– not freshly ground, but who cared when she had a thrilling plan to share? – and scampered back downstairs, where she extracted the Recipe Sharing Society memo from between the pages of Sugarcraft Delights. Then, tucking her laptop under her arm, she hurried back upstairs and snuggled next to Mark in bed.
‘You’re all hyper,’ he observed, biting into his toast.
‘Oh, I know. I’ve just been thinking, that’s all.’ She sipped her coffee and opened her laptop.
Mark raised an eyebrow. ‘What’s this? Moles again?’
She grinned. ‘No, it’s not moles, darling, although I’d like you to keep me posted on their activities.’ She brought up the ad for the shop on her screen.
Registering the Gumtree logo, Mark leaned closer. ‘Thinking of selling something?’ His face broke into a relieved smile. ‘Oh, you’re selling the cookbooks! That’s a brilliant idea. Someone’ll want them if they’re cheap enough …’
‘Mark, I’m not—’
‘… just offer them all as a job lot, nine-hundred-and-odd books for, I don’t know, fifty quid or something? To get them off our hands.’
‘Listen,’ she said, more forcefully now, ‘I’m not selling the books. At least, not on Gumtree. Look, this is Sew ’n’ Sew’s, the haberdashery shop in Burley.’ She swivelled her laptop towards him and jabbed at the exterior shot.
‘Oh.’ He frowned. ‘So it is.’
She glanced at him. ‘Remember I told you about Pattie and Christine giving it all up for a new life in Majorca?’
‘Ha, yes,’ he chuckled. ‘Giving it all up … we’re talking a poky little shop selling … well, whatever it is they sold. They were hardly joint CEOs of ICI.’
Della frowned at him, wondering when this mild peevishness had begun to creep in. ‘No, they weren’t,’ she said coolly. ‘But I still think it’s pretty amazing.’
‘It’s retiring, Dell. That’s what people do when they get to seventy-whatever.’
‘Yes,’ she said, with a trace of impatience, ‘but that tends to imply just stopping work, and doing lots of pottering, and they’re doing something bold and adventurous.’ As Mark shrugged in a yeah, whatever sort of way, it struck her again that in just a couple of days’ time Sophie’s room would be Sophie-less and it would be just the two of them. Instead of thinking, Hey, we can do whatever we like, Della felt a jolt of alarm. ‘Well, I want to do something bold,’ she added.
He blinked at her. ‘When you retire, you mean?’
‘No, I mean now!’ Della sensed him edge away a little, as if she might pounce and demand that they make passionate love, despite that happening with a similar frequency to a lunar eclipse these days.
‘Er, what d’you have in mind then?’ He drained the last of his coffee as if to fortify himself.
‘This,’ she exclaimed. ‘The haberdashery shop. It’s empty and available and the rent’s so cheap …’
He smirked infuriatingly. ‘Hmm, wonder why?’
‘Well, yes, it’s pretty scruffy and definitely needs cheering up. But that can be fixed, Mark. I’d like to – well, I’d like to view it at least.’
‘View it? Why?’
‘Because …’ She paused. ‘Because I think I might like to take it on.’ Mark looked at her, without speaking at first, as if considering how best to handle the issue. She could virtually hear him formulating a diagnosis and appropriate treatment: patient has clearly spent too long trundling back and forth to a gift shop. She would benefit from variety in her life. Perhaps she could try a new hobby or, seeing as we didn’t go away this summer, a weekend trip might offer a cure.
‘Dell.’ He placed a hand over hers. ‘Look, I know you’ve had an awful time lately with your mum and the funeral, and Jeff and Rox being hopeless as usual. You’ve had such a lot on your plate. But …’ He exhaled heavily. ‘I really don’t think opening a haberdashery shop makes any sense at all.’
She spluttered with laughter. ‘Oh, I don’t mean I’d keep it as a haberdasher’s. I haven’t a clue about sewing and, to be honest, I don’t know how it survived all those years.’
‘Well, that’s a relief!’
She glanced back at the screen. ‘No, look – it’s an empty shell. Just a building. It could be anything.’
‘Like what?’
She paused. It felt important to describe the inside of the shop and her dream for it: the books, naturally, plus the mellow music, the low lighting, the coffee and cakes and art on the walls. ‘I want to open a bookshop, Mark. A bookshop that only sells … cookbooks.’
He blinked slowly at her. ‘What? Is this a joke, Dell?’
‘No, it’s not a joke. Look, I know we can’t keep Mum’s books. They’re always toppling over, scattering all over the floor …’
‘Ah, so you’ve noticed,’ he remarked dryly.
‘And it’d be amazing,’ she charged on. ‘The sort of place where people would want to hang around and browse for hours.’
‘So that’s your business model, is it?’ He chuckled infuriatingly. ‘It’s pretty flawed, darling. It’s just not viable. Browsing doesn’t put any money in the till.’
‘No, no, listen. What I mean is, it’d draw people in. It would be like a cosy living room full of, oh, I don’t know … ideas and memories and inspiration.’ Aware of him staring at her, as if anticipating a punchline, Della pulled out the Recipe Sharing Society memo from her pyjama pocket.
‘Right, so cooking with lard and dripping and refined sugar, that’s really what people want these days, is it? Inspiration for heart disease and type-2 diabetes.’
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