The Teashop on the Corner

by Milly Johnson

  ‘Er, yeah,’ said Shaun. Environmental health would be swooping down on her very soon, he reckoned. Surely cats and cafés didn’t mix?

  ‘Is it too thick? Does it need more milk in it, do you think?’

  Dear God, thought Shaun. It was a cup of hot chocolate, not an entrant for Masterchef.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he said, tinkering with the tap. He noticed her apron was patterned with covers of old Penguin books but the pocket at the front was an orange sleeping cat. She’s added that herself, he thought. And made a good job of it. She looked the arts and crafty type. He could imagine her making her own rugs at night in a house full of shelves of books.

  Shaun liked books and read a lot at home in the quiet evenings. He didn’t like cats particularly, but then he had never had much contact with pets. He didn’t do emotional ties.

  ‘What happens to the cakes that you don’t sell?’ he asked, bending to check the cupboard underneath the sink for leaks.

  ‘I drop them off at the homeless shelter,’ replied Leni.

  ‘But soon there won’t be any left to take. I have every confidence this little place will be booming. Anyway, selling tea is just my folly. The shop is the real business of course.’

  And that’s just as heaving, Shaun muttered to himself.

  ‘Most of my orders come from the internet,’ Leni expanded, as if hearing his thoughts. ‘I’m very busy ordering and packing up what I’ve sold during the day when the teashop is empty. So you don’t need to worry about your rent, Mr McCarthy.’

  And she laughed and he thought that the sound it made was like that of a tinkly bell.

  ‘There, it’s done,’ he said, throwing the wrench back into his bag. He drained the cup of the last dregs of chocolate. It tasted like melted-down biscuits and would keep him going for another hour or so before he stopped for a sandwich. He could have done with another, if the truth be told. He had no doubt that if he asked for a fill-up, she would have obliged – with another smile – but that would mean more small talk and Shaun McCarthy wasn’t in the mood.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Leni Merryman. ‘Do I owe you anything?’

  ‘No,’ he said, waving the suggestion away. ‘All in with the rent.’

  ‘Well, you know where I am if you want to give me some custom,’ Leni tilted her head as she spoke.

  ‘I’m not a visiting-coffee-shops sort of person,’ said Shaun. ‘Too busy. I only build them.’

  She chuckled as if his gruffness amused her. ‘Well, thank you anyway.’

  Shaun lifted up his bag and walked back through the teashop. It was a shame it was always empty of customers because she’d done it up really well. He dragged his eyes along the glass cabinets as he passed them. They were filled with gifts – quality gifts – cufflinks made from old typewriter keys, tiny silver charms in the shape of books, gift tags made from book pages: romantic books, he presumed, seeing as the word ‘Darcy’ was ringed in red. All quirky, fancy things that literary types would go gaga over – himself excepted, of course. He might enjoy reading books, but he had no use for a tie-pin silhouette of Edgar Allan Poe.

  Between the last cabinet and the door was a long pinboard studded with postcards sent from all over. He spotted one from Madrid, one from Kos and one from Lisbon.

  ‘What’s your online shop called?’ he asked.

  ‘Book Things. Nice and simple. You have a lovely accent, Mr McCarthy. Is it Northern or Southern Irish?’

  ‘Northern,’ said Shaun.

  ‘My daughter Anne was born in Cork,’ said Leni. ‘She wasn’t due for another two—’

  Shaun’s small-talk alarm went off. Time to go.

  ‘Thanks for the chocolate,’ he said, taking hold of the door handle. ‘Must get on and earn a living.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Leni with an understanding nod. ‘Busy lives.’

  Busy lives indeed, thought Shaun. He liked his busy life. He liked filling his head with his work and his business and his books at the end of the day that stopped him thinking about his years in Belfast and his earlier days in Londonderry which still haunted him, thirty-four years on.

  Leni bent down at the side of the ginger cat curled up in his basket.

  ‘Oh Mr Bingley,’ she said, giving him a rub behind his ear which set him off purring. ‘I wish Anne were here to see this. She’d love it here, wouldn’t she? She will love it, won’t she?’

  Chapter 5

  After Julie had left, Carla had sat in the vestry like an animal which had been stunned before being slaughtered. She was shivering but it was only partly because of the cold, still air of the room. Her body was in shock down to the bones and was vibrating to drum up some heat and comfort. It wasn’t working. She couldn’t remember hearing the door open and the Reverend Duckworth entering. Not until he covered her shoulders with a throw did she become aware of his presence. It was heavy and velvet: maybe one of his vestments. She sat there for a few minutes, absorbing the warmth it afforded.

  ‘Cl-Shall I direct people onwards?’ he asked softly. ‘The cl-Ship next door I do believe?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Carla, surprising herself by standing because she didn’t think she still had a spine. It felt as if it had been ripped out of her. ‘I’ll do it.’

  The Reverend Duckworth squeezed her hand and she felt him willing her strength. He was a nice man. A kind man.

  She pulled in a long lungful of the chilled vestry air, let go of the warm hand lending support to hers and pushed the material from her shoulders. She strolled out into the church, forcing a smile onto her lips, unstable as it was, and addressed the pews of mourners more slowly and calmly than she would have thought possible.

  ‘I apologise for the disturbance to the ceremony. Please make your way to the Ship next door where refreshments will be waiting for you.’ She focused her eyes on Andrew. ‘I know some of you have travelled a long way so please, join me.’

  People rose and started to file out, whispering to each other, the subject matter obvious. Carla couldn’t blame them. She would have been the same had she been out there observing all this. She wondered how many of them would ask her what was going on, how many times she would have to tell the same story. She couldn’t do it. She didn’t want to be put on the spot.

  ‘Wait!’ she shouted on impulse. Everyone turned to her and she momentarily lost her nerve. She didn’t so much forget what she was going to say, because she hadn’t planned anything. She opened her mouth and let the words make their own exit in whatever order they happened to come out.

  ‘You’ll all be wondering what that was . . . what happened. It appears that Martin had another wife. That is as much as I know, so please don’t ask me for details because I don’t have any.’

  The church was filled with gasps.

  ‘Please, today, let’s just say goodbye to the Martin we all knew and . . . loved.’ She stumbled over the word. It had been true until half an hour ago.

  She hoped that would stop any questions. Fat chance. Five seconds later, Andrew was at her side.

  ‘What do you mean he had another wife?’

  ‘Well, he had another wife,’ said Carla, shrugging her shoulders. ‘That woman in the red shoes apparently was Julie. His first wife. The one he never divorced, as I found out today. That makes me the “other wife”, I suppose.’

  ‘That was Julie?’ Andrew pointed towards the back of the church, as if she was still there, hiding behind the large arched door. ‘Blimey, she’s changed. She was a great big fat lass the last time I saw her. Long brown hair. Teeth like an abandoned graveyard.’

  Carla suddenly felt full of anger and frustration which needed to be vented. In the absence of Martin she turned to the nearest thing she had to him – his cousin.

  ‘Why did no one ever mention her to me? I didn’t know he’d been married before,’ she snapped, her voice carrying more wobble than aggression.

  Andrew shook his head and his great jowls flapped.

  ‘They were just kids. They were m
et, married and separated within a year. I’d forgotten all about her if I’m honest. Still, I would have thought Martin should have mentioned it.’ He raked his fingers through the little hair he had left. ‘And you say they never divorced?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How does that leave you?’

  Carla sighed. ‘Up a certain brown smelly creek without a paddle, I imagine.’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘I honestly didn’t know he hadn’t divorced her. Who gets married to a second woman when you’re not divorced from the first one?’

  I can’t blame Andrew, thought Carla. It wasn’t a subject that would normally have raised its head when you mainly kept in touch via the medium of Christmas cards. Martin hadn’t really liked Andrew all that much. Then again, Martin hadn’t really liked anyone that much. He’d taken being anti-social to an art form.

  ‘I need a large drink,’ Andrew said, taking hold of Carla’s arm. ‘I suspect you do as well.’

  And he led her out to the Ship, where Carla endured all the ‘sorry for your losses’ she was offered, attempted to ignore all the gossip happening around her and tried her best to get through the next hour without throwing herself on the carpet and screaming out her pain.

  Chapter 6

  ‘Honestly, Molly, this house is far too big for you to manage. Gram and I do worry about you.’

  Molly’s daughter-in-law, blonde, buxom Sherry Beardsall, angled the teapot over Molly’s cup, topping it up to full, whilst launching into what had become, over the past weeks, an all-too-familiar speech. ‘I mean, what do you really need with three bedrooms?’

  And Molly answered as she always did, with a timid smile. ‘Well, it’s not really all that big.’

  Molly wasn’t half as daft as Sherry thought she was. She wasn’t taken in by the mask of concern that Sherry wore over her heavily powdered face because this conversation always steered towards the words ‘Autumn Grange’, just as surely as if it had been a destination programmed into a sat-nav.

  The house was too big for Molly, although it wasn’t a fraction as large as her sister’s next door. Margaret lived in a very old, grand house with six bedrooms and a small lake in the grounds. Her husband Bernard had inherited The Lakehouse from his parents and it was he who’d had Willowfell built for Molly on their land many years ago. Houses in the village of Higher Hoppleton commanded a greater price with every passing year. Molly’s house, with no mortgage on it, was worth a ridiculously pretty penny and her son Graham and his wife Sherry were in an unobstructed line to inherit it.

  ‘Here, have a slice of cake.’ Sherry cut them both a piece of sponge. ‘I won’t give you too much to start with,’ she simpered, handing Molly a slice which was half the size of her own. Sherry shoved the cake into her mouth and devoured it in two bites. Cream and icing sugar stuck to her red lipstick and when she dabbed it away with her serviette, the colour strayed over her lip-line. She looked like she had blood, rather than make-up, on her mouth.

  Molly nibbled delicately at hers, not really wanting to eat cake, and certainly not with Sherry, who had begun these Tuesday morning visits a few weeks ago out of the blue. The attention she paid to her mother-in-law had gone from nought to sixty and Molly knew there had to be a reason for it. She doubted it was money because Graham had his own business; he and his wife both had flash cars and a new-build double-fronted house painted monstrous pink and yellow. But whatever Sherry wanted from her, it hadn’t raised its head properly yet; it remained shrouded in gifts of cake, small talk and subtle mentions of Autumn Grange.

  Sherry usually started by alluding to how Molly was getting on a bit and how worried Gram and she were that she was coping okay.

  Graham, although Sherry always called him Gram, obviously wasn’t that concerned because he seldom visited; only when he had to, at Christmas, birthdays and Mother’s Day – unless they happened to be on holiday in their Greek villa. He left all the social stuff to his wife, a woman named, by no coincidence, after a drink that was sickly-sweet and best encountered in small quantities once a year at Christmas.

  ‘I mean you’ve still got a bedroom reserved for Gram and he isn’t likely to sleep in there again,’ chuckled Sherry.

  ‘No,’ replied Molly with a sigh of resignation. She didn’t want him sleeping in it either, if the truth be told. She wanted her little Graham, her baby in there. The one she had had before his father had moulded him into his own mini-me. She wanted to reach back into the past and take her baby boy and run, run with him so that Edwin couldn’t ever find them.

  ‘It’s far too big a house for one person. Gram and I do worry that the housework will get on top of you. And that you don’t have a turn on the stairs . . .’

  Sherry was still going on, still trying to convince Molly that she was an eighty-eight-year-old invalid reliant on incontinence pads and mashed foods instead of a sixty-eight-year-old competent woman. Why would she need sheltered housing at her age? She was perfectly capable of negotiating a staircase and pressing a button on a washing machine. Physically she was fine; mentally – well, her memory was starting to fail a little. She’d had a few incidents recently of forgetting where she had put things. She’d misplaced her silver compact which was usually in her handbag and an antique gold pen which she had bought herself as a fiftieth birthday present. And harder to explain, she had lost a small Royal Doulton figurine of a lady. It was a rare one too, an early one. She had thought it was safe on a shelf in the second bedroom with five other collectable figures. But it wasn’t there any more. It had been a present from Harvey, her second husband. The man whose wedding ring she had ripped off her finger when she found out about his affair. And he’d had the cheek to take the ring with him when he left.

  She hadn’t mentioned to Margaret that Sherry had been visiting every week because her sister would have marched right up to her daughter-in-law and asked what her game was. Margaret didn’t trust Sherry or Graham as far as she could have thrown them – and that wouldn’t have been very far with their combined weight of over fifty stone. Margaret could smell a rat before its parents had even conceived it. And Margaret was fiercely protective of her sister.

  In the womb, Margaret had taken the lion’s share of any bravery on offer, leaving her twin with crumbs of it. Margaret didn’t like Sherry and she liked her nephew even less and stuck in the middle, Molly didn’t want to stoke any more fires of dislike between them. She loved Margaret and it hurt her that she had no time for Graham – and that the feeling was whole-heartedly reciprocated.

  ‘Gram and I drove past a lovely house yesterday,’ said Sherry, casually, sweetly. ‘I said to Gram, “Isn’t that a beautiful building?” An old mansion. I couldn’t believe it when Gram said it was Autumn Grange. I never realised it was so beautiful. I’d love to show it to you.’

  Here we go, today’s mention of Autumn Grange, thought Molly. She sipped her tea with her eyes down. She didn’t need to go and visit Autumn Grange – she knew it already. It was the old Woolstock mansion on the edge of Ketherwood which had been converted half into sheltered housing flats, half into an old people’s home. Ketherwood was the least desirable location in the area, dominated by a sprawling depressed sink estate. Not even Alsatians ventured out alone in Ketherwood. Molly, Margaret and Bernard had visited an old friend in there a few months ago. It had been a grand old building in its time and though the façade remained impressive, inside it was shabby and tired, with a pervading air of school dinners that had lingered in their nostrils long after they had left.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll bother,’ said Molly, noticing Sherry’s top lip tighten slightly. ‘I’m not one for looking at old buildings.’

  ‘I’ll just go to the toilet, if I may,’ said Sherry, taking two attempts to rock to her feet. She was a thick-waisted woman with an enormous bust that would have permanently tipped her forward had her backside not given her some ballast. Still, she had been a good wife to Gram . . . Graham, a great support to him. And, best of all, Graham
seemed to love her, really adore her. Once upon a time, Molly had feared he wasn’t capable of love. He had always found it so hard to form attachments. At school he had no real friends, and he’d been a loner at college. Molly had wanted to believe that it was because he was so very bright, and the super-intelligent sorts often had a problem socially, didn’t they? But deep down, though she fought against admitting it to herself, she knew it was because Graham Edwin Beardsall was inherently unlikeable.

  Molly heard the tell-tale creak of the third bedroom floor upstairs, the one where she kept her computer and all her paperwork locked away in her desk. She’d lived in the house long enough to recognise every groan and whisper the wood made. Was Sherry in there and if so what was she doing? She wished Margaret were here. Margaret had the effect of citronella on flies where Sherry was concerned.

  As if by blessed magic, Margaret’s head poked around the door. ‘Only me, darling. Is the kettle on?’

  ‘It’s always on for you.’ Molly leapt up from her seat to get out a cup for her twin sister. They had been identical in looks until their early teens when Molly lost weight and Margaret found it and suited it, so it stayed. Molly had remained dainty and thin – too thin, Margaret told her often, and bossed her into clearing her plate whenever they ate together. Personality-wise, Margaret had always been bossier, bolshier and more confident. Those qualities had propelled her career forwards to the top of the nursing tree, whilst Molly’s gentler, less ambitious nature had served her well as a doctor’s receptionist in the small local village practice.

  The other way in which they differed was Margaret’s secret gift. Although it had been more of a curse to her.

  Margaret wafted the air in front of her nose. ‘What is that smell?’

  It was Sherry’s perfume. Cloying and thick, it welded itself to the insides of nasal passages. The army could have used it as a replacement for CS gas.

  Margaret noted the large, gaudy leopardskin handbag and paired it to the smell pervading the room. There was only one person she knew who might carry around a bag like that. Barnsley’s answer to Bet Lynch with a thyroid problem.