'And people are watching me go about my work day decluttering people’s airing cupboards. Who would have thought?'
Birdie put her hand on her hip and winced a little bit. 'Speaking of decluttering, I’ve got a little bit of a delicate situation. You know the woman in the chocolate shop?'
Nina had been in there multiple times and indulged in the chocolate many more times than she liked to admit, but she didn’t really know the people in the chocolate shop. 'Well, not really. Obviously, I’ve spoken to her a couple of times.'
Birdie screwed up her face. 'You see, there’s a bit of a problem. Out the back, their storage room is a complete mess and she needs help with sorting it.'
Nina smiled at the same time as thinking that she had no time at all, but there was no way she was going to say that to the person who basically ran Lovely Bay. 'Of course. How bad is it?'
Birdie screwed her face up again. 'It’s really quite bad; you can hardly get in there. In fact, it’s not really a storage room these days. It’s just a load of junk that has been shoved in on top of each other.'
Nina shook her head. 'Wow, you wouldn’t believe that from the front of the shop. It’s amazing in there.'
'I know. I think it’s one of those things where she’s just so busy all the time, especially now they’ve taken on the extra shops, and it’s just bottom of the priority list. It just keeps getting worse and worse with more and more stuff going in there.'
'Right, well, it shouldn’t be a problem. Sounds like it’s just a case of clearing things out.'
'Yes, precisely,' Birdie nodded. 'The thing is, it’s getting to be a bit of a hazard in my opinion. You know, a health hazard. I don’t know, but I feel like it is. You don’t know what’s in there, and it’s right next door to my shops.’
‘Yeah, there is that.’
‘Do you think you could fit it in before the wedding?'
Nina was more or less fully booked, but there was no way she was going to say no to helping out a Lovely who was in a stitch. Everyone had been so amazing to her in the little town, and the way the system worked, you did things for other people when you could. If you were asked, you simply didn’t say no. She’d worked that out in the early days. She’d have to juggle things around and change a few clients until after the wedding.
'Sure, sure, I can sort it,' Nina said, as if it was nothing. Internally, she rolled her eyes at yet another thing to have to fit in.I only have a small wedding to organise,she thought to herself.
She was super grateful to Birdie, though, who had helped her so much. Even the job at the deli, although she hadn’t realised it at the time, had assisted in dropping her into the Lovely world, which had facilitated in healing the hideous grief that had strangled her when she’d first arrived in Lovely Bay. There was no way she was going to say that she couldn’t help out. How bad could a storage room at the back of a chocolate shop really be? She’d soon find out.
30
Nina made a cup of tea, grabbed a couple of chocolate digestives, and walked back to the desk she’d set up in her new office area. The whole of the ground floor was now painted and clean, the windows shone, and light streamed through from the harbour. Nina hadn’t really done much at all other than clear out the area and use the wonderful paint sprayer’s skills to work its magic to sanitise and breathe new life into the whole of the downstairs area.
With not much time because of her actual day-to-day job and getting organised for the wedding, the only thing she’d really done on the lower floor was to sort out a desk. She now had two of them on either side of the main barn doors at the front. Placing them near the windows and doors had been one of her better ideas; the office overlooked the harbour and it made her smile every time she looked up from her laptop and gazed out over the sea.
Her desk and the one on the opposite side were actually old tables that had been found in the attic. Robby had stripped down the tops of the tables to their natural wood patina, and Nina had painted the legs in warm white. Once they were in place, she’d thoroughly enjoyed making the space her own; she’dplaced a tall vintage reading lamp on the left of her desk, a bunch of flowers on the right, a pot with pens and pencils, and a few little baskets with all her stuff colour-coded and organised just so. Her workspace was about a million times better than what she’d had in the rental cottage when she’d started the organising business. In the cottage, she’d pretty much worked from her phone perched on the kitchen table and had never felt comfortable. Now, it felt like she had so much room she didn’t really know what to do with herself.
The eventual plan for the lower floor of the building was to use it for storage for clients who might need a temporary place to put things and also somewhere she could keep her organising supplies in bulk. The commercial section of the property had ended up being much better than she’d thought it was going to be. It gave her somewhere to effectively work, with a beautiful outlook to boot. It made her old, past-its-best office block not too far from her flat and her tedious, boring job look a bit stupid, too. She was now doing something she loved for herself and reaping daily rewards left, right, and centre.
After answering a few text messages about quoting for jobs and sending an email to a woman in Lovely Bay who had sent her a bunch of flowers to say thanks for a job she’d done, Nina sat back in her chair and started to think about the wedding. Though she’d kept it entirely to herself, she’d had second thoughts about the dress and it being part of her second wedding. When she’d spoken to her mum about it, her mum had told her over and over again that she thought it was a bad idea. Nina hadn’t agreed at all, but now it was getting close to too late for mind changes, she was wondering whether her mum was right. Her sister hadn’t minced her words and had also told her that she thought it was a ludicrous idea. Not that her sister knew much; most of the time, she was half-cut anyway.
Mulling it over and wondering what to do, she picked up her phone, flipped back the wallet cover, and tapped on ‘Photos’ in the albums. She scrolled and scrolled and then smiled at a photo of her and Andrew on their wedding day. A wave of emotion seemed to well up around her and grab her around the throat as she looked at the girl on her phone with not a care in the world. She couldn’t seem to untangle herself from a multitude of emotions about her first wedding and here she was wearing the same dress as she started a new chapter. Why would she do that?
She shook her head to try and make sense of what she was feeling. Initially, she’d been so sure it was the right thing to do. Now, she was overthinking and questioning herself. It was as if her thoughts and emotions were knotted together, twisted up, vying with each other, trying to tell her she was doing the wrong thing to be wearing the dress again. Too many feelings, too much sadness. Guilt, that was in there, too.
There was also something else in the mix. An ending, not a moving on as such but a sliding to another place. The next part of her life was beginning. The dress being part of it seemed to accentuate that. She shook her head and tried not to think about it too much. It wasn’t even worth going into. If she’d learnt one thing that had come out of the grief group, it was that despite what anyone said, what she’d lost because of what had happened to Andrew would never not make her sad. She shook her head and sighed and decided that she was overthinking. It was a dress at the end of the day. Robby was fine with it. She’d wear it and be done with it.
Just as she was ordering some work supplies she felt her phone vibrate in her pocket a few times, slipped it out, and looked at the notifications on the screen. She closed her eyes for a second, shook her head, and then sighed. Lindsay was again texting her. Since Nina had sent a vastly inflated quote toLindsay in the hope that it would put her off, it had, in fact, had the opposite effect.
Lindsay had sent Nina multiple texts at all times of the day. Nina had replied, nearly every time, with one-word answers, hoping that Lindsay would get the hint. However, Lindsay hadn’t got the hint at all; if anything, she seemed to be more insistent with her texting.
Nina tapped and read Lindsay’s message.
Lindsay:Hi Nina, how are you? Just wondering if you’ve worked out a date yet for the declutter?
Nina shook her head. The woman wasn’t going to take no for an answer. She read through the next message.
Lindsay:If we can get this sorted, it would be great for me.
