Page 48 of A Year at Appleyard Farm
She stared at the rows and rows of tins and packets. Breakfast cereals, boxes of tea. Washing powder and soap. Tins of soup and hot chocolate. Sweets galore.
Tom inspected his hands before taking down a packet of cocoa powder carefully. ‘Blimey, I remember this from when I was a child, at least it’s similar. This is even older, I think.’
‘How old is it?’
He turned the packet over. ‘I don’t know. Older than the stuff we had certainly. Maybe 1960s or ’70s perhaps?’
‘Cora would know, I bet.’
‘We could put glass across the front.’
Merry stared up at him, lost in her own thoughts.
‘Out there,’ Tom pointed. ‘Wouldn’t it be fabulous to have these on display in the shop? We’d have to cover the fronts of the shelves with something to preserve the stock, but people would love it, I.’
‘Oh, they would,’ breathed Merry, jiggling up and down. ‘This is just perfect. I told you we needed to reuse all these old things, and now we have the absolute icing on the cake. It’s like it was meant to be.’
Tom gave her a sideways glance.
‘And there’s no need to look at me like that. Don’t you feel it too?’
Tom, who didn’t, simply smiled. Merry knew it made sound business sense to him, and that was all he needed to know.
‘Come on, let’s try these other keys,’ he said. ‘At least to see if we can find some spares, and I’ll let you get back to your furniture. We’ll shut everything away again. They’ve been here for years, another few weeks won’t make any difference.’
Merry had almost forgotten about the furniture after the excitement of finding all Christopher’s things.
‘I should ring the estate agent, I suppose, and put him in the picture. Not that I want to, mind. I don’t think I could bear to lose all these things now. I haven’t even looked at what else was in that desk drawer.’
‘Better to be safe than sorry,’ said Tom. ‘We’ll only get into hot water if we’ve got no claim to any of it.’
‘I know,’ agreed Merry morosely, picking up the rest of the keys. ‘I’ll ring them in a minute.’
‘Well, admittedly they had just lost their brother, and grief can do funny things to you, but I wouldn’t say the family were at all close. Their instructions were quite clear: get rid of everything.’
‘But did they know what was here? Had they had a look at any of it, do you know?’
The estate agent was reassuring. ‘I would imagine so. If you recall, their great uncle died quite some time ago and the family made enquiries then about selling the property. It was only because of the disagreement between the siblings that the house never came to market and that only changed at Christmas as you know. They would have had plenty of time to check the house during the time it was empty, it did belong to them after all.’
‘Yes, of course, they must have, mustn’t they?’ agreed Merry gratefully. ‘So you don’t think there would be any comeback?’
‘I wouldn’t think so. The property and any remaining contents now belong to you.’
A muffled bump sounded above Merry’s head, and she lost the thread of the conversation for a moment.
‘So basically, we shouldn’t worry, and there’s no need to contact the previous owners, is that it?’
‘Pretty much. From what you’ve said, it doesn’t sound as if it would have much value anyway. Sentimental perhaps, but as I’ve said, I don’t think the family went in for that very much.’ Merry could hear the smile in the estate agent’s voice.
‘We’re not planning on selling any of it, just to use it in the shop, either for practical purposes or for decoration.’
There was another bump from overhead.
‘Then I really wouldn’t worry.’
Merry thanked him and hung up, quite distracted now as it sounded as though something was bouncing on the ceiling overhead. She put down her phone and hurried up the stairs.
As she reached the top, she could hear that the noise was coming from one of the smaller bedrooms, a room as yet unoccupied but housing a number of items of furniture from the hotel that they had still not made up their minds whether to keep or not. There was another thump as she reached to open the door.
