The Teashop on the Corner

by Milly Johnson

  ‘He needs a kick up his bottom,’ said Mr Singh with a grin. ‘Nice man but not much get up and go.’

  ‘And don’t get me started on Boldwood.’ Harvey puffed out his cheeks. ‘Totally deranged obsessive. Should have been in a mental home.’

  ‘Calm down, Harvey,’ said Molly crossly. ‘He’s a fictional character, not a neighbour you’ve having a dispute with about leylandii.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ replied Harvey, nevertheless taking Molly’s advice and sitting back in his chair to rest his racing heart.

  ‘What triggered the diversion from the Brontës then?’ said Carla, giving Mr Bingley a scratch behind his ears.

  ‘Leni has just received a consignment of next year’s diaries featuring pictures of the most desirable heroes,’ Molly explained. ‘Now Maxim de Winter. I always found the thought of him very sexy.’

  ‘He’s not in the diaries, yet Heathcliff is. Darcy, obviously, takes centre stage,’ Harvey said with a disgusted ‘pfff’. ‘Could we have another pot of tea please, Leni? I’m quite thirsty after all this discussion.’

  ‘Certainly, Harvey,’ said Leni, coming forward to take the empty teapot away.

  ‘I haven’t read Jude the Obscure,’ said Mr Singh.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ replied Harvey. ‘It’ll depress you. Unless you enjoy dysfunctional relationships, poverty, passive aggression and violence.’

  ‘Maybe I will give it a miss,’ said Mr Singh. ‘I can see all that on Jeremy Kyle.’

  ‘You watch Jeremy Kyle?’ Carla was highly amused by that.

  ‘I am hooked,’ said Mr Singh. ‘Especially the lie detector results.’ He started to chuckle. ‘“Apart from the five people she knows about, have you slept with anyone else?”’

  ‘How have we gone from a conversation about Jude the Obscure to Jeremy Kyle lie detectors?’ Leni said with a broad smile, bringing a full, steaming teapot over to Molly and Harvey.

  ‘My favourites are who has been doing the stealing from the family house.’

  Carla thought Mr Singh might explode if he laughed any louder. Molly didn’t say anything but imagined Harvey hooked up to a lie detector machine. The incriminating spikes would run off the paper.

  Leni brought a wide wedge of cake and the latte to Carla.

  ‘How is Anne?’ asked Molly. ‘Have you had any more postcards from her?’

  ‘I had one at the weekend,’ smiled Leni. ‘She’s fine. Enjoying the Greek sunshine.’

  ‘Which university is she going to?’ asked Carla. Oh, to be young again and at the threshold of life. She wished she were Anne.

  ‘She has a place at Cambridge to read English,’ Leni beamed.

  There was a round of impressed ‘wow’s.

  ‘Which college?’ asked Molly.

  ‘Robinson. It’s the newest college, I think.’

  ‘She’ll be coming home soon then to start in September. Or do they start in October?’ said Mr Singh.

  ‘She’s taking another year off. They encourage gap years there so it isn’t a problem.’ Leni wrung out a cloth and started wiping down the counter surface. ‘She might never get the chance again to do all this travelling.’

  ‘Yes, she must travel,’ put in Harvey. ‘I’ve been all over the world and never regretted it. Everyone would sell everything they have and get on a plane if they could see what I’ve seen.’

  ‘She might meet a nice rich doctor in Australia and be swept off her feet,’ smiled Carla. It happened to some people. Not everyone had crap love lives. Some women met decent men who didn’t lie and were loved and respected.

  ‘Life is there to be enjoyed, especially by the young,’ said Mr Singh, taking a handkerchief out of his jacket in order to blow his nose on it. ‘Before they begin to fear it and worry about it not always being there.’

  ‘Anyway, seeing as it is Brontë Tuesday and we should respect that,’ began Harvey, intent on steering the conversation around to where he thought it should be as he could sense a dip in the mood and wanted to zap it away. ‘Charlotte, Emily and Anne – snog, marry or avoid?’

  Chapter 54

  By Thursday Will had been shopping and bought himself a proper double bed and a decent mattress, though it wasn’t a flashy pocket-sprung top-of-the-range type like the one his marital bed had boasted. But, if anything, it was more comfortable. He always found the old one a bit firm. This cheap one would probably knacker up his back, but at least he was getting a good night’s sleep, even if he couldn’t shake off that recurrent dream about panicking at the top of ladders. And he joined a gym. He’d cancelled the platinum joint membership for the swanky Harrots gym near Penistone; Nicole’s dad would have restarted her membership because she couldn’t do without her spa treatments. But for Will, the This Is Sparta gym on a back street of Old Town was good enough. It had all the weights and machines he needed to batter his body and free up his head for a few hours a week. There was no fancy café with a super salad bar, no swimming pool, no vibrating plates, just a load of men in various stages of fitness and not a bottle of Evian spray to be seen anywhere.

  He hadn’t seen much of Carla the past few days. They both kept themselves to themselves, crossing paths occasionally in the kitchen. She was always pleasant, but he thought that her eyes carried a lot of sadness in them, however much her lips might have smiled.

  Carla was starting to panic about money. She might be on the brink of owning the deeds to Dundealin, but there were still water rates and council tax, electricity, gas, shopping and car bills to pay. At the back of her Hard Times journal, she had started a budget sheet with a column of outgoings and incomings and decided that maybe joining a temp agency might be a way forward, because what was stored in the bank wouldn’t go very far if all she had was Will’s rent coming in by way of revenue.

  Carla headed off to Sheffield on Thursday morning. She drove her car down to the station, parked up then caught the train into the city centre and walked up to The Moor where ‘Workpeople’ was situated. The office was very impressive with its almost totally glass front. Her appointment was at eleven-thirty and she was exactly on time.

  She didn’t have to wait long before she was escorted to a desk by a woman whose name badge read ‘Faye’ who then typed her details into a computer. Faye, bless her – thought Carla – tried not to look discouraging about there being hardly any job opportunities for a thirty-four-year-old woman whose only real skill was in making bouquets and wreaths.

  ‘No positions available working with flowers at the moment,’ Faye sighed, scrolling through information on the monitor. ‘I’ve got some data entry work at the West Yorkshire Bank. Five days in Wakefield starting Monday. Lollipop lady. Volunteer at Helping Hands charity shop, obviously that’s unpaid. Erm . . . Vera’s Sandwich café in Brightside need a part-time worker: ten-thirty to two p.m. five days a week. Office cleaner, four hours per week.’

  ‘I’ll take the data entry,’ said Carla. She knew she would be bored out of her skull, but at least it would get her back onto the job market and earning a wage.

  ‘Okay, I’ll ring them,’ grinned Faye, happy to have helped someone out. She obviously enjoyed her job, thought Carla, who knew how good it was to have a job you liked. And how grim it was to have a job you hated.

  She caught the train home, avoiding the shops as she knew she’d find loads of things she wanted because she had no money to spend on them. Sod’s law.

  Chapter 55

  Molly, usually a light sleeper, was amazed to find that when she woke on Saturday morning there was a note from Harvey on the kitchen table informing her that he had gone into town and wouldn’t be long. What on earth did he have to go into town for? she thought. Then a bite of panic stung her heart. He hadn’t left, had he?

  She hurried upstairs and into his room, flinging open the wardrobe doors, expecting to see empty coat hangers swinging, but his things were still there. Her whole body seemed to sigh with relief.

  Molly went into her bedroom to look through the win
dow to see if, by chance, she could spot him walking down – or up – the road but she couldn’t. She wondered how long he had been gone and if he was all right. She had a sudden vision of him collapsed in the market and a circle of strangers crowded around him. Maybe she should go and try and find him, she decided, but then again he didn’t have a key to get in if he returned home before she did. She would just have to wait.

  It was when she passed her dressing table that she noticed the lid wasn’t square on her jewellery box. She lifted it up to find that three of her rings were missing.

  *

  Ryan arrived half an hour early. He was wearing a red polo shirt that had been ripped on the side seam and badly repaired with orange cotton. Leni suspected it might be his own handiwork.

  ‘Morning, early bird,’ she greeted him. ‘Would you like some crumpets before you start?’

  ‘Please,’ he said and ate three. From the blissed-out look on his face, Leni wondered if he’d ever had real butter before in his life. Some of it had dribbled and made dark circles on his shirt.

  ‘Your mum isn’t going to be very pleased at those,’ Leni pointed out, before she remembered what Shaun had told her about his mother being absent.

  ‘I do me own washing,’ he replied.

  A sad ache passed like a cold cloud across Leni’s heart. Poor lad, she thought. She wondered what home life was like for Ryan. Who cooked his meals, who changed his bedding, who kissed him goodnight?

  Her thoughts were interrupted as the large figure of Shaun McCarthy entered the shop, his expression full of suspicion.

  ‘Morning,’ he said, looking from Leni to Ryan and Leni knew that he was checking to see that all was okay, but she managed to answer his greeting politely enough.

  ‘I came to see if there was any chance of ordering some breakfast. The site office toaster has decided to die.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Leni. ‘How many slices would you like?’

  ‘Er . . . sixteen please.’

  ‘Yep, no problem. I’ll get my assistant onto it. He’ll bring it out to you. Four slices at a time.’ And she smiled as if making the point that her assistant was going to offer a totally reliable service, despite him being a notorious O’Gowan.

  Ryan was wary of Shaun, that was obvious, and Shaun was quite happy that he was wary of him. It might keep him from trying any underhand tricks, knowing that someone was onto him.

  Shaun watched the lad walking back to the teashop after delivering the last four slices of toast. He didn’t have a cocky swagger like his father and his eldest brother Fin, who had been in Broadmoor, the last that Shaun had heard. Bull O’Gowan bragged about it, which proved to Shaun that as far as headcases went, he wasn’t far behind his son. He’d also been reliably informed that Leslie O’Gowan, the second oldest brother, was out of prison. Not for long, Shaun thought, as Ryan went back into the teashop on the corner. No, it was impossible for the skinny lad with the thin arms and the grease-stained top to be anything other than dysfunctional with his family history and background. Nature and nurture had both failed him.

  Didn’t anyone give you a chance when nature and nurture both failed you? whispered a quiet voice inside him.

  Shaun picked up his trowel. Voices like that he could do without. He didn’t want to remember so he made it a point never to look back, he only ever kept his eyes, and his thoughts, forward.

  Chapter 56

  Molly couldn’t work out if she was more cross than disappointed, more hurt than angry. She knew those rings had been in her jewellery box and there was no reason why they would be anywhere else but there. Harvey must have taken them, there was no other explanation. That’s why he was so damned secretive in going into town by himself. She hoped he’d exerted himself and was taken to hospital where she would go and visit him and find those rings in his pocket and . . . what then? Would she turn him out of her house? Shout at him as he lay on a hospital bed that she never wanted to see him again – however ill he might be? Damn him. Damn Harvey Hoyland. She felt hot tears of frustration spring to her eyes and she defied them to make a showing.

  She hated him for stamping all over her heart again. Leopards didn’t change their spots, hadn’t she learned that by now? Even after all these years, Harvey Hoyland’s spots were so familiar, she could have drawn a portrait of them all in her sleep.

  She heard a car pull up outside, hurried to the front window and saw Harvey getting out of a taxi. A cold feeling of dread gripped her and threw her whole body into a state of panic. She didn’t know what she was going to say to him when she saw his lying face. She was equally, if not more, furious with herself for being taken in by him. Again.

  Molly, calm down, she urged herself, breathing as slowly and deeply as she could before she hyperventilated. Outwardly, when she checked in the mirror, she looked composed, even if inside her heart was tearing around like a bucking bronco.

  Harvey was breathing heavily when he walked in. Whatever he had done had fully exhausted him.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she asked, struggling to keep the annoyance out of her voice.

  ‘Town,’ he replied. ‘I fancied a bet.’

  Oh, well that explains it. She wondered which pawn shop her rings would be in by now.

  ‘I won,’ he grinned. ‘A hundred and fifty pounds. And I only had a fiver each way on it. I saw the name and I couldn’t resist.’

  ‘What was the horse called?’

  ‘Troubles of the Heart. Now I really do need to go to the toilet, Molly, if you’ll let me pass please. I’ll answer all your questions and no doubt get the sharp end of your tongue when I come back downstairs.’

  His tread was slow and laboured on the stairs. Molly paced up and down waiting for him to return. She knew she would have to say something to him about her jewellery. He seemed to take an age to come back down again. He walked into the lounge, bold as brass, with a relieved smile on his face.

  ‘Oh my, that’s better. Now what were you saying?’

  ‘I was asking you where you had been.’ Molly’s impatience was seeping out through the cracks in her composure. Better that than tears of disappointment. ‘And you were telling me that you’d been to a betting shop.’

  ‘Yep. That’s about it.’

  ‘Was betting on a horse worth getting up at the crack of dawn for in your state of health?’

  ‘Well, the betting shop didn’t open until eleven, so I wandered around the shops for a while. Barnsley town centre has changed in the past few years, hasn’t it? My goodness.’

  ‘Why get up so early if the betting shop didn’t open until eleven?’ Did he think she was an idiot?

  ‘I couldn’t sleep so I thought I’d go out and catch the bus into town. I hardly thought it appropriate that I woke you early and asked you to drive me to a betting shop, knowing how much you always disapproved of my habit of gambling,’ said Harvey, going into the kitchen to put on the kettle. ‘Tea?’

  He was infuriatingly chipper. Well Molly decided that she was going to bring him down a peg or two. Ill or not ill, he couldn’t go around stealing from her when he was a guest in her house.

  Without answering him she marched upstairs into her bedroom and grabbed her jewellery box. Once downstairs, she slammed it on the kitchen table making the cups and saucers he had just put out give a short shocked dance.

  ‘I had six rings in this box,’ she began with a very tight expression. ‘Do you want to guess how many I have now?’

  Harvey’s eyebrows dipped in confusion. ‘Erm . . . six?’

  ‘Let’s count them, shall we?’ Molly opened it and took out a ring. ‘One . . .’

  She found another. ‘Two . . .’ and moved her necklace out of the way to retrieve the third with the opal. ‘Three.’ Strangely that opal ring was one of the missing ones she hadn’t been able to find. She gulped. There were three more rings in the box. A cold wash of shame drenched her.

  ‘And three plus three makes six?’ said Harvey. ‘Is this some sort of dement
ia test to make sure my heart hasn’t affected my brain?’

  Molly was only glad she hadn’t come out and made a point-blank accusation. He must have realised where this conversation was going. Worry nudged the embarrassment away. She had been sure there were only three rings in there, just as she was sure that Royal Doulton figure was on a shelf and her pen and compact were in her handbag. She’d had another ‘episode’, it seemed, and now was the time to go and see a doctor and have a test done for Alzheimer’s.

  ‘You’ve got too much on your mind,’ said Harvey, pulling out the chair for her. ‘Sit down and stop nattering. I merely fancied a little outing by myself and some thinking space. Now, have we got any chocolate biscuits left?’

  That was it, said Molly, sinking onto the seat. She had too much on her mind, that was all. But she was so sure there had only been three rings. So sure.

  Chapter 57

  ‘Shaun, Shaun!’

  Shaun’s attention was diverted from choosing between the mixer tap he was holding in his hand and another. He looked up the aisle and saw her, waving, making an awkward bouncy run towards him and then he felt her arms around his neck and her lips press deep into his cheek.

  ‘Well, how are you?’ She held him at arm’s length and beamed at him. Rosie, his ex-wife.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘I see you are pretty fine too.’

  Rosie patted her solidly rotund stomach. ‘Two months to go. A girl.’

  ‘Well, that’s good,’ said Shaun, wondering how he could be struggling for something to say to a woman he had been married to for two years.

  Apart from the change in her usually trim figure, Rosie looked exactly the same: swinging blonde ponytail, big blue eyes, and a trademark perma-smile. Pretty, bubbly, warmth oozing out of her. Once upon a time he thought that’s what he wanted, thought she would be good for him.