‘It must be quite a lot, running it all alone.’ The woman’s lip sort of snarled.
Daisy smiled, but her back stiffened. ‘It has its moments, but I love it. It’s a good place to be here in Pretty Beach.’
The woman nodded again and picked up another book. She flicked through the pages, then put it down. ‘And you live upstairs?’
‘Yes. There’s a little flat above the shop.’ Daisy instantly regretted divulging her living arrangements.
‘That must be convenient.’
‘It is.’
There was a pause. The woman moved again, this time to the sideboard where Daisy had laid out new arrivals and an oversized, overfull vase of Susannah’s garden flowers was perched on the left. The woman ran a finger along the edge of a display card and looked back at Daisy. ‘Do you get much foot traffic here or is it mostly locals?’
Daisy tilted her head. ‘It’s a bit of both, actually, which is why it’s working. Some tourists, but we’ve got a good local base. Lots of lovely regulars and we’re already on the Insta book trail. Social media has put us on the map.’
‘Hmm, yes, I’ve seen that.’ The tone was non-committal, almost trying to be disinterested, very strange and the woman stared at Daisy for just a touch too long.
Daisy felt a horrible sort of shudder-y feeling run up and down her spine as she folded the top of a reusable bakery bag beside the till area and found herself asking a question. She wasn’t sure why and wished she hadn’t. She should have gone with her gut and not engaged the woman any further. ‘Have you visited Pretty Beach before?’
The woman looked at her, expression unreadable. ‘Not recently.’
The woman moved away from the table again and wandered slowly past the armchairs, where the older couple still sat, oblivious to the change in atmosphere. She reached the library ladder nearest the back of the shop and ran her eyes over the shelves and then turned and looked at Daisy intently. ‘It’s a very curated shop if you know what to look for. You’ve tried to make it look the opposite, haven’t you? I thought that when I saw it on social media. The supposedly mismatched things obviously chosen with the utmost care to give that impression. Do you choose all the props yourself?’
Daisy laughed to herself. Yes, for sure, she had chosen the things in the shop, but most if not all of them had been cobbled together from cast-offs, secondhand via Marketplace and charity shops. It wasn’t as if she’d sat around and chosen what she’d wanted from an antiques shop. ‘I do.’
‘Are the books chosen by you, too?’
‘Mostly with the fiction and then other things that I think will fit the place. We have a lot of rare books in a special collectionand the Penguins of course. I do a lot of buying and selling on eBay, too…’ Again Daisy wished she hadn’t said anything.
‘And it’s profitable?’
Daisy frowned. It wasn’t a totally unusual question. People asked how business was all the time, but the way the woman had said it didn’t sound like curiosity. More like an audit and very direct. Obnoxiously direct with a touch of condescending smug thrown in for good measure. Daisy gave a small shrug, keeping her face neutral and attempting to shoot the conversation dead. ‘Yes, thanks, we do well.’
The woman nodded, then turned back to the shelves.
There was something about the woman that turned Daisy off. In the way she moved and the questions she asked. She wasn’t just passing through that much was more than obvious. She wasn’t in the bookshop for a quick browse and a cup of tea. She was watching, weighing, clocking the layout, the corners, and the flow of the space. Daisy Henley didn’t know what that meant. She did know she didn’t like the vibes it gave her at all.
6
It was a few days later and Daisy hadn’t seen the woman again nor thought about her. What she referred to less and less as “Uncle Dennis’s” building and more as her home was finally quiet and calm. Upstairs, the twins had been tucked into bed and Daisy hoped they were lost somewhere in the clutches of cloud-cuckoo land. There had been a few final calls for water and the usual wriggles about the duvet, but as she’d pottered around her bedroom tidying up, they’d settled and drifted off to sleep. Daisy had crept down the stairs in bare feet and paused at the bottom to take a breath. She was tired from a long day of cleaning Suntanned Pete’s holiday cottages, but she had an interiors itch in the form of getting the kitchen looking like the kitchen of her dreams. Once the little nugget of giving it a makeover had lodged in her brain, she hadn’t been able to let it go.
Padding past the glass door to the bookshop, she smiled at the sight of it and the laneway through the window. The light was dim but lovely and all was quiet outside. Out the back, in the kitchen, she flicked on the lamp by the door as she stepped in, folded her arms and pondered. The kitchen wasn’t large; in fact, it was tiny. So small that you could stand in the middleand touch all four corners if you really stretched. One side held the sink and an old cupboard with a temperamental door. The other had a short run of base and wall cupboards, all knocked about and, despite all manner of effort, never quite looked clean, no matter how often Daisy had scrubbed them. Technically, the cupboards would pass one of those laser germ-seeking lights the number of times Daisy had cleaned them, but to the eye, they appeared to be pretty grubby, to be quite frank.
Daisy stood in the doorway, hands on her hips, her hair scraped into a messy bun and old denim dungarees pulled on over a stripy long-sleeved tee. The dungarees had paint on the legs, one button didn’t fasten, and the knees had gone shiny, but they were her go-to for jobs when she didn’t want to care.
The little table in the corner had been a godsend. It was used for all manner of things, breakfast, glitter bombs, lunch, homework, chopping veg, wrapping presents and rising bread dough near the radiator. Tucked under the window in its usual spot, it was time for it to move and for her to get her decorating wriggle on because she had Pete coming over to help with putting up a shelf. Putting both hands under the edge, she gave it a solid shove. The legs scraped along the old floor tiles with a low, dragging groan, which to be honest sounded like just about how she felt. Stopping, she moved to the other side and gave it another nudge with her hip. A few more shoves and it was away from the wall and into the middle of the room so that she’d be able to get to work.
Pulling open the cupboard doors on the run of cabinets, she gave a small shake of her head. The inside had become a jumble of plates, mugs, chipped saucers she never used, a frying pan handle poked out, and in the corner, a box of couscous needed using. She grabbed a few old tea towels, laid them on the table, and started unloading. The mugs went first; one with a cracked handle from Maggie, another with faded gold lettering, herfavourite one with a chip on the rim. Lining them up in rows, she then moved onto the crockery, pulling out plates and stacking them, plonking bowls in a pile and then grabbing random stuff. Out came a jam jar full of teaspoons, a milk jug she used once a year, a grater with a bent edge that took skin off knuckles and loads of other accumulated clutter that would be heading for a new life and the charity shop.
Daisy was surprised at how speedily the room emptied as she worked quickly, dragging the contents out of one cupboard at a time and piling everything onto the table. There was no real method, just clearing and plonking and it didn’t take long. In a kitchen as small as it was and with her previous life, which had involved multiple moves, really, there wasn’t that much to deal with. Once the cupboards were bare, she stepped back and looked at the mess. The table groaned under the weight of everything, appearing as if someone had tipped out the contents of a whole flat onto a single surface.
Grabbing her list, she clarified what she needed to do: take the doors off the cupboards, clean inside the shelves, sand the edges, paint, replace the handles with brass ones, add open shelving and a rail, remove the light and add a decent light fitting.
Turning to a small dresser near the back door, which she’d inherited as part of the building, she tutted. It was cluttered with half-used candles, an old cafetiere that had never worked properly, and a collection of dried rosemary in a jam jar. She swept it clear and wiped it with a cloth, stepped back and analysed. It wasn’t lovely yet, but with the duck egg blue paint, it would be. Leaning on the worktop for a bit, she surveyed the tiny room, thinking that already it felt oddly better. Not changed, but on the verge of something. It was still cramped and there was a piece of lino curling up near the fridge, but she was doing something and that was the important bit. She’d just moved thelast pile of random cutlery out of a drawer and onto the table when the back door gave a quiet knock, followed by the click of the handle and the clatter of flip-flops.
‘Only me.’
Daisy smiled and turned to find Suntanned Pete standing on the back step, toolbox in one hand, a few pairs of old metal brackets sticking out of the side of his rucksack, and a set of sunglasses so reflective she could see the fairy lights from the hallway bouncing off them.
