The Teashop on the Corner

by Milly Johnson

  ‘Do you mind if I ask – have you had your own business for a long time, Leni?’

  ‘I don’t mind at all,’ she replied. ‘I was the manager of a bookshop for many years. The owners installed a café in it and it was terrible. I thought I could do better, but doing it is very far away from planning it. It wasn’t a well-paid job and I was divorced and my ex-husband didn’t pay any maintenance so, to find some extra cash, I started, in my spare time, importing novelty stationery to sell on the internet. Annie was only young then but she used to help me pack it up and just to amuse ourselves really, we’d plan having a shop where everything for sale was book-related and in the middle would be a small teashop with lovely cakes and proper sandwiches.

  ‘Then I began to find that I was earning more money and getting far more satisfaction out of doing my part-time job at home than I was in my full-time job during the day. So I decided to hand in my notice and go for it. I’ll be honest,’ she laughed, ‘it took me a while to build up to take the leap. I was terrified that all my orders would dry up and I’d have to sell my house and that Annie and I would end up out on the street. But, I was determined to make it work. I wanted to make sure that Annie didn’t have to take out any student loan when she went off to university. But, with her gone . . . travelling, I found I was quite lonely. Then I saw this place advertised. It was too far away from where I lived in North Yorkshire, so I sold up, moved here and took out the lease and I opened up the little teashop that Annie and I had planned.’

  Carla’s anxiety levels were spiking. What was she even doing here? Leni was competent and brave, Carla was a total wet lettuce.

  Through the window, Carla saw a man approach the small shop unit and stand there, taking a look at his watch. He was early but it had to be Shaun McCarthy. She took out her purse.

  ‘This one’s on me,’ said Leni, pushing the five-pound note away. ‘Good luck.’

  ‘Thank you, Leni. Bless you.’

  Carla walked out of the shop and across the square with legs shakier than those of a new-born giraffe.

  Chapter 66

  Molly drove to Spring Hill. It was the only place she could think of to go. She needed to be somewhere that felt as comforting as an old cardigan because she was chilled to the bone as she slipped the car into gear and set off. She walked in to the Teashop on the Corner, her body scrunched up as if she were in pain, and she was.

  Leni glanced up and smiled. She held on to that smile even though the usually cheerful Molly looked pale and shivery.

  ‘Everything all right?’ asked Leni, adding tentatively, ‘Harvey not with you?’

  ‘No. Not this morning,’ said Molly with an over-casual tinkly laugh. ‘I fancied some time to myself. Morning Ryan. And how are you today? Busy?’

  ‘I’m all right, ta,’ he called, going into the back room with a pair of scissors he had just collected.

  ‘He’s parcel-wrapping today,’ explained Leni. ‘Now, what can I get for you?’

  ‘A nice pot of tea, nothing to eat, thank you.’

  Leni prepared a tray. She arranged some freshly made shortbreads on a plate as well. Glancing over at Molly, she knew that all was not well. Molly had something on her mind, the weight of it was almost visible on her shoulders, pushing them down.

  ‘There you go,’ said Leni.

  ‘Thank you, dear.’ Oh how Molly wished Margaret were here to talk to. Then again, maybe not. She could hardly expect Margaret to give her an unbiased view. And Molly was more than partly to blame for that.

  ‘Leni,’ Molly’s fingers curled around Leni’s as she put down the plate of biscuits. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Thank you for what, Molly?’ Molly obviously was thanking her for more than the tea.

  ‘Thank you for setting up this wonderful little teashop. It’s one of my favourite places to be.’

  ‘That’s a lovely thing to say,’ beamed Leni. She could see that Molly was close to tears. ‘Shall I get a cup of tea and join you? I could do with a break. We’ve had a bit of a rush on this morning for once.’

  ‘Yes please.’ It had been a long time since Molly had been in more need of some warm and gentle female company.

  Chapter 67

  Shaun McCarthy held his hand out.

  ‘Miss Martelli?’

  ‘Yes, that’s me,’ she said with a nervous chirp.

  ‘Come on inside, why don’t you?’

  He had a lovely lilting soft accent, thought Carla, like Liam Neeson. Although she preferred Will’s voice, which was quite gritty and deep and always seemed to have a laugh hiding in it ready to spring out.

  Carla walked into the shop unit. An architect’s cock-up, Will had said. Dundealin was an architect’s cock-up as well. Was it a sign? Or was she merely a magnet for architects’ cock-ups? It was small, a quarter of the size of Marlene’s Bloomers. The front part of the unit was big enough for the purpose of a florist. The back part was larger than she expected, with a sink at one side of the back door and a loo at the other. Yes, this would do very well indeed for a florist shop. Her own florist shop. A swell of giddiness rose up in her. She beat down all the doubts that threatened to spoil her vision of her own business with an inner war-cry of Yes I can do this. Yes I can make this work.

  ‘I had got it ready for a woman who wanted to open it as a cupcake shop. Then she realised that there was a teashop in the same square and changed her mind. I had checked with Ms Merryman first to make sure there was no conflict of interests and there wasn’t but . . .’ He huffed with annoyance. ‘So, there you have the story on that one. I can let you have it for a good price, I’m not greedy. I just want to get the units filled.’ Then he told her what he expected for the rent and it was less than she had imagined.

  Yes, yes yes. She wanted to bite his hand off, but she supposed she should act against nature and play it slightly cool. She forced a sigh out of her lungs and formed her features into a contemplative arrangement.

  ‘Hmm,’ she said, crossing her arms. ‘The unit is a little smaller than I imagined.’

  Shaun blew the air out of his cheeks. If he heard that line one more time, he would scream.

  ‘Six weeks rent free, no bond,’ he offered.

  ‘Done.’ Carla couldn’t hold back any longer. She was so rubbish at bartering.

  ‘You worked me a bit there, didn’t you?’ Shaun’s blue-green eyes were narrowed, but there was a twinkle playing in them.

  ‘Hard-headed businesswomen do that,’ smiled Carla as a thousand champagne bottles popped their corks inside her.

  ‘I don’t suppose you want any signage?’ Shaun asked, picking up a long wooden plinth and turning it over to reveal what the cupcake shop should have been.

  Carla stared open-mouthed at the words FRENCH FANCY. If that wasn’t an omen, what was?

  Chapter 68

  Leni poured herself a cup and checked to make sure that Ryan was doing all right in the back room. He was fine but still quiet, as if he had things on his mind. She could feel the tension in the air.

  Leni took her tea over to the table to find Molly dabbing at her eyes with a linen handkerchief. She was laughing with nervous embarrassment and apologising.

  ‘Molly, what’s wrong, my love?’ Leni’s gently concerned voice was like a key to the door that held back a mother-lode of the older woman’s hidden feelings. The years hadn’t hushed or weakened them. They wouldn’t be held back any more.

  ‘I’m so sorry. Here I am again, making a fool of myself,’ Molly tried to smile away her emotion. ‘I don’t know, I haven’t cried for years and suddenly I can’t seem to stop.’

  Then Carla burst into the shop brimming with news about what she had just agreed with Shaun. When she saw that Molly was upset her euphoria was pushed right down.

  ‘Hello, Carla dear,’ said Molly, her lovely dark blue eyes swimming with tears.

  ‘Molly. What’s wrong?’ She looked to Leni for guidance. ‘It’s not Harvey, is it?’

  ‘Molly, you’re among friend
s,’ said Leni, taking one of Molly’s hands and placing it between both of hers. It felt tiny and chilled and full of delicate bones. ‘Why don’t you start with why you’re here today? What you needed to get away from.’

  Molly nodded slowly.

  *

  Harvey slid his finger into the flap of the first envelope and ripped it along the edge. It contained one sheet of lined white paper. The letters were wild loops of anger, written quickly and from a crushed heart.

  Harvey Hoyland,

  I didn’t think it was possible to hate someone so much, but I do. You have killed me by leaving me to run off with a woman I know you will despise within weeks. What you have done has hurt me as much as you intended it to, so well done. ‘Once a thief, always a thief,’ was what Margaret warned me before I married you and she was right. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you for what you have taken from me and I hope you both rot in hell.

  Molly Jones.

  Please note that I will never use the name Mrs Hoyland again.

  The ink had bloomed in places and he knew that tears had been falling from her eyes when she wrote this. He could see the small scratches where her pen had ground letters into the paper, he could feel the pain in every character formed. He had hated her too when he left. Hated her for driving him to the warm waiting arms of another woman when it was only Molly that he wanted.

  Chapter 69

  ‘I’ve given Harvey some letters to read that I wrote after he’d left me. And I’m frightened. So very frightened.’

  ‘What are you frightened of?’ asked Carla, gently.

  ‘That I’ll disgust him. That he’ll realise I’m not the woman he thought I was.’ Molly could not wipe her tears away fast enough. ‘There’s so much I should have told him. I locked it away and it festered and damaged everything. It damaged my whole life. He damaged my whole life.’

  *

  Harvey opened the second letter.

  Oh my darling, I miss you so much. The pain is ripping me apart. If I could see inside myself, I know there would be a hole in my heart that will never mend. I cannot sleep, I cannot eat. My mind torments me with visions of what you are doing now with her. I see you laughing, I see myself pushed to the back of your brain, out of sight, out of mind. I have forgotten how to smile. I jump out of my skin when anyone comes to the door but it is never you. Or when the phone rings, or when the postman stops at my door. I want to see you so much but I would die if I saw you with her. I know I would not survive the sight.

  He shook his head. Guilt filled him that he had hurt her so much. He didn’t even think she cared that he had gone. He had imagined her in Margaret’s house, the both of them huffing: ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish.’ He had no doubt that Margaret had warned her about him: an ex-jailbird wasn’t going to be good enough for her sister, even though he had been toeing the straight and narrow path since being released ten years before he had ever met her. Molly Jones was a lady and she deserved more than he could ever have given her. God hadn’t bestowed upon him a brain like Bernard Brandywine that brought in a salary huge enough to build Molly the house he should have provided her with. But he could give her all the love she would ever need. If only she had taken it from him.

  He opened another letter.

  A postcard arrived from you last week. All you had written were the words ‘wish you were here.’ Did you know what it would do to me to hear from you? Did you not realise I would rip myself apart looking for a hidden message? Why are you writing to me when you are with another woman? Are you really missing me? I cannot tell you what it did to me to receive it. I had begun to accept that it was the end and you tore me apart all over again with those four words. It was cruel to give me hope. I felt drunk on it when I heard from you, filled with light which slowly faded over the next days when nothing followed. You plunged me into a sickening darkness worse than you did when you first left. I would kill you if I saw you again.

  He remembered writing that postcard on the morning he walked out on Joyce. He had been on the way to the bus station and the jolly postcard with the little boy riding the donkey on it had caught his eye. Molly didn’t love him enough to forgive him. It wasn’t fair of him to ever compromise her dignity to ask her to.

  Wish you were here summed it up perfectly. He wished with all his heart that she were. But as soon as it left his hand at the post box, he knew he shouldn’t have sent it, because she would be confused by it. He learned from that that he was a selfish bastard, self-serving, scarily impulsive. If that didn’t tell him she deserved better, nothing would. He folded up the letter and picked up the next.

  *

  ‘My sister has the nicest husband you could possibly wish for,’ smiled Molly through her tears. ‘Bernard has been a knight in shining armour to me as well as her. He built me a house in their grounds to live in after my first marriage broke down. He gave me the deeds, it’s all mine, my security. He met Margaret at a dance when we were sixteen and he was nineteen. I think we both fell in love with him on the spot, but it was Margaret who caught his eye. She was always much more sure of herself than I was, feistier, fun. I was quiet and skinny and always in the shadows. I couldn’t have him, so I looked for someone like him and I thought I found him in Edwin. He was tall and broad and dark-haired and came from a rich family, like Bernard did.’ Molly quickly held her hands up in protest. ‘Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t his money that attracted me, it was his refined manner, his confidence. Just like Bernard. He swept me off my feet. Things moved too fast. I was very innocent. I didn’t know if what I was feeling was right or wrong. I supposed it was love.’

  *

  I didn’t tell you the whole truth about so many things and I wish I had because I know it would have made a difference. I once said to you in an argument that you were just like Edwin, can you remember? You weren’t. You were nothing like him. I never told you what he was really like. I thought you would think I was a stupid girl for the mistakes I made. And you were so worldly. I wanted you to think I was wiser than I was too. I am now, but it’s too late.

  *

  ‘I didn’t know anything about men, courting, relationships,’ said Molly. ‘Margaret was so happy, so content and I wanted to be like her. On our third date, I let Edwin . . .’ She didn’t say the words, but she didn’t need to, the others understood.

  ‘I wanted him to. I wanted to feel normal. But I didn’t. He was clumsy, rough. I thought the problem was me. I fell pregnant straightaway and there was no question in his mind that we shouldn’t be married. I thought I’d grow to love him, that everything would be all right, that I’d grow to enjoy . . . it.’

  ‘Oh Molly.’ Leni reached into her pocket for a tissue as Molly’s hankie was saturated.

  ‘I know, I’m a stupid woman. I never spoke about it. Not even to Margaret. Whatever happened in our marriage was supposed to stay in our marriage and Edwin was . . . was not a man you disobeyed. Plus I had little Graham to think about. I had to make my marriage work. I didn’t want him to grow up with a broken family. But Edwin was so brutal.’

  ‘You must have been in hell.’ Leni’s lovely face was so full of genuine concern that Molly could hardly bear to look at her.

  ‘How can you not think that I am the most ridiculous woman in the world for staying with him?’ she asked.

  ‘Because sometimes our perspective gets lost without us realising it,’ replied Leni. ‘Time and distance help us find it again.’

  *

  I don’t think my son ever loved me. Even as a baby he wouldn’t take comfort from me. He wouldn’t breast-feed, he wouldn’t settle in my arms. It was as if he didn’t recognise me as his mother and mistook his grandmother Thelma for her. I don’t know if he picked up on my being a constant nervous wreck but he resisted my attempts to cuddle him whereas he would hold out his arms to his grandmother.

  Edwin was frustrated with me. I screamed out one night for help and Thelma rushed into the bedroom only to tell me that I would wake the baby. I didn’t se
e how distorted my life had become until many years later. It was as if they were a sealed family unit, Thelma, her son and grandson and I was an unwanted outsider. It broke my heart that my child wasn’t bonding with me.

  Everyone thought I was so lucky having a husband who didn’t want me to go out to work. I expect they imagined me being a lady of leisure. I didn’t set foot outside the house for a month once. It would have been more but Bernard and Margaret forced their way into the house, worried about me. I laughed off their concern, but they weren’t fooled.

  The things Edwin called me were worse than what he did to me physically. One particular horrible night I knew I had to get out. Edwin was asleep and the baby was in the cot in his grandmother’s room. I wish now I had grabbed him and raced out, but I was terrified Thelma would wake up and shout for Edwin. I have always felt shame that I left my son, even though I knew he was idolised and secure and I intended to fight for him when I was safe. I was his mother but I left him.

  *

  ‘But you couldn’t do anything else. You would have done it, if you could have,’ said Leni.

  ‘I have told myself that so many times over the years and I’ve never believed it once,’ replied Molly. ‘I should have unlocked the door, opened it ready and grabbed my baby. I wish I could tell you how many times I’ve replayed that scene with a different ending.’ She coughed and Leni rushed to get her a glass of water.

  ‘I ran to Bernard and Margaret. I said I’d left Edwin but I never told them the whole story why, although I supposed they guessed most of it. I was so conditioned into not saying anything. You see it on the news, don’t you? These poor girls who have the chance to escape a kidnapper and they don’t because they’re brainwashed into a perverse sense of loyalty.’