Page 42 of The Little Teashop of Lost and Found
It was a delight to be able to drive myself into Haworth next morning and the car had been so lovingly restored that it felt brand new. I wished I had a garage to leave it in, rather than it sitting forlornly on the rough patch of ground at the back of the café.
I’d just left a message for the man who serviced the café’s gas boiler, asking him to come and do the same for the flat one, when Nile waltzed in through the unlocked back door, deposited the promised telephone handset on the table and left again with nothing more than a brief, muttered, ‘See you later.’ He seemed preoccupied: perhaps that was why he’d forgotten to knock.
To my amazement, and against all the laws of workmen, the boiler man appeared within the hour, right after my phone had been reconnected (so it was just as well Nile had remembered the handset).
He sneered at the antiquated boiler in the flat and said it probably came out of the Ark, like the one in the café, and if either of them broke down, he wouldn’t be able to get the new parts, so they’d have to be scrapped. That I might have to buy two new gas boilers before very long was a cheering thought.
Still, it was a productive morning in that I had a working landline telephone, a functioning boiler and warm radiators upstairs, by the time Bel arrived. We applied the first coat of warm white emulsion on to the living-room walls, and if the entire interior of the café and flat hadn’t been coated in shades of dark mushroom, one coat might even have been enough.
Bel could only stay for a couple of hours, but I painted round the edges of the walls and she rollered the middles, which made it speedy, and since we were chatting while doing it, it took my mind off what we’d discovered in the newspapers the previous day.
Images of the Oldstone and lost lambs had haunted my dreams last night. It was all starting to get way tooWuthering Heightsfor my liking. Why couldn’t I have just been left in a cosy basket on the Brontë Parsonage steps, like Dad always told me I was?
Nile had been so preoccupied earlier that I thought he might forget his offer to take me furniture hunting, but he appeared after lunch. Or actually, he appearedwithlunch, since he brought me a cheese and tomato sandwich in case I hadn’t had anything.
I hadn’t, and I was suitably grateful, though I fully intended stocking up the café fridge with a few basics like bread, cheese, eggs and milk at the very first opportunity.
Nile seemed in better humour than earlier, so I suspected he was one of those men who get grumpy when their blood sugar dips. It was very thoughtful of him, anyway, and I ate the sandwich while he drove me to his friend’s barn showroom.
It was cosy and comfortable in the car, and once I’d demolished the sandwich and relaxed a bit, my mind strayed back to what Bel and I had discovered from the newspapers. In fact, I was miles away on a blasted heath when Nile’s voice suddenly jarred me out of my reverie.
‘What’s the matter, Allie? You’re not listening to a word I say and you don’t even seem to have noticed that I’ve pulled over.’
‘Don’t call me Allie!’ I snapped. ‘Nobodycalls me Allie.’
He grinned. ‘I thought that would get your attention! You’ve been lost to the world ever since we set out, so if any more devious Mrs Muswell dealings have come to light, you’d better tell me about them now, not keep them to yourself.’
‘No, it isn’t that,’ I said, and then, without in the least intending to, found myself telling him about the newspaper articles.
‘I’d only had my birth certificate to go on before, so all the extrainformation about how and where I was found has really thrown me. It … made it suddenly real, rather than just a story.’
‘I suppose it would, especially now you’ve seen what the moors are like. I expect you want to visit the actual spot soon, the Oldstone? We go on family picnics there in summer, but it’s a bit bleak at this time of year.’
I shivered slightly, despite the efficient heater blasting out warm air. ‘I can imagine, but you’re right: going up there is something I’ll have to do.’
‘I could come with you, if you like,’ he offered.
‘That’s kind, but I feel it’s something I’m going to have to do alone the first time.’
‘OK, I’ll draw you a map of how to get close to it by road, instead, because it’s impossible to find if you don’t know the way.’
‘That would be really useful, thank you,’ I said gratefully.
‘That’s all right. Let me know if there’s anything else I can help you with.’
‘I think the next step after that will be to find the two eyewitnesses and talk to them. It’s just to complete the picture – I’m not expecting it to lead to finding my birth mother.’
‘Well, you know my opinion on that one,’ he said. ‘Better to leave it alone.’
‘Now I know how remote a spot I was abandoned in, I have to admit you have a point, because she can’t have expected me to be found … or not alive, at any rate, can she?’
‘She may not have thought it through to that extent, Alice. We don’t know the circumstances, but they must have been traumatic and desperate to make her do something like that.’
‘That’s what Dad said. He thought she was probably very young and when I arrived just wanted to get rid of me and pretend it never happened.’
‘I think that’s a fairly common scenario,’ Nile agreed.
‘But if you think about it, she can’t have beenthatyoung, because how could she get me to a remote spot like the Oldstone in the early hours of a freezing cold March morning if she couldn’t drive?’
