“Agreed,” Miss Saltmarshe said, and dabbed at her lipstick-clad lips with a napkin. Pink lipstick shouldn’t have worked on a redhead, but it somehow did. Then she stretched out her hand. “Truce? Start over?”
“By all means,” Kivi said, and shook the woman’s hand. She tried not to notice how warm it felt. Or how soft.
“Now, I wonder…” Miss Saltmarshe stared down at her breakfast, then back up at Kivi. “How do you make this granola? It’s probably the best I’ve ever had, and I’d hate to go home without the recipe.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere,” Kivi quipped, trying to relax as they settled into the conversation. But privately she wasn’t so sure. Something about this woman was getting under her skin, and she couldn’t make up her mind whether she liked her or not. And there was no way she could call her Saskia. Or indeedMiss Saltmarshe,now she’d explicitly asked her not to. So she supposed she’d just have to call her nothing, for now.
Chapter Seven
Saskia
This trip is going to cost me a fortune in car parking charges,Saskia thought as she fed coins into the ancient-looking parking meter at Miltree beach. It was so decrepit that half the paint had rubbed off, and there was no way in hell that it would accept her debit card.Let’s hope that there’s somewhere in the village to get change.
She certainly wasn’t prepared to ask the magazine to pick up that charge, too. They had been extraordinarily generous, sending her to Cornwall for six weeks as part of their commission. Well, a month. They’d paid for a month. Saskia was paying for the other two weeks, as well as other expenses. She’d reasoned that a month wasn’t enough to get a proper feel for a place, especially not when you were writing some twenty-thousand words about it, and so she’d asked them to extend the accommodation booking. It was lucky that all of this had been booked so many months in advance. She could already tell that Sandy Dunes Guest House was popular, especially now they were easing into summer, and that it was one of the best places to stay out there.I’ll be sure to mention them in one of the articles. Probably the one about small businesses.
Which was the one on which she was focusing today. She’d come into the village as a starting point, and she intended to takeherself on a tour of what Kivi had referred to as ‘the shopping centre’. A hand-drawn map by Eva had pointed out the main amenities: a greengrocer, the bakery, a florist, a boutique and a pub. “There used to be a sweet-shop, but the pandemic pushed it under,” she’d said with a sad expression. Saskia made a mental note to mention that, too.
The shops were all centred around a four-way junction, just a few minutes’ walk from the beach. The pub took over one corner, with the boutique behind it. The greengrocer took up another corner, with the bakery behind that. One corner was empty – presumably the erstwhile sweet-shop – and the fourth corner was the florist. Saskia debated which to go for first, and then the presence of another customer exiting the greengrocer prompted her to head for there.
It was surprisingly dark, cool and musty inside, a contrast from the blinding sun outside. Saskia’s mouth twitched at the rustic set-up – it could have been straight out of a 1940s Blyton novel. Pallets of fresh produce lined one side, while chillers of fresh meat and deli products lined the other. One of the short ends held a freezer of ice cream and frozen veg, and the other held an old-fashioned-looking cash register. In the middle was a long line of back-to-back shelves, boasting mostly locally-made products. Her heart nearly seized with delight. The readers would adore hearing about this. She whipped her phone out, and crouched down to take an atmospheric picture of the grocery pallets.
“Can I help you?” came a voice from behind her, and she nearly jumped through the ceiling. While her back had been turned, an elderly man had come up behind her and was peering over her shoulder. “Why are you taking pictures of my shop?”
Ah. This must be Mr Elliot, the owner. She straightened up and held out her hand. “How do you do, Sir? I’m Saskia Saltmarshe, and I’m a writer forBritish Livingmagazine.”
She wasn’t officially, only for the next few weeks on commission, but it didn’t matter, because Mr Elliot clearly hadn’t heard of them. “Riiiiight,” he said sceptically, and looked at her expectantly. Shealmostfloundered, then remembered who she was, and secured her professional veneer in place.
“British Livinghave sent me down here for a few weeks to write a series of articles on Cornwall, and the appeal of living or visiting here. One of these articles is about small businesses, so I was hoping to start here, in Miltree. May I ask you a couple of questions?”
“No,” he said abruptly, and she almost flinched. “We’re full enough of tourists as it is? Do you know that half of the people who live here now weren’t even born here? So many DFL types, thinking that they can bring their bright city ideas down here and we’ll bend to them. It doesn’t work, and it never will. So you can tell your readers from me: we don’t need any more tourists. Not down here in Miltree. Try somewhere else.”
He turned around and stumped back off to his till, where he perched on a stool and glared at her, arms crossed. She certainly wasn’t staying where she wasn’t wanted, so she picked up her phone and headed for the door. Every inch of her bristled with indignation, and she couldn’t leave without saying something. She hadn’t earned her reputation as a spitfire for nothing.
“If you don’t mind me saying so, Mr Elliot, it’s a wonder you have a business at all with that attitude. If you’re like this with all the Down From London types, as you refer to them, what happens if they continue to move down here? If they continue to occupy the village? They won’t come in here when they’renot wanted, not with the ever-increasing rise in supermarket delivery. Then where will that leave you?”
And she swept out, head held high, before he could respond with anything else equally cutting. She got the impression that he’d be excellent in a debate, but she didn’t have the time or inclination to get into one right now.Whoa, what’s happened to me? ‘Argumentative’ used to be my middle name.
Luckily, she got a far nicer reception from the bakery. This time, she didn’t see the teenage girl who had served her yesterday – instead, she was greeted by a smiling woman in her early thirties. When Saskia asked whether the owner was about, she disappeared out the back, and reappeared with a portly man in his late sixties, who introduced himself as John.Are all these businesses male-owned?she wondered. When she introduced herself and stated her mission, he – and Felicia, the woman who had greeted her – were more than happy to be interviewed. They sat her down at a little table opposite John, with a cup of tea and a Chelsea bun for good measure.
“I launched this bakery in the early eighties,” John started, “and it’s been a stalwart since then. When my wife was alive, she ran a lot of community events from here, but after she died ten years ago, I had to focus on just running the business. Everything is baked by my two sons at our family property in Lygate, a few miles from here, and in the last couple of years, I’ve handed over a lot of the on-site work to my younger sister and her daughter. This has allowed us to open on Sundays – which became necessary after the pandemic, because we almost didn’t make it through. It was the cushion of tourist money that we’d built up that enabled us to survive the pandemic. We could stay open, being a food business, but so many people were reliant on the supermarkets and home delivery… and it nearly ended us.”
“So you’d say tourism is a good thing?” Saskia said, pushing her phone (which was recording) further towards the softly-spoken man. Perhaps he sensed this, because he cleared his throat and spoke up.
“Absolutely,” he said with fervour, and behind the counter, Felicia nodded. “Although, not everyone in the village would say as much.”
“I know – I’ve just been speaking to Mr Elliot next door,” Saskia said, and Felicia pulled a face. John rolled his eyes.
“You got Tommy, then,” he said. “He’s older than me, he is, and he doesn’t share many of my sentiments. His son, Freddie, is much more open-minded. When Tommy retires, I reckon he’ll revolutionise that little shop. Just like my family will probably revolutionise this place when I finally relinquish the reins. Get it a website, social media, all that lark…”
“You mean it doesn’t have them already?” Saskia was surprised. She would have thought that an online presence these days was crucial for small businesses.
“Not a squeak,” Felicia confirmed. “Other than a generic search engine listing showing our address, phone number and opening times.”
“Wow,” Saskia murmured.
“Don’t try to sway him,” Felicia shrugged, but she was smiling. “The stubborn mule won’t budge.”
“I won’t be in charge much longer,” John chuckled, stretching his arms behind his head. “I’m going to be seventy in September, and it’ll be high time for me to relax. I feel like the pandemic aged me about ten years, and my use-by date is fast approaching. But I’ll tell you this… there aren’t that many shopkeepers like me and Tommy around any more, Miss Saltmarshe. We’re notdependent on online tomfoolery, like all the businesses on the other side of the road. This side, we’re more traditional. Our lifeblood comes from word of mouth, not clicks of a mouse.”
