“Bring your own mug—love it.”
“And the coffee wouldn’t be some fancy forty quid a bag stuff. Just normal coffee.”
Winced a bit at this. But fine—we can still put some nice farm-shoppy touches on the flavor description on the chalkboard. “Amber tones,” “cinnamon-edged,” that sort of thing. I mean, who’s to know? It’s like wine, everyone’s just making it up.
“And any leftovers go to those families on the island who need it. We all know who they are. No fuss, we’d see it gets to where it should go.”
“I’d need a little more detail on that, but absolutely, we would want to avoid waste anyway.”
Galoshes put her pasty down. “Are you serious about this?”
“I’m serious about this. I realize we’ve been a bit heavy-handed here. This isn’t just a shop, it’s a community center. We need to make sure the changes reflect that, as well as making money.”
Galoshes folded her arms. “And tell Doc to tone down the wankery.”
I burst out laughing. “I might word it differently, but all right—we’ll keep it simple to begin with, shall we?”
After a long, agonizing moment, Galoshes nodded once.
“Really?” I said, my voice a bit too shrill. “You won’t block us at tonight’s meeting?”
“I wouldn’t block you,” Galoshes said, affronted.
“Right…”
“But I think Baptiste’s objections on animal rights grounds might be revoked, now you mention it.”
“Animal rights?”
“All that butter.”
I laughed again. Galoshes remained entirely straight-faced, adjusting her glasses, but there was maybe ahintof warmth in those eyes. Progress, definitely.
Just read back over all this and feel so great about it. Have got somewhere with Galoshes! She still doesn’t respect me, of course,but who cares? (…I care. Enormously. Find it hard to think about anything else, actually. But progress is progress, and at least now while I’m obsessing about impressing Galoshes I can do it next to the Bramblebay Farm Shop coffee machine.)
Next job is harvest festival planning. Ormer does harvest festival in a big way—there’s a tractor procession, orange leafy wreaths on every door on the Rue, the chocolate shop sets up a stall on the harbor selling gingerbread and pumpkin-spiced hot chocolate…but Bramblebay Farm has never been involved.
Which is ridiculous. We should be at theheartof harvest festival. We’re a farm! There is no harvest without us! So, buoyed up by coffee and biscuit success, am plotting new festival schemes while Red manages the till. Thinking donkeys should be involved. More soon.
Returned to the shop floor to find Red nowhere to be seen. That girl does a disappearing act like nobody else—often find she has vanished when Toby is around, and then reappears as though she was never gone—but nonetheless was quite surprised. She was supposed to be in charge while I stepped out to think about donkeys.
Then heard the sound of sniffling. Crying, unmistakably.
Crept toward the till. Red was crouched behind the counter, curls falling forward, shoulders shaking with sobs.
“Oh, Red, what is it?” I asked, coming around the counter to duck down beside her.
She jumped. “Shoot,” she said, tugging her sleeves over her hands to wipe her face, expertly dodging her piercings. “I’m so sorry, Charlie, I was just taking a minute, if I’d heard the door open I would have…”
“Don’t worry about it. Hang on.”
Hopped up and flicked our sign to CLOSED. People could wait a minute for their pumpkins and leeks.
“What’s going on, honey?”
She was sitting cross-legged on the floor now, staring miserably at her own feet.
“Please talk to me. Are you OK?”
