‘Yes! I’mtotallydown for squeezing!’
Five minutes later, I had a party of four booked in for a night on the May Bank Holiday weekend. I could hardly claim eight weeks wasn’t enough time to prep for a lifestyle regeneration retreat, given that for the previous one I’d had about eight minutes.
I had some work to do.
* * *
Although the exclusivity of the retreat appeared to be its main appeal, we didn’t want to be so exclusive that every potential customer needed detective skills to find us. Becky and I spent our mornings decorating the top floor, the afternoons creating a website that we hoped came across as mysterious and need-to-know rather than vague. We fiddled about with some numbers and costings, but with so much still to work out, we ended up simply adding something about how each retreat was custom-made, and to contact one of our retreat curators for a bespoke quote.
There was so much potential to waffle on about restoring well-being and cultivating emotional breathing space, spouting piffle that promised everything while refraining to specify what anyone would actually be doing in practice. We could have ramped prices through the roof and sniggered our way to a hefty profit. But that was not what we were here for. Becky and I were done with making money from spouting piffle. We wanted Damson Farm to welcome everyone who needed it. Those who thought they couldn’t spare the time or the money most of all.
I worked with Charlie’s notebook open beside me, and I sought to honour her dream in every word I wrote.
I was, however, realising that despite being a B & B girl born and bred, there was a lot that I didn’t know about the ins and outs of the business. More to the point, while I knewhowmy parents ran the Tufted Duck, I didn’t knowwhythey chose to organise and plan and fry the bacon the way that they did. I’d be an idiot not to find out as much as I could as soon as I could.
I gave them a call that Wednesday afternoon, hoping to squeeze in a conversation during the relative lull between cleaning up from one weekend rush and getting ready for the next.
I hadn’t spoken to them in a few weeks. My parents loved me, and I loved them, but neither of them had a mobile phone, and pinning them down for a conversation was not an easy task.
‘Hi, Grandma.’
‘Hello? Eleanor, is that you?’
‘Yes. How are you doing?’
‘Well, fine of course.’
‘Are Mum or Dad around?’
‘Who?’
‘Wendy and Colin. Can you put one of them on the phone?’
‘Colin has gone out.’
‘What about Wendy?’
‘What about her?’
‘Can you tell her that Eleanor’s on the phone and wants to talk to her, please?’
‘She’s upstairs, doing the family rooms.’
‘Okay, but can you go and ask her to come and talk to me?’
‘When do you want to talk to her?’
‘Now, Grandma. Can you go and fetch her now, please?’
‘Right.’
She hung up.
After leaving three messages on the answer phone, and sending an email to the bookings line, I decided there was only one thing for it.
‘I’m going to visit my parents for a couple of days,’ I told Daniel that evening as we ate dinner. ‘I’ve got loads of questions about how they run the Tufted Duck, and getting them on the phone is impossible.’
‘When’s the last time you saw them?’ he asked.
