Page 9 of The Bookshop at the Cornish Cove

‘Nancy, you’ve been lovely to my nan. The whole of Driftwood Bay has been amazing to her and I’ll never be able to thank everyone. Your mum isn’t just Nan’s cleaner she’s way much more than that.’

‘I don’t want Mum to know anything. She can’t find out.’ Panic was rising. ‘Please tell me that you haven’t told your nan about this.’

‘No, I haven’t. But she does know that I’m coming here to see if I can do anything to help. I told her I was coming to help you unload some boxes. Don’t worry.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I wasn’t going to charge you anything, Nancy,’ he continued. ‘This is a gift from me to you to say thank you for being so kind to Nan.’

Maybe he wasn’t such a baddie after all. Not everyone has to be friends. If he could offer help, out of the goodness of his heart, surely I would be a fool to turn it down.

I thought about my future. Teaching was behind me now and it was something I would never want to go back to. A bookshop was all I’d ever dreamed of. I wanted to run this one until I was a little old lady. I could be stubborn and defiant, and refuse his help, or I could accept that with some expert advice, this business could give me the future I so craved. I’d be a fool to turn him down.

‘Then yes please, Dennis. I would like your help.’

He smiled back at me and then that smirk reappeared.

‘There you go. That wasn’t so hard after all, was it?’

8

Much as I had wanted to slap him the day before, when we sat down and Dennis started to explain certain aspects of the business to me, he made an awful lot of sense. He asked what took up most of my time and got me to describe my typical bookshop day. There were so many ideas I’d had that I’d not yet put into practice because I didn’t feel like I had the time. I explained that I felt like I was doing two jobs; one being the manager and the other just being a worker and I struggled to do both at the same time.

But when he questioned how I was spending my spare time, I felt like he was personally criticising me.

‘Did you know the percentage of start-up businesses that fail within their first year?’

I thought back to the day we met and him telling me this information and what a surprise it had been to me.

‘I did not. But I bet they didn’t believe in the power of the universe taking care of everything for them, did they?’ I smiled.

‘Is the universe going to pay the rental on the shop when you can’t afford it though? Starting a business takes extensiveplanning, research and implementation. What’s your plan for staffing? What happens when you go on holiday?’

God, he really was a laugh a minute. How on earth did I think he was hot when I first met him? Just because he was well dressed and good looking wasn’t enough to endear him to me.

‘Nancy, are you listening to me? I’m trying to help you here, you know.’

‘Sorry, I was just wondering what you do for fun.’

‘Not really relevant, is it?’

‘It’s not, but it’s called conversation. I say something, then you say something back and so on and so on.’

‘Hilarious. Shall we get back to the business plan?’

‘Yes, would love to.’ I smiled sweetly again.

He sighed.

‘Sorry, it’s just so serious.’

‘Yeah, that’s exactly what it is. That’s my job and that’s what I’m trying to make sure you realise. Trying to get those bills paid for you. You can’t keep ignoring those brown envelopes, you know? You have a business to make profitable.’

‘I do know that of course, but Aunty Theresa’s money is in the bank too.’

‘Yeah, but that’s running out. Look, last night I set up this spreadsheet. I wanted to show you the outgoings and incomings. They just don’t balance at all.’

‘But you have to speculate to accumulate, isn’t that what they say?’ You see, I did know what I was talking about. I’d show him.

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