Page 37 of Forgive Not Forget
“I’ll see you later,” Anna said as she ran from the room. Her head suddenly reappeared around the door, and she blew Katherine a kiss.
Katherine sank back into the bed with a satisfied smile and closed her eyes. She had no intention of falling asleep, she was simply going to rest her eyes. Virginia woke her an hour later when she meowed in her face with fish breath.
“Oh, Virginia,” Katherine said as she flung a hand over her nose. “Haven’t you brushed your teeth this morning?”
Virginia leaned her head down and rubbed it against Katherine’s face, then curled up in a ball on her chest. Another five minutes in bed wouldn’t do any harm, and it was nice to have Virginia all to herself for once.
Katherine basked in the silence. The noise from the abbey construction work had a habit of penetrating the walls of Abbey House over the past few weeks. She was pleased that the major work was now finished, and silence had been restored to her home. Though it had been nice to have Laura and the children over earlier in the week. It had suited Abbey House to being filled with the chatter and laughter of children. Was it something she would want full time?
If she thought logically about the question of children, Katherine had to admit she’d never had the intention of falling in love again and dealing with everything that brought with it. After Helena, she swore she wouldn’t put herself on the line again, but then she’d met Anna, with all her wit and charm. It was inevitable that they would end up here, talking of children, yet she hadn’t seen it coming. In fact, it had completely floored her.
What had made her think Anna wouldn’t want children? She’d certainly never raised the subject of having children before now. Had she hoped that Anna would assume she didn’t want children because of her past? Surely Anna was a little too old for pregnancy, and it would bring added complications, as she and Helena had found. Was she too sold for child-rearing herself? She’d started a new chapter of her life, one that was past children. She’d had her chance, and it hadn’t worked out. Could she go through all those hopes and heartaches again, especially when it would be like history repeating itself, a history she was trying to escape from? With that thought, she sat up, today wasn’t the day for it. Virginia took the hint and walked to Anna’s side of the bed before curling back up into a ball.
She dressed quickly, not realising an extra five minutes had led to an extra thirty minutes, and she had so much to do before she left for work. With Rebecca’s room cleaned and the bed made, the bathroom spotless and public areas of the house cleaned, she moved on to the kitchen, ensuring she had all the ingredients for dinner that night. A quick check of the fridge told her she already had enough bottles of champagne chilling. She made herself a sandwich to take to the office, only to find Anna had already packed her one. She felt awash with love, and not just for the delicious sandwich that would be inside the lunchbox.
She shouted goodbye to Virginia as she closed the front door, only to turn a shade of pink when she spotted the postman halfway down the drive. With rational thought, she realised the postman wouldn’t know Virginia was a cat even if he had heard her. She left him to pop the letters through the letterbox and made her way to the abbey. A quick bite to eat and a check of her emails would take her until the meeting started with Carrie and Anna, then back home.
* * *
Katherine leaned around the meeting room door to find Anna and Carrie working away behind a laptop. “Ready for me?”
“Yep,” Carrie replied.
“Always,” Anna added with a wink.
Katherine took a seat on the opposite side of the table and opened her notebook. “Blow me away.”
Carrie tapped a key on the laptop, which projected an image onto the wall of the meeting room. “I’ve visited some local and national heritage sites in the last few months whilst Anna has focussed her attention on online offerings from the better-known charities. From this, we created a list of categories for the shop. We have home and garden, books, gifts, stationery, and accessories. We’ve kept the items on the lower price end whilst retaining quality. We don’t want to be investing too much money in high-end items we aren’t sure will sell.”
Carrie led them through a few slides showing practical, well-made offerings for the garden, ranging from bird boxes to metal animal sculptures and outdoor planters.
“Where we can, we have chosen items that fit more with an abbey environment. For example, this range of outdoor metal mirrors is in the shape of a Gothic window. These are at the higher end yet more fitting. In the meantime, we’ll focus on mugs, aprons, tea towels, and coasters, all with the same branding.” An image of the items appeared on the next slide, complete with a logo of the outline of the six windows of the renowned east chapel wall and “Nunswick Abbey” written underneath in a monastic font.
Carrie sat down and Anna took over the laptop.
“Books. We have our extremely popular and beautifully written abbey guidebook.”
Katherine lowered her glasses and looked at Anna over the top of them. “Now on its third print run, I believe.”
“Indeed,” Anna replied with a pinking to her cheeks.
Katherine wasn’t sure if Anna was blushing with embarrassment or from her having lowered her glasses; she knew the effect that had on Anna.
Anna showed several slides of popular books that had an abbey theme. “There are fiction ones, mainly crime and historical, but also nonfiction ones about abbey architecture and history. Also a few ghost stories.”
“Wouldn’t the ghost books be more fitting in the fiction section?” Katherine smirked. She and Anna had different views on ghosts. Katherine felt there was no scientific evidence for the existence of ghosts whilst Anna preferred to keep an open mind.
Anna folded her arms and glared at Katherine. “See me after class, Dr Atkinson.” She returned her attention to the laptop. “We also have children’s books, including colouring, sticker, and fiction. All the books would be sale or return, so no risk to us on these.”
“Excellent,” Katherine responded, impressed by Anna’s efforts to reduce risk to their small retail budget.
“Other items for children will include the stationery, which we have decided will be uniform for adults and children. Pencils will have a natural wood finish, notebooks will have kraft covers, rulers will be wooden, and we even have eco pens made from recycled cardboard. All in one colour print to keep the costs down. Then we have the den kits, slingshots, crossbows, key rings, and water bottles.”
Anna flicked through several slides showing proofs from the merchandise company they were working with. “Then we have cotton and jute bags, and of course, travel mugs. Something else I’ve been working on is a toy bear in embroidered, hooded robes.” A bear in brown robes with a rope tie around his waist flashed on to the screen. On the back of the robes was the abbey logo. “This is a rough visual of what I’m thinking. I may even turn him into a key ring.”
Katherine nodded. “Fantastic, he’s cute.”
“We also have our range of art, which you’re dealing with, Katherine, and I understand we’ll be having them made into greeting cards too?”
