‘You’d better brace yourself, because if she left owing money to any of her suppliers, you might have to pay them off before they’ll agree to deliver to you,’ he suggested helpfully.
‘I’m not liable for any of her debts and I’m not going to pay them,’ I insisted stubbornly. ‘I’m as much a victim of Mrs Muswell as anyone else.’
‘I doubt they’ll see it that way, so you’ll just have to make a speedy success of running the place, won’t you? I’m Nile Giddings, by the way.’
‘Alice,’ I said. ‘Alice Rose.’
‘A rose by any other name,’ he said flippantly. ‘And shouldn’t you be in Wonderland, not Brontëland?’
I ignored that sally. ‘I’ve got plans for the café and I won’t need any of the suppliers Mrs Muswell used, because I intend reopening as an upmarket afternoon tea emporium.’
‘Really?’ His face expressed mild disbelief. ‘Good luck with that, then.’
‘I’ll do it, you’ll see!’ I insisted.
‘I hope for your sake you do. And what are you going to call this little oasis of refreshment?’ he asked sardonically as he turned to leave, clutching his reclaimed antiquities as if I might leap forward and snatch them back.
A vision of Molly Muswell’s social networking avatar flashed across my mind, her plump face bunched up in a friendly smile, so that her small eyes looked like deeply set currants in a bun.
‘The Fat Rascal,’ I told him.
Luckily, my grammar school was closed on the Friday, since it was a staff training day. Although normally I resented the way these Baker days interrupted my lessons, this time it had worked to my advantage.
And of course none of my school friends noticed any difference in me, because, being a year younger than the rest of my class but twice as clever, I didn’t have any.
12
The Blasted Heath
I felt strangely unsettled by this encounter, though I suppose unexpectedly coming face to face with so much male beauty was enough to throw anyone! And Nile Giddings appeared to have the mercurial temperament to go with the Greek god looks, too.
We didn’t seem to have got off to a good start, though admittedly I’d been just as spiky and sarcastic as my visitor. But then, anyone would be who’d been brought up by Nessa: I tended to give at least as good as I got.
I went to check on how Tilda was doing and found she’d thrown herself into cleaning the flat with huge enthusiasm. Although I offered to help, she said firmly that she could do it quicker and better without me.
So I dusted the café and kitchens instead, though they barely needed it, and then settled in the office with my laptop to type up the first of several lists from my notes. If I was going to wave a magic wand over the café and undo Wicked Witch Muswell’s evil spell, I’d need more elbow-grease than fairy dust to achieve it, so it was time to get practical.
But unfortunately, I strayed again.
The evil fairy lay on her deathbed, suffering from a fatal surfeit of spite. She contemplated her life of misdeeds and wickedness with satisfaction but then, with a deep sigh, waved her wand weakly.
‘Unspell!’ she cried. It was that easy.
All over Fairyland, frogs turned into princes and geese stopped laying golden eggs. And deep in a wood, where an impenetrable thicket grew around the bower where Beauty had fallen asleep, a portal shivered into existence and a small mouse took the opportunity to scurry through into another time and place …
A loud thump in the flat over my head brought me back to the present and I firmly closed the Beauty Goes Bad document and opened a new one called, simply, ‘Tearoom Lists’.
The shortest was of those items I wanted to get rid of, like the café chairs and tables and all the thick white crockery, since Mrs Muswell hadn’t left much else behind. I followed that one with the list of replacement equipment and furniture I’d need, which ran to two pages without my even having to give it much thought.
But the very first thing I’d have to buy was gallons of paint, stepladders and brushes to transform the dingy café – and I’d do as much of the work as I could myself, because I’d have to be on a tight budget if I wasn’t to find I’d run out of money before I reopened.
There’d be some major things I wouldn’t be able to do myself, like renovating the café cloakroom and fitting new work surfaces into the kitchen. I’d have to ask about for a reasonably priced local handyman.
I was still giving myself a headache over some financial calculations when Tilda called me upstairs to see the fruit of her labours.
‘Oh, wow!’ I said when I did, because although it was still bare and dingy, it was now totally clean and smelled of pine disinfectant and lemon antibacterial cleanser – tangy. It practically made your eyes water. You could see through the windows now, too – the back one at the kitchen end overlooking the small garden and the front directly facing Small and Perfect. There was a light on behind the thick bull’s-eye panes of the shop window, so Mr Small and Perfect was probably polishing his curios.
‘It’s absolutely amazing – thank you so much!’ I said gratefully.
‘Eh, I’m black as a sweep, but I’ve had a grand time,’ she assured me, ‘and you’re paying me for it. There’s nothing else up here needs doing now, bar a lick of paint and some curtains, carpets and furniture.’
That was a slight understatement, but at least if it came to it, I could camp up here from Sunday, once my car full of belongings had arrived.
‘You’re not completely on your own down here in Doorknocker’s Row, because you’ve got a neighbour in t’ shop across the ginnel,’ Tilda said.
‘Yes, I just met him.’
‘Oh? He’s a proper handsome lad, that one. When he first moved here and the local girls got a good look at him, it was like putting a cockerel in a hencoop, there was such a flutter.’
‘I can imagine,’ I replied, and immediately determined to make it clear in any future encounters with Nile Giddings that there was going to be no fluttering from me. ‘He said you warned him Mrs Muswell had been selling the antiques she was displaying for him in the café, and pocketing the cash. When he saw the lights were on, he thought she was here.’
‘I put a note through his door, but he’s been away a while so I expect he only just got it,’ Tilda said. ‘Bit too late to do anything now.’
‘Yes, though Mrs Muswell had missed a couple of things that were hanging in that dark corner near the stairs and he’s taken those. And he’s reporting the theft to the police.’
‘I don’t know that they can do anything about it and she’s too wary a bird to show her face here again,’ Tilda said, shaking her head. Then she looked round the room with the satisfaction of a job well done and added, ‘I’d get someone out to service that old gas boiler in the kitchen before you light it. The name of the man who does the one in the basement is on a label stuck on the side; I’d ring him.’
‘Good idea – I shouldn’t think it’s been used for donkey’s years.’
‘That’s right, you don’t want to start off by blowing the place up,’ she agreed. ‘Now, here’s my phone number if you need me to help with anything else, otherwise I’ll be back Friday as usual, to clean through again, shall I?’
‘Yes, do, but I might ring you before that, because I’d like to meet Nell when my plans for the teashop are clearer in my mind.’
‘Where are you staying till you can move into the flat, then?’ she asked. ‘Did you find somewhere else?’
‘I haven’t got round to looking yet, but I’d better do that now. At the worst I expect they’d have me back at the Gondal Guesthouse – I could survive one more night – then just camp in the flat after that.’
Tilda looked doubtful about this idea and said she’d have put me up herself, except she only had a two-bedroomed cottage and Nell lived with her, but I assured her I’d find somewhere.
But when she’d gone, I wondered how I’d set about it, because the telephone landline wasn’t yet connect
ed and I was waiting for a router as well, so I could get the internet … and now I came to look, there was no sign of a local phone book.
I really ought to upgrade my phone, too. The one I had was an old one of Dan’s.
My laptop, with the latest list up on the screen, was still blinking at me in the office and on impulse I had a quick look at internet connectivity … and discovered I could piggyback someone else’s open connection!
Quick as a flash I was in, and emailing short updates to Edie and Lola. Then, just as I was embarking on a search for a guesthouse, that damned doorbell did its loud jangle.
‘Is that you, Tilda?’ I called. ‘Did you forget something?’
She’d certainly forgotten to lock the door behind her again, for Nile Giddings suddenly appeared in the doorway, then pounced before I could slam down the lid of my laptop.
‘Aha! I had a feeling it would be you,’ he said triumphantly, and I felt myself going guiltily pink.
‘Oh, was that your internet connection I borrowed?’ I said innocently. ‘Sorry, I just wanted to check out local guesthouses … and anyway, how did you know?’ I asked, as the thought occurred to me.
‘Because it was taking me for ever to download new photographs on to the Small and Perfect website,’ he said grimly.
‘Well, I’m very sorry,’ I repeated, ‘but my router is supposed to arrive tomorrow and my landline will be connected early next week, so I won’t need do it again.’
‘You’d better not,’ he said tersely. Then he looked around and clocked all the empty spaces in the kitchen.
‘She really did clean you out, didn’t she?’
‘The only things she left were fixed in or screwed down, apart from a fridge and freezer so old they belong in a museum,’ I agreed. ‘You should have seen the flat: not only was it stripped bare, it was filthy, too.’
‘So you won’t be moving in any time soon, hence the guesthouse search?’
‘Oh, Tilda has spent most of the day cleaning the flat so it just needs a lick of paint and some furniture now,’ I said, hoping I sounded more upbeat about it than I felt. ‘I’ll move in when the rest of my belongings arrive along with my car on Sunday. I don’t want to go back to the guesthouse I stayed at last night, if I can find a different one – preferably cheaper.’
‘Even off-season, Haworth is still pricey,’ he said, then paused, frowning. ‘I’ve got a better idea. My family live just out of the village and my mother takes paying guests when she can get them. The house is a big old place, a bit ramshackle and run down, but it’s cheap and she’s a great cook.’
‘I’m sure it’s wonderful, but I need to be within walking distance of the café until I’ve got my car, so even for a couple of nights—’ I began, but he interrupted me.
‘I divide my time between home and the flat over my shop and I’m there most weekends, so I’ll give you a lift in and out.’
I was very far from sure that I wanted to be stuck out on the moors with strangers and dependent for transport on Mr Tall, Dark and Stroppy. ‘I don’t want to put your mother out, when I need somewhere for only a night or two. She’s probably shut for the winter like a lot of the local guesthouses, isn’t she?’
‘Sheila’s doors are never shut,’ he said enigmatically. ‘I’ll ring her.’
‘Sheila?’ I repeated and it suddenly occurred to me to wonder if he had a wife stashed away there, too. He might well have, for he was about my age – mid-thirties, or possibly a year or two older … Maybe one of those hens Tilda had told me about had fluttered a little more attractively than the others?
‘My mother – I always call her Sheila. She’ll be delighted to hear you’re going to stay at Oldstone.’
‘Oldstone!’ I exclaimed, sharply.
‘Yes, do you know it?’ he asked, surprised.
‘No … it’s just an odd name,’ I said weakly, and he gave me a considering look as if wondering whether taking me home with him was a good idea after all. Then he seemed to make up his mind.
‘I’ve got a few things to do first, so I’ll come and collect you around half five or six. Be ready.’
‘But dinner—’ I began, feeling railroaded and even surer I didn’t want to go with him.
‘Oh, she’ll feed you, don’t worry,’ he assured me. ‘She always cooks enough for an army anyway, though she’s part Scandinavian, so you’re never quite sure what’s on the menu. Do you like Norwegian food?’
‘I’m not sure I’ve ever had any.’
‘It’s good, except for the time she produced a whole sheep’s head for dinner. It’s a Norwegian delicacy, but all those teeth and the eyeballs are too off-putting.’
‘Eyeballs?’ I echoed faintly.
But he was gone, leaving me feeling totally unsettled. Not only was I about to be marooned on the moors with the unknown family of the strangely unnerving Nile Giddings, which might be all too Wuthering Heights, but the house was called Oldstone, the name I’d been registered under on my birth certificate!
Might I be connected to the place? I could have been given that surname because I’d been found near it (in which case I hadn’t been found miles from habitation, like Nessa had said), or perhaps I had been found further away, but by a member of that family?
Now I was actually here and Sleeping Beauty had woken up, it was hard to understand why I’d never checked out all the available details of where and by whom I was found, though I had sort of pushed it all away to the back of my mind after Nessa’s revelation, following on from losing Dad …
But, I thought, there must be lots more information out there than my birth certificate, and once I had an internet connection I’d be right in there looking for it.
Princess Beauty woke up after the best sleep of her life, to find herself bound tightly in a cocoon of silk and unable to wiggle even her smallest finger.
A mouse was sitting on the end of the couch, washing his whiskers.
‘Hello,’ said Beauty. ‘Can you help me? A friendly spider wrapped me up warmly before I fell asleep, but now I don’t seem able to move.’
‘You’re very stupid,’ the mouse said witheringly. ‘It’s a silk shroud – you’ve been asleep for aeons and so has the huge spider in the other room. He’s wrapped you up to eat later and he’s stirring now, so he’s probably ready for a snack.’
I closed the lid of the laptop with a snap.
There wasn’t much more I could do at the café by then and, having already snipped through the first ring of briars and freed myself from my self-imposed imprisonment, I went for a walk around the village.
I passed several better and more established cafés than mine and, despite the time of year, there were still plenty of visitors about.
I found the church and the graveyard, which lay before the Brontë Parsonage, exactly as it looked in photos, but I didn’t go inside that or the museum. They’d have to keep for another time, as would the moors that tantalizingly beckoned beyond.
I paused by the Parsonage steps, though, remembering Dad’s fairy-tale description of how the young princess had crept up and left me there late one night.
I thought he’d have been happy I was there now …
After a while, the cold breeze wandering around my legs got me moving again back down the hill. No one at all stopped dead and exclaimed at my resemblance to someone local that they knew, as I’d thought, hoped, or even feared that they might. In fact, no one had given me a second glance, probably because in a place as popular with visitors as Haworth, tall strangers with long copper curls and pale green eyes were nothing out of the ordinary.
By the time Nile reappeared I was waiting by the café door with my baggage, the lights off and the key in my hand. I hadn’t until that moment wondered where he’d left his car, but he wrested the case out of my grasp and set off down the passageway to the parking area at the back of the café. I should have guessed.
‘This is my land,’ I said indignantly, catching up with him.
‘Well, th
at side certainly is,’ he said, pointing. ‘But this patch I bought from the people who had The Butty Box, before Mrs Muswell took over, so I’d have somewhere to park. I’m afraid you’re going to have to share it.’
‘I’m sure that didn’t come up when my solicitor did the searches on the property,’ I said suspiciously.
‘Maybe not, but I had a deed of the sale signed in front of my own solicitor, and Mrs Muswell knew about it when she took over,’ he said. ‘I’ve no idea why it didn’t come up in your searches.’
‘Well, I suppose it’s legal then, and I can’t do anything about it,’ I said grudgingly.
‘Gee, thanks!’
His car was a dark Mercedes estate with an interior that smelled of leather combined with the faintest hint of an expensive and subtle aftershave. I half expected the boot lid to go tight-lipped at the sight of my inferior luggage, but no, it popped up and stayed open. He slid my case in as if it weighed nothing and then we were off into the gathering dusk.
At least it gave me an opportunity to see where the alleyway led to and how to get through the small streets to the main road. The car climbed and took a turn or two, then came out on the moors above the village and continued on until all the other houses had petered out.
‘If you carry right on along this road it takes you over Blackdog Moor to a crossroads with a motel, just above Upvale village, which is in the next valley. But if you turn down any of the small side roads off it, you could be missing for a week.’
‘Maybe I’ll stick to the main road for a while, then, till I get my bearings,’ I said, shivering, because now the light was almost gone and a fine, driving rain was moving in, we seemed to be surrounded by darkness and blasted heath.
Had I really been left somewhere out there, at the mercy of the elements and passing predators?
Then we were turning off the road sharply right by a large sign that said ‘Oldstone’ and, rather bafflingly underneath, ‘Pondlife’.
The Little Teashop of Lost and Found Page 9
