‘Oh, really?’ Quintus Braithwaite’s tone was edging towards rude. He wanted to get the committee meeting finished as soon as possible so that he could impress those present with the lavishness of Hiawatha’s hospitality.
‘Running Polly’s Cake Shop as a Community Enterprise is an admirable idea,’ Arnold Bloom continued, ‘but the fact remains that the community does not own the premises. And I think before we go any further in planning how the venue would be run, we should confront this rather large elephant in the room. How are we going to raise the money required to buy their property?’
‘We could rent it,’ came the reply from the Chair, who had only just thought of that.
‘We could rent it only if the person who owns the freehold is agreeable to having us rent it.’
‘And who would that person be?’ asked Quintus Braithwaite casually, unwilling to reveal the inadequacy of his researches into the project.
‘Well, currently Josie Achter owns it. But I’ve heard rumours that she’s very keen to sell up and might not be open to the idea of renting the place out.’
‘Then we should definitely find out if that is her position or not.’
Arnold Bloom nodded. ‘That is exactly what I was about to suggest. I feel investigation of that matter should be initiated, before the next meeting indeed, so that the outcome can be reported on at that meeting … I think it’s vital that we should find out the views of the current owner of Polly’s Cake Shop on its future.’
‘We’re not going to be bound by what she thinks,’ the Commodore protested.
‘That will rather depend on whether we are in any position to dictate terms – in other words, returning to the elephant in the room, whether we can somehow raise the funding to purchase the freehold.’
‘Don’t you think it possible,’ interposed Flora Claire, ‘that Josie might be prepared to rent the place to us?’
‘We could certainly ask her about that,’ said Arnold. But he didn’t sound optimistic.
‘Or maybe,’ Flora went on, ‘she might be prepared to lower the price a bit … “for the sake of Fethering”?’
Jude’s reaction to that suggestion would have been, ‘Dream on’, and others present were equally dismissive of the idea.
Arnold Bloom said diplomatically that every avenue should be investigated. ‘And I’m sure that sounding out the current owner would be a tactful exercise. We might find that Josie Achter is a strong supporter of the Community Project we are envisaging.’
From what Jude had heard of the woman, this sounded unlikely. Nor did it seem any likelier that the community of Fethering would be able to raise the kind of money needed to buy the café. In fact, she felt sure that the SPCS Action Committee was one of those local initiatives which would pretty soon die of attrition. The enthusiasm with which it had been set up would melt away in the face of reality. And she for one wouldn’t feel much regret when that happened. She’d only come to Hiawatha to support Sara. She’d much rather be spending her Wednesday evening in the Crown and Anchor.
Alec Walters, the recently elected Treasurer, now thought it was time to put his oar in. ‘If Josie Achter had any interest in the future of her property, one would have thought that she’d have appeared at one of our SPCS meetings. But she has appeared at neither.’
‘That’s a good point,’ said Quintus Braithwaite, anticipating the rejection of Arnold Bloom’s suggestion.
‘But I still think,’ his opponent went on, ‘that ascertaining her views on the situation would be a necessary preliminary step. It’s important we know whether we’re likely to receive co-operation or obstruction from her.’
‘Very well,’ the Chair of the committee said shortly. ‘We’ll put it to the vote. Will those in favour of checking out Josie Achter’s attitude to what we’re doing please raise your right hands?’
To his annoyance he saw that more of those present supported Arnold Bloom than him. It was then discussed which committee member should make the approach to Josie Achter to find out her position. Sara Courtney announced that Jude knew the woman in question through a Pilates connection.
And to Jude’s annoyance she found out that not only was she on the SPCS Action Committee, she had also been delegated by it to approach Josie Achter.
SIX
The next morning, the Thursday, Carole Seddon had a call from a very worried-sounding Stephen. Her son told her that his wife Gaby had suffered a small amount of bleeding and was in hospital. The doctors had reassured him that this was not unusual at her stage of pregnancy, and if it was a sign of labour starting, the baby was sufficiently developed to be viable. But he didn’t sound reassured.
Carole immediately asked if there was anything she could do, like looking after her granddaughter Lily while Stephen was at the hospital, and it turned out that that was exactly the offer he had hoped she would make.
She threw a few overnight things into a bag, taking four days’ worth of underwear because she didn’t know how long her stay in Fulham would be. And then she was faced with the problem of what to do with her Labrador Gulliver. As she went downstairs to her immaculate kitchen, he looked up from his favourite position in front of the Aga reproachfully, as if to say, ‘You nearly forgot about me, didn’t you?’
There were kennels she had used before, most recently when she went with Jude for a fortnight’s holiday in Turkey, but they weren’t close by and she didn’t know whether they’d take on dogs for an undefined period. So instead Carole hurried round from High Tor to Woodside Cottage to ask if Jude could look after Gulliver.
This was not completely unprecedented. Her neighbour had stepped into the breach before and, when she heard the situation, immediately volunteered to take the dog.
Carole said he could be left in High Tor if Jude had to go out or had a client to treat and that it might be simpler to feed him in her house because all his stuff was there. ‘And he needs a good walk twice a day. As you know, I tend to take him on Fethering Beach before seven every morning …’ She caught the expression in Jude’s eye. ‘… though it is of course up to you what time you take him out … and indeed where you take him.’
‘I’ll take care of him, don’t worry.’
Gulliver seemed to understand her tone of voice – or maybe he’d just recognized the word ‘walk’ that his owner had uttered. He looked up lovingly at Jude and wagged his sand-coloured tail.
Carole made a considerable drama of giving Jude a key to High Tor. It might have been imagined that, being so close, the two neighbours would have a copy of each other’s keys on a permanent basis, but that didn’t take into account Carole Seddon’s attitude to security. Though she always had a key to Woodside Cottage on a hook in her kitchen, she only lent one of hers to Jude on an emergency-by-emergency basis. If she were honest with herself, this was because she thought her neighbour laid-back to the point of being scatter-brained, and worried that the key might get lost under the piles of cushions and throws in her cluttered sitting room. Or, worse, might be stolen by one of Jude’s flakier clients.
Anyway, the arrangements were quickly made. Jude was surprised at how panicked her neighbour seemed to be by the news about Gaby, but she didn’t get a chance to ask further questions. A very tight-faced Carole was soon driving in her showroom-clean Renault towards Fulham.
With the result that Jude hadn’t had time to tell her about the previous night’s meeting of the SPCS Action Committee at Hiawatha.
There had been no call from Carole by the time Jude left Woodside Cottage on the Friday morning, so she just hoped that no news was good news. Her destination was Polly’s Cake Shop. With Sara Courtney as her go-between, and playing on their connection through the Pilates class, Jude had fixed a meeting with Josie Achter. She was still annoyed at having been dragooned on to the committee, but she was determined to discharge efficiently the duties that she had been given, and then work out her exit strategy.