Chuckling to herself as she picked up a pot, Tilly shook her head. This hazy blue calm, Darling, was the part they showcased on the Darling council website. From the outside looking in, you didn’t get to witness the three-in-the-morning with a storm raging part. Funny, really, how the night had felt like the end of everything and the morning looked like the start of it.
She was still standing there in the sou'wester, gloating quietly at the heron, when she heard a car pull up. Not really giving a hoot about her get-up, she looked over and didn't bother to hide. Otto got out in a wax jacket and wellies, with Stanley trotting beside him. He called out and lifted his chin. 'You're still here, then.'
'Just about.'
'The power's off all down this side, but I've just heard that it will be back by lunch, they reckon.' He looked past her at thedecking, the dead bunting, the cracked pots. 'How did you get on?'
Tilly shook her head, smiled and pretended she’d been fine. There was no way she was going to tell him that she'd been frozen stiff with fright for a lot of the storm, with every nerve on end and petrified for hours. 'No worries from me. I slept through the whole thing, give or take.'
‘Slept through the whole thing? Are you kidding? The foghorn doesn't half carry across the water on this side. I’m surprised you weren’t up all night.'
Tilly thought about the duvet over her head, the thoughts she'd had, how she'd convinced herself she was going to be murdered in her sleep. 'Actually, I slept like a baby.'
Stanley looked up at her with scepticism. Otto made a surprised face. 'Right. Well, you did well to survive your first Darling storm unscathed.' Clicking his tongue for Stanley, he nodded. 'Rory'll be round to take the sandbags up later. Don't move them yourself, they weigh a ton when they’re wet.'
'Thanks so much for doing that.'
'Not a problem. See you. Nice hat.'
Before Tilly could say anything, Otto had turned on his heel. Shame really. She would have loved to invite him in for a cup of tea.
29
It was a few days later, and Tilly was in the boat room elbow-deep in a cupboard whose contents were not for the faint of heart. Her phone rang with a call from an international number, and sitting down among dust, old buckets, and rusty paint tins, she answered. Obviously, Inês from Portugal, Tilly wondered what she was going to say. Inês had emailed her WhatsApp number and said she would call. The time had come. 'Hello?'
'Tilly.' Inês pronounced her name,Tee-lee, with two notes, like the start of a song. 'You are alive.'
'Inês! Hi! Yes, I'm alive. It’s so lovely to hear from you. How are you?'
'Well! I’m very well. We all are. How are you?’
‘Yes, great, thanks. How’s the business?’
‘We have had a very good few years. COVID, unbelievably, was brilliant for our business in the end. We got a lot of new customers who turned out to be repeat customers and new clients.'
'That’s such good news.'
'How are you? You are back from your travels around the world, yes?’
‘I am. I’m back in England.’ Tilly didn’t bother to go into the whole Lennixx thing. No one needed to know about that.
‘So. You have a business idea! You want our faults. Are you crazy?'
Tilly laughed and forced herself to speak slowly. 'I want your faults, yep, all of them. Well, as many as I can afford, which, to be perfectly honest with you, is not very many to start with.'
The worst they can do is laugh.
Inês chuckled. 'Four years or so ago, an English girl stood in our dump room and asked me why we hid the best cloth in the house. I tell my husband that night. He says, what? I say,exactly.Nobody sees it, Tilly. The buyers come, they want perfect, perfect, perfect, they pay nothing for our faults. So...'
Tilly couldn’t work out where the conversation was going; therefore she kept quiet.
'You will not buy our faults. You will take them on consignment. You know this word? You sell, then you pay us. For the first shipment, we will do it all via WhatsApp video unless you can come here. You pay the shipping, that is all, and you send me photographs of every bed, and when you are rich,thenwe talk. Yes?' Inês cackled.
An old rusty bucket handle was digging into Tilly’s hip, fog sat soft and pearly at the little window, and Tilly squeezed her eyes shut as she tried to compute if what she had heard was correct. 'Oh, right, okay. Yes. Thank you so much. Gosh, are you sure? That’s so good of you.’
‘Of course!’
‘The other thing is that I don’t really know about labelling and all that side of it. I need to get the legal stuff sorted, plus sizes and all that. There’s a lot to think about. My email was really just to get your thoughts.'
