Wish Upon a Star (18 page)

‘What?’ I said, taken by surprise. ‘No, darling! I’ve told you, your daddy lives at the North Pole, because he has to count all the penguins. But one day when he’s finished counting them, I expect he’ll come and visit you.’

‘Is he a penguin, too?’

‘No, of course not. If your daddy was a penguin, you’d have webbed feet and a beak, wouldn’t you?’

‘Would I?’ she murmured drowsily. ‘I don’t think I want a penguin daddy. I like Daddy Jago best … ’

I thought it better not to say any more about it at that point, because although phenomenally bright for nearly four, she was clearly too tired to take in any explanations. I opened the Moomins and began to read.

Jago rang me on Monday morning, just as I was getting Stella ready for the Mother and Toddler group again. I was in the kitchen with Ma, putting my shoes on, and Stella had dashed off to fetch her scarlet mack, because it was a gloomy, rainy day.

Jago said how much he’d enjoyed the day out and then added, ‘You know that old shop in Sticklepond we saw on the way back from the meeting on Saturday night?’

‘If you can call a frontage about five feet wide, hidden between two bigger buildings, a shop, then yes.’

‘I popped round to the estate agents as soon as they opened this morning – they have a branch here – and I’ve got the details.’

‘That was quick work.’

‘I thought they might have something more suitable in Sticklepond, but that was the only thing in my price range. Apparently prices there are going up and up. Anyway, Honey’s Haberdashers sounds bigger in the leaflet than it looks, so I’ve got an appointment to view it this afternoon at two thirty. I’m meeting the estate agent there. I don’t suppose you’d like to come too, out of sheer curiosity?’

I wavered. ‘Stella usually has a nap around then … and I’m really curious to see it.’ I covered the receiver and asked Ma, who was sitting pensively staring out of the window at the heavy rain, coffee cup in hand, if she would be in this afternoon and could listen out in case Stella woke.

‘Yes, I’ll be here. Ottie’s back at Winter’s End and she said she’d drop in this afternoon. We’re thinking of a joint retrospective exhibition in the autumn and need to discuss it.’

‘Oh, thanks, Ma. I’ll make you something nice for you both to have with your coffee,’ I promised, and then uncovered the phone again.

‘I heard that, that’s great,’ Jago said. ‘Shall we meet outside the shop just before two thirty, or would you like me to pick you up? It looks like the monsoon has struck.’

‘I like walking in the rain. I’ll see you there.’

When I’d put the phone down, I said to Ma, ‘I do love looking at other people’s houses. Jago’s got an appointment to explore Honey’s Haberdashers.’

‘Honey’s?’ she said, and a brief unease seemed to pass across her face. The unlit lilac Sobranie at the corner of her mouth wavered in its holder.

‘Yes – remember we said the other night that we’d spotted that it was for sale? You know the place, don’t you?’

‘Of course I know it. It was still in business when I was small, though mostly it was the older people in the village who favoured it, because I don’t think some of the stock had changed much since Victorian times.’

‘I’ll tell you all about it afterwards,’ I promised.

‘I heard the last of the Honeys was in a care home somewhere,’ she said. ‘Perhaps she’s died and that’s why it’s finally for sale.’

‘It’s odd it hasn’t been sold long since to pay the care home bill then, isn’t it?’ I said, thinking about it. ‘I mean, practically everyone seems to lose their homes if they go into care. It seems very unfair.’

‘Yes: no inheritance for the offspring. If that happens to me, Cally, then you won’t get anything at all, because your father’s pension will go with me. There’ll just be this house and maybe a few paintings.’

‘I wasn’t counting on it anyway, Ma, especially since you’re not much past sixty, which is the new middle age!’

‘Tell that to my knees,’ she grumbled. Then she went out to the studio, holding an enormous, vividly striped golfing umbrella with two broken spikes over her head and I went to find out where Stella had got to.

Inspired by the big puffball toadstools we’d seen at the nature reserve, I’d made microwave meringues that morning and written them up for ‘Tea & Cake’.

Microwave meringue – how great an invention is that? All you need is icing sugar and egg white to create mouth-watering morsels of deliciousness that magically puff up in seconds.

I’d
intended to take some to playgroup with us, but when I opened the box Ma had beaten me to it and there were only a few crumbs left.

Stella was so tired after playgroup that she was falling asleep over her lunch, but there was no sign of Ma, so after I’d tucked Stella up in bed for a nap I had to fetch her down from the studio. She’d forgotten both that she was listening out for Stella and that Ottie was coming over.

I showed her the covered plates of fruit fairy cakes and some egg and cress sandwiches. Ottie always had a very healthy appetite, despite being as thin as a lath.

Life was unfair like that.
I
was now starting to feel like some strange mutant cross between one of those puffball mushrooms and the microwave meringues they’d inspired.

I thought all this would make me late meeting Jago at the shop, but actually he and I and the estate agent all arrived more or less at the same time, each with our own umbrellas, which we folded and stood in the small, open porch. They instantly formed pools on the red quarry tiles.

The young estate agent (‘Call-me-Charlie’) looked like a pale and acned version of Brad Pitt, though he wouldn’t have lasted five minutes with Angelina Jolie. He seemed gloomy as he inserted a large key into the door and then put his shoulder to it, moving a small Everest of junk mail out of the way.

‘Haven’t had a viewing for a couple of weeks,’ he said apologetically, though I thought months was more like it, if at all. ‘Usually Conrad from the Merchester office does Sticklepond viewings, because his family come from round here.’

He didn’t say why that was a good thing, but gestured us past him into the darkness of the shop. Our feet thudded dully on the wooden floor and the air was so fogged and thick with dust particles that our lungs were probably instantly flocked.

The blinds were down over the shop window but no one suggested pulling them up to let in more light, because clearly there was a more than even chance that the cord had rotted and the whole thing would come crashing down.

It was a narrow shop, though Jago was right and it was wider than it had first appeared. It also seemed to stretch back an awfully long way. An L-shaped counter loomed in the gloom and above it to the left were glass-fronted display cabinets that were too shrouded in grime to make out the contents.

‘The electricity’s off, I’m afraid – pity it’s such a dismal day,’ the estate agent apologised. ‘Still, I’ve got my torch.’

He sent the beam darting to and fro, illuminating a jar of knitting needles, an old wooden till drawer, some mannequin busts still draped with fifties-style blouses and a lot of hand-lettered signs on metal stands in pounds, shillings and pence – and one in guineas.

‘Wow!’ said Jago.

‘Good heavens,’ I exclaimed. ‘It’s like a time warp.’

In fact, the shop looked just as it must have done for many years before it was shut up, somewhere around the late sixties, but with the addition of a ton of dust and the cobwebs that hung like bad macramé from the light fitting and added an extra layer of darkness to the ceiling corners.

I was pretty sure some of the cobwebs must still have their occupants in residence, so I inched closer to Jago, in case one of them made a sudden move towards me.

Call-me-Charlie coughed hollowly. I’m not sure if the dust was getting to him, or it was simply the preface to the estate-agent speak he was about to come out with. Probably a bit of both.

‘Obviously the place has been a
little
neglected since the last of the Honeys was taken to a nursing home, after breaking her hip.’

‘What century was that in?’ asked Jago. He had taken his own small credit card-shaped torch from his pocket and was casting it about in a fascinated sort of way.

‘The last one. I suppose it was about thirty years ago,’ Charlie confessed with a sudden grin. ‘She’s a hundred and two now, and still going strong.’

‘So it’s just been locked up and left ever since?’ I asked, surprised.

‘I think she expected to return one day, but never did. But there was a lodger in the flat over the shop until fairly recently so the roof and guttering have been maintained annually.’

‘It smells dry enough in here, too,’ Jago observed.

‘I’m surprised the place wasn’t sold to pay for the nursing home fees,’ I commented.

‘I think she’s quite well off, because the nursing home she lives in is
very
expensive. Of course, she was getting rent for the flat at one time, too, and I suspect it was the lodger leaving that finally prompted her to put the property on the market.’

‘It says in the details that the shop will be sold as a going concern, with stock,’ Jago said, flourishing the brochure.

‘Y-eees …’ Charlie said apologetically. ‘Of course, that’s not possible, which I’ve done my best to explain to Miss Honey, but she hasn’t been back here, and in her mind I think it’s just as it was when she was young.’

‘Since it clearly
isn’t
a going concern, though, the price seems a little high,’ Jago said. ‘That must have put people off.’

‘Of course, though these things are always negotiable and it
is
a good village. Prices in Sticklepond are rising and new businesses opening all the time.’

‘I don’t particularly want a shop, but a display window would be nice,’ Jago said. ‘I make a particular kind of wedding cake, so I need a preparation area and also a packing room and perhaps office space.’

‘Ah, not any kind of drapery or haberdashery then …’ Charlie said, seeming to be musing on some knotty problem. Then he got back into agent mode: ‘Come on, I’ll show you the rest.’

There was a door at the back, half-covered by a thick, moth-eaten curtain with a once-gold bullion fringe, which led into a living room containing more cobwebs, an open fireplace with a pretty art nouveau tiled surround, a large and ugly dark dresser and a small organ with a rotted ruched pink silk front.

‘It says in the particulars that the house is to be sold part-furnished,’ Jago said, straight-faced. ‘What with the shop a going concern and some furniture thrown in, I’m only surprised no one has snapped the place up before now.’

‘Try explaining that to Miss Honey,’ Call-me-Charlie muttered morosely. Then he readjusted his agent’s expression and led the way upstairs to the front bedroom, which had old wooden panelling and the window that overhung the shop.

‘Most of this room is as it was in the seventeenth century,’ the agent said, ‘but the rest of the house has been rebuilt and extended over the years.’

There were two more good-sized bedrooms and a bleak bathroom, but once we’d seen those, Charlie seemed reluctant to go up the final flight of stairs to the small flat under the eaves.

I could see the reason for his reluctance once the door was open, for every wall was lined with a towering stack of yellowing newspapers to waist height or higher. You could smell the old newsprint in the air.

‘I’m afraid the lodger went a bit strange during the last few years … but it’s a good flat, it just needs a
little
updating.’

‘Just a little,’ agreed Jago, drily.

We trooped back down again. Charlie led the way through the bare kitchen into a smaller room that contained nothing more than an old galvanised washtub with a wooden dolly standing in it, and unlocked the back door. Across a strip of old stone flags a long, low building faced us.

‘This must be the “attached outbuildings providing further self-contained accommodation”,’ Jago suggested, and Charlie nodded. The last of his assumed enthusiasm had long died and I don’t think he expected anything to come of this viewing other than a dry-cleaning bill for his now-grubby suit.

‘Yes, and it was also let for several years, though not as recently as the flat. It would make a perfect granny annexe.’

‘I haven’t got a granny,’ Jago said.

‘Or holiday let,’ Charlie suggested hastily.

The annexe was minute, with a bathroom that had obviously been created by knocking through into the outside toilet and coal house and inserting into the resultant space the smallest bath I’d ever seen. It was occupied by the largest
spider
I’d ever seen, too.

‘Oh my God, it’s moving!’ I cried, grabbing Jago’s arm tightly.

‘I’ll save you,’ he said, grinning.

‘My hero!’

Charlie glanced at his watch and then quickly ushered us outside into a bramble-smothered wilderness. ‘The garden, with vehicle access at the rear and garage. Well, there we have it,’ he added, and then abandoned us the moment he’d locked the shop door to dash off to what he obviously hoped would be a more fruitful viewing.

We brushed ourselves down and I got Jago to check there weren’t any spiders on the back of my coat.

‘At least it’s stopped raining,’ he said. ‘Have you got time for a quick cup of coffee in the café next door?’

‘I think so. Ma’s friend Ottie Winter is coming round and we haven’t been out all that long. Call-me-Charlie didn’t exactly let us linger in the house, did he?’

‘No, he abandoned hope pretty quickly, for an estate agent.’

Over coffee and a cake apiece, we discussed the house and shop.

‘There’s lots more accommodation to it than I expected, though it’s spread out a bit,’ Jago said, examining his Florentine with the eye of a connoisseur.

‘Yes, it’s so narrow, yet it goes back for miles. I love the seventeenth-century bits at the front.’

‘It may be big, but the price is still way too high, considering it
isn’t
a going concern and the whole place wants painting, decorating and generally dragging into the twenty-first century.’