11 The Teashop on the Corner (35 page)

Each day was a mad whirl of organisation and she loved every second of it.

From the moment she awoke on Saturday morning, Molly was like a cat on hot bricks.

‘I wish you’d relax,’ said Harvey, watching her stride across to the front window and nudge her nets out of the way for the hundredth time. ‘Why are you so jumpy about
your daughter-in-law coming?’

‘Because she’ll go home and tell Graham that you’re here and he’ll come over and . . .’ She didn’t know what would happen after that. All Molly knew was that
there would be trouble.

‘I’ll hide when she arrives,’ said Harvey, calmly. ‘I’ll go into the study bedroom and read the newspaper. I promise I’ll sit quietly in the corner on the
rocking chair.’

‘Would you mind?’ asked Molly, feeling her shoulders untense slightly at the thought of buying herself some extra time. ‘She only usually stays half an hour. And don’t
rock. It makes the floorboards creak.’

‘Of course I won’t mind and I promise to stay still,’ chuckled Harvey. ‘Although I would have liked to have seen the legend in the flesh. Dressed flesh, obviously.’
And he shuddered.

‘The sooner she comes the sooner she’ll go . . . oh she’s here. Quick, Harvey.’

Harvey toddled up the stairs as speedily as he could. ‘I’ll be as quiet as a little mouse,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Enjoy.’

‘Enjoy, ha!’ Molly batted the word back at him with a small explosive sound. She didn’t enjoy Sherry’s company at all. She was constantly on edge waiting for Sherry to
get around to saying what she had really come for. She was starting to suspect that despite the villa in Greece, despite the his and hers BMWs, despite the double-fronted house in a posh part of
Bretton, Graham’s financial situation wasn’t as healthy as it was cracked up to be. That would explain all the ‘this house is too big for you, Mother’ casual statements with
barbs attached and all the comments along the lines of ‘what a lovely retirement home Autumn Grange is’. Then again, he inherited a fortune from his father and grandmother. He
couldn’t have lost it all, could he?

Sherry came waddling up the path in a skirt that was far too short for her. At least her varicose veins were less noticeable now her legs were tanned.

She rang the bell and walked straight in as usual. ‘Hello, Molly,’ she called and leant towards her mother-in-law to kiss the air near her cheek. Her ghastly perfume enveloped Molly
like a cloud of mustard gas.

‘You look well,’ Molly forced herself to say. ‘Your hair’s gone lighter in the sun.’

‘Oh we’ve had a fabulous time. Gram and Archie send their love. They say they’ll see you soon. I’ve brought us an éclair each. Let’s go and have a cup of tea
and a catch-up. You can tell me everything that’s been happening to you whilst we were away.’

‘Oh there’s nothing to tell, really,’ shrugged Molly, following the enormous-bottomed Sherry into the kitchen. She had put on even more weight on holiday. Her hips stuck out
like two donkey panniers.

The chair groaned as if in pain when Sherry sat down at the table and took the éclairs out of the bag, licking the chocolate from her fingers whilst Molly boiled the kettle.

‘I think we’re going to sell Dream Hall and move somewhere smaller,’ said Sherry. She said it casually, but Molly knew there must be more to the story. The large house with the
gaudy frontage was their main status symbol. They wouldn’t have let it go lightly, whatever Sherry was trying to tell her.

Dream Hall. What a ridiculous name for a ridiculous building. Sherry had had the front façade painted with a pink bottom half and a yellow top half. It sat in their garden like a giant
trifle.

‘Oh?’ Molly poured the hot water into a warmed teapot.

‘Yes, it’s too big for just Gram and me. We’re rattling around in it now that Archie’s at university and unlikely to want to live with us any more.’ Sherry took a
mirror out of her bag and started pincering at a rough hair on the edge of her lip with her French-polished nails. ‘And much as I’ve enjoyed my holiday, I said to Gram I said,
“I’m getting a bit bored with Greece. Maybe we should sell this as well and have holidays in other places”.’

So they
were
having financial problems. She waited for more.

‘I’m looking forward to a smaller house. Less to clean and why waste all that money heating rooms you don’t use? We don’t need a games room any more. No one has played
snooker for years.’

‘I totally agree,’ said Molly as a spark of mischief ignited within her. She was feeling the influence of Harvey Hoyland far too much. She dropped a nugget of bait into the
conversation to see if Sherry would bite. ‘I feel that I need a smaller place too.’

She saw Sherry jerk forward in her chair, her interest sparked.

‘Do you? Is that how you feel?’

‘Yes, I’m rather lonely. I wouldn’t mind the company of other people my age.’

Molly, you naughty woman
, she giggled inwardly to herself.

Sherry bit hard down on her éclair. The cream squished out of the sides as if the cake had grown wings. Sherry extended her tongue and licked down two lengths. She could catch flies with
that tongue, Molly imagined Harvey saying.

‘I would love a house this size,’ Sherry said, through a mouthful of choux pastry. ‘We should live here and you should move into Autumn Grange.’ She let loose a tinkly
laugh as if she had made a joke, but Molly knew that Sherry’s head was already knitting plans together.

‘Oh yes, Autumn Grange. I remember you telling me about that place.’ She nodded in contemplation and smiled as she did so.

‘They have social clubs up at Autumn Grange. Do you remember me telling you? For non-residents as well. You should go up there and make some friends.’

‘Yes I think I might,’ replied Molly, although she had no intention of doing so. She didn’t want the éclair either. She cut the end piece off and ate it out of
politeness.

Sherry had finished hers and was eyeing up Molly’s.

‘Don’t you want that?’ she asked.

‘I did have rather a large breakfast.’

‘Waste not, want not.’ Sherry lunged for the bun. She seemed incredibly jolly – as if she’d just had some great news. ‘They’re from our local patisserie. I
hope we don’t move too far away. I don’t think I could survive without my weekly fix. Then again, you’ve got a lovely bakery around the corner, haven’t you? In fact I think
it’s even better than ours.’ She devoured the second éclair in two bites, with the ease of an anaconda swallowing a ferret.

‘Have you had some good weather over here? You look very mocha.’

‘Do I?’ replied Molly.

‘Yes, you do. Very well, in fact.’

Molly heard a small creak upstairs. Harvey had rocked on the chair, she could tell.

‘I think I’ll have another cup of tea, please. I’m a bit dry after those éclairs. Would you put the kettle on again, Mother? I think I’d like a fresh brew if you
don’t mind.’ Sherry rocked to her feet. ‘I’ll just pay a little visit. How can you be thirsty and want the toilet at the same time? Seems mad, doesn’t it?’ Again
that frothy laugh. She was a very happy bunny.

And with that she waddled up the stairs, leaving Molly to make a fresh pot of tea. It appeared that Sherry Beardsall was going to be there for another twenty minutes at least.

Upstairs Harvey tried not to rock in the chair. He broke off attention to his newspaper on hearing footsteps on the stairs and remained as still as he could, his ear trained to
pick up every sound. He heard the bathroom door open and then, a second later, he saw the door to the room he was sitting in creep open and an enormous fleshy woman with a mop of white blonde hair
tiptoed incongruously into the room. She didn’t see him because he was half-obscured by a wardrobe door and had a tartan cover pulled up to his nose. But he needn’t have worried because
she didn’t even glance at his side of the room; her attention was firmly fixed on the large desk.

As Harvey watched, she pulled something out of her skirt pocket and started poking it into the lock of the desk drawer. He wondered if she had tried to open it before, failed and come back with
a more specialised tool to trigger the lock. As she bent over to see if there was something blocking the hole, Harvey was presented with a sight that he never wanted to see again. A woman with an
arse like two giant uncooked dumplings should never wear a G string, he decided.

‘Fuck,’ the woman whispered under her breath. ‘Fuck fuck fuck.’

Harvey really tried to keep his mouth closed, but the brake badly needed attention.

‘You won’t find any pies in there, my dear. Only a last will and testament and the house deeds. Or maybe that’s what you are looking for?’

Sherry spun around, saw the man in the chair, threw whatever she had in her hand up in the air and screamed as if he were a poltergeist.

Seconds later the house shuddered as Sherry thundered down the stairs and crashed into Molly who was on her way to see what the commotion was all about, though she could make an intelligent
guess.

‘Ring the police. You’ve got a burglar upstairs.’

Oh, Harvey.

Then Harvey appeared in the doorway and Sherry screamed again. ‘There he is.’

‘He’s not a burglar, he’s a guest,’ explained Molly, casting an evil eye at Harvey.

‘A guest?’ exclaimed Sherry, her face screwed up with revulsion. ‘What do you mean
a guest
?’

‘Delighted to meet you. Name’s Harvey Hoyland.’ Impishly, Harvey extended his hand which Sherry viewed with disgust.

‘Harvey Hoyland?
The
Harvey Hoyland? The Harvey Hoyland you were married to, Molly?’

I’m going to kill you, Harvey Hoyland, when Sherry has gone.

‘Yes,’ Molly was forced to say.

Harvey, realising that Sherry wasn’t going to shake his hand, dropped it back by his side.

‘Sherry was looking for pies in your desk, Molly,’ he twinkled.

‘We’re not having this,’ growled Sherry, grabbing her handbag from the table. She was bright crimson in the face and the whites of her eyeballs contrasted madly with it.
‘I’ll see what my Gram has to say about this.’

‘Do give him my best,’ said Harvey called after her, with the smoothness of Cary Grant. ‘Tell him he still owes me a goldfish.’

Sherry teetered out of the house, rattling her car keys, and stomped down the path towards her car.

‘That was a very telling conversation you had with her, my love,’ said Harvey, watching Sherry through the window squeezing her bulk into the driver’s seat. He hoped the car
had reinforced suspension. ‘Heard every word through the floor. Voice like a bloody foghorn, but thank goodness for that. Selling up their assets, eh? And trying to bung you in an old
people’s home. What does that tell you, I wonder?’

‘Oh Harvey, what have you done?’ said Molly, slumping onto a chair and burying her head in her hands.

‘I’m lancing a boil,’ said Harvey. ‘I don’t want to leave you at the mercy of those two. So I’m bringing it on, as the youth of today say.’

‘Will, it’s bad news, I’m afraid,’ said Shaun, not comfortable at having to deliver it. ‘My labourer is coming back full-time tomorrow.’

Will nodded his understanding.

‘Look, Shaun, I’m really grateful for the work you’ve given me already.’

‘If I need you again, I’ll give you a ring,’ said Shaun. ‘I was talking to John Silkstone, who’s a building contractor in Oxworth. He mentioned he might have
something suitable soon.’

‘Well, I appreciate that,’ Will smiled. ‘And if I stop passing out when I get above the twelfth rung, I’ll get in touch with him.’

‘You ought to see a doctor about that,’ said Shaun. ‘I’m sure it’s fixable.’

‘I shall,’ said Will. He’d have to. Or he’d starve.

Back to the drawing board after today then
, he thought. Who would have reckoned he’d ever be worried about keeping a roof over his head in his profession?

*

‘My dear Molly, please don’t panic.’

But Harvey might as well have told the tide to stay back. Molly was mentally following Sherry on her way to Dream Hall. She would burst in and tell him all about finding Harvey in the bedroom
and Molly could envisage Graham going the same shade of beetroot purple that his father had when he was enraged. Graham would pick up his jacket and follow Sherry out to her car to ‘sort this
out immediately’. By her calculations, they would be here in ten minutes maximum.

She turned from the window back to Harvey, his mood annoyingly buoyant as he sat in the armchair conducting an imaginary orchestra with his foot.

‘Are you sure that’s what you saw? Tell me again.’

Harvey dropped a loud sigh. ‘Yes I’m very sure. Sherry tiptoed in, as far as a woman of that size can tiptoe anywhere, and she made straight for your desk and started poking around
in the lock with this.’ He held up the tool which he had retrieved from the floor after Sherry had dropped it. It was like a Swiss army knife, except all the arms looked suspiciously like
various kinds of lock-pickers.

‘What was she doing in that bedroom in the first place?’ Molly muttered to herself. So she’d been right to suspect that Sherry might be snooping around upstairs when she had
heard all those tell-tale creaks before.

‘I’m no Brain of Britain, my love, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d had a few cracks at opening that desk already and returned with some specialised equipment this
time. Do you keep anything important in it?’

‘Yes, all my bank books, premium bonds, some cash for emergencies, passport, house deeds, will.’

‘Yes, I suspected as much. You remember when you told me that things of value were going missing . . .’

But the conversation was cut short as the squeal of a car tyre dragged Molly’s attention back to the window.

‘I knew it, they’re here. They must have flown.’

‘Good, you’ll get some answers sooner rather than later then, won’t you?’ said Harvey, rising to his feet. He wouldn’t have admitted this to Molly but he was very
curious to see what the years had done to Graham. He couldn’t imagine that they’d ironed him out into a decent man who really did care for his mother. Well, his death might be imminent,
but he could pay Molly back in some way for her kindness. He could give her some temporary protection until her sister and Bernard came home at least.