Chapter 11
‘You want me to do your accounts? I thought you were meant to be cheering me up, not giving me work to do!’
‘I’ll pay you. I’m not asking you to do it for free.’ Lili hadn’t expected Abigail to jump at the idea. The look on her face said that she still wasn’t keen, even if she was being paid. ‘At least take a look at them for me. I haven’t been doing this long, but I just see the months flying by and when I come to submit my tax return, it will be a mess. I’m also running the other landscaping business, so it’s all getting a bit tricky.’
They were standing in the converted attic of The Potting Shed. Lili had introduced Abigail to Zoe as they made their way towards the back of the shop, where a flight of carpeted stairs rose to the first floor. In the eaves was a desk with an ancient computer where Lili could sit nursing the headache she got from trying to make her figures add up while staring out of the small window at the courtyard below.
Abigail sat down on the old-fashioned leather chair and pulled herself forward to the desk. She stared at the computer. ‘This looks like something out of the … the …’ Unable to pick the right decade, Abigail turned in her seat to look at Lili. ‘Where did you get this from?’
‘The previous owner. She’s retired now.’
Abigail groaned. ‘No kidding.’
Lili thought of Ray’s wife, Sarah. This had been her hobby in retirement, but when her son and her grandson had moved there from London, she had decided to stop work altogether. She told Abigail all this.
‘That makes sense. So, basically everything that came with The Potting Shed – including this … thisthing– was still here.’
Lili nodded.
‘I can’t work on this.’
Lili’s shoulder’s sagged. She’d had a feeling Abigail would say that.
‘But I can work with this view.’
Lili stood to one side of the desk and caught Abigail smiling as she stared out of the window into Cobblers Yard. The old-fashioned store fronts with bowed leaded windows painted in vintage greens and browns really caught the attention and gave the yard its distinctive feel, as though one had just stepped into a Dickensian novel.
Lili smiled too. She remembered the first time she’d set foot in this yard, with her friend’s daughter, Maisie, in tow. It had been pouring with rain and she had been looking for an art and craft shop to get Maisie a kit to turn the amber she had found on the beach into a necklace or a bracelet. She hadn’t found one. Instead, Maisie had walked out of the shop – Ray’s shop, as it was then – with an easel and some paints.
Lili glanced across the yard. Ray wasn’t a shopkeeper; he’d only taken it on to be near his soon-to-be ex-wife. As soon as Sarah had thrown in the towel on The Potting Shed, he had done the same with his shop. Ray was far better off running his heir-hunting business.
Lili hoped that the art and craft shop would soon have a new proprietor. Otherwise, she was afraid that in time, it would start to look just as neglected as the old bookshop next door with its window display of bestsellers from yesteryear full of cobwebs.
Ray had told Lili that nobody had quite got to the bottom of who owned the place and why it had stood empty for so long. As an heir-hunter, he had been looking into it, trying to discover if the owner was deceased in order to find their descendants – if there were any. He’d said it wouldn’t be a bad inheritance, a little business premises with a flat above to live in. So far, he hadn’t had much luck.
There weren’t many shops in Cobblers Yard; six in all. Lili had given Abigail a brief tour before they’d stepped into The Potting Shed. As well as the art and craft shop, the flower shop and the forgotten bookshop, as she called it, there was Reggie’smusic shop, which sold string instruments, guitars, violins and violas. Lili pointed to the charity shop next door which sold all sorts and was run by two old ladies called Mabel and Marjorie. They were sisters who’d both lost their husbands, and they were very entertaining but outspoken old ladies. There was a friendly rivalry between them and Reggie.
Lili loved it in Cobblers Yard, even though just then she was spending a lot less time there than she would have liked. She could tell when Abigail walked through the narrow alleyway and entered the yard that she was taken aback. She’d never found this place before, in all the years she’d lived near Aldeburgh before moving away, but she immediately loved it too.
Abigail had been to Aldeburgh before – many times. She’d grown up in this area, along the coast in a little coastal community, a small village called Shingle Cove. The village had one street. Lili enjoyed visiting the beautiful, untamed stretch of sandy beach. There were no toilets, no little cafés or promenade or even a car park. It was as though that stretch of beach, that sheltered cove, belonged only to those who lived there.
Who needed facilities when you could use the loo in the comfort of your own home, leave your car outside your house, walk out of your door with a cup of tea in your hand, and stroll the few hundred yards down to the beach?
Lili loved it there. If she could afford it, and if ever a house came on the market there, she would buy one without hesitation. It was such a shame that Abigail didn’t feel the same way; it was a tragedy that her life there had been blighted by the loss of her father. She had an older brother who still lived in the area, working in Sizewell B, the power plant a few miles up the road, and volunteering for the RNLI.
Lili had heard that Abigail’s half-sister had just qualified as a vet after years of training, but that she was still looking for a position. In the meantime, she was back home, helping her mother run their guesthouse.
Lili couldn’t stop thinking about that beach. When she stepped on to that beautiful but often deserted stretch of beach, she felt she had entered another world where mobile phones, cars, and computers didn’t exist. That was probably the reason Abigail’s mother’s little guesthouse did so well with returners. It was so peaceful and otherworldly. She imagined their guests went there to escape.
Abigail told her that her mother had spent the insurance pay out from her husband’s death on the unusual three-storey detached guesthouse. It was the last property in the street, and some of its rooms had views of the beach and sea.
Lili thought, in hindsight, that it would have been much better if Abigail had stayed at her mother’s guesthouse instead of at the cottage. At least she would have had some company. She decided to raise the issue with her friend. ‘So, have you spoken to your family yet about the cottage?’ she asked.About anything, Lili thought of adding. She doubted that Abigail had contacted them at all.
Abigail shook her head, her demeanour suggesting that she didn’t want to talk about it.
Lili looked at her ancient hand-me-down computer and changed the subject. ‘So, what am I going to do about the computer?’
‘You’ll most definitely have to get a new one.Or a laptop would be better.In the meantime, I can transfer whatever you’ve got on here on to my laptop. Then we can take it from there.’