He left the room and she quickly finished getting dressed although it was hard to find any hope. She wasn’t sure what anyone could do to save the studios.
Flick walked into the café a short while later to find everyone there waiting for her – Luke had obviously rounded everyone up. She was so nervous about telling them. If she thought they’d been annoyed before, about changing the studios and making cheaper items, it was going to be so much worse now they’d all agreed to get behind it to save it. Everyone had worked so hard. How was Flick going to tell them that in a few months they would probably have to pack up and leave and that all their hard work had been for nothing? And while she understood her nan’s reasons for selling, she was also annoyed that Audrey had left it to her to telleveryone the bad news. She really had washed her hands of it.
Flick sat down and cleared her throat. ‘I just wanted to start by saying thank you all for your hard work over the last few days, creating smaller items, transforming your studio spaces and helping with the wonky tree. And thank you Polly, your hard work and delicious food has brought people through the doors. I think we’ve created something wonderful here and the importance of the workshops in helping those with brain injuries is something very close to my heart, and it seems, for many of you too.’
She swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘I’m afraid there’s no easy way to say this, but my nan has decided to sell regardless of what we’ve achieved.’
Predictably, there was an outcry, with everyone talking and shouting over each other, moaning about the work they’d put in, how it had all been a waste of time. She held her hands out to try to get them to be quiet and after a few moments they all stopped talking, obviously hoping for some chink of light in this dark cloud. Although Flick couldn’t give them that. She explained her nan’s reasons why and that she was still giving them six months and that her nan then hoped to sell the house as a successful business.
They were all quiet for a moment before they started speaking again.
‘Well, that’s rubbish,’ Aidan said. ‘Who would buy the studios as it is when they can make far more money by converting it into a hotel or B&B?’
‘We’ve all worked so hard,’ Ethel said.
‘The café looks amazing,’ Polly said. ‘And I’ve just given up the lease on my van.’
‘OK, OK,’ Luke said. ‘We’re all upset by this and understandably so but this isn’t Flick’s fault. And I do understand why Audrey is doing this, this was Tom’s dream, it was never hers. But rather than moan about it, we need to do something constructive and come up with a plan to save it.’
They were all quiet as they thought.
‘I could ask everyone in the Wonky Tree Facebook group to donate to save it,’ Ethel said.
‘I think it’s great that we raised enough money to resurrect the wonky tree, but that was thousands. We’d need over a million pounds to buy the house and I just can’t see that we’d ever raise that kind of money,’ Flick said.
‘What about getting a local business to sponsor it?’ Rose said. ‘There’s one in a nearby town, Pet Protagonist, who make personalised books for people’s pets and donate a percentage of their profits to a local animal shelter. Maybe we can find a company who would be willing to help us in the same way?’
‘But it’s one thing a company giving us, say, a thousand pounds a month to go towards our workshops, but a company isn’t just going to buy a million-pound house,’ Flick said.
‘What about asking a brain injury charity to buy it for us?’ Aidan said. ‘If they can see the importance of what we are doing here, they might help.’
‘I don’t think they will have the money for that, we all know charities are crying out for donations,’ Flick said, feeling like she was shooting down every suggestion. And it wasn’t like she could come up with something better.
They all fell quiet as their ideas dried up. Flick noticed that Polly was staring at Luke, clearly expecting him to swoop in and save the day like he had in the past. And this was why Luke wanted to leave Lovegrove Bay. Every time something went wrong or when something was broken, it was Luke who was expected to pay out and fix it. No one liked him for him, they liked him for what he could do for them and that had to be exhausting. Flick had no doubt if she was to ask him to buy the house, he would do it because he had a heart of gold, but that was exactly why she never would. She wouldn’t take advantage of him like that.
‘I think we have to be practical,’ Flick said. ‘I hate to say it when you’ve all worked so hard but the most important thing to save is the workshops, that’s the legacy my grandad created when he started this place, that’s what we’ve all rallied behind. We can make a real difference to people’s lives. We can approach companies to sponsor something like that, hire the church hall once or twice a week with the sponsor money and continue to teach our art to people with brain injuries. We can get other art teachers to teach them too, a different workshop each week.’
‘And what about the rest of us?’ Rose said.
Flick sighed. ‘I don’t know. There was never anyguarantee any of this would work. I guess we just keep on doing what we’re doing now, we keep running the studios and hope for some miracle over the next six months and, in the meantime, you should keep looking around for your own studio space. Polly, the café is a big success so far, that will look good for any potential buyers. Maybe someone will buy the place purely for a successful business like yours.’
They were all quiet, the joy and excitement of seeing life breathed back into this place over the last few days well and truly gone. Slowly they all got up and trudged out and Polly went back into the kitchen, leaving just Flick and Luke.
She moved to sit next to him, taking his hand. He was looking thoughtful.
‘Promise me something,’ Flick said.
‘What?’
‘That you’re not going to go white knight in shining armour with this.’
‘I can’t promise that.’
‘You don’t have to fix everything, it’s not your responsibility. Sometimes things just don’t work out, that’s life, that’s the way it is. You can’t save everybody.’
‘But I have the money, and I can spend it how I see fit.’
‘I will be really angry if you do this.’
