Page 15 of The Little Teashop of Lost and Found
‘Possibly, but I expect it would be difficult to take her to court over it since she’s in Spain and no one will give me her contact details.’ I sighed. ‘Still, it might look better in the light of day, if it ever stops raining.’
‘I hope it does, but I suppose you could always cut your losses and sell it again, if not,’ she suggested.
‘No,’ I declared with sudden determination, ‘I’ve sunk all my money into the place, so I’ll just have to make a go of it – thoughnotas the Branwell Café, because I found one of the menus and it seems to have been a cheap burger and sandwich joint.’
‘Have you considered shutting the café down and turning the whole premises into a house?’ she said. ‘I mean, that’s what you were looking for originally, wasn’t it?’
‘I suppose I could, but either way, renovating the place will take most of what’s left of the insurance pay-out, and I don’t think I’m going to make enough to live on from my books, even with a proper publisher and an agent.’
‘You’d have to get another job?’
‘Yes, and since baking is all I know how to do – well, I might as well do it in my own café as someone else’s.’
‘You’re right,’ Lola said. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. Oh, I do wish I could come and help you sort things out!’
‘So do I, but I know it’s impossible: you’re already doing too many things.’
‘It’ll be easier when the extension is finished and I can move in with the girls,’ she said. ‘At the moment, running the jam and pickle company with Mum, the school run and juggling all the children’s activities means I never seem to have a second free. Just as well I like being busy.’
‘Yes, and I need to just get on with it, like you did after you lost Harry.’
‘But I was lucky because I could move back in with Mum and Dad and then, once I’d sold our house, there was enough to fund the extensionanda new building for the jamming and pickling. Things have really taken off with the business, and it’sfun,’ she said.
‘I think you’ve just infused a bit of backbone into me,’ I told her. ‘The Branwell Café will be reborn as something new – onwards and upwards!’
‘That’s the spirit!’ she said, then made me promise to ring her again next day when I’d been back and seen it in daylight.
‘I think the electricity might be back on, too. When it wouldn’t work, I assumed Mrs Muswell had had it disconnected, but they said here there’d been a power cut earlier.’
‘If it’s light enough to take pictures, send me some.’
‘With or without the giant spiders?’ I asked.
‘Without!’ she said firmly.
I borrowed an umbrella from the moronic youth and had a quick meal in the bar of an almost empty nearby pub.
I was tiring now after all the ups and downs of the day, but as I made my way back to the guesthouse, it suddenly struck me that I was actually here at last, right in the heart of Haworth!
Perhaps I hadn’t been born in the village, as in Dad’s stories, but I must have come from the immediate area and I felt ready to embrace the part of me that belonged here … if I could find it.
There was a thin, brisk woman with cropped iron-grey hair behind the reception desk when I returned the umbrella. When pressed, she admitted that she was Hattie Voss, the owner of the guesthouse, and asked me if everything in my room was OK, though not in a tone to indicate that she cared one way or the other.
‘OK’ was about the most you could say about it, but I took the opportunity to ask her about Mrs Muswell, since she’d told me she always stayed there and was friends with the owners.
‘Well, yes … she does stay here sometimes,’ she said reluctantly, then suddenly called out, ‘Jim!’
A short, balding man with a military haircut and moustache, who had been visible through a door laying the tables in the dining room for breakfast, stopped clattering plates and joined us.
‘Our guest was just asking about Mrs Muswell and I told her she occasionally used to stay here.’
‘Ah … yes,’ he agreed. ‘Handy for the café. She had a good manageress, but she liked to pop over from time to time and personally check on things.’
They were oddly cagey and insisted they didn’t have any contact details for Mrs Muswell in Spain. I didn’t believe them: they smiled and smiled but were probably still villains, just like Mrs M.
I wasn’t getting anywhere, so finally I gave up and retired back to my room, where I fell into that state of exhaustion where you become febrile and wide awake, but in a slightly nightmare, spaced-out kind of way.
Since the guesthouse had broadband and I had my laptop with me, I sat at the rickety dressing table and began some of the internet searches I should have done before I signed the contract – and quicklydiscovered there was a surprising amount about the Branwell Café out there. None of it was good.
