Page 24 of The Cornish Cream Tea Bookshop
‘So true,’ Thea said.
Ollie noticed that they were holding hands, Ben rubbing his thumb over the base of Thea’s palm. The gesture was so intimate that Ollie felt a stab somewhere close to her heart. Things had never been like that with Guy. Or maybe they had, at the beginning, but she had erased all the good memories because of what had come after.
‘I’ll leave you to canoodle,’ Ollie said, and headed for the stairs.
‘Oh no, we weren’t—’ she protested, but Ollie waved her away.
‘Say no more! I want to find the best place for my ghostly table, anyway.’
She hurried down the stairs and to the back of the shop, where the brightly coloured children’s section had its own, smaller beanbags, a vibrant red carpet that contrasted with the rest of the shop’s dark blue, and book-related cuddly toys peeping out between the books on the shelves.
A young girl and boy were kneeling at the tot-sized table, drawing on paper with wax crayons, and an older boy – still only around eleven years old, Ollie thought – was sitting on the carpet, reading a book and holding a giant cuddly spider that, despite the smile on its face, gave Ollie the creeps.
‘You all doing OK in here?’ she asked.
The older boy glared at her for a second, then went back to his book. The girl at the table turned her wide-eyed face to her and said, ‘Yes thank you, miss.’
Ollie smiled. ‘Let me know if you need anything. Are your mum or dad in another part of the shop?’
‘I’mlooking after them,’ said the older boy.
‘Of course, but you’re still quite young. Is someone picking you up? Has one of you got a phone, so I could give them a quick call?’
‘Mummy says it’s OK,’ the little girl whispered. Her pale brown hair was still blonde at the tips, and she looked so young, her eyes creasing with sadness. Ollie thought she might be about to cry, and had an urge to back up, hands out, and extract herself from the situation. But these were young children: they couldn’t be here alone.
‘And where is mummy?’ she asked. ‘Maybe we should get her, just to be on the safe side.’
‘Mummyishere,’ said a voice from behind Ollie, and she turned to find herself face to face with Becky. ‘They’re fine here until closing. I’m keeping a close eye on them.’ She grabbed Ollie’s arm and pulled her out of the children’s section. Ollie’s shoulder throbbed, but she didn’t say anything. ‘And,’ Becky continued in a hissed whisper, ‘my job would be a lot easier if you were behind the till, where you were supposed to be.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Ollie said. ‘I was upstairs, talking to Thea.’
‘Yeah, about your glitzy events, I know. The thing is, though, that there are a lot of mundane tasks that have to happen too. It’s not all about booking celebrity authors and draping the shop in frilly decorations.’
‘I know that,’ Ollie said, keeping her voice calm. ‘And Iamsorry. I didn’t realise they were your children. They’re gorgeous.’
Becky stared at her, but then something inside her loosened. ‘Yeah, well. The after-school club isn’t running for the next couple of days because they’re short-staffed. This is the only place for them to go.’
‘It’s a good place,’ Ollie said. ‘It must seem like paradise to them.’
‘Meg and Billy are OK, but Dylan wants to be out playing with his friends, or at home on the Xbox.’
Ollie nodded. ‘It must be tough.’ She had no idea, really, but she could see Becky wasn’t pleased with the situation.
‘Yeah,’ Becky said, the single word dripping in sarcasm, as if she knew exactly how clueless Ollie was. ‘You going back to the till? There’s some postal orders need sorting.’
‘Of course. And listen, Becky—’ But the other woman had walked away, crouching down next to her two youngest children, her demeanour instantly softer.
Ollie watched her for a moment, sighed, and went to make a start on the postal orders.
Chapter Eleven
Try one hour without your phone. Leave it on the other side of the room and don’t be tempted to touch it.
It was one of the suggestions in the mindfulness book Ollie had bought after her accident, when she couldn’t work and everything she tried to do at home – read, binge Netflix series – had been overwhelmed by the searing ache in her shoulder that painkillers barely touched. At the time, she had been seeking out distractions rather than trying to abandon them, but she’d thought mindfulness and meditation would help her focus on something other than the pain.
Now she was trying to bring calm back into her life. The only problem was, she had distilled her favourite tips from the book into the notes app on her phone, which was rather unhelpful when she was trying not to use it. What also wasn’t helping was her chat with Melissa. She didn’t want to leave her friend’s message unanswered while she was right there,on the other end of her device, albeit hundreds of miles away.
Melissa had responded to her tale of wandering round a haunted church with a , even though she had downplayed the meeting with Max. Melissa knew all about Guy, and about how Ollie had resolved to stay single. Even from Portugal, her friend would hold her to her word.
