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She inserted the key Seb had given her and pushed open the door. The brass bell above her head reverberated with a jaunty chime of welcome but it jarred against Sophie’s ragged nerves.
‘At last dear, it’s perishing out here. What kept you?’ Delia bustled in behind her, a rich aroma of warm baked pastries following in her wake and permeating the shop’s motionless air. ‘I’ll just butter these whilst they’re still warm. Young Tom Wallington really is proving to be a baking maestro. These croissants of his really do melt in your mouth. You should taste his cherry and almond macarons, and his white chocolate profiteroles are simply delicious, too. If you ask me, his talents are wasted here after all that training he did in Paris and at Betty’s, but, well, his father can’t…’ Delia’s prattling dropped off when she noticed Sophie’s expression. ‘I’ll pop the kettle on. See you upstairs when you’re ready for a cuppa.’
Sophie’s eyes followed Delia’s plump backside as she disappeared up the stairs to perform the same task she had done every morning for the last sixteen years, only this time for her best friend’s niece. She stepped further into the high-ceilinged room, memories crashing through her thoughts whilst she listened to the cheerful tinkling of cutlery and cups as Delia busied herself in the upstairs kitchen, one that was as familiar as her own.
Sophie smoothed her palm over the glass-topped counter, its surface reflecting her pixie-like features and the misery swirling in the far corners of her soul. A wave of desolation rippled over her when she realised Gingerberry Yarns would never again be blessed with the smiling presence of its proprietor. The fact that the world could keep on turning despite this devastating knowledge annoyed her.
She sighed, then cast her professional eye around the room. Her recent absence afforded her the opportunity to scrutinise its outmoded contents with a fresh perspective. What her eyes met instilled no creative enthusiasm. The place was old-fashioned and shabby at the edges.
Why hadn’t she noticed this careworn façade before?
Puffs of dust and sadness hovered amongst the packed wicker baskets. Garlands of twisted yarn nestled in cubbyholes or behind glass doors with tiny brass knobs more befitting a gentleman’s outfitters from the fifties. The shop was well stocked but everything on the shelves depicted a bygone era when communities were tight and pockets tighter. It was a place you would find your granny holding court, not a young mothers’ chinwag or a teenagers’ coterie of gossip. But then, “Gran’s Woollen Emporium” was exactly what Gingerberry Yarns was – an old people’s social club or a place for the knitting circle from the local WI to persuade their deft fingers to twirl yarn into garments for the needy.
Polished teak shelves ran round the remaining two sides of the room, stuffed with lurid, multicoloured acrylics Sophie had last seen on Barbie. Where were the natural lamb’s wools, the organic silks, the fair-trade cottons? Even the Aran was synthetic.
Knitting needles had been jammed into spaghetti jars like forests of pasta. Cards of pearl buttons and other assorted fastenings dangled from racks of chipped steel. The sample garments displayed on coat hangers on old mahogany hat stands, clearly knitted by her aunt or Delia, to Sophie’s trained eye resembled bed jackets for the terminally ill. There were so many trendy designs coming out of Scandinavia at the moment, inspired by the wave of crime fiction that had been serialised for television, and the art of knitting was now a celebrity-endorsed pastime. She thought of the chunky sweaters Scarlet adored; hers was red and cream, a prized possession that had cost her well over a week’s salary.
Her fertile designer’s mind drifted to the Kaffe Fassett designs, works of art every one of them, all sculpted in naturalwools, if not organic or locally sourced. She remembered the “knit and natter” sessions she had attended when a penniless student in Manchester, where, for the price of a cup of coffee in the local coffee chain café, she’d spent warm, aroma-filled evenings with a diverse gathering of friends, from eager teenagers to harassed new mums grabbing a couple of hours of sanity away from the baby, and even professional women escaping the testosterone-infused office for a more girly activity that would not be judged against the bottom line.
The shop sported the most magnificent glass-plate frontage with its title embossed in arched gold lettering. But the window was almost opaque with rain-streaked grime and its display of misshapen sweaters did not invite curious perusal by passing window-shoppers.
In the farthest corner of the room, behind the counter where Sophie slumped, her elbow supporting her chin, Claire and Delia had squeezed in an enormous antique mahogany table, complete with green leather inlay as wrinkled as an octogenarian’s knees; its tooled edges inlaid with gold leaf and the deep scratches testament to the passage of time. Around this monstrosity huddled a disconsolate selection of equally ancient hard-backed chairs. A couple sported chintzy cushions as a nod to the comfort of their users’ buttocks.
Clearly this was where the serious business of the day was conducted – just not the money-making kind. It seemed as though ghosts still lingered there, at the table, completing unfinished projects before they could rest in peace.
The whole store screamed warmth and comfort; a genteel, English lady’s boudoir of the 1950s. Its painted walls blistered and flaky to the touch, its flooring worn and patched. Places like Gingerberry Yarns would not have survived in the metropolises of Bristol and Manchester. They had been replaced by trendywine bars and the ubiquitous coffee shops, estate agents and nail bars, although even these businesses were struggling now.
Sophie glanced out of the front window to the row of shops on the other side of the village green. Marietta’s Hair Salon, its windows reflecting the golden glow of the mid-morning sun, displayed three giant black-and-white portraits of cutting-edge hair design. With the bakery producing fresh croissants, Sophie wondered whether Gingerberry Yarns was the only shop in the vicinity that had not moved with the times.
As she straightened up, the realisation came to her with a jolt that slammed straight to her heart. Her aunt and Delia had run this compendium of yarns and ribbons over the years, not as a business, but as a social enterprise. A note of dread rang in the back of her mind for what she would discover in the accounts when she marketed the business. It was blatantly obvious from the noticeable voids on the shelves behind the gargantuan meeting table that very little had been spent on the shop’s maintenance. There was no point thinking about that, though, now the building and the business were going to be sold.
Delia appeared at the bottom of the stairs carrying a tray. ‘Here we are, love, one steaming cup of your favourite Earl Grey tea. Warms the cockles of your heart, it does.’
Unlikely, thought Sophie. Anxiety and grief had lodged a tight knot in her chest that no amount of alcohol-free beverage could dislodge. Only in the welcoming arms of Jack and Daniel could Sophie feel the suffocating weight begin to ease and that was only a temporary reprieve.
‘I’ve made a pot for when Iris and Marcia arrive. They usually pop in after collecting Iris’s pension on a Tuesday morning, after a compulsory visit to old Mr Wallington’s bakery. Oh, I shouldn’t continue calling it that now, I suppose. Did you know he’s moved into Cranbury Residential Care Home? Oh, and even Susanfrom the village store has decided not to open her teashop this summer – she’s struggled to find anyone willing to work there for just six months of the year – which means there’s nowhere for visitors to the village to pause for a cup of tea or coffee. Ah, everything is changing in Somersby. The passage of time favours no one, I’m afraid.’
As Delia busied herself dusting the shelves with a long feather duster, accompanied by a running commentary of complaints about how quickly the dust settles when not kept on top of, Sophie swung her contemplation and analytical eye onto her aunt’s best friend of over forty years.
Her hair, the colour of autumn mist, had been cut in a surprisingly modern style – spiky fringe, tufted at the back, and finished off with the suspicion of gel! In fact, Delia carried her sixty years well. In spite of her ample hips and bosom, Sophie’s expert eye told her that she modelled her wardrobe on the latest trends; hand-knit apricot cashmere sweater, embellished with tiny shimmering beads around the neckline and a pair of flatteringly cut trousers. She had a suspicion – no, a certainty – that Delia had designed and hand-sewn the items herself to flatter her figure perfectly. Delia had completed her day’s attire with the largest pearl earrings Sophie had seen and a long silver chain from which her bejewelled glasses swung like an optical pendulum as she swished away the offending dust.
But there was a tightness at the corners of Delia’s thinning lips and pronounced creases between her eyes. With a jolt of guilt, Sophie realised how anxious the older woman must be about what would become of Gingerberry Yarns and, therefore, her own future. Delia would never have admitted it to Sophie, but Sophie knew she had relished the role of the shop’s co-chatelaine over the years. It was what she had lived for.
‘Delia, let’s sit down.’
Sophie strode over to the gigantic table and folded her six-foot frame into one of the uncomfortable chairs. Its wooden spindles dug sharply into the small of her back. Silence extended through the room. It felt weird because the whole place was usually suffused with chatter and the aroma of her aunt’s favourite coffee brewing in the corner for customers to help themselves.
Best just launch in, she thought. The residents of Somersby were renowned for their straight-talking. ‘Delia, Aunt Claire left me Gingerberry Yarns in her will.’
‘Oh, that’s marvellous, my dear. Your aunt truly loved this place, you know. She spent more time here than she did over at her house in Cranbury. She adored the yarns, the cottons, the silks, the mohairs. Oh, the way she used to run her fingers through those spools of ribbons and laces. But, most of all it was the people she loved, Sophie, the regulars. Her “posse”, she would call them, “Claire’s haberdashery posse”.’
Delia stared out of the window, lost in her memories. Her trendy haircut made her look like she was wearing a pewter helmet, but her face reflected the kindness that oozed from her pores. She twisted her rings around her fingers as she reminisced. Her tear-blotched face was pale and drawn, the red spidery veins bleeding across the whites of her eyes evidence of the copious weeping the trauma of the previous couple of weeks had caused.
‘I know mere words can’t erase your sorrow, Sophie. William and I were never fortunate enough to be blessed with children of our own, nor as an only child from a single mother do I have any nephews or nieces or other relatives, but you, Seb and Dominic are as good as family to me.’ Delia drew in a deep breath as she prepared to deliver her next sentence. ‘We need to open the shop back up. It’s been closed for over two weeks now and people areasking. I’m happy to stay on, but if you don’t want me to... I’ll understand.’
Delia crooked fingers, gnarled by years of gripping knitting needles and the onset of arthritis, continued to twist at her wedding ring, fearful of the response.
‘Stay on?’
