Page 118 of A Secret Cornish Wish
I love Jack’s art shop. Formerly a butcher’s, it opened in the summer of 2020 and now, some four years later, it is still thriving, and I am one of its most frequent customers.
Before Jack opened his shop, I had to buy the majority of my art equipment online. There was the little craft shop in St Felix that Jack’s other half, Kate, owned, but she only stocked a small amount of painting equipment, aimed at the amateur artist. Which these days – and it still astonishes me to say it – I am no longer.
I walk back down the high street clutching my precious tube of Prussian-blue oil paint, and onwards towards Harbour Street. The town, as always, is bustling with tourists on this beautiful May morning.
I call in on Ant and Dec at the Blue Canary bakery and pick up a tuna salad roll for my lunch, and I treat myself to a Belgian bun while I’m there. Then I carry on down towards the harbour, passing the flower shop as I go.
‘Hi, Poppy,’ I call to a woman placing some rose stems in a metal bucket outside the shop.
She spins around. ‘Oh, hi, Frankie. How are you?’
‘Good, thanks.’ I hold up the tube of paint. ‘Jack has saved me once more.’
Poppy smiles. ‘How’s the latest masterpiece going?’
‘I wouldn’t call it that. But it’s coming on . . . gradually!’
‘All great works of art take time – I imagine so, anyway. You know I’m not the most artistic of people even though I run this place. Amber is the creative one.’
Poppy, Rose’s granddaughter, who I first met when she was just a small girl, took on the running of the flower shop in 2015 when Rose sadly passed away.
I went to Rose’s funeral, feeling as if a huge part of my life had been removed quite forcibly from my memories, and also feeling incredibly guilty that I never made the effort to visit Rose in hospital down in London when she was alive. But I’d just moved back here to St Felix, and I simply didn’t have the spare money after our move to spend on long and expensive train journeys to the capital.
However, Poppy arrived in St Felix not long afterwards, and, with the help of Amber, her assistant and friend, made a huge success of the shop once more.
‘I’m sure you both do your bit,’ I reply, smiling at Poppy. ‘Your grandmother would be very proud.’
‘Thank you, Frankie. Coming from you, that means a lot.’
‘You’re very welcome. Right, I’d better be getting back; the painting won’t finish itself.’
‘Good luck!’
I leave Poppy and continue down to the harbour, then I cut up a side road that leads towards my little studio.
Yes, I actually have my own art studio and shop now. I still can’t believe it.
After Rosie and I moved back here, I worked in the Lyle gallery for five years, but during that time I painted a lot in the outhouse in Claire’s garden.
Claire really has been so kind to both Rosie and me. Before we even moved in with her, she emptied her little box room and had it redecorated in pink emulsion, and the very specific Cath Kidston wallpaper Rosie had always wanted, but I had never been able to afford to buy for her. Claire had redecorated the little workshop too – painting it in pure white – so it made the perfect studio for me to create my own works of art.
Over the next few years, we were extremely happy living with Claire. Rosie absolutely thrived living by the sea, and every day I could see her becoming a little healthier as she spent more time outside and breathed in the clean and bracing coastal air of St Felix. She made friends, had boyfriends and I watched my daughter blossom from a little girl to a shy and gawky teenager, and finally into the beautiful young woman she is today, just about to complete her first year at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.
I missed her, of course I did. But over the years, as I watched Claire cope with the departure of first Alice, and then George, and finally Freddie, I realised that letting Rosie go out into the world to find her own way, and learn her own lessons, was just as difficult, if not harder than actually parenting her when she was young. As each of Claire’s children left the house to go to university or start their first job, Claire would be bereft for a while, but then as her children settled into whatever new place they had departed for, and she witnessed them growing in confidence and happiness, she would settle, and become happier herself, until it all began again with the next one.
So when it came to Rosie’s turn to leave, I knew what to expect. I allowed myself to grieve her departure, telling myself that I’d soon feel better. It took a while but, eventually, just like Claire, as I saw her changing, so did I.
A car horn toots behind me, and I realise that I’ve been dawdling along in the middle of the road lost in my own thoughts.
I turn and realise the person tooting is not annoyed or angry with me, but simply saying hello.
‘Sorry!’ I call to Ana as I move to the side, and she pulls her red vintage camper van alongside me. ‘I was lost in thought.’
I know Ana well. Her husband, Noah, owns the antique shop not far from my studio.
‘I could see,’ Ana says through the open window. ‘Good thoughts, I hope?’
‘So, so.’ I smile. ‘Are you on your way out or back home?’
