‘If he’s only seen it out of season, then Sticklepond may not be the quiet backwater he expects,’ I said.
‘He did remark how quiet it was, now I come to think of it, and that you wouldn’t know there was a shop here if you missed the sign on the wall at the High Street end of Salubrious Passage, so I couldn’t have many customers.’
‘Of course you have lots of customers! Everyone knows you’re here,’ Bella said.
‘Yes, that’s what I told him.’
‘What does he look like?’ I asked.
‘I can’t really remember, lovey, except that he was a bit older than his wife and pleasant-spoken.’
I pictured some silver-haired, elderly and irascible thespian, retiring to live out his days in the quiet backwater that was Sticklepond … except, of course, that lately it was less and less of a quiet backwater. A couple of years earlier, when that alleged Shakespeare manuscript had been discovered up at Winter’s End, visitors had started flocking there in droves, and there were other attractions in the village as well, like the Museum of Witchcraft, the chocolate shop, a bookshop called Marked Pages, two pubs, and a whole raft of gift shops, craft galleries and cafés that had opened to cater to the tourist boom.
Sticklepond had once been a much larger and more important place, before the Black Death decided to cull so many of its inhabitants, but it was now firmly back on the map.
‘It’ll be odd having a neighbour after so long,’ Aunt Nan said. ‘The cottage has been empty since last year and just holiday lets for ages before that. But I’ll be happier for knowing there’s someone the width of a wall away when I’m gone and you’re here on your own at nights, Tansy.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep saying things like that, Aunt Nan! I’m not going to be here on my own for a long, long time,’ I told her firmly.
‘Well, when you are, I’ll still be watching over you – your guardian angel! That Chloe from the chocolate shop was telling me all about those yesterday afternoon. The vicar came to visit first, and then his wife came afterwards with the baby and brought me a chocolate angel. But we ate it.’
‘Didn’t you save me a bit? Her chocolate is supposed to be wonderful!’
‘I’m afraid we ate every last morsel – and it was wonderful,’ Bella said guiltily.
‘There was a message inside it,’ Aunt Nan told me.
‘A Wish, I suppose,’ I said, because Chloe specialised in making hollow chocolate shells in various shapes, with messages or ‘Wishes’ inside, like a sort of yummy fortune cookie. ‘What did it say?’
‘That imminent meetings with loved ones would give me much joy.’
‘It probably meant Tansy coming back,’ Bella said.
‘No, I think it meant heavenly meetings with Mother, Father and little Rosina, not to mention Jacob,’ Nan said thoughtfully, ‘though perhaps it meant Tansy as well.’
‘It meant just me,’ I said firmly. ‘I’m back and I’m here to stay – and if we’re to transform Bright’s Shoes, I’m going to need your help!’
‘Well, I can’t say I’m not glad to have you home, but I’m sorry it’s turned out like this, lovey, because I’d have liked to have seen you married and with little ones. But at least you found out he was the wrong man for you before it was too late, that’s the main thing.’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ Bella agreed. ‘It would have been much worse to have found out about Charlie after you were married!’
‘You two should get to work on the plans for the new shop right away,’ Aunt Nan said. ‘Because if you’re going to do it, then there’s no time like the present, and it’ll keep you both out of mischief.’
Working out the plans for the shop kept Aunt Nan amused too.
Florrie’s daughter, Jenny, the retired nurse, continued to help Nan to wash and dress in the mornings, before she went downstairs to sit in her big shabby, comfortable chair in the kitchen, by the stove in its inglenook fireplace.
Here she received a steady stream of visitors, including the vicar, Florrie, her friends from the Women’s Institute and even Felix Hemming from Marked Pages, who brought her a gift of one of the sweet, old-fashioned romances of the type she had often bought from him in the past.
Hebe Winter took to dropping in on her way to her Elizabethan re-enactment meetings, too, an alarming sight in full Virgin Queen rig-out, right down to the wig and huge ruff. Aunt Nan said she kept coming only because she liked playing the Lady Bountiful, and was also trying to wheedle the recipe for the Meddyg out of her, but I think they both enjoyed the visits really.
I left most of the shopkeeping to Bella, so I could be with Aunt Nan, because even though I tried to convince myself differently, I could see that my time with her was limited. I baked lots of cakes and biscuits for the stream of visitors, and ate a fair amount of them myself …
One afternoon, while Florrie was with her, Bella and I began a complete stocktake in the storeroom that had been partitioned off from the shop. It was cramped and cluttered, lit by one dim bulb, which I quickly replaced with something a bit brighter.
‘I’ll pull things out and you write them down,’ suggested Bella. ‘Looking at the dust, I don’t think some of the stuff at the back has been moved for about half a century!’
Bella had to answer the shop bell once or twice, leaving me to rummage alone, and I turned up ancient treasures like plastic overshoes and old-fashioned court shoes made for fairy-sized feet.
Aunt Nan herself had tiny feet which, like people, seemed to have got bigger over the years. I might take after the small, dark Bright side of the family, but I was still several inches taller than Aunt Nan and my feet were size five.
‘She really let the stocktaking slide for a few years,’ I told Bella when she came back.
‘She’s seemed interested in the wedding shoes lately, but I think the shop was getting a bit much for her before I started working here and she just kept it open out of a sense of duty. She’s so much happier about it now that she can see that it has a future.’
‘I hoped involving her in the plans would give her a new lease of life, but … well, even I can see she’s fading day by day,’ I said sadly.
‘I know it’s upsetting, but she’s in her own home, which is what she wants,’ Bella said. ‘She’s happy enough.’
‘I just can’t bear the thought of being without her,’ I sighed. ‘I’m so glad you’re living in Sticklepond too, Bella.’
‘My course starts again tomorrow night. There’s only another couple of weeks to go and then I’ll get my certificate, though much good it will do me in the current job market! Just as well I’ve already found work.’
The course aimed to update office skills, though, as Bella pointed out, she didn’t really have any to start with, except she liked playing with computers. ‘I’ve just put a card up in the Spar window, offering to do anything at home like typing or spreadsheets or inputting data, so maybe I’ll be able to earn a little extra money.’
‘I’m sorry we can’t give you more – or not yet, anyway,’ I said guiltily, because she wasn’t getting much above than the minimum wage.
‘It’s all right. The shop’s barely been ticking over and the short opening hours suit me, so I can spend lots of time with Tia. I’m not going to have any more children so I’d like to enjoy her childhood with her.’
‘At