‘No, I don’t know how much longer she will be, it could be another hour or more.’
‘Well, why don’t you at least take a seat.’ Xander indicated the bench behind her and she reluctantly sat down.
Xander was just about to walk away when the shop door, or rather what was left of it after the firefighters had broken it down, opened. Immy stood up holding her breath as Coral came out looking very serious. Xander took Immy’s hand.
‘It will be fine,’ Xander whispered but it didn’t help to reassure her. Her mouth was dry and she felt sick.
Coral approached them. ‘I’ve checked everything over very carefully. I’m afraid to say there is a lot of superficial damage. All of the furniture and fittings inthe shop, the shelves, sweet dispensers, even the flooring and wall hangings are completely beyond repair. You’ll also need a new till. There’s a lot of cleaning up to do to get rid of the sweet residue, so much of that has melted and it will take a lot of industrial-strength cleaner to get that up. Honestly, I’ve never seen anything that bad in all my years of doing this job, it looks like melted plastic. Everything in the stockroom has gone. It seems that the fire started from an electrical fault near the back of the shop, possibly the till, so I highly recommend you get the electrics looked at throughout the whole building before you continue to use any electricity.’
Immy didn’t want to get her hopes up about the fact that Coral hadn’t mentioned anything serious yet. She might be starting off with the easy stuff and about to lead on to the harder stuff.
‘Apart from that, the building is structurally sound, there has been no damage to anything that could impact the integrity of the building. I imagine a lot of that is to do with the speed that the fire was put out. I’ve seen far far worse than this because the fire was not spotted in time to save it. The flat above is OK to return to and you can return to the shop at any time to start clearing this up. I will write a full report which I’ll send to you and copy in the mayor.’
‘Oh my god, thank you so much. I was so worried about what you would find.’
‘As I said, the clear-up is going to be very extensive, I certainly don’t envy you that,’ Coral said.
‘Fortunately, she has a lot of people that are willing to help,’ Xander said.
Coral smiled. ‘That’s good.’
They said their goodbyes and Coral left.
Immy let out a huge breath of relief. ‘I can’t believe it. This news couldn’t be any better. I mean, I know there’s a lot of clearing up to do and I might not have any electrics for a while until I can get an electrician out to look at it, but at least we can start cleaning it up. If we can at least empty it before the weekend and get rid of all the burned sweets and other rubbish, we can still run the Easter egg hunt from the empty shop.’
‘Yes, exactly. I’m so relieved for you.’
‘Shall we go and have a look?’
Xander nodded and they walked over to the shop and stepped through the door. Coral certainly wasn’t underestimating the amount of clearing up that needed doing. It was a mess. Most of the sweet dispensers were plastic containers and they all had melted in the heat too as well as the sweets inside them. This was going to take a lot of work just to get the shop back to the bare bones.
‘I feel like we could display these as some kind of contemporary art piece and charge people to come and see it,’ Xander said.
‘I know, it does have a slight Salvador Dalí style with everything melted and dripping down onto the floor.’ Immy sighed as she looked around. ‘It’s just so sad. So much work had gone into this place.’
‘We’ll get it looking as good as it was before, you’ll see. It just needs a bit of a clean and a lick of paint.’
She liked his optimism. She needed that now more than ever. There wasn’t a single part of the shop that hadn’t been affected by the fire.
‘And look at it this way, now’s the time to try something different with the layout or how the shop looks. If something wasn’t quite working before, now’s the time to change it.’
‘That’s true.’
She carefully moved through the shop. The damage was even worse at the back, everything was black.
As Coral said, it looked like the starting point of the fire had been the till. She’d bought a bright pink retro-looking till online a few weeks ago because she thought it looked cool and matched the vibe of the shop. But it clearly had some electrical problems. She cursed herself for leaving it plugged in overnight, or even buying the stupid thing in the first place.
All the boxes of stock had gone up in flames, even her beloved rainbow rug hadn’t made it. All of her little knick-knacks she’d gathered over the years had gone – the dog-shaped cookie jar was smashed, the oversized plastic bars of chocolate on the walls were now particularly Dalí-esque, a candle the shape of a large fizzy cola bottle was now just a puddle of brown wax, the vase that looked like stacked liquorice allsorts had cracked significantly so it certainly wouldn’t be holding any flowers and water ever again.
Xander came up behind her, stroking her back. ‘They’re just things. I know it’s awful to see it like this after all the work you put into the shop, but the importantthing is you’re alive, Jacob is alive, the baby is OK. No one got hurt and the damage, while it looks horrific, is purely superficial.’
‘You’re right.’ She leaned her head on his shoulder. She needed to keep reminding herself of that.
She walked to the back of the shop, picking her way carefully through the debris, and opened the door to the community room where the Knit ’n’ Natter group and the others met every week. She was pleasantly surprised that it was largely unaffected, there was a lot of dust and the place stank of smoke as did the rest of the shop, but everything else was exactly how she’d left it on Friday night.
‘Oh, look,’ Immy said, softly.
Xander came to join her. ‘Now that is a bonus.’
