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She had the feeling digital nomads were a new concept at Clove Lore and hoped she wasn’t going to attract much excitement or attention from the local volunteers who she’d heard about from Jude Crawley, the woman who’d sorted out her contract.
She must be the first visitor actually beingpaidto stay here, she realised. She’d soon bring the place into the new century with a decent sales point and comms devices and then she’d get out of here and onto her next job, which, she recalled, was in Lisbon, then the next one was… London? Or was it the Southampton job after that? Not to worry, her diary had all the details and flight information. These jobs all just blurred into one another after so long on the road as an itinerant IT expert.
She looked again at the note. God, she certainly hoped nobody expected her to actually sell any of these books!
Joy took a deep breath and looked over the titles on the table. She instantly understood the relevance of some of them; books referencing floods. The flood was the reason she was here, after all. The reason she was being paid to stay here for two weeks and install the new tills, entry system, security cameras, and all the rest of it. The village were paying her wages out of their recovery fund. Jowan de Marisco Clove-Congreve had said as much in his email back when she asked for more information about the job.
The other books in the display she couldn’t account for quite so easily. Something called theVinland Sagas, books about mermaid myths, Treasure Island, she supposed because they were by the sea. Her eye fell upon the copy ofThe Borrowerswith its intriguing cover showing tiny human-like people peering through a mouse hole at a giant world beyond the wainscoting. There was a note card on top of the book which read, ‘This one is a gift from Borrow-A-Bookshop to our littlest Borrower yet. For Radia Pearl, happy holidays!’
Joy turned with the book in her hand. ‘They’ve left a gift for you. That’s a first!’
Radia raced towards her and without even checking to see what kind of story it was, clutched the book to her chest. ‘I told you this one was going to be different! Like a real holiday!’
‘No Rads, it’s just work.’
‘But we’ll read books together and we’ll go to the beach?’
‘Of course we will.’
‘And we’ll have ice cream every day for breakfast.’
‘Hmm, not sure about that one.’
‘And maybe we can stay longer this time?’ She already knew what her mother was going to say before she heard the words.
‘Just a couple of weeks then we move on, OK? Just like all the other jobs.’
Radia Pearl, however, already sensed what her wayfaring mother was too world weary and restless to grasp: that Clove Lore really was different to all the other places they’d stopped at.
A whole summer of adventure and possibilities were waiting for the pair of them, only they’d have to cram it into two short weeks.
Soon they’d know the magic Clove Lore can do, but for now they set about unpacking, looking wistfully at yet another strange bed in yet another strange place, Radia wondering if her mother would ever be happy enough in any of the corners of the world her work dragged them to, to stay put for a bit.
Meanwhile, all over Clove Lore, the hard work of clearing away all signs of the one-hundred-year storm continued, a storm that could have taken so much from the Devonshire harbour village, but which had, in fact, opened up new possibilities and new futures as yet not fully realised by the people lucky enough to live here.
