Page 55 of The Cornish Cream Tea Bookshop
By the time people started filing in for the quiz, the bookshop was buzzing, Ollie and Thea high on their success. Even Becky had seemed pleased that they’d secured such a high-profile author, though her enthusiasm was tempered, as it always was, with caution and practicalities.
‘We need to start selling tickets soon,’ she said. ‘There’s not much more than a month to go.’
‘I’ve already got the newsletter written,’ Ollie replied, ‘and the social media posts. Once we’ve pinned down the details – the exact timings, and how much we want to charge – it’ll take the press of a few buttons to get it out into the world.’
Becky folded her arms. ‘You were confident they’d say yes, then?’
Ollie grinned. ‘If they said no, it was half an hour of my time wasted. If they said yes, then we’d be ahead of the game. It made sense.’
‘It’sallpositive,’ Thea said, putting an arm around each of them. ‘All of it. Now let’s take that energy into tonight, make our first quiz as much of a success as the Christmas event is going to be.’
‘Do we mention it?’ Becky asked.
‘Until we’ve firmed everything up, which should be on Monday, we stay quiet.’ Thea mimed zipping her lips. ‘It’s our secret, OK?’
‘OK,’ Ollie and Becky said in unison, and when Ollie caught the other woman’s eye, she was delighted to get a brief smile in return.
Nothing, Ollie reasoned, an hour later, could go wrong at a quiz. There were no hotplates or naked flames, no pitchers of tomato-heavy, oil-based sauce to be flung about, no possibility of mistaken ghost sightings that would have everyone screaming and running away in terror.
The events space was full, six teams of up to six people crowded round tables, all with determined expressions and poised pens because, Ollie knew, if you went to a quiz, regardless of the topics or the quality of the prizes, it was almost impossible not to be competitive.
Finn, Meredith and Ben were on a team with Adrian and his wife Tillie, Lizzy had brought someone who Ollie guessed was her husband Martin, and two lanky teenagers who had the same rosy cheeks and tawny hair as her. There were quite a lot of people she didn’t recognise, which could only be a good thing, and then there was the team made up of Liam, Marion and Max.
She didn’t know why they’d decided to join forces, except that she’d been eager for them all to come, and it was quite likely they already knew each other, considering how close-knit Port Karadow was. Regardless of what had brought them together, it was lovely to see Liam at a community event, and it was lovely to see Max full stop.
She had to stop her gaze drifting to him every five minutes, because she was supposed to be running the show. She would give almost anything to know what the three of them were talking about in between rounds. But their presence didn’t stop her from asking the one question she’d included with a slightly ulterior motive. She watched everyone’s faces as she read it out, her stool on the low stage at the front of the room giving her an elevated position.
‘Which author wrote the Roskilly and Faith series of Cornish-based mysteries in the nineteen seventies, which used local legends as the inspiration for the plots?’
She held her breath, hoping she wouldn’t be met with a sea of blank faces, or the quizzers looking at her with the disappointment of hearing something that was beyond their knowledge base. She felt a spark of excitement when heads bent over tables, and she heard the whisperings of conferred ideas. When she caught Max’s eye, he frowned at her, but she saw amusement there, too. Obviously she had giftedtheir table a point, but she wanted to see how many other people in the town had heard of Bryan Mailer.
The outcome, when they went through the answers at the end, was a lot better than she’d hoped. Most of the teams recognised the name, and in some cases it was more than that.
‘Oh I loved those mysteries.’
‘Knew the answer right away: easy-peasy.’
‘I think we’ve got a couple of his books on the shelves in the back bedroom.’
‘Someone told me he was a recluse who lived near here; tied up in legends and not much else.’
Ollie listened to their comments, storing them away for later. And afterwards, when the prizes had been awarded – to a team made up of people Ollie didn’t yet know, who called themselves The Port Karadow Crusaders – and everyone was milling around the bookshop picking up Christmas presents, Ollie’s prepared table of Bumper Quiz Booksgetting a lot of attention, Thea brought it up.
‘Customers sometimes ask me for those Roskilly and Faith mysteries, but they’re out of print.’
‘Really? Maybe we should get some second-hand copies in, then. They’re great stories.’
‘You’ve read them?’ Thea asked, as she slid a stack of paperbacks into a customer’sFall Into A Good Booktote bag.
‘Four so far. They’re so engaging, and they’re super local. I think we should look on AbeBooks. I know we don’t have a second-hand area right now, but I don’t think that matters.’
‘They’d be great for the Cornish section,’ Thea said. ‘I’ll look into it.’ She handed the customer her receipt, andwished her a good night. There were only a couple of people left in the shop, the clock ticking round to ten o’clock.
‘We could do it together, if you like?’
Thea paused, then smiled. ‘Sounds good. And Ollie …?’
‘Yup?’
