once when I was still working at the library,” said Ethel in her gentle voice. “It was all about the dangers of flying and it said that you were exposed to dreadful radiation from space when you were up in the air—enough to give you cancer several times over! And jetlag is so disruptive that it can lead to heart disease and psychiatric disorders.”

  Well, thanks very much, I thought. This is exactly what I wanted to hear after I’d been flying for twenty-plus hours, continuously zapped by cosmic rays, and now struggling with jetlag, since it was the middle of the night back in Sydney. I guess all I had to do now was sit back and wait for the cancer and heart disease and psychotic breakdowns—oh, and let’s not forget the bad breath—to get me.

  “Constipation is the worst thing about flying,” said Mabel suddenly in her booming voice.

  There was a moment of awkward silence as even my mother’s usual polite English aplomb failed her. Then she picked up the teapot and said brightly, “More tea, anyone?”

  Mabel accepted a fresh cup, then continued, undaunted. “Flying in an airplane gives you gas, bloating, and constipation. But don’t worry—I know just the thing. When my Henry and I went on holiday, I made sure to take a bag of prunes with me on the plane. Marvellous things, prunes. Much better than any of those laxatives you can buy at the chemist.” She leaned towards me again. “I’ll bring some over for you, Gemma—I’ve got some stewed to a special recipe. Never fear, we’ll get your bowels going again!”

  I really began to wonder if I had made a terrible mistake coming back…

  CHAPTER THREE

  I looked across the high street of Meadowford-on-Smythe and a broad grin spread across my face as I caught sight of the raven-haired girl on the other side.

  “Gemma!” She waved excitedly.

  “Cassie!” I hurried across and caught my best friend in a quick hug.

  “How was the flig
ht? Was the food awful? Did you get any sleep? Meet any dishy men on the plane?”

  I laughed and looked fondly at my pretty, vivacious friend. Cassie never changed. We’d known each other since primary school and had a deep, abiding friendship that had carried us through the hormonal years of high school, the carefree days of university, and even the long separation of my time overseas. And though she was obviously now all grown up—with a killer figure to boot—Cassie was still very much the girl I’d met on the first day of school, searching for ladybirds in the playground. She was still bubbly, warm-hearted, and impulsive—a combo that matched her artistic persona.

  Cassie’s childhood obsession with painting and drawing had turned into a lifelong dream to be an artist. It was still more dream than reality at the moment (like most artists, Cassie found that, sadly, talent alone didn’t pay the bills) and I knew that in order to support her artist lifestyle, she had had to work a selection of part-time jobs—something she hated.

  But that was all going to change now, I reminded myself. Cassie was coming to work with me and the thought filled me with a rush of happiness.

  As if reading my mind, Cassie squeezed my hand and said, “Well? Are you excited?”

  “You have no idea,” I said. “I can’t wait to see it.”

  She glanced at her watch. “It’s nearly six. Come on—we’ve got a bit of time before the sun goes down. I was hoping we could see it first thing this morning, before I had to go to work, otherwise I knew we’d have to wait until I finished for the day and it’s much nicer to see it in daylight—”

  “I know… sorry,” I said ruefully. “I just couldn’t get up this morning. I told myself I’d just sleep a little bit longer—and then the next thing I knew, it was nearly lunchtime! My mother let me sleep, thinking I needed the rest, but I wish she’d forced me to get up.” I shivered and pulled the collar of my duffel coat up higher around my neck. “Brrr... It’s really chilly isn’t it?”

  Cassie chuckled. “You’ve gone soft, Gemma, since moving out to Australia! This is hardly cold! Wait till you see what it’s like in January! It’s actually quite warm, I think, for September.”

  I thrust my hands deeper into my pockets. “Well, you can’t blame me—we were heading into summer in Australia when I left and my body’s not used to the sudden change. Besides, I forgot about the ‘wind chill factor’ here.” I shivered again as another strong gust of wind blew down the village high street and sliced through the wool of my duffel coat.

  “Better get used to it,” said Cassie. She made an expression of mock horror and lowered her voice dramatically. “We even have something called ‘snow’ here—it’s this white stuff which is really cold and falls from the sky and you’d better take precautions otherwise it might get you when you least expect it…”

  I gave her a playful shove, then we walked slowly through the village, talking and laughing, just as we used to when we were girls. I’d lived in Meadowford until my early teens when my family had moved to North Oxford. Looking around me now, it was as if time had stood still. There was the pub on the corner of the village green, the 14th-century church with its picturesque steeple, and the bustling village high street lined on either side with little shops selling everything from sausages to antiques, knitting wool to vintage books… I suppose it was always like that in these quaint little Cotswolds villages, with their pretty thatched-roof cottages and winding cobbled lanes—like something out of a postcard or a calendar of the English countryside.

  At the bottom of the high street was an old Tudor building with an adjoining courtyard. Cassie and I stopped in front of it and I looked up at the historic structure, my heart pounding with excitement. This was the reason I had given up everything and come back to England.

  It had once been part of a Tudor inn with the adjoining courtyard providing stables for the guests’ horses. I remembered it vaguely from my childhood as a shop premises. In more recent times, it had been used as a café. There was a sign, crooked and fading, showing the picture of a coffee cup, and, through the drab lace curtains, we could see some cheap vinyl chairs and laminate tables, as well as a buffet cabinet in that ugly yellow so popular in the 1970s. A few lace doilies were scattered around the tables, together with a few vases of drooping plastic roses.

  “It looks a lot worse than I remembered,” said Cassie doubtfully, as she peered in the windows. “When I came past last time, before I told you about it on the phone, I didn’t think it looked so bad.”

  “Didn’t you say it had been closed for a while?”

  “Yeah, for a couple of months, I think. Not that it had that many customers even before it closed,” said Cassie wryly. “No one wants to sit in some dark, dingy room to eat stodgy cake and drink lukewarm coffee.”

  “Well, I’m going to change all that,” I said, smiling in anticipation. “It will be completely different when the place is mine. People will come from across Oxfordshire to eat and drink at my tearoom.”

  Cassie made a face and said, “Gemma—I hate to say this, but are you sure you want to go ahead? You haven’t signed anything; the loan hasn’t even been approved by the bank yet. You could still change your mind. There are other places, other villages. I’m sure we could find another site and you could always convert it and—”

  “No,” I said, looking up at the building and admiring the timeless beauty of the “wattle and daub” Tudor exterior with its the dark wood beams and whitewashed walls. Yes, it was in a pretty sorry state and there was a general air of dejection and abandonment about the place. And yet… for the first time since the day I had handed in my notice at my office in Sydney, I felt sure of what I was doing. Gone were the doubts, the panic, and the anxious worrying. It was strange, but standing there, staring at the shabby old café, I knew I was doing the right thing. You only get one life and I’m going to take the chance to follow a dream.

  “No, I’m not changing my mind,” I said to Cassie. “I know this can be beautiful. The building’s been standing here for over five hundred years. The bones are all there. We just need to spruce it up and redecorate the inside—strip out that dreadful 70s décor and restore the original period features.” I peered in again through the window. “That looks like a real inglenook fireplace, there behind that horrible striped screen. Imagine how gorgeous that’s going to look when I turn this back into a traditional English tearoom.” I sighed with pleasure at the prospect. “I just need the bank to approve the loan, exchange contracts, get the keys… and then we can get to work!”

  “Well, I hope the bank doesn’t drag its heels,” said Cassie. “I was chatting to the estate agent yesterday and he told me there’s been another offer.”

  “Really? Who? Someone local?”

  Cassie shook her head. “No, some giant travel corporation from China that’s expanding in the U.K. They want to buy the site and turn it into a gift shop-slash-canteen for their big Chinese tour groups when they come through Oxfordshire.”

  I looked at Cassie in horror. “But that would be a disaster! They would completely ruin this place! There’s so much heritage and history wrapped up in this building—it would be sacrilege to turn this into some tacky gift shop full of cheap plastic keyrings and cheesy Oxford T-shirts!” I shuddered.

  “Yeah, everyone in the village agrees with you. They’re up in arms about it, but what can you do?” Cassie shrugged helplessly. “They can’t really do anything to prevent the sale going through if the owners decide to accept the offer.”

  “Do you know what the Chinese are offering?”

  “More than you are,” said Cassie darkly. “But the owners are pretty decent people. They’re tired of running this café and they want to move to Spain—but I think they’d like to preserve things as well. They want to try and do the right thing. So I think as long as you can give them what they originally asked for, they’ll be content with that. But the Chinese are putting pressure on them and it’s a tempting offer, so you don’t want to delay things.” She gave me
a wry look. “Not to quote Princess Leia but… you’re our only hope, Gemma.”

  I nodded. “Don’t worry—I’ll get it. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t. I’ve provided everything needed for the application and the bank was very positive. In fact, the chap I spoke to before I left Sydney told me that the loan was practically approved and it was just a formality, getting the official paperwork signed and all that. But everything should be confirmed by the day after tomorrow.” A huge yawn overtook me and I had to cover my mouth hurriedly. “Sorry.” I gave Cassie a sheepish smile. “I seem to get these waves of tiredness that come over me at odd times.”

  “It’s the jetlag,” said Cassie.

  “Yeah, it was a really long flight… and when we got back home, Mabel Cooke and her friends came over for tea, so—”

  “What? I can’t believe you spent the first day back in this country having tea with the Old Biddies!”

  “The who?”

  “The Old Biddies—that’s what I call them. Mabel Cooke and her gang.” Cassie grinned. “Not to their faces, of course.”

  I laughed, then looked up at the tearoom building again in the fading twilight.

  “Any idea what you’re going to call it?” Cassie asked. “The previous owners were really boring and just called it the Meadowford Café but I was thinking—”

  “The Little Stables Tearoom,” I said softly, with a smile. “That’s what I’m going to call it. And when I’m finished with it, it’ll be known for having the best tea and scones in Oxfordshire.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “You don’t have to rush back for dinner with your parents, do you?” asked Cassie. “We could go to the pub for a drink—and maybe even stay on for dinner. The Blue Boar does really good food in the evenings now.”

  I smiled. “That sounds great. I haven’t had a ‘pub meal’ in ages. Mmm… I fancy some fish and chips.”