Page 75 of The Little Teashop of Lost and Found
‘Your dad told me after we bumped into her at the garage in Upvale years ago. They’d met as teenagers at a local tennis club one summer when he was staying with his grandparents and though he couldn’t have changed that much, she just brushed past us without a word as if she didn’t recognize him and went out.’
‘He did spend a lot of his school holidays here at Oldstone with his grandparents, didn’t he?’ Nile said. ‘That’s why he was so attached to the place.’
‘And his university holidays too, until he dropped out and went to work for those family friends in Germany who had the swimming pond business,’ Sheila agreed.
‘So – was she an old flame?’ asked Bel.
‘I think they’d had a bit of a teenage summer fling, from what Paul said. I saw her at the surgery once, soon after she joined the local practice, and said I believed she’d known Paul when they were younger, but she was very brusque.’
‘What did she say?’ asked Bel, interested.
‘She said, “I barely knew him, except as a decent tennis player. The locals played like rabbits.” ’
‘I think if I saw her coming towards me holding a racquet,I’drun like a rabbit, too,’ Geeta said.
‘Or with a loaded syringe,’ I agreed, resolving that if I registered with that practice, I’d make sure my appointments were with one of her colleagues.
To meet other early walkers as I was returning to the car with Hugo after one of our morning ambles up to the Oldstone was therefore an unwelcome and unusual intrusion – and doubly so once we came near enough for recognition.
The moment my eyes met those of the tall, red-haired woman with one of the Giddingses I knew my past had come back to haunt me, though I am certain I showed no betraying flicker of surprise – and certainly I could show no other emotion, for I felt none.
Presumably she was simply curious to view the place where she was found, though the news that she was to live in the area was unwelcome: I hope she won’t attempt to stir up the old story again.
She doesn’t look in the least like me, yet there is a familial resemblance that, fortunately, only I am likely to perceive.
28
Mr Wrong
First thing on Monday morning, Jack surveyed the teashop floor, which was now sealed to a warm, mellow, almost honey colour, and pronounced that I could walk on it.
This was just as well, since in two days’ time the job lot of tables and chairs that Nile had found for me were to arrive. If there were any to spare, Teddy would collect them in his big four-wheel-drive pickup and ferry them out to Oldstone for the waffle house.
When I texted Nile to tell him about the floor I didn’t get an answer, so he was probably busy. He’d taken himself off to his flat when we’d returned (in convoy) after lunch the previous day and I hadn’t seen him since.
Ross was stripping the outside paintwork of the back windows with a small blowtorch, which looked rather dangerous, while Jack had resumed his tiling, and on a sudden impulse I slipped out of the front door and across the courtyard to Small and Perfect. Even if he was going to open, I was sure Nile wouldn’t be in his shop that early and I wanted to look at the Spode jug again to confirm it reallywasthe same shade of blue as my Minton teapot in case of any further argument.
There was no sign of it, though. Could he possibly have sold it to an online customer overnight and taken it out of the window to pack up? Its place had been taken by a brightly coloured porcelain parakeet, so it looked rather that way.
I knew it would have been out of my price range but I still feltdisappointed and cross as I returned to the café and gave the wall above the panelling in my little office a second coat of cream paint.
Then I retired upstairs to write, though as usual I was called down several times, on the final occasion to admire the new loos and washbasins in the customer toilets, though one white suite looks much like any other.
Nile must have been out all day, because it was only late that evening, just as I was about to stop working, that the lights in his flat went on. The blind was already down, so I couldn’t see him … and he couldn’t see me being a Peeping Thomasina. But two minutes later my phone buzzed with the incoming reply to the message about the floor being finished ready for the furniture.
‘Good ,’ it said, as tersely as if text messages were being charged by the letter.
I went to register at the nearby medical practice next day and was informed that the only doctor taking on new patients was the one I most wanted to avoid. But then the receptionist added that of course, since it was a group practice, I could make appointments with any of the others instead.
Her tone suggested that this wouldn’t be at all unusual and her expression as she glanced at the name board, where a red light was flashing next to Dr Collins, was uneasy.
The forms being completed, I was just about to leave when the woman herself flung open a nearby door and called imperiously for her next patient.
‘Mrs Clemency Jones?’
She scanned the waiting room, spotted a small, inoffensive woman cowering behind a potted palm and jerked her head.
Mrs Jones got up and scuttled in past her.
