The Oddest Little Cornish Tea Shop

by Beth Good

Genres: Women's Fiction

Synopsis

It's a big day for Charlie Bell - the grand reopening of her Aunt Pansy's long-closed tea rooms in Tremevissey, a quaint Cornish seaside resort. But not everyone is chuffed for Charlie. The tea rooms are cursed, locals say. For Pansy was cruelly jilted by her lover, and walked out into the Atlantic Ocean, never to return. Charlie dismisses the 'curse' as superstitious nonsense, of course. But by the end of the first day, her world is in tatters, and she's not even sure the tea rooms can open for a second day of trading. Then in walks a rugged, taciturn man with a sexy smile and everything he owns on his back, looking for a summer job …Is Gideon Petherick an angel in disguise? Or is history about to repeat itself?

Release date: August 16, 2018

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 100

Sample

‘This is for you, Aunt Pansy,’ Charlie Bell said under her breath, with a mental nod to the woman who had first opened these tea rooms in sunny Tremevissey all those years ago. Over two decades ago, in fact.

Though it was almost as long since tragedy had struck, leaving the village shocked and her grandmother bereaved.

She waddled outside with her new sign, the words ‘CORNISH TEA ROOMS: GRAND REOPENING TODAY, 10.30A.M.’ chalked across its shiny black surface.

‘And for you too, Grandma Cornish,’ she added, grateful to the woman who had left her this somewhat decaying but still lovely property in her will, bypassing her parents, whose only interest in life appeared to be the walking holiday centre they ran in Kenya, where they had emigrated years before. ‘One hour to go before the tea rooms reopen. I hope I do you both proud.’

Thankfully the tea rooms were rather less decaying now she had spent a small fortune on refurbishments and a state-of-the-art fire safety system.

She set the A-board out on the pavement and stepped back to admire it. Then promptly decided to move the sign further out towards the kerb. So passing cars could see it better as they headed for the harbour car park.

‘Goodness, be careful.’ Irene, her head waitress, was watching from the side door of the tea rooms. ‘You look like you’re about to lay an egg.’

Her head waitress and her only waitress, truth be told.

Grey-haired, lethargic, and a bit on the disapproving side, Irene was not the enthusiastic helper Charlie had been hoping for when she first started this mad venture.

She had originally envisaged someone young and full of energy for her head waitress. But it seemed all the students in these parts were either sitting examinations or heading off to backpack around Australia. So it had been Irene she hired, and an even older woman, Joyce, who had been taken into hospital last week with a suspected heart condition.

Leaving her with only Irene to wait tables. And herself, of course.

Still, she comforted herself, applications for summer jobs at the tea rooms were bound to improve as the season hotted up. It was only early May, after all, and although the recent warm weather had brought a few tourists to their remote corner of the Cornish coast, the village was still relatively quiet.

‘You think it’s so easy, you try picking it up,’ Charlie replied, puffing as she found an ideal resting place for the sign.

‘Such a fuss.’ Irene tried to lift it, then gave up, somewhat red in the face. ‘Grief, woman, what’s it made of? Lead?’

‘Weighs a ton, doesn’t it?’ Charlie bustled her inside. ‘Pretty, though, and won't blow over.’

She checked her watch for about the twenty-fifth time that morning. There was still an hour to go before the grand reopening. She hesitated, then turned over the sign hanging on the glass door from Closed to Open.

Catching Irene’s sideways glance, she shrugged. ‘In case I forget later. There are still about a hundred things left to tick off on my to-do list. Now that’s one less to worry about.’ She propped the door open with a chair. ‘Besides, if we leave this door open, no one will see the Open sign from the street.’

‘But if you leave the door open like that,’ Irene said drily, ‘they won’t need to see the sign. They’ll think we’re already open.’

‘True.’ Charlie blinked. ‘Then I’ll just have to ask anyone who comes in, politely but firmly, to come back later.’

‘Good,’ was Irene’s tart response, who seemed unlikely ever to make Cheeriest Employee of the Week. ‘Because we still have loads to do before we can start serving.’

‘For instance?’

‘Well, apart from checking all the sauce bottles, and measuring the salt and pepper cellars, and filling the cutlery drawers . . .’ Irene began to count the jobs off on her knobbly fingers. ‘All the pavement tables and chairs need to go outside, today’s Specials need to be chalked onto the wall board, and Bab’s up to her eyeballs in clotted cream in the kitchen. She’s prepping cream teas for a hundred covers, like you suggested. Someone ought to help her before she drowns in strawberry jam.’

Babs was her chef-cum-baker, who seemed far less experienced than her CV had suggested. Which was yet another thing to worry about, but Charlie was trying to keep a happy face on. At least until after this first week was finished.

‘I’ll do the Specials board,’ Charlie said, rooting about for the mini bucket of coloured chalk pens behind the counter.

‘I can’t do the tables and chairs,’ Irene told her in an injured tone. ‘Not all on my own. Not with my bad back.’

‘Your back, of course.’ Charlie managed a faint smile. Another reason why she had wanted a student. It was true that experience ought to count more than the ability to move about in a timely fashion, but she could really do with someone whole and hale right now. ‘Fine, okay. I’ll do the tables and chairs. You do the board.’

‘Don’t blame me if the writing’s a bit wobbly, though,’ Irene warned her, grabbing the container of chalk pens. She nodded towards the outside sign. ‘Like that one there. I did my best. But I told you, I’m not much of an artist.’

‘That’s not a problem. Just make sure all the spelling is accurate. And the apostrophes. People always notice when the apostrophes are wrong.’

‘Can’t do punctuation, sorry.’ Irene picked up a green chalk pen and glared at it accusingly, as though it was to blame for all her shortcomings. ‘I was rubbish at English at school. Besides, you never said anything about punctuation at the interview.’

‘Well, so long as it’s spelled correctly –’

‘Can’t spell too good neither.’ But when Charlie reached reluctantly for the bucket, Irene clutched it to her chest. ‘Still, I’ll do my best. Rather Specials than tables and chairs, thank you very much.’

And with that, Irene scurried away to fill out the board.

Charlie stared after her in mild annoyance, then picked up one of the round metal tables and carried it outside. That woman could move surprisingly fast for someone with chronic back pain, she thought suspiciously. In fact – though she disliked thinking the worst about anyone – there only ever seemed to be something wrong with Irene’s back when she was called upon to do a job she didn’t like.

‘You ought to be stricter with that one,’ Mrs Petals said from the door of the art gallery next door, making her jump.

Charlie set the metal table down with a distinct crack and turned to look at her neighbour. ‘Sorry?’

Mrs Petals was in her early fifties, with a huge white-blonde knot of hair that sat like a spider's nest on the back of her head. She was tall and spindly, with a deep voice that made people look twice, and always wore the same long, brownish-grey cardigan, whatever the weather, over a range of checked pinafore dresses or corduroy slacks.

Her voice deepened even further now. ‘You’re the boss, not Irene. You need to make sure she knows that. She’ll be running rings round you within a week if you let her get away with picking and choosing jobs like that.’

Blimey. The woman must have ears like a bat, Charlie thought.

‘Thanks for the tip,’ Charlie said sharply, feeling a little foolish now. Why couldn’t Mrs Petals mind her own business?

But Mrs Petals was not wrong, she had to admit. Charlie was the boss, not Irene. The problem was, she was not used to being the boss, and both Babs and Irene knew it and were cheerfully taking advantage of her inexperience.

It had to stop.

This was her first day of trading, and already Irene was refusing to take her orders, and Babs had an odd way of pretending to be deaf when told to do something in a different way than the one she was used to.

If she couldn’t command the respect of her staff today, of all days, at the grand reopening of her aunt’s tea rooms, then she probably never would.

But how to achieve authority?

She simply wasn’t a shouter, or even strict by nature. Yet she couldn’t see any other way to get them in line.

The phone rang in the art gallery, and Mrs Petals scuttled back inside. ‘Good luck with the reopening, Charlie,’ she called over her shoulder, then the door to the gallery shut with a jangling of bells.

Charlie rolled up her sleeves, then got on with shifting the rest of the metal tables and matching chairs outside onto the small pavement area designated for outdoor eating. It was hard work, and she was soon panting and perspiring, a little concerned she would not get the job done before opening time.

But at least the weather was clearing up. By the time she lumbered out with the last few chairs, the clouds that had been obscuring the sun all morning finally rolled away, and the Cornish resort of Tremevissey lay bathed in May sunshine.

‘What a gorgeous day it’s turning out to be,’ she said cheerily to the old lady hobbling past the tea rooms on a stick, a local eccentric called Mrs Trevellyan. Nobody knew quite how old she was, but her age was rumoured to be heading towards one hundred. Certainly she had outlived everyone in the village, people said, and most of the inhabitants of the Cornish coast too. ‘A lovely day to reopen Pansy’s tea rooms. Don’t you agree, Mrs Trevellyan?’

But Mrs Trevellyan did not smile in return.

‘Come to no good, all this,’ she replied instead, in a gnarled old Cornish accent, and spat on the pavement right beside the plastic bowl set out for thirsty dogs. ‘See if it don. . .