11 The Teashop on the Corner (8 page)

A letter had arrived from Julie’s solicitor demanding that Carla vacate the property by the last day of June. Carla didn’t know if she should see a solicitor as well. She felt numb
and, for the first time, very hungry. She tipped three Weetabix into a bowl then realised that the two-pinter of milk in her fridge had the lumpy consistency of old yogurt. She walked to the shop
down the road for some fresh and a loaf and a tub of butter. It was the first time she had done any shopping since before Martin had died. The Weetabix tasted bland and unappetising in her mouth,
despite her ravenous hunger, but she forced it down. Before that, she couldn’t remember when she had last eaten. Her jeans were hanging from her.

She didn’t know what to do with herself. She didn’t even know what day it was. How long was it until the end of June? Where would she go? How could she pack up and leave – she
barely had enough energy to brush her teeth. She wished Theresa was home; then again she wished she wasn’t. She didn’t want Theresa to walk through the door all full of smiles and
sunshine and for Carla to fall on her sobbing. She couldn’t remember when Theresa was coming back. The last Monday in May was ringing a bell for some reason.

There was a knock at the back door and it was pushed open by whoever was on the outside and in walked Theresa, all smiles and sunshine.

‘Coo-ee. Guess who?’ Then the smile dropped from the tanned face. ‘Jesus. Have you been on a diet?’

And despite her best intentions not to, Carla fell on her best friend sobbing.

Molly was determined to find the Royal Doulton figurine. It had to be in this house somewhere because she wouldn’t have thrown it out. Her compact and pen might have been
mislaid or accidentally fallen out of her handbag, but a figurine was harder to lose and it was needling her that she couldn’t find it. It wasn’t in any of the obvious places, so she
started to look in the more obscure ones, secretly hoping that she wouldn’t find it at the back of a drawer or in a box of photographs – because what would that say about her mental
state if she had put it in there and couldn’t remember doing so?

There was nothing in the wardrobe or the large bedding chest. There was no trace of it in the beautiful old rolltop desk which used to belong to dear Mr Brandywine senior, which he always
promised Molly she would have – and the family had honoured that promise. Molly could never think of Emma and George Brandywine without a fond smile. They were the kindest, most gentle couple
she had ever met. She had loved them and grieved for them as a true daughter would when they died.

Molly kept a treasure box in the deep bottom left drawer of the old desk. If the figurine was anywhere other than on the shelf, the odds were that she had mistakenly put it in there – but
when she took off the lid, it was clearly not inside. Top of the pile of contents was a card from Emma and George congratulating her on getting her first job as Dr Dodworth’s receptionist.
Inside, Emma’s scrolling sentiment was written in her scratchy fine ink pen.
We are so proud of you, Molly. We know you will make a wonderful receptionist. With Lots of Love, ‘Ma
& Pa’.

It had begun as a joke, Molly referring to them as Ma and Pa, but it stuck. She suspected the Brandywines knew how much she wanted someone to call parents and they accepted their titles
willingly. Molly’s eyes filled with unshed tears and she blinked hard to stop more rising. A thought of Ma and Pa Brandywine visited her every day without fail.

Underneath was a twenty-first birthday card to her from Bernard and Margaret. It had been scented, but the fragrance of roses was long gone. Molly couldn’t even remember how she celebrated
that birthday. She was married then, but her life was a sham, she was miserable and low and the youthful years that should have been filled with hope and a new beginning were worse than those of
her earlier life of confusion and helplessness. There was no reference to Edwin Beardsall in her box. She had not carried one single good memory of her ex-husband forward.

Next in the pile was the Mother’s Day card Graham had made at primary school. The front had a picture of a daffodil on it, a cup from an egg carton painted orange forming the
flower’s trumpet. It was the only hand-made card she had ever received, and that was because the kind teacher at school had posted it to her directly. She had been under strict instructions
to send any Mother’s Day cards he made to his paternal grandmother, not to Molly, and so she had helped Graham make another in secret at playtime. The glue was failing and the cup had almost
fallen off entirely. Molly’s finger lightly traced the large heavily-looped letters: ‘To My Mother’. He had never called her mum, only ever mother.

There was her school report card. It read:

The ‘unconfrontational’ comment was an indirect reference to her sister, whom Miss Wolf had found very confrontational. Their teacher was a horrible old bat, Molly
chuckled to herself. She hadn’t liked any of her pupils very much, and Margaret least of all. She had been terribly unfair to . . . what was her name . . . Phyllis . . . Phyllis Wood, that
was it. Phyllis came from a very poor family: her clothes were often stained and tatty and she wore the same socks day after day. Miss Wolf had made Phyllis stand on a chair as an example of how
not
to dress for school and Phyllis had been crying until Margaret grabbed her hand and pulled her down from her pedestal of ridicule. Before Miss Wolf could get her words out, Margaret
had told her that she was evil and that their uncle was a solicitor and Margaret was going to tell him what she had done to Phyllis and persuade Mr and Mrs Wood to press charges.

Miss Wolf had stuck her face in Molly’s and demanded of her: ‘Is your uncle a solicitor?’ She had known that Molly wouldn’t dare lie to her.

‘Yes,’ replied Molly, hoping Miss Wolf hadn’t noticed the nervous gulp in her throat. ‘Our mother’s brother, Uncle Frederick. He works in Leeds, for the
court.’ Deception didn’t come easy to Molly, but she would rather tell a lie than get Margaret into trouble.

Molly hadn’t been able to sleep properly for weeks, thinking that Miss Wolf was going to ask their mother and father if Uncle Frederick really was a solicitor. They didn’t even have
an uncle. But Miss Wolf never did. And she never put Phyllis Wood on a chair again and mocked her either.

Molly shivered. Miss Wolf had turned out to be an angel compared to some people she had encountered in her life. She could have laughed when the next card in the pile came from
him.
A
postcard, from Blackpool. Harvey Hoyland. The biggest devil of them all.

He always had such lovely handwriting. She had once looked up his wide-spaced, slanting style in a graphology book to see what it said about him: Trustworthy, loyal and
well-adjusted. Enjoyed freedom and didn’t like to be hemmed in. Well, the last part of that analysis was as true as the first part wasn’t.

He had been gone three months when that postcard had arrived and she hadn’t known what to make of it. Even now she could recall the quickening in her heart when she plucked it out of the
letter-box. She analysed it for days: did it mean he wanted her to go up to Blackpool and find him? Did he really miss her? Why had he sent it if he didn’t miss her? What would his
fancy-piece think about him sending a postcard to his estranged wife? Did he mean he wished Molly was there as well as, or instead of, her? Was the front picture of a child on a donkey of any
significance? Or was he rubbing it in by telling her that life was so good for him now that he wished she were here to witness it? She didn’t know and never would.

He didn’t write again. He slipped out of her life like a shadow runs from the sun, never asking for anything in the divorce settlement. She had hated him so much for the silence which was
a torture. Why had she kept that damned postcard anyway? It held a ridiculous power to stir up settled waters within her where old feelings still subsisted in glorious technicolour, even now after
twenty-eight years. Molly made to tear it in two, rip it in shreds the way that Harvey Hoyland had ripped up her heart. It wasn’t the first time that she had tried to rid herself of it, but
she had never managed to. This time was no exception. She hurriedly put the lid on the box and stuffed it back in the desk drawer. Out of sight, out of mind.

She wished she could have wiped the blackboard of her life clean and started again: been more like Margaret, stood up to Edwin, run away with her son and never let his father or grandmother see
him again.
And what about Harvey Hoyland?
A voice in her head asked her. And she didn’t know the answer. Half of her would never have said yes to agreeing to go to the pictures with
him that frosty November night when she had slipped on a patch of ice in the town centre and he’d caught her. Half of her would have given him free rein to all the parts of her heart and her
mind to which she had denied him entry.

Molly shook her head as if trying to purge it of the vision of her second ex-husband. There was no point in philosophising about him. She would never see him again. He could even be dead and
buried. He smoked, he drank rough spirits, though he was more likely to have been murdered by some husband whose wife he had stolen or by a gambling-house owner to whom he owed money than to die
peacefully alone in a bed.

Molly carried on with the business of searching for the figurine, but she didn’t find it.

Will went out at nine a.m. exactly to catch the train for a meeting with his accountant in Huddersfield, who sighed and shook his head a lot at him, and then he went to pick up
his new vehicle – a battered Nissan white van which his regular car mechanic had bought at an auction and kindly offered him first refusal on after hearing about his troubles. Will was
touched by his thoughtfulness and said yes on the spot. Cosmetically, it looked shot at, but it was still a snip at eight hundred pounds. A very short time ago, eight hundred pounds would have just
about covered the cost of two wheels on his Jaguar, and he wouldn’t have thought twice about the expense. Ironically, his first ever car had been an old Nissan and now he had gone full loop
back to the beginning. Still, it would be a useful runaround with a sound engine and it would get him to where he wanted to go without haemorrhaging petrol and he would just have to get used to
travelling from A to B without turning heads for the foreseeable future.

By the time he arrived back home, he opened the front door to find that Nicole had returned and gone through the house like a locust. It was stripped. He didn’t mind that she had taken the
dining table and ten upholstered chairs or the swanky Harrods dinner service that had been a wedding present to them
both –
or even the display cabinet that housed the swanky dinner
service. He didn’t even mind that the huge leather sofas were gone, or the baby grand piano that she had insisted she wanted for Christmas but couldn’t even bang out Chopsticks on it.
He even laughed that she had taken the Christmas tree from the garage – and the box of baubles and tinsel. Jesus – she must have had a team of joiners primed to disassemble their ornate
four-poster and the huge French armoire wardrobes and transport them to waiting delivery vans.

She did have the decency to leave him the double bed in the spare room – and the bedding on it. One bath towel, one cup, one plate, one knife, one fork and one spoon. She also left the
kettle and all the food in the cupboards and the built-in fridge, dishwasher and washing machine. But what he couldn’t – and wouldn’t – stomach was the sight of
his
open safe in their bedroom. When he checked it, it had been wiped clean of the Tag Heuer watch she bought him for Christmas – not surprisingly – but also of the small shell box in which
he kept his mother’s wedding and engagement rings, his dad’s wedding band and his sister’s twenty-first emerald ring, which their parents had bought her two months before she died
of leukaemia.

Will hadn’t been really angry for a long time. He’d been roused to a few expletives when Yorkshire Stone Homes said they were making an immediate bank transfer which would save his
company, only to find that they’d reneged on the promise and the money never appeared in his account, driving the last nail into his financial coffin; but the anger bubbling through his blood
now took fury to another level. He picked up the keys of his new old van and flounced out of the near-naked house, each stride of his long legs powered by pure unadultered rage.

Nicole’s parents lived in one of the very grand houses at the back of Barnsley park. The Views had a long private drive flanked by romantic stone armless statues every ten yards. Will
passed them in a blur of speed. He hoped that Barnaby Whitlaw wouldn’t set the dogs on him – or, worse, his wife Penelope – before he got to Nicole. Then again, the way he felt,
he could have taken them all on: wife, parents, Dobermanns, the lot.

Parked on the large paved circle outside the house were two delivery vans, and men were carrying Will’s furniture out of them and into one of the outbuildings. He slammed on the brake
which squealed like a terrified mouse. The blubbery-bodied Barnaby Whitlaw appeared as soon as he spotted his son-in-law springing out of the old white van. He opened his mouth to speak but Will
got the first words in.

‘Where is she?’

‘If you mean Nicole, then she isn’t in . . .’

Will had already noticed Nicole’s sports car parked in the open garage. She didn’t walk anywhere, so he knew the likelihood was that she was in the house.

‘Unless you want an almighty show in front of the delivery men, Barnaby, I suggest you get her out here now.’

Penelope Whitlaw came striding out of the front door, smoothing her steel-grey hair away from her face as if she meant business.