Knit One Pearl One (3 page)

I’m trying to work out how we can rope in enough parents to make the bloody bus thing work as I push the buggy down the High Street, with Pearl having a nap, her hat half covering her face. I got details from the local council, and you can start off with a Walking Wednesday, which I quite like the sound of, and see how it goes just one day a week before you launch a whole scheme and find yourself pretty much permanently in your tabard marshaling small people around at the crack of bloody dawn. You need a minimum of two adults for each journey: a driver and a conductor, one to lead the kids, and one at the end to make sure no stragglers get left behind. Dear God. You have to set up a route, so parents bring their kids along rather than having to stop at each house, which would take all day. But even so. Jane Johnson says she’ll help, and she works in the school office, so that will be an advantage when it comes to setting up rotas and getting notes out to all the parents. But Annabel is bound to meddle if we ever manage to get the idea approved. So that’ll be me stuck in a bright orange outfit on a ten-mile walk that finishes at the end of our rickety old pier if she has anything to do with it. Christ. Me and my big mouth. Next time I read something interesting, I’m going to write myself a note. And hide it.

It’s still freezing cold, but at least the sun is shining. I love Broadgate on mornings like this, with the sea sparkling at the end of the High Street, even if it is a rather chilly kind of sparkle. Mr. Parsons is hanging up metal buckets on the hooks outside his ironmongers and arranging mops, and Mrs. Baintree in the bakery gives me a cheery wave, which is good because when we first opened the new café things got rather strained. I think she was worried we’d be taking all their customers, but since we don’t sell loaves of bread, or giant baps, or multicolored biscuits with smiley faces on them, cordial relations have been restored. She even came in for a coffee last week.

Elsie’s behind the counter as I wheel Pearl through to the back of the shop.

“Morning, Jo, is she asleep?”

“Yes, but not for long. Unless you fancy a little walk?”

She smiles. “You’re all right, dear. That girl will be along soon, won’t she?”

“Yes, she’s due any minute.”

Hurrah. The cavalry are coming.

Elsie doesn’t entirely approve of Cinzia. There’s something too flamboyant about her for Elsie’s taste. But even she has to admit the children adore her.

“It looks like you sold lots of that new cotton on Saturday.”

“Yes, Mrs. Collins was in, she’s making another blanket. I asked her if she’d like to knit orders for us, and she was really pleased. She said she’d think about it and let us know.”

“Well, she’s a lovely knitter, I’ll say that for her, and we can always do with more things to sell in the shop.”

“Morning, Jo.” Laura walks through the new archway into the café, carrying a cup and saucer. “Thought you’d like a cup of tea, Jo.”

“Bless your heart. That’s just what I need.”

Elsie stiffens. She and Laura have a running battle over who is in overall charge. And the truth is, nobody is. Or I am. But definitely not Elsie. Laura worked for Connie at the pub as a waitress before we spotted her as perfect for the café. She’s studying textile design at college part-time and lives just off the High Street with her little girl, Rosie, and her mum lives a couple of streets away from Elsie. So she’s perfect for popping in when we’re particularly busy in the summer, and she sorts out all the orders with Connie, and arranges the rota for her college days. Her friend Tom does the days she can’t do, which is working really well, even if he does play in a band in the evenings so he sometimes looks slightly frayed around the edges in the mornings.

Connie and Mark have been really clever about the menu too, keeping it simple so we don’t need too much equipment or people wearing special hairnets; we do juice and smoothies, teas and coffees, and a selection of Mark’s cakes and biscuits, and paninis. Nothing hot, so no grills or ovens, just simple, fresh food and great coffee, thanks to the huge machine Connie’s uncle Luca brought over for us, which was half the price of anything we could find from the local suppliers. It was a bit terrifying at first, all that steam and wiping nozzles, but he was very patient, and now we all know how to use it, although Elsie isn’t convinced it’s not going to blow up and tends to steer clear of it.

“Would you like a tea, Elsie?”

“Well I don’t mind if you’re making one.”

Laura winks at me as she goes back through into the café. I’m glad now we didn’t spend a fortune and turn it into one huge space. It works well having the two shops connected, and if things ever get really tough, I can always sell the café and go back to just having the wool shop. But the café is definitely attracting new customers; people don’t tend to go into wool shops unless they already know how to knit, but once they’re sitting in the café, they see the notices we’ve put up about our knitting groups, or the tea cozies, and the blankets and shawls for sale, and it encourages them. And Laura often sits knitting at the counter, working on the designs for her course, like the bag knitted on huge needles with lots of bobbles, or the cape with the lovely cable pattern.

“Hello, poppet.”

Pearl is waking up.

“Shall I give her a biscuit?”

“She’s just had breakfast, Elsie, thanks.”

In other words No, please don’t be passing her chocolate digestives every time we’re in the shop, particularly when she’s wearing a balaclava, or I’ll have to wash it again.

Laura brings Elsie her tea and shows us both a magazine she’s got from college, with pictures of a knitwear show in Milan full of extraordinary sweaters with extra sleeves, or huge cowl necks, and wonderful soft wraps draped over tiny vests.

“Do you think that’s cashmere?”

Elsie and I are both peering at the pictures.

“It looks a bit thinner than that, doesn’t it? Maybe silk?”

Laura nods. “That’s what I thought, but then I thought maybe four-ply?”

Elsie’s finding her glasses while I pick Pearl up. She’s not very good at waiting patiently in her buggy while people chat.

“Come on, darling, let’s see the lovely pictures.”

“More.”

No
and
more
are the top words at the moment. And it’s surprising how far you can get with just two such useful words.

“Do you want a drink, sweetheart?”

Please let me have remembered to put her juice cup in my bag.

“No.”

Excellent.

“Nice apple juice?”

She starts to wriggle.

“More.”

She wants to be down, running about, but I’m not that keen; I’d prefer to avoid the bit where she pulls balls of wool off the shelves and I try to stop her if I can possibly avoid it.

“Let’s have some juice first, love.”

She gives me one of her why-is-my-mother-such-an-idiot looks, which she’s learned from Archie, and is about to start yelling when Cinzia arrives, just in the nick of time. She’s looking even more like Sophia Loren than usual, a young Sophia, like she was in
Houseboat,
although I suppose that would make me Cary Grant, so possibly not. But she has that gorgeous sway about her, and wears the kinds of clothes that regularly make most of the male residents of Broadgate stand with their mouths slightly open.

She’s busy kissing Pearl, which Pearl is tolerating although she’s not usually that keen on too much fussing.

“So today we go to baby gymnastica, yes?”

“Thanks, Cinzia, she’ll love that.”

“See, I am wearing the trousers.”

It’s amazing how many more dads have suddenly found time to take their toddlers along to the baby gym sessions in the Village Hall since Cinzia arrived. She wore a tiny denim skirt and black footless tights a couple of weeks ago, and Lucy Meadows says Mr. Dawes was so busy watching her he tripped over a mat and banged his knee so badly he had to go home. Mrs. Dawes is still giving me rather pointed looks in the playground, particularly if Cinzia is with us.

“Brava.” I’m picking up a few more Italian words to add to the ones Connie’s taught me.

“Rock Around the Clock” comes on the radio, and Pearl and Cinzia start to dance, with Pearl bobbing up and down and Cinzia shaking her enviable hips. Christ. I think the baby gymnasticals might be in for another tricky session. She’s wearing skinny jeans, with a glimpse of a very flat brown tummy, and a minuscule pale blue T-shirt with a cashmere cardigan. It’s always cashmere with Cinzia.

“Are you still okay for tomorrow night, Cinzia?”

“Sure, and we will make pizzas I think, with ’am?”

Ham on pizzas is Archie’s favorite. And Cinzia’s learned not to call it prosciutto, which Archie refuses to eat.

“Great.”

“Say good-bye to Mamma, Principessa.”

Okay, so the Principessa thing isn’t ideal, but I put up with it because Pearl likes it, and she sometimes gives me a dismissive wave, like I have her permission to leave, which is so much nicer than the routine where they burst into tears at the slightest hint that you might be about to part.

I used to hate that with Jack; he went through a very clingy phase, which basically meant I didn’t go anywhere without him for ages. He even came to the dentist with me, which was particularly hideous, him sitting in his buggy looking at his baby books while I tried to avoid flinching when the dentist did that jabbing thing they do with the little prodder. Nick used to get really annoyed about it, and told me I was making Jack anxious. With hindsight I wish I’d told him to shut up, and if he spent a bit more time working on his relationship with his son, and less time on having an affair with bloody Mimi the French UN worker, he’d be in a better position to give me top parenting tips. Although I didn’t know about that at the time, of course, I just thought he was busy being an up-and-coming television news presenter, and I was the stay-at-home mum who wasn’t keeping up my end of the deal. Most of the time I remember feeling like I was somehow failing, not quite exciting or smart enough, not able to keep up with the pace. God, if only I’d known.

“Thanks Cinzia, and call me, if anything—”

“Yes, I will call, like every day; I will call if anything ’appens, but it will not. We will have a lovely day, and do our gymnastica, won’t we, Principessa?”

Pearl waves. I’m sure she’s going to have an Italian accent; she sounds very Italian when she’s babbling, and she goes in for a fair bit of Italian-style tutting, often accompanied by a slight shrug of the shoulders. And she calls me Mamma, but then so did the boys and we didn’t have an Italian au pair then. Or even the remotest hint of an au pair. Nick didn’t like the idea of anyone else in the house; he liked to come home and completely switch off. Sometimes he just slept, and hardly spoke to us at all. Which I also used to think was somehow my fault.

“See you later. Have a lovely day, sweetheart.”

Great. Finally, I can start work. It’s ten past ten and I’ve been up for hours. This working-mother lark is such a treat.

“I’m going up to the office, Elsie, and I’ll check the website orders.”

“Right you are, dear.”

I think I’ll make a list. That’s always calming. I’ll drink my tea and make a list. And then I need to sort out the window displays. I took out most of the Christmas things last week, but I still want to add in a few more hot-water-bottle covers, and the new tea cozies. And I should probably start thinking about a new display for February, with a Valentine’s Day theme again; it worked really well last year, and I’ve still got the strings of pink heart-shaped fairy lights in the stockroom. The café window display is fairly simple, with knitted tea cozies and teapots, and knitted cakes on the antique glass cake stands I found in Venice, and the blue willow pattern one I found in a junk shop; with fairy lights and frosted glass sundae dishes, it all looks very pretty. Gran and Betty loved knitting the scoops of ice cream for the dishes, in dark chocolate and raspberry, with a few pale pom-poms in vanilla and caramel, and mint. So all I need to do is update it, adding in knitted mince pies and holly leaves at Christmastime, or more knitted cakes. Gran found a pretty cup and saucer in the jumble sale at the Lifeboats last week, so I want to put that in too.

Which reminds me, I must ask Gran if she can babysit on Monday, so I can go to the bloody PTA meeting with Connie. I’ll ask her if she’s decided about her cruise as well; she’s been looking at brochures again with Reg, and there are some lovely looking ones that go round the Caribbean, but she says she doesn’t want to be that far away, in case I need her. So I need to persuade her it’ll be fine.

Right. List. Ring Gran. Get more details on the bloody bus thing. We’ll need to set up one of those telephone charts for the mornings when the light sea mist is more of a torrential downpour and walking to school would involve lots of soaked children arriving sopping wet and chilled to the bone. I should ring Mr. Prewitt too, and make sure he’s got everything he needs for the shop accounts; he’s been impressed with the impact of the café; our profits were up nearly 500 percent for the last quarter, even after I gave Connie and Mark their share, which sounds great until you know how low it was to start with.

I want to check with him about the insurance too; ever since the fire I’ve been fairly obsessive about it. Thank God our policy was up-to-date, or I would never have been able to afford to buy Mrs. Davis out. Even though her florist business wasn’t earning much, and the prices round here are still pretty low, it was a fair chunk of money, and being right next door might have made some people double the price. But she was so nice about it, and kept trying to lower it because her electrics started the fire in the first place. I sorted it out with Graham and Tina in the end, and he talked to his brothers. We saved a bit by not using an agent. But I thought I’d still need to take out a business loan, and I don’t think the bloody banks are that keen on wool shops run by single parents with three kids. Although they seem perfectly fine with multimillion-pound gambles run by the kind of men who you’d pay serious money not to sit next to at dinner parties. Not that I go to dinner parties, but if I did I bet I’d end up sitting next to a banker boasting about his bonus. Despite taking us to the brink of financial meltdown, they all still seem to be awarding themselves massive bonuses. Bastards. But with the insurance money and a bit of help from Gran and Reg, and dipping into my rainy day money, I managed to buy the café without having to go the bank. Not that things aren’t a bit tight, and I still can’t work out how I managed to paint most of the upstairs while Pearl was newborn. I went into a sort of magnolia daze I was so tired. But things have always been tight financially, so I’m used to it. Nick and I never reached the bit where things got a little easier; he was gone long before that. Not that I realized it at the time. I thought he was just working, not off having an affair and taking out a bloody second mortgage behind my back. It’s almost embarrassing how stupid I was back then. Still, you live and learn, as Gran would say. Although in Nick’s case of course, not so much.