The Weekender. Fay Keenan
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encounter than he had so far with any of the other shop owners, walked to the door. He suspected that he’d have a long way to go to demonstrate his worth as an MP to Holly; strangely, however, he found himself wanting to do so, if only to prove her wrong.
3
‘Who was that?’ Rachel came carefully down the steep stairs from Holly’s flat to the shop floor carrying two mugs and a teapot on a wooden tray. ‘Looked fit from behind, whoever he was.’
Holly shook her head. ‘You should get out more.’ Taking the mug from the tray once Rachel had poured some tea into it, she sipped the strong, re-energising tea.
‘So, who was it?’
Holly felt her cheeks warm a little as she recalled the slightly awkward encounter. ‘That was Charlie Thorpe, the new MP for Willowbury and Stavenham.’
‘Wow, really? I hope he didn’t hear you slagging him off,’ Rachel grinned. ‘I mean, that would have been… awkward.’ She paused, catching sight of her sister’s expression. ‘He heard you, didn’t he?’
Holly grinned. ‘From the way he couldn’t wait to get out of here, I assume he did!’ She took another gulp of her tea. ‘I don’t care. He needs to know that some of us aren’t just going to give him the easy ride that Hugo Fitzgerald had. He’s going to have to work to represent us.’
‘Oh, hark at you!’ Rachel teased. ‘Sounds like he’s bringing out your militant side already. Not that it needs any encouragement, of course.’ Holly had taken part in several high-profile Green Party demonstrations over the years, and was known as a bit of a rabble-rouser, as well as a keen supporter of local Green initiatives. She’d organised several litter picks and recycling runs in the town since taking on the shop and was known to wince every time she saw a discarded plastic bag or bottle blowing in the breeze. An ethical eater, her love of a good bacon sandwich meant she couldn’t quite become fully vegetarian, but she tried to source her food as locally and organically as possible. Outside, in the small courtyard behind the shop, she had a raised bed that was packed full of aromatics and herbs, which she cooked fresh when she could and dried and stored in jars for the winter months.
‘I just don’t like seeing someone getting something for nothing,’ Holly muttered.
‘What, you mean like we did?’ Rachel reminded Holly gently. They’d been the joint beneficiaries of their paternal grandfather’s will; the money had been in trust until they both reached adulthood. While their father had initially raised an eyebrow about Holly’s business venture, he couldn’t dispute the fact that the shop made money, however improbably, and he was justifiably proud of the path she’d taken. Rachel, the more conventional sister, had put most of hers into buying a home for herself and Harry after her divorce.
‘That was different,’ Holly said. ‘Grandfather made a weird decision, but one we’ve really tried to make the best of. After all, I don’t think you’ll find Mum and Dad complaining that we’re not running to them every five seconds for money!’
‘Absolutely,’ Rachel agreed. ‘Although, for all of my looking on the bright side, as you call it, there’s not enough money in the world to get Harry new lungs, or in the trust to fund the drugs he needs privately.’ She shook her head.
‘We’ll get there,’ Holly said softly, looking over at where Harry was now playing. ‘The government and the drug companies will see sense eventually, the way the issue keeps being highlighted by campaigners and the media. You have to keep believing it, sis.’
‘I know.’ Rachel drank the rest of her tea. ‘I’ve got to go. Harry’s got a check-up at the hospital. We’re going to make an afternoon of it and grab an early dinner in Bristol if it all runs to time.’ Gesturing to Harry, she took the toddler’s hand and, after kissing her sister goodbye, she headed out of the door of the shop.
Holly’s heart ached as they left. She wished there was something else she could do, but even if she sold the shop and the two sisters pooled their resources, it still wouldn’t be enough. Since Rachel had got divorced a couple of years ago, the main responsibility for caring for Harry had become hers alone, with her ex-husband having moved to Singapore for his career. Rachel and Harry were financially provided for well enough by him, but that wasn’t the same as having someone to share the ups and downs of having a child with a serious illness day to day. Thus, the two sisters had grown closer, to the extent that they saw each other most days now they both lived in Willowbury.
Reluctantly, Holly’s thoughts wandered back to the visitor she’d just had; perhaps Charlie Thorpe would be able to help, after all. Then again, after he’d heard her opinion about him jumping into his dead colleague’s seat, she wondered if he’d be willing to listen to her anyway.
Sighing, she changed the background music and settled in for an afternoon of retail. She’d recently taken a massage course, which she was considering offering to customers, but she hadn’t yet been brave enough to advertise it in the shop. Perhaps it was time to take the plunge.
Taking a deep breath, she logged into ComIncense’s website and created a new page, titled ‘Holistic Massage Therapy’ and filled out a few details. Printing out a copy to put in the window of the shop, she wondered if anyone in Willowbury would let her loose on their back, shoulders or even feet. She could think of a few people who she wouldn’t want to touch with a bargepole, and it would be just her luck to be lumbered with some of Willowbury’s less savoury residents as clients. But who knew, perhaps some would give it a go.
As she was finishing the page, she couldn’t help wondering what Charlie Thorpe would look like with his shirt off on her massage table but quickly squashed that idea; after the way he’d reacted to her and her shop, she couldn’t imagine him crossing the threshold anytime soon.
4
Charlie had been under no illusions that he was going to have a tricky time when he took on the Willowbury and Stavenham parliamentary seat. It wasn’t just that Hugo Fitzgerald had been cordially loathed by his constituents (although enough of them had kept voting him in, year after year, to give him a very comfortable majority), but also, in comparison, he’d be seen initially as nothing more than a wet-behind-the-ears career politician. He was resigned to the fact that it would take at least five years to gain their trust – a Westminster parliamentary term, in fact – and probably twenty before he was regarded as a local in this most Somerset of Somerset villages. Yet again, he wondered why he’d said yes. He was a Yorkshireman by birth, and felt like a fish out of water down in the West Country, even though he’d often visited when he’d had a girlfriend who lived in the area. The Mendip Hills were no substitute for the Yorkshire Moors, he felt; too smooth, too green, not angular enough for his tastes.
Exiting Holly Renton’s ridiculously named shop, still smarting from her casual dismissal of his effectiveness, or lack thereof, he’d wandered back up Willowbury High Street, noticing, properly, for the first time, just what kind of stock in trade this place had. When he’d been offered the seat after Hugo’s death, he’d imagined Willowbury to be a kind of tea shops and gourmet ploughman’s’ lunches patch; wealthy, middle-class and churchgoing constituents, whose main concerns were where the new motorway junction was going to be built and whose view was going to be ruined by the next new housing development.
While Willowbury wasn’t exactly inner-city Leeds, where he’d cut his teeth campaigning as a candidate in a seat that hadn’t been held by his party in nearly forty years, it wasn’t what he’d been expecting either. For a start, the preponderance of what might be called New Age establishments (although he’d been warned that this was not a moniker that the traders themselves much cared for) was rather more akin to Totnes, the place in Devon where he’d spent holidays as a child.
There was no getting away from it, he thought as he wandered back up the rather steep High Street. Everywhere you looked in Willowbury was a crystal, a mural or a shop selling spiritual how-to guides. And this was one of the major towns in his