Stevie sagged against the stainless-steel counter and wiped a trembling, floury hand across her face. She was so exhausted, she didn’t know what to do with herself. In an ideal world, she should be in bed, but she had a ton of baking still to do and she hadn’t cleaned the shop yet, or checked the sugar bowls to see if they needed refilling, or cut up the fruit for the smoothies she now offered or—
The list was endless, and she was just one woman… How on earth she ever thought she could run a business all by herself, she didn’t know. She must have been mad.
‘OK, think – baking first,’ because then she could do some of the other stuff while the oven was doing its job. So she set about stirring and mixing, working more or less on autopilot simply to get the job done. What she had once revelled in doing was now becoming a chore, one more item to be ticked off an impossible list.
When she’d put the last of the butterscotch buns in the oven, she shoved all the dirty bowls, pans, and utensils in the dishwasher, and wiped the countertops down. Cleaning the floor would have to wait until morning, she was too tired to deal with it now.
Instead, she tackled another mound of washing up by hand, savagely regretting her decision to buy bone-china cups and saucers, and pretty but not-dishwasher-safe plates with gold leaf around the edges. If she could have stuck them all in the dishwasher, it would have made her life so much easier. And she’d give anything for easy right at this moment.
She left the washed dishes to air-dry (it was beyond her to dry them herself when she had so many other things to do) and she plodded into the café area and pulled fifteen pristine tablecloths from the cupboard of a lovely Welsh dresser she’d found online. It was painted turquoise and cream and complemented the pale rose walls perfectly. Only right now, she was too tired to enjoy it. It was simply another thing she had to clean and dust.
It took her a good half hour to remove everything from the tables, whip off today’s tablecloths, put fresh ones on and replace the sugar dish, the salt and pepper pots, and the little vases of flowers, after checking none of those items needed filling up, of course, and that the flowers would last another day without being replaced. She made a mental note to give them clean water in the morning. She really couldn’t be bothered to do it right now.
A buzzer sounded and for one moment Stevie wondered what it could be.
Oh, it was the timer on the oven! Her brain was so addled she was having trouble with even the simplest of tasks. She’d heard buzzers like this one practically every day of her working life, and here she was, so tired she wasn’t sure of her own name. Was it only thirteen days since she’d opened the tea shop door to her first customers? She vaguely recalled being full of enthusiasm and hope…
Luckily nothing was overdone or (God forbid) burned, but it was only luck she realised when she noticed the timer on the second oven was set to two hours instead of the twenty-two minutes it should have been set for. She whisked out the apricot and almond gallets and felt like crying – not because they were ruined, but because she’d caught them just in time.
This was ridiculous. Something was going to have to give, because she couldn’t keep this up.
She put the pastries to cool, gathered up all the soiled tablecloths and napkins and shoved them in the washing machine, then decided to sweep and mop the tiled floor after all. It was only when she was brandishing her mop near the customer toilet, she realised she’d forgotten to clean it. There was nothing worse than dirty customer toilets in a restaurant, pub, or café (unless it was a dirty kitchen) and Stevie took great pains to ensure that hers was spotless. She could think of nothing more off-putting for a customer than eating in a premises, only to pop to the loo and find it disgusting, leading to thoughts of how clean the kitchen might be.
Stevie slid down the mop and collapsed onto her just-cleaned floor.
She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t!
But what she was going to do was go to bed and start again in the morning. Apart from being so tired she didn’t know what to do with herself, her feet and legs were aching from being on them all day, she had a headache, and she hadn’t eaten since… when? She couldn’t remember. Certainly nothing but a couple of cups of tea and coffee had passed her lips since breakfast, and she couldn’t actually remember if she’d had breakfast or not. She vaguely recalled holding a piece of toast, but that might be yesterday when she’d eaten it and not today.
She went to bed with so much on her mind that her sleep was broken and fitful, her brain too full of the things she needed to do, which explained why she was up and dressed well before her alarm went off despite her exhaustion.
Three and a half hours sleep, that was all she’d managed, and she wondered how long a person could live on so little. If she could get through today and tomorrow, she could spend all day Sunday in bed, she promised herself, and to hell with ordering supplies, or doing the accounts, or the washing, or anything else which didn’t involve snuggling under her duvet.
‘But what kind of a life was that?’ she asked herself after downing a quick cup of very strong coffee, cleaning that pesky customer loo, taking everything she needed for today out of the enormous fridge and arranging it in the display cabinet, then setting off to the bakers for some fresh bread (she really had no time to make her own) and the grocers. Both shops were open early, and she dived into the first one she came to, a list in her hand. She was rapidly becoming the list queen of Britain and she had no idea how she had managed to live her life before without one.
Oh, yes, because she hadn’t been run off her feet every second, that was how.
‘What can I get you today?’
‘Hello, Mrs Evans. How are you?’
‘Better than you, by the looks of it.’
‘Excuse me?’ She must have heard the other woman wrong.
‘You look worn out. Good night was it?’
‘Eh?’
‘I said, last night was a good one, was it? Where did you go, somewhere nice?’
‘Er, no. I stayed home.’
‘Oh, sorry, I just thought… Don’t mind me, my mouth can run away with me sometimes. Here, let me see that.’ Mrs Evans took the list out of Stevie’s hands and scanned it.
‘That’s OK. I didn’t realise I looked so bad.’ Stevie gave a weak laugh. She must remember to put some make-up on before she opened up, otherwise she might scare her customers. Another job to add to the list…
‘I don’t mean to pry, love, but are you all right?’
‘Just tired. Really, really tired,’ Stevie said. ‘It’s not easy running your own business, is it?’
Mrs Evans owned the greengrocers with her husband. In fact, nearly all the shops and businesses in Tanglewood were privately owned; Stevie hadn’t seen a big-chain anything since she’d been here. It was what gave the place its charm, and she guessed Mrs Evans would know exactly what she meant.
‘You’re doing it all by yourself, aren’t you, dear?’ the shopkeeper asked, weighing up some grapes and popping them into a brown paper bag.
‘Yes.’ The word came out as a sigh and Stevie shrugged an apology. She didn’t mean to be so down, but she was seriously beginning to wonder how long she could carry on like this. Peggy’s Tea Shoppe hadn’t even been open two whole weeks yet and already Stevie was almost at the end of her tether.
‘You need someone to give you a hand. It’s too much for one person.’ Mrs Evans lowered her voice, even though there was only the two of them in the shop. ‘I mean, how do you manage if you need to pop to the loo?’
Stevie laughed. She wasn’t really sure how she managed some days, either.
Hang on… That was it! She had an idea. She didn’t have to be one person – she could be two! If she hired someone to take orders, serve, clean tables, and so on, then Stevie would be able to spend some of the day in her kitchen, instead of doing what she usually did after the tea shop closed.
She needed an assistant!