Annie found the appropriate keys and set to work on the door to the disused tearoom.
Truth be told, she’d been waiting for an excuse to go in and have a look around, and now she’d found one.
Chapter 21
The room was dark, the windows covered on the outside by wooden shutters. Annie ran her hands along the wall for the light switch and flicked it. A strip light in the ceiling buzzed angrily like a disturbed bee and flickered to life.
“Well, I never!” said Maeve. “It’s just as I remember it.”
Aside from a couple of boxes of Christmas decorations and an old door lying up against one wall, the place looked as though it had been closed down at the end of a working day. Mismatched wooden chairs stood upside-down on battered pine tables—three smaller and one long bench table that ran almost the length of the sea-facing window. Six old nautical oil lamps in mottled brass sat along the windowsills, covered in a rind of dust. Along the wall by the door they had just come through was a short counter, a small chiller, and shelves behind them. The till on the counter was pre-electric.
“I never came in here,” said Gemma. “It had closed down before we moved to the Bay. We always make good use of the kiosk in the summer, though.”
“It’s tiny!” said Annie, comparing it mentally with the Pomegranate Seed.
“Did a roaring trade, though,” said Maeve. “Got too much for her in the end.”
“Couldn’t she have hired some help?” asked Annie.
“She had help!” Maeve replied. “But she wanted to retire. Didn’t want the hassle that goes with running a business.”
“Fair enough,” said Annie. “I’ve spent half my life running a business. And then one day you wake up and realize that so much of what defines you is the business that you’re not sure who you are without it.”
“So that’s what you’re running from,” said Maeve.
“Maeve!” said Gemma. “Put your filter back in. Sorry, Annie.”
Annie was about to protest that it was fine when Maeve cut back in.
“Oh, rubbish,” she said. “Any fool can see she’s running from something. What are you? Midforties? So, I ask you: Why is a middle-aged, articulate woman, with a clear line where her wedding band was recently removed, hiding in a glorified beach hut?”
“Easy there, Marple,” said Gemma. “I’m so sorry, Annie. She lost her filter when she hit her sixties and nobody’s been able to find it.”
Annie laughed. “It’s fine, honestly,” she said. “Maeve’s not wrong. Though it’s more of a retreat than a hiding place.” Annie took a breath. She figured if she told her story now, she wouldn’t have to tell it again; small villages being what they were, gossip would spread quickly. “I’ve walked out on my failed marriage and left behind my half of the business.”
“What was the business?” asked Gemma. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“I’m a chef,” said Annie. “I own the Pomegranate Seed restaurant in Leaming on the Lye.”
“The Pomegranate Seed!” said Gemma. “I know that place. I took Brian there for our anniversary last year. It’s been in all the foodie magazines. Gosh, is that you? Your food is amazing!”
“Do stop gushing, Gemma,” said Maeve.
“No, please.” Annie laughed. “Let her gush.”
“Cheat, was he?” asked Maeve.
“Honestly, Maeve,” said Gemma. “You’re like a bloodhound.”
“There’s not much that could induce a woman to leave behind a successful business,” said Maeve. “Women are practical like that. So, either he cheated, or she did.”
Gemma slapped her head. “Maeve!” said Gemma. “This is why you don’t get invited to parties.”
“He cheated,” said Annie. “And I left.”
At the lull in the conversation, Annie looked around the room. The pictures on the walls—framed posters of old 1920s and ’30s adverts for ice cream, cocoa, and soap—had cobwebs swung between their frames like lace hammocks. A copy of Country Life lay on the longest table as though just read and discarded. Annie ran her thumb across the dusty cover to reveal the date: 1992.
“How old is Mari?” Annie asked.
Maeve sucked air in through her teeth and frowned as she mentally calculated.
“Ooh, she’s got to be in her nineties,” she said. “Well into them too, I’d say.”