Page 41 of The Village Shop for Lonely Hearts

Josh shrugged his shoulders. ‘Nobody does late-night opening around here, apart from the pub. I mean, there’s no point. It’s like a ghost town.’

‘I see,’ said Amber, wondering whether to question him further.

Josh picked up on her tone. ‘What?’ he asked.

‘Grandma Tilly mentioned that some people commute from the village into the towns and cities for work,’ she began. ‘Perhaps they don’t get home until after 5 p.m.’

‘Perhaps,’ he said, still looking at her. ‘What’s your point?’

‘I’ve done the long commute when I worked in London,’ she told him. ‘You come home late at the station and just want to grab some food.’

Josh grimaced. ‘Well, they’re not grabbing it from here, according to my sales figures.’

‘Because you’re not open after five o’clock,’ she reminded him.

‘And we don’t have any kind of convenience food like ready meals,’ he added.

She nodded. ‘That too.’

He shrugged his shoulders in response. ‘Look, until we clear the shop, I can’t even think about opening hours and all the rest of it.’

‘I know,’ Amber told him. ‘The trouble is that I’m beginning to run out of places to put things.’ She hesitated before going on. ‘I think maybe it’s time for you to move the tractor to clear some space in the back room.’

Josh almost looked ashen in the light. ‘Yeah, you’re right. I’ll move it after we close up this evening.’

Once the shop was closed later that day, Amber began to wipe down the dust on the fireplace which they had uncovered.

But Josh quickly told her to give up. ‘There’s no point cleaning anything in here until that stinky old tractor has come through,’ he told her. ‘Chances are that it’ll leave a trail of oil anyway.’

She grimaced. ‘Let’s hope not.’ She glanced over to the front door. ‘How are you going to get it down the steps on the veranda?’ she asked.

‘I’ve set up a ramp with some sheets of plywood,’ he told her.’ Hopefully they’ll hold the weight.’

‘Hopefully?’ she asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Just keep your fingers crossed,’ he said, doubt filling his voice.

Amber pushed as many boxes as she could to one side whilst Josh went into the back room to fiddle with the tractor.

‘Keep out of the way,’ he called out. ‘This could get messy.’

‘How messy?’ she called back.

But he didn’t hear her because he had just turned the key in the ignition. After a couple of splutters, the engine sprang into noisy life. He looked up at her, amazed, as if he hadn’t expected it to continue to turn over. Although the shop was immediately filled with both grey smoke and the immense racket of an ancient engine that hadn’t been started for a very long time.

Amber was horrified. Was this even safe?

‘OK,’ she just about heard Josh shout above the noise. ‘I’ll try and steer it through.’

Amber crossed her fingers and prayed that he wouldn’t end up crashing through the double front doors, which she had already wedged wide open. Or, in fact, any of the walls.

The noise of the engine changed to become even louder as Josh crunched the tractor into gear. With a massive jolt, it leapt forward by a foot and she saw him swear to himself in shock.

Amber pressed herself up against the fireplace, as far back as she could go, severely concerned about her personal safety at that point. Not only was the noise awful, the floorboards were shaking beneath her feet. She held her hand over her nose to stop herself from breathing in too much of the smoky fumes coming from the engine.

With another, smaller jolt, Josh wrenched the steering wheel over to one side, forcing the wheels to straighten up and aim for the middle of the shop floor.

This was a bad idea, thought Amber, feeling like she was in the middle of an earthquake. The whole shop was liable to fall down on top of them.