Page 52 of The Village Shop for Lonely Hearts

She blushed. ‘Well, I’m not. That’s you.’ She bit her lip. ‘Am I being too much?’

‘Yes,’ he told her before smiling. ‘But I quite like it.’

She looked at her feet, finding herself tongue-tied for the first time with Josh in a few days.

‘So we need to concentrate on the walls and ceiling first,’ he carried on. ‘What about the fireplace? Shall we hide it again? We could use the storage space.’

But Amber shook her head. ‘I was actually thinking of making it a feature.’

‘Of course you were,’ he drawled.

‘If you want, we can always place something in front of it later,’ she said, keen to appease his concerns. ‘But in the meantime, to be honest, it’s pretty cold in here so the extra heating would be nice.’

He went over to peer into the large wood-burning stove that had been installed in the fireplace. ‘I can remember Dad lighting this when we first came here,’ he said. ‘I’ll see if I can get a chimney sweep out to check the flue. I don’t want the whole place to go up in flames, or die of carbon monoxide poisoning in my bed.’ He laughed. ‘Unless it’s for the insurance money of course. Kidding!’ he added, at Amber’s horrified face.

‘Just warn me before you light it,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to go up in smoke either.’

She looked at the long wall on the far side of the shop. Without the interruption of the chimney and fireplace, it was actually far longer than she had realised and could probably hold almost six shelving units along the whole stretch.

But Josh insisted that he wanted to paint the wall before they placed the oak shelves back against it. So whilst Amber sanded them down, Josh began to prepare the ceiling and walls.

Along with the tractor, it meant that the shop was even more crowded than normal when a rare customer came in.

‘Have my cataracts got worse?’ said Grandma Tilly, standing at the front door to the shop and staring around in wide-eyed disbelief.

She hadn’t been in the shop for a couple of days and hadn’t seen it since the tractor had been moved.

Josh frowned down at her from the top rung of his stepladder. ‘Is everything OK? I said I’d pop in and see you later.’

Grandma Tilly smiled. ‘I just needed to get out and have some fresh air,’ she said. ‘So, am I allowed to ask what’s going on?’

‘We’re having a mini makeover,’ Amber told her.

Tilly smiled. ‘It looks a tad more than “mini” to me, I would say.’

‘I agree,’ said Josh, as Amber knocked over a pile of tins that had been tottering precariously only a few moments previously.

‘Gosh, I’d forgotten about that,’ said Tilly, weaving her way through the mess to look at the fireplace.

‘Isn’t it pretty?’ said Amber.

‘My husband installed that many years ago,’ said Tilly with a knowing smile.

‘I don’t remember Grandad being good with his hands like that,’ said Josh.

‘Oh yes,’ said Tilly, turning to look at the tractor. ‘Mind you, it was your dad that loved this old thing. I don’t remember it being quite so prominent in the shop before though. Although I could be losing my marbles, of course.’

‘No, that’s just us,’ Josh replied, giving Amber a pointed look.

She waved his concerns away with her hand. ‘It’s going to look worse before it looks better,’ she told Grandma Tilly.

‘Then perhaps I think you’re at rock bottom now, my dear,’ said Tilly, with a wink. ‘But I’m sure you young folks know what you’re doing.’

‘But maybe don’t tell Mum about all this quite yet,’ suggested Josh.

Tilly nodded. ‘I agree.’ She looked around at the mess. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

‘We can’t have you hurting yourself,’ Josh told her. ‘It’s such a mess in here.’