The Vintage Teacup Club (7 page)

Alison woke up to a knock at the bedroom door and Holly’s voice.

‘Mum, the woman from next door is here. She says she wants to speak to you or Dad.’

What time was it? Alison squinted at the alarm clock, it was just gone half-eight. Surely that was a bit early on a weekend to be paying your new neighbours a visit?

‘Can you tell her I’ll pop over to hers in half an hour, Hol?’ Alison called through the door from bed.

‘Not really,’ her daughter yelled back. ‘She’s a bit cross, Mum, I think you should come down.’

Pete was dead to the world still, he’d rolled away from Alison and was now sleeping on.

‘OK, hang on a sec.’ Alison walked to
their en-suite and splashed her face with water. She heard the bedroom door creak and then Holly appeared near the bathroom doorway.

‘Holly – you know what I said about barging in,’ Alison said quietly. ‘Dad’s still asleep, you know.’

Considering she was almost a teenager, Holly was pretty perky for a Saturday morning, already dressed in cut-off jeans and leggings with a loose black Beatles T-shirt. Holly lowered her voice to a whisper, ‘Mum, she’s waiting downstairs. She was pretty shouty.’ Alison came back into the bedroom and replied, ‘I’m pretty sure whatever it is can wait until I’m dressed.’

Holly glanced around the room as Alison slipped on underwear, jeans and a long-sleeved top. ‘Mum …’ at her mother’s dressing table, tugging distractedly at her messy ponytail, bangles gently jangling. ‘Why do you have all these pictures of olden-days dead people getting married?’

Alison looked over to where Holly’s eyes had come to rest. She’d never thought of the photos like that before. She’d been collecting them for years, black and white photos of couples on their wedding days, the more awkward-looking the better. Her friend Carla had sent her one she’d picked up in Portobello market, a very young bride with too-large shoes, who looked like Olive Oyl, her chunky older husband looking down at her adoringly. She’d framed each photo
in a junk-shop frame and mounted them around her mirror. There was no way of knowing whether any of the couples were still alive now, but if they were they’d certainly be very old.

‘I just like them,’ Alison said. ‘Don’t you think they’re interesting?’

Holly didn’t pause for a second. ‘No, Mum. I don’t – I think they’re creepy. Are you ready yet?’

Alison and Holly walked downstairs and there was Janet from next door, still waiting on the doorstep, the front door open. Janet was a stout woman of about fifty, with ruddy cheeks and carefully curled ash blonde hair; in Alison’s view she wasn’t a patch on Sally, her old friend and neighbour who’d moved out the previous summer.

‘Hi Janet,’ Alison said, clipping the front part of her hair back with a kirby grip. ‘What can I help you with?’

‘Your dog,’ said Janet, her flush deepening as she struggled to even get the words out. ‘Just come and look at what he’s done.’

Alison and Holly followed Janet as she marched back towards her house in her high heels, sending bits of gravel flying. She led them down the side passageway between their two houses, past her living room window with its ruched coral curtains, into her back garden. Alison hadn’t seen the next-door garden since Sally had left – but Janet and her husband had manicured the lawn to suburban perfection, with neat rows of matching pansies filling each flower bed up to the
back, except for …

Janet thrust out a sturdy arm to indicate the damage where the fence had been torn down, flashing her fuchsia-painted nails. There really wasn’t any need, it was hard to miss. George must have powered through the back panel of fencing, and he was presently having a whale of a time digging a big hole in the once-pristine lawn. Muddy laundry, pulled from the line, lay scattered around and about. And cowering under the garden bench was Janet’s cocker spaniel, Cassie, a quivering wreck.

George had taken to barking at Cassie through the fence the moment she arrived – but it looked like he might have taken things a step further today.

‘Ah,’ Alison said, Holly next to her, shaking with suppressed giggles. She drew on all her strength to stop her own emerging. ‘I see. Oops,’ Alison said, biting her lip. Then she put two fingers in her mouth and whistled loudly. The wolfhound’s head bobbed up from the muddy hole. ‘Party’s over, George,’ she called out.

Janet’s lips were pursed so tightly she looked as if she might pop.

‘Oh Christ, she’s awful, Jamie,’ Alison said, her head in her hands, weeping with laughter. ‘So prim. And after she woke us up at half-bloody-eight in the morning I was dying for her to be the one in the wrong …’

Jamie was cooking up pancakes in the kitchen
of his little thatched cottage. ‘Do you live next door to Hyacinth Bucket?’ Jamie asked with a laugh, giving the first pancake a flip.

‘Yes, yes, I do. She
is
her, Jamie. And God help us George had only gone and chosen her frilliest nighties to rip into shreds. They must have been her very best.’

‘Here you go, tell me if this doesn’t make you forget all about it,’ Jamie said, passing Alison a pancake and a bottle of maple syrup. He ladled more mixture into the pan to cook up a second.

‘Yum,’ Ali said with her mouth full. ‘Outstanding, sir.’

Jamie slid into the seat opposite and put slices of chopped up banana in his pancake before covering them in chocolate sauce.

‘Ali, you know I mentioned I had something to talk about with you,’ he said, folding the pancake over.

Alison nodded, then swallowed the mouthful of pancake. ‘I do indeed, and that’s exactly why I’m here. So what’s the big mystery?’ she asked.

‘It’s good news, I think,’ Jamie said, a hesitant smile on his face. ‘A big step, but an exciting one. It’ll be a totally new start for me and a potentially interesting opportunity for you.’

Jamie had Alison’s full attention now. He could gossip with the best of them, but when it came to his own life he tended to be private, so she knew this must be something he had given serious
thought.

‘Ali, I’ve decided to start up a new business. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for years, but with one thing and another …’ Jamie’s attention drifted briefly. For a moment Alison could picture Seb with them in the kitchen at the worktop, he would have been making tea while Jamie flipped the pancakes. They had been one of the strongest teams Alison knew.

‘You know that estate agent on the high street that went quiet and eventually closed?’ Jamie looked her squarely in the eye, as she tried to remember. The shops on the high street seemed to be changing so often nowadays. ‘The one opposite your friend Maggie’s flower shop?’ he prompted.

‘Oh yes,’ Alison said, ‘I saw it was empty. It’s a nice space inside, wasted on an estate agency really.’

Jamie nodded. ‘That’s right. Well. It’s up for rent.’

‘And this affects us how?’ she asked, trying to guess what Jamie had up his sleeve.

‘A café, Ali,’ Jamie said. ‘But I’m not talking about just any café. Great cakes, fresh coffee, a wide selection of teas, yes, all that. But more than that. This would also be an inspiring place to be, with gorgeous vintage furniture and retro styling and a gallery space. BLITZ SPIRIT,’ he said, raising a hand to indicate a sign above the shop.

Alison tilted her head, as if viewing the imaginary sign, slowly letting the idea sink in.

‘I just think we all deserve
something a bit funkier than Joey’s, don’t you?’ Jamie said, and Alison laughed. Joey’s café on the high street had been around since she was a little girl, but longevity didn’t always equal charm. The service was awful and the food wasn’t much better – everyone in Charlesworth went there occasionally, for the simple reason that it was the only place where you could sit down and eat. What Jamie was suggesting was something very different though, a café that would be the social hub that their old market town needed.

‘So I’m thinking that as well as being a chic hangout, it could bring out the town’s creative side – with top-notch art and crafts for sale inside.’

‘It sounds great,’ Alison said. ‘I can already picture you running it actually.’

‘Thanks, hon,’ Jamie said, smiling, the creases around his eyes deepening. ‘But look, this doesn’t have to be all me. If you like the idea, you can be part of it too.’ He continued, ‘I’m just putting this idea out there, no pressure. But I was wondering if you’d like to come in as a partner, Ali.’

Alison sat back in her chair and listened as Jamie went on.

‘So the idea is that you’d make a contribution to the rent, and get a share of the profits. In addition to that, you’d have a space of your own to sell the candles, your embroidered cushions and homeware, plus
any new craft lines you might want to start. You’d have the benefit of café customers lingering long enough over their cups of Earl Grey to fall in love with the stock.’

Alison smiled, mulling it over.

‘I’d run the café, and organise everything to do with the food, including baking, so your time would remain devoted to the crafty side of things. But ultimately the space would be shared and I’d want for us to decide on the art and any events together. You mentioned you still had quite a bit left over from Pete’s redundancy payment,’ Jamie said. ‘So perhaps this could be a good investment?’

‘OK,’ Alison said. ‘This all sounds …’ she continued, grinning, a wave of excitement building. ‘I mean, you know better than anyone, Jamie, that this is what I’ve always wanted to do.’

Jamie reached over and gave her hair a ruffle. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘because you’re the only person I can imagine doing it with.’

‘So what would the costs be?’ Alison asked, sitting up straighter in her chair and clasping her scarlet-nailed hands together.

Jamie went over to the counter and brought her a sheet of paper with his calculations on it. He ran his finger down the right-hand column. ‘How about if you paid three hundred pounds a
month towards the rent at the start,’ Jamie said, ‘and then we could adjust that up later if you wanted? You said you had about half of Pete’s lump sum left, didn’t you?’

Alison nodded and looked over the figures on the sheet.

‘Anyway,’ Jamie said. ‘It’s a big decision, I know. And you’ll need time to think about it and talk to Pete. So just come back to me when you’re ready.’

Alison nodded, knowing that despite what Jamie said, he’d need to put a deposit down soon in order to make sure no one else rented the space.

‘You’re really making this
happen, aren’t you?’ Alison said, giving Jamie a hug. ‘Your very own café. Of course I want to be part of it.’

‘Chloe, come on, not that tight!’ I called out, giggling and reaching behind me to still Chloe’s hand. Chloe and I were crammed into a toilet cubicle at work and she was lacing me in to my wedding-night corset.

When the parcel arrived on my desk that lunchtime, Chloe spotted it from across the office, leaped up from her chair and dashed across the room, ringlets bouncing, shepherding me away from my computer and into the ladies’. I’d liked the look of the underwear on the Blackout Nights website – it was all original 1940s, and the corset promised a waspish waist and a curvy bust. My waist was now tiny – miniscule in fact – but I could hardly breathe, and looking down I wasn’t sure I had much of a boosted cleavage for
all the effort.

‘All
riiiight
,’ Chloe finally relented. ‘I’ll tie it here. Spin around and show me.’

‘Spin around, are you kidding?’ I laughed. ‘We can hardly move in here without getting intimate.’

‘Right, let me get past,’ Chloe said, ‘and you can show me properly by the sinks.’

‘Come out then,’ she called a moment later. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got the bathroom on lockdown.’ I peeked out and saw she did indeed have her back to the main door, holding it firmly shut. I ventured forward, and took a look in the full-length mirror. I had on my work trousers still, but I looked completely different.

‘What a bombshell,’ Chloe said, smiling.

Actually, I didn’t look half bad. While my curves weren’t quite dynamite, they were, undeniably,
there
, knocked into my slightly boyish figure by the corset’s engineering. Earlier that week I had been to the hairdresser to have some pale blonde highlights added to my shoulder-length hair and a new, sweeping fringe now brought out my wide-set hazel eyes. The overall effect was impressive: it was still
me
, but a more glamorous version of me. A push at the door made me jump.

‘
Busy
,’ Chloe yelled, leaning back on it hard.

‘It’s not bad, is it Chlo?’ I said, fidgeting with the boning, ‘although I just can’t see how on earth I’m ever going to eat any wedding
cake in it.’

*

Back at my desk, I kept my head down for the last few hours of the day. While the art director who sat nearby talked through with his team what images were needed for the next issue, I sorted through paperwork, responded to emails and helped Zoe with a gigantic pile of filing that had to be done before the office inspection the next day. The highlight of the afternoon was an email from Maggie with a picture of some handmade wedding decorations she’d spotted – vintage maps cut out into strips and made into heart shapes you could string together. By the time the clock on my computer clicked to half past five, I’d finished everything on my to-do list and emptied my inbox.