The Oddest Little Cornish Tea Shop: A charming and quirky romance for the beach Read online

  ‘Some bloody bird has only got in and done its business all over the conservatory, that’s what.’

  ‘Oh no. Have you let it out again?’

  Her heart hurt at the thought of some small, defenceless bird flapping wildly about the glass walls of the conservatory, desperate for a way out.

  ‘Long gone.’ Irene pursed her lips, looking at her accusingly. ‘Somebody left the riverside terrace door ajar overnight.’

  ‘Oops.’ That “somebody” was probably her, Charlie thought with a guilty start. She only hoped the bird hadn’t got hurt. ‘Poor thing.’

  ‘I cleaned up its doings. Had to change five red checked tablecloths though. That’s nearly all your spares gone.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I put the soiled ones in the laundry bag. For collection Monday.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Irene shook her head. ‘And us not even open yet.’

  ‘I know, it’s a nuisance. Thank you for doing that so promptly.’ Charlie nodded towards the broom. ‘Better put that away now and wash your hands. Time to open.’

  ‘Isn’t there going to be a ribbon?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘If it’s so grand, this reopening of yours, shouldn’t there be a ribbon across the front door?’ Irene looked at her expectantly, arms folded across the broom. ‘And a celebrity to cut it? Or a parish councillor, at least?’

  Charlie stared back at her, speechless.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Five minutes later, she handed a pair of kitchen scissors to Mrs Petals from the art gallery, who had apparently been born and brought up in the village, so was as close to a “local celebrity” as she could find at short notice.

  ‘It is with great joy, and by the power vested in me … ’ Mrs Petals began, then stopped at a burst of laughter from punters waiting behind her, and ended in a confused manner, ‘I now declare these Cornish Tea Rooms officially open!’

  Charlie clapped her hands and smiled with satisfaction as her neighbour cut the hastily strung pink ribbon across the entrance to the tea rooms.

  Open at last, she thought happily.

  Irene’s husband had arrived by then too, with their grown-up daughter Sally, who dutifully took a photo on her phone for the website. There was a smattering of applause from the waiting customers, then everyone piled inside to find a table.

  Babs had not emerged from the kitchen for the reopening ceremony, apparently still wrestling with the remains of a strawberry Pavlova that had gone “horribly wrong”. But nobody seemed to have missed her.

  ‘Congratulations, Charlotte,’ Mrs Petals said, handing back the scissors. ‘And good luck. You’re going to need it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Charlie said drily, only too aware of that, then hurried back inside. She found Irene dealing with their first-ever customer complaint, from a large gentleman with baggy shorts and a florid complexion.

  ‘Problem, Irene?’

  The large gentleman pointed crossly to his seat.

  One of the seat pads in the conservatory had been dirtied with what looked suspiciously like bird droppings. There was now a tell-tale stain on the back of his baggy shorts, as he turned round to demonstrate, much to the amusement of a small child watching from the next table. The man glared at the child, who hurriedly looked away, still giggling.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ Charlie whisked the dirty seat pad away in exchange for a clean one, making a mental note never to leave the terrace door open overnight again. ‘A bird got in.’

  The man grumbled something about ‘Health and Safety’ under his breath, as though Charlie needed more reminders of that. But he sat down without further complaint, and began instead to examine the squashed-looking brownie on his plate.

  ‘Told you so,’ Irene said in her ear, almost smugly, and then glanced across at her husband and daughter. They were studying the cake trolley where a large wasp could be seen – and heard – buzzing eagerly about the neatly arranged rows of baked goodies. ‘Oh look now, a wasp has got in too. Who’s going to deal with that, do you think?’

  Charlie groaned inwardly.

  She hated wasps.

  One wasp, quite unprovoked, had stung her on the bum during a school outing when she was twelve, and she hadn’t been able to sit down for days. She could still remember the crushing embarrassment of everyone on the bus back to school knowing what had happened, and chanting with glee, ‘Charlie got bit on the bum! Charlie got bit on the bum!’

  But watching with trepidation as the yellow-striped intruder buzzed about the cake trolley, Charlie became suddenly and terrifyingly aware of something far worse.

  The smell of something on fire.

  What the hell?

  Already, several customers had smelt it too, frowning and sniffing the air.

  ‘Is that … burning I can smell?’ one woman asked her friend in a penetrating voice, and yet more heads turned towards the kitchen.

  ‘Oh God, what now?’ Charlie thrust an order pad into her waitress’s hands. ‘Go and kill that bloody wasp, then take some more orders,’ she hissed.

  She dashed past a large blackboard cheerily announcing “DIALY SPECHALS” into the smoke-filled kitchen, and discovered Babs weeping noisily into her jam-stained pinny.

  ‘Babs? What is it?’ she gasped. ‘Speak up, what’s happened?’

  The miserable chef pointed to the island kitchen table, her face still hidden in her pinny. ‘Burnt … the … tea … cakes … ’

  ‘How badly burnt?’ Charlie plucked one blackened teacake off its wire tray and burnt her fingers, it was still so hot. She promptly dropped it. ‘Okay, pretty bad. You’ve incinerated them, in fact. Ouch, that hurt.’ She sucked on her tingling fingertips, shaking her head in disbelief over the charcoaled remains of the teacakes. ‘Hold on, I thought you were supposed to bake all these yesterday evening?’

  ‘Ran out of time,’ Babs said, adding in a muffled voice, ‘And the Pavlova is ruined. So that’s off the menu.’

  ‘Shit.’

  Babs emerged from her pinny with an accusing glare. Splodges of strawberry jam dotted her face and hair. ‘Language,’ she exclaimed, horrified.

  ‘Sorry, but … ’

  ‘I won’t abide bad language in my kitchen.’

  Charlie stared back at her. It’s my bloody kitchen, not yours, she was thinking crossly. But this was a time to pour oil on troubled waters, or balm, or whatever it was people poured at difficult moments, not to quibble over details.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a more measured tone. ‘Look, don’t worry about the teacakes. Let’s open a window and get rid of this burning smell. Then Irene can always run down to the mini-market and buy some ready-made cakes.’

  Bab almost screeched. ‘Ready-made?’

  ‘Only for today. I’m sure most people would prefer a nice cream tea anyway,’ she said, and gazing about the kitchen, spotted some misshapen brownies and the lopsided Pavlova. ‘Or one of your tasty home-made cakes.’

  But this was apparently not as soothing a remark as she had hoped. Babs disappeared back into her jammy pinny, gurgling something incoherently.

  ‘There, there.’ Charlie patted Babs on the shoulder awkwardly. ‘No need to cry.’

  Irene appeared in the kitchen doorway with her order pad, glanced at the smouldering teacakes, and then fixed them both with a look of silent disapprobation.

  ‘In fact, there’s no time to cry. Not even another second.’ Charlie gave Babs a comforting thump on the back that made the other woman jerk upright. ‘Look, the first orders are here. Isn’t that exciting? Now, are you feeling better? Excellent.’ She turned to Irene with an encouraging smile, nodding at her order pad. ‘What’s first, Irene?’

  ‘Five toasted teacakes with tea,’ Irene read aloud in a deadpan voice, ‘and two portions of Strawberry Pavlova with a pot of coffee.’

  Babs screamed.

  The morning did not go so badly though, even after that inauspicious start. Customers were plentiful, a few of
them locals curious to see the new decor in the refurbished tea rooms, many others passers-by on their way to the well-known harbour. And most of them bought at least one drink per head, frequently with cake of some kind or a sandwich. After some teething problems with the brand-new coffee machine that was supposed to do everything except make the bed, but actually refused to turn on at all until they’d rebooted its internal computer – twice – they ran into no further issues.

  Lunchtime business was impressively brisk too, and food orders kept coming into the early afternoon. Charlie lost count of the number of tuna melt paninis she had heated under the grill while juggling ices at the ice cream counter or making fruit crush as the sunshine grew hotter. Baked potatoes with chilli or grated cheese were popular choices, and nobody seemed to mind that the chocolate brownies looked a bit squashed.

  Mrs Petals came in for a snack at about three in the afternoon. Charlie took her order, but refused to take any payment for her prawn mayo sandwich with a cappuccino.

  ‘No, I insist,’ she said when Mrs Petals waved a five pound note at her. ‘You did the honours with the ribbon earlier. It’s the least I can do.’

  ‘Very kind of you, I must say.’ Mrs Petals took a deep bite of her sandwich and made an appreciative noise. ‘Delicious. Maybe a little too much salt, but …’ She glanced about the busy tea rooms, and there was a hint of jealousy in her tone as she murmured, ‘Well, you do seem to be doing well on your first day. I’m very pleased. No disasters yet?’

  Charlie crossed her fingers behind her back, smiled broadly, and said, ‘Of course not. Everything’s going swimmingly,’ pretending that misshapen brownies, burnt teacakes, and bird poo in the conservatory were not to be classified as disasters.

  And she was right.

  Because ten minutes later, when Mrs Petals had slipped back to work next door, somebody came in and ordered a crème brulée.

  Not a sinister move in itself, of course. But Babs, keen to prove her culinary prowess, insisted on using a hand-held torch to brown the sugar on top.

  ‘One crème brulée,’ she announced proudly, and Irene whisked the still warm order away to its waiting table.

  Then Babs put the still-burning torch down in a hurry, and turned away to stir a fresh batch of vegetarian chilli bubbling on the stove.

  ‘Because it was going a-stick,’ as she told Charlie later, in between noisy sobs. ‘I was so busy, I f ... f … forgot about the brulée torch.’

  Meanwhile, the torch, abandoned beneath a row of orders torn from Irene’s pad and suspended helpfully on a metal wall line, burnt merrily away until one of the orders caught fire. Then another. Then another.

  Then one of the burning orders fell onto a tea towel below, while Babs was tasting the chilli and wondering why on earth she could smell burning.

  Then the smoke alarm went off.

  Babs shrieked.

  Irene dashed into the kitchen, saw what she thought was a burning tea cloth, and whisked it hurriedly to the floor. Onto a floor trail of whisky Babs had spilt when trying to make an Irish coffee earlier and had failed to mop up.

  WHOOSH.

  ‘Oh no,’ Babs moaned.

  Within seconds, there was a small conflagration in the kitchen, and fire started creeping up the island table leg, where apparently more spillage of whisky had taken place.

  ‘The fire extinguisher,’ Babs cried, pointing with a shaking finger.

  ‘Where? Where?’

  ‘Behind the spice rack. No, right behind it. No, stuck to the wall.’ Babs bit her lip as Irene wrestled with the small bottle of extinguisher. ‘Point and shoot. Point and shoot.’

  ‘Yes, yes, hang on a tick.’

  But it turned out Irene had never used a kitchen fire extinguisher before, so paused to read the instructions first, her glasses propped forward on her nose, a look of increasing panic on her face.

  Which is when Charlie ran in from serving an outside table, deafened by the piercing shriek of the smoke alarm, and batted away thick smoke with both hands. ‘What have you done now? What the bloody hell is going on?’

  ‘Language,’ Babs shouted.

  At that moment, the state-of-the-art, high-powered sprinkler system kicked in. Not just in the kitchen, but throughout the busy tea rooms themselves. And water began to cascade merrily down from the ceilings, spraying everywhere indiscriminately.

  ‘Holy shhhhhhh ….’

  CHAPTER THREE

  Charlie finished her call and put down the phone handset. ‘The insurance company will cover it,’ she told Irene, ‘but I still have to pay the excess, and the premium will go up afterwards.’ She gazed about the soggy tea rooms in despair. Tablecloths still dripping, abandoned meals pooled in water, the art work on the walls ruined. ‘And we have to wait for an assessor to visit before we can open again. A Mr Fishbourne, apparently. He’s coming as soon as he can. Plus, there may be issues with the electrics which could mean everything being ripped out and rewired.’

  Irene shook her head. ‘What good is all that mumbo-jumbo to us?’

  ‘Not much, I’m sorry.’ Charlie sighed. ‘Look, you might as well go home. You and Babs.’

  ‘But we need to clean this place up.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘All on your own?’

  ‘It will give me something to do. To take my mind off what’s happened.’

  Irene hesitated, looking round at the debris. ‘Well … Only if you’re sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’ Charlie made a face as Babs appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, drying her wet hair with a towel that looked equally wet. ‘I wish I had better news for you both. But there’s no point trying to hide it. I can’t afford to give you full pay until we open again. I simply don’t have the resources. But I can offer half-pay for the next ten days, at least.’ She shrugged. ‘If the tea rooms aren’t open again by then, we’ll be in trouble.’

  ‘Doesn’t the insurance cover our pay?’

  ‘Apparently not for this. Or not with the policy I took out. The woman I spoke to was very apologetic but it was obvious she wasn’t going to budge. Not over sprinkler damage. They would only cover wages if the place had been gutted. Or there was subsidence. Or an Act of God.’

  ‘It felt like an Act of God.’

  Charlie couldn’t even smile. Her heart was too heavy. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said again.

  ‘I can’t survive on half-pay.’ Babs sounded outraged. ‘I’ve got cats to feed. Five of them. And Jess has just had another litter. She needs special food. It’s expensive, breeding.’

  ‘I know it’s hard. But I’m afraid it’s that, or … ’

  ‘Or I find myself another job?’

  Charlie bit her lip. She was feeling quite aggrieved over Babs’ attitude, given it was her negligence that had caused the fire in the first place. But she could understand the older woman’s unhappiness over a loss of pay. She was fairly unhappy herself.

  ‘That’s about the long and short of it, yes.’

  Babs threw the wet towel to the wet floor, and squelched over it in sodden ballet-style pumps. ‘Then you can stick your job. Never wanted it anyway. Nasty swear words all the time. And alcoholic coffees, when I told you I don’t hold with the demon drink. Talk about Satan’s helpers. I was after a job at the farmers’ market. But they wanted someone younger. Otherwise I’d never have set foot inside this place. Not with a curse on it.’

  Charlie stared at her, bemused. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You keep saying that, but you’re not. Well, I know when I’m not wanted.’ Babs grabbed her coat and bag – both wet – from the staff cupboard, then headed clumsily for the door, knocking several chairs over in her wake. ‘Enjoy being cursed. Tatty-bye.’

  Charlie buried her head in her hands.

  This isn’t happening, she kept thinking. Simply not happening. I’m going to wake up any minute and it will all have been a dream …

  Irene was unfastening her damp apron, though she was the driest of them all, h
aving had the good sense to run outside with the customers once the sprinklers came on.

  She gave Charlie a wan smile. ‘I’ll be off too. Though don’t worry about me quitting. I can manage on half-pay for now. Ten days, you said?’

  ‘It might be sooner than that, if the insurance company can get an assessor out here by Monday.’

  ‘Well, fingers crossed for that.’ Irene hesitated. ‘I’ve left my bag upstairs. Do you mind?’

  ‘Go ahead, the door’s not locked.’ She watched Irene head for the stairs up to the small flat above the tea rooms where Charlie lived. ‘Wait, Irene …’

  The waitress stopped, looking back in surprise. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you believe what Babs said? About the tea rooms being cursed?’

  ‘I’m not soft in the head like that one.’ Irene shook her head, laughing. ‘Dizzy, that’s Babs. Pay no attention to her nonsense. That weren’t no curse, what happened today. It was just a silly old accident, that’s all.’

  Charlie smiled. ‘Thanks.’

  It was just an accident, she told herself firmly, and tried not to think the worst. There isn’t a curse on this place. That’s superstitious rubbish.

  Upstairs, Irene slammed the door to the flat and started back down the narrow stairs.

  Then she let out a cry.

  Charlie ran to the back of the tea rooms at the sound of thuds, followed by a terrible moaning. She found Irene crumpled in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, clutching her leg at an awful angle.

  ‘Oh my God, are you all right?’

  ‘I slipped,’ Irene whispered, staring up at her through swimming eyes. ‘Missed a step, I did. Best call a … an ambulance.’

  ‘An ambulance?’

  Irene nodded painfully, and looked down at her crooked leg, saying with a gasp, ‘I think I’ve only gone and broke my bloody leg.’

  When she finally got home from the hospital that evening, Charlie wandered through the dark tea rooms, trying to sidestep pools of water still lying on the floor, then crawled exhausted up the stairs for an early night. Yes, the place was an unholy wreck. Yes, it smelt of burning and damp and several dozen now mushy cream teas.