‘No, no, that simply won’t do,’ Stevie cried crossly. ‘You’ve put an o in – it should be an e.’
‘Where?’
‘There, see?’ Stevie jabbed a finger at the recently painted sign outside her recently acquired tea shop.
The sign-writer scratched his grizzled head and peered upwards.
‘You’ll have to do it again,’ she stated.
‘No, I won’t. I’ve done it exactly as you wrote it.’ The elderly man fished around in his pocket and drew out a crumpled, grubby bit of paper. He smoothed it out against his chest, then stuck it under her nose. A dirty, paint-covered finger stabbed at the writing. ‘There? See? Poggy’s Tea Shoppe.’
‘No, it’s not. It doesn’t say that at all. It says Peggy’s Tea Shoppe. That’s an e.’
‘Well, it don’t look like it to me, and I paints what I sees, don’t I?’ he pointed out, reasonably.
‘But it’s wrong. That’s an e. Doesn’t that say e to you?’ Stevie grabbed the paper out of the old man’s hand and thrust it in the face of a passer-by. The woman almost jumped out of her skin.
‘See what?’ she squeaked, holding her anorak close to her bosom with a shaking hand.
‘The e,’ Stevie almost shouted. ‘As in “Peggy’s Tea Shoppe”.’
‘Oh. Yes. Tea. Yes, I think it’s going to be a café and I’m sure they’ll sell tea, dear,’ the woman gabbled. ‘Some young thing from over London way has bought it. I hope she’ll do better than the last lot.’
‘What do you mean?’ Stevie demanded, the misspelt sign momentarily forgotten, but her informant shuffled quickly down the pavement and was soon out of reach.
‘What was all that about?’ Stevie asked no one in particular.
For the first time since she’d seen Tanglewood and made the most important and spontaneous decision of her life, Stevie felt a tad uneasy. She knew there was something she should have done and it had niggled at her ever since she set eyes on the tea shop, and now it hit her – she hadn’t asked why the previous owners were selling up. It simply hadn’t occurred to her. She’d been so caught up in the excitement of it, she hadn’t once considered the reason why the café was on the market.
Stevie probably wouldn’t have been allowed to look at the books anyway (not that she’d even thought about it) as the premises wasn’t being sold as a going concern. The business itself hadn’t been for sale, just the property. The fact that the fixtures and fittings were included, was just a lucky bonus.
‘Don’t know and don’t care,’ the sign writer stated, his singsong Welsh accent carolling the words, pulling her out of the faint worry which was now starting to cloud her mind, and she frowned at him as he bent to his paints, snapping the lids back on.
‘You haven’t finished yet,’ she protested.
‘Yes, I have.’ The old man was adamant. ‘Unless you want to pay me to do it again?’
‘I haven’t paid you at all yet,’ she corrected.
At that, he held out a slightly trembling grubby hand.
Stevie ignored it. ‘I’m not paying you until you put it right.’
‘And I’ll tell everyone as how you wouldn’t pay an old man for an honest day’s work. How you cheated him out of his wages and now he can’t afford to turn on his gas fire,’ the old man shot back at her.
‘But it’s the middle of May! You don’t need the fire on.’
‘Gets cold in the nights,’ he retorted, then added, ‘And I won’t be able to have any luxuries, like food and a bit of tobacco.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Stevie stomped inside the café and returned with her purse. She counted out the notes, then waited for him to pick up his things, which he did with annoying slowness. Finally, he hoisted his ladder over his shoulder, his back bent under its weight.
‘Right then, Miss Poggy,’ he said. ‘I’ll be off. Call me if you want any more work done.’
‘It’s Taylor! Miss Taylor,’ she shouted at his retreating form, the ladder bobbing gently up and down as he staggered off under its weight. Miss Poggy indeed!
‘If you say so,’ she heard him call back.
‘Balls,’ she muttered under her breath and stomped off to get her own ladder.
She didn’t have one, she discovered. She also discovered she didn’t have any paint either, or a paintbrush.
Sighing in frustration, she picked up her purse again, locked the tea shop and headed for the ironmonger further up the street.
‘Hiya, love, what can I get you?’ a man in his fifties asked her. He wore a dark green apron which reached to mid-calf and looked as though he knew one end of a screwdriver from the other.
‘I need a ladder,’ Stevie began, then a rack of wooden prong things caught her eye. ‘Er… what’s that for?’ It looked a bit like a coat rack but had been placed on its flat side with the two-foot-long straight prongs sticking into the air.
‘A wellie rack. Would you like one?’ he said, grabbing a wellie from a shelf behind him and plonking it upside down on one of the wooden prongs.
Actually, now he came to mention it, perhaps she did have a need for a wellie rack in her life, even though she didn’t have a single pair of wellies to her name.
No, she’d come here for a ladder, and a ladder was exactly what she intended to return home with. Home – it felt strange to call the tea shop “home”. She’d only moved in the day before yesterday, and she had yet to acclimatise.
‘Just the ladder, please,’ she replied firmly.
‘What kind do you need? Single ladder, extension ladder, step ladder, platform ladder, dual-purpose ladder, roof ladder?’
‘Um…’ Gosh, who knew there were so many varieties? ‘I want to paint a sign above my shop,’ she said.
‘How high?’
‘I dunno, two to three feet?’
‘I meant, how far off the ground is the sign?’
‘Oh, I see. About the same height as yours,’ Stevie said. ‘I think.’
‘A tall step ladder will probably do it,’ the ironmonger said, and fetched a sturdy red-coloured one from the back. ‘It extends into one, if you need a bit more height,’ he added.
‘That’s brilliant,’ she agreed. ‘I’ll need some paint, too.’
‘What kind of paint? We’ve got emulsion, both silk and matte, gloss, satinwood, undercoat, damp corrector, masonry paint—’
‘Whatever is used to paint a sign,’ Stevie interrupted. She had an odd feeling of déjà vu, as if this sort of scene had played out before on a TV show… something to do with fork handles, or was it four candles?
Never mind. It didn’t matter. What did matter was getting the sign right, otherwise Poggy, I mean, Peggy, will be coming back to haunt me, Stevie thought.
She paid for her purchases and was just about to pick the ladder up (how she was going to carry it down the street was a bit of a mystery at the moment) when she spotted something else. And this was something she most definitely had to have.
It was a wooden hat and coat stand and would look perfect just behind the door, for those rainy days she’d heard so much about. Apparently, Wales was renowned for them. The stand even had a kind of tray at the bottom to catch the drips as well as somewhere to stash wet umbrellas.
‘Can I pay for this, take the ladder home, then come back for the coat stand?’ she asked.
‘Of course, you can, love, or we can deliver them both at the same time. Where do you live?’
‘I’ve just bought the café down the road,’ she said, unable to keep the pride out of her voice.
‘That’s you, is it? From London?’
‘That’s me.’
‘Well, in that case, give me a minute and I’ll pop them both down. Jack, here, can mind the shop.’ Jack was a beanpole teenager who was glued to his phone. ‘What am I thinking? Jack, stop playing with that thing and carry this ladder to the café down the street. You know, the empty one. Get a move on, lad, the lady hasn’t got all day.’
‘Thank you, that’s really helpful,’ Stevie said. ‘How much do I owe you for delivery?’
‘Nothing. It’s on the house.’
Stevie was touched. ‘At least let me buy you a cake and a coffee,’ she offered. ‘Come and see me when I’m open and I’ll save a slice of something nice for you.’
A half an hour and a tin or two of enamel paint later, her sign now read:
Peggy’s Tea Shoppe
Wiping her hands on a duster, Stevie admired her handiwork. It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do. Besides, she didn’t have time to mess with it any more – she had a tea shop to open. Not right this very minute, of course, but in a week or so, and before she did, she wanted to give the place a really good scrub. It didn’t appear to need it, to be fair, but she’d feel happier if she gave it a clean, almost like a dog scent-marking its patch.
She’d start with the front-of-house, the tea shop itself, because that was what passers-by could see through the windows, then work her way back to the kitchen. Upstairs would have to wait. She had unpacked some essentials, but that was as far as she’d got.
She set to her cleaning with gusto, wiping and mopping, disinfecting and scouring, until the tea shop was positively gleaming, and when she was satisfied, many hours later, she put her cleaning cloth to one side, took off her rubber gloves and stepped back to admire her work.
Perfect. Her own little empire; a blank canvas ready for her own stamp. The walls were a pale shade of old rose, and she had no intention of changing the colour, but she desperately needed tables, chairs, curtains for the gorgeous bay windows, not to mention plates, cutlery, serving dishes, napkins, tablecloths… the list seemed endless.
In fact, she’d made an actual list last night, and it was quite daunting. She’d managed to order a great deal over the Internet, things like the baking equipment, a state-of-the-art food processor, mixing bowls, spatulas, and the hundreds of other things she needed for the kitchen. She’d even managed to get a good deal and early delivery on catering-standard tables and chairs. But she still needed those all-important finishing touches, and a frantic scroll through eBay had shown her how hard it was going to be to ensure everything arrived on time.
There was nothing for it – she had to call in reinforcements.