The Little Clock House on the Green: A heartwarming cosy romance perfect for summer

‘Okay,’ Kate said warily. ‘I know it must have been hard not telling anyone about the money and where it came from,’ she waited a heartbeat and then added, ‘you haven’t, have you?’

‘No. I kept your secret.’ It hadn’t been that difficult. Telling anyone would have just made them hurt for what could now never be changed.

‘Thank you. You’re mum must be wondering what the hell is going on, though, and worrying. I mean, me suddenly talking about how I could afford to buy that building and open up a business in it.’

‘Actually, she probably doesn’t,’ Juliet admitted. ‘And that’s probably on account of her thinking that I’m going to be buying it with you.’

‘Buying it with–’

Juliet heard her kitchen chair being scraped back from the table as Kate hopped up. ‘Did I just hear you right?’

Juliet nodded and pulled the cork out of the bottle of wine again.

‘Wait,’ Kate stopped her. ‘You’re serious, serious?’

‘Serious, serious. Fancy that wine, now?’

‘Forget the wine, have you got any honey lying around? I’ll make us both a couple of honey martinis while you tell me why on earth your mum thinks you want to buy The Clock House?’

‘Honey martinis? I haven’t had one of those since…’ Juliet shut her mouth when she remembered it had been after Bea’s funeral. ‘I don’t think I’ve got any vodka.’

‘We’ll do it gin-based, then. You still have that bottle sitting on your bookshelf in the lounge, gathering dust?’

‘Yep.’

‘So go get it and start explaining.’

‘Okay,’ Juliet wandered out into the lounge, throwing a, ‘It’s all because of the cats,’ over her shoulder.

In the lounge she reached up to the top shelf of the bookshelf and grabbed a hold of Gordon. One of her Musketeer cats, Porthos, stretched lazily on the sofa beside her as if he knew that sooner or later he’d be talked about.

‘Well, of course it’s because of the cats,’ Kate said, as if the statement made total sense to her, when Juliet walked back into the kitchen with the bottle. ‘Continue,’ she said, taking the gin from her and then moving to the small workspace area to set out the rest of the ingredients. ‘Or is the deal with the cats big enough that you need the alcohol first?’

‘I can probably survive, but only if you hurry. So the thing with the cats…’ Juliet replied hovering over Kate’s shoulder. ‘I overheard Gloria Pavey–’

‘Gloria Pavey is a complete bitch and no one should pay any heed to whatever she says. Ever. Wait – she is still a bitch, right? Please tell me she hasn’t morphed into a national treasure and I’m going to have to feel guilty for every horrible thing I ever said about her?’

‘Oh rest assured, she hasn’t changed one little bit. Well, actually, now that she’s become the ultimate cliché, she’s worse.’

‘The ultimate cliché? Do tell.’

‘Her hubby went off with a younger model,’ Juliet explained, pushing aside the guilt for gossiping.

‘No! After all the work she had done to make sure that wouldn’t happen.’

‘I know. But it turns out that instead of having her boobs done she should, in fact, have had them reduced and had a completely different part retrofitted instead.’

‘Retrofitted?’

‘The younger model is an actual model… called Bobby. As in short for Robert.’

‘Bobby? Truly? Bob Pavey has left Gloria for another guy… A guy called Bobby?’

‘You forgot the male model part.’

‘The Bobsters… Bob and Bobby Pavey,’ Kate tried the names out and Juliet watched her computing the hugeness of the gossip that had been delivered. ‘God, it must be killing Gloria that she made Bob take her name when they got married.’

‘I know. And you can hardly blame her for being bitter and twisted now.’

‘You’re right. That’s, wow, a lot. I mean, Gloria’s always done the competition thing with just about everyone she comes into contact with, but competing for your husband’s affection against another man? How is she still even adulting?’

‘She’s not, really. And that’s why we’ve all been cutting her a little slack.’

‘Oh my God, I just thought – this must mean I’m officially no longer the only screw-up in the village.’

‘You’ve never been thought of as a screw-up and anyway…’ Juliet added, because if she didn’t get the words out soon she would definitely be too drunk to filter what she was saying.

‘Sorry – yes – so what did Gloria do?’ Kate asked as she took a lemon from the fruit bowl and cut it in half.

‘It sounds so silly now,’ Juliet murmured.

‘It’s not silly if it hurt you. Come on, out with it.’

‘Okay. So. I overheard her declaring me the ‘Girl Most Likely To Become Whispers Wood Official Crazy Cat Lady’.’

There. She’d said it. And with that she opened a drawer to search for the honey drizzler stick thing she was sure she owned.

‘What?’ Kate said, spying it in the drawer and fishing it out for her and then brandishing it like a sword. ‘Is she still living in that converted barn? I am going to track her down and pull her hair and kick her shins and steal her conkers and, hang on, she called you a name?’

‘I know,’ Juliet nodded, squishing half the lemon juice into the cocktail shaker. ‘It’s pathetic. I shouldn’t have let it get to me. Except. Well, Kate, do you know how many cats I have now?’

‘One,’ Kate answered loyally, calmly chucking a shot of gin into the shaker and looking at her for confirmation.

Juliet shook her head.

‘Two?’ Kate asked, chucking in another shot of gin.

Juliet shook her head.

‘Right, right,’ Kate added, measuring out one more shot, ‘I saw another one that looked like it doubled for Grumpy Cat.’ She reached for the honey. ‘So, you have three cats, big deal.’

‘Five. I have five cats.’

The honey drizzler that Kate had plunged into the jar of honey paused mid-air. ‘Wow, Juliet… That’s a lot of fur-babies to feed.’

‘I know,’ Juliet agreed, sliding the cocktail shaker under the spoon of honey before the contents could ooze and drip onto the countertop. ‘And I swear the last two found me, I didn’t find them. I’ve officially run out of names. There are only three musketeers, Kate. Four if you count D’Artagnan. And you know how I hate it when things don’t match. Do you know what I ended up calling the last one, the one that could stunt-double for Grumpy Cat?’

‘What?’

‘Catty McCatFace. And now it has a complex–’

‘Because it thinks it’s a boat?’

‘No, because, because other cats probably hear me calling it in at night and probably go all Gloria Pavey on it when I’m not around.’

‘Oh Jules,’ Kate said sympathetically.

If Kate was using her pet name for her, she really was sounding pathetic. Annoyed with herself, she threw open the door of the freezer and tossed a bag of ice onto the countertop. Taking a rolling pin out of the drawer, she smashed the bag and tipped some of the contents into the cocktail shaker, slammed the lid down on top and began to shake it vigorously.

‘So why would buying The Clock House stop you from being the Crazy Cat Lady of Whispers Wood?’ Kate asked, as she stood back to allow Juliet to reach into an overhead cupboard and grab two jam jars.

Juliet stared at the jars. It had taken hours to build up the lace-effect Washi-Tape evenly.

‘Jules?’

‘Having a business to work on will help take my mind off it. Cheers,’ she said, passing one of the jars to Kate and clinking hers against it before taking a huge gulp.

Lemony-honey-alcoholic goodness slipped down Juliet’s throat, making her think she could do this. She could make Kate understand without having to go into soul-despairing detail.

‘You’re going about this the wrong way,’ Kate said after taking another sip. ‘What would take your mind off thinking you’re going to end up old, alone, mad and with a house full of cats, is to find a man.’

Juliet stared hard at her cousin and then nodded at the genius of it all. ‘Yes. Thank you. I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of that.’

Kate winced. ‘I get that pickings are slim around here, but maybe it’s time to try online dating.’

‘You think all my problems will disappear if I do online dating?’

‘I know it’s not easy–’

‘Oh you do, do you?’

‘Okay. I don’t. And I’ve obviously oversimplified. Obviously there’s more to this than the cat thing.’

‘I’ve tried online dating.’

‘Seriously?’

Juliet put down her drink. She’d only had half of it and couldn’t believe the words had popped out like that. ‘It was a disaster.’ A serious disaster. She didn’t think she could ever do it again. She was too shy. Too reserved. Too tentative. Too unattracted to every man bar one…

‘You never wrote to me about this.’

‘You never wrote to me about what happened with Marco.’

Kate stared into her drink. ‘So we’ve been keeping secrets.’

‘Yes. Secrets.’ Juliet felt the familiar weight of hers and, not for the first time, thought that if she could just once shout it out at the top of her lungs, everything would be better.

‘If I tell you about Marco, will you tell me your secret?’ Kate asked.

‘Is it so wrong to want to concentrate on something other than a man?’ she asked, fully prepared now to sulk. ‘The world doesn’t revolve around them, you know. Maybe I want a new challenge in my life.’

‘Okay. Who is he?’

‘What?’

‘Someone’s done a number on you.’

‘No they haven’t.’

‘Rubbish. Some guy has done a number on you and frightened you off all men.’

‘No. He really hasn’t. Wouldn’t. Couldn’t.’

Kate’s eyes narrowed. ‘You sound like you’re talking about someone specific.’

‘Nope,’ Juliet answered, shoving more alcohol down her neck.

‘You want to talk about anything else, don’t you?’

‘I really do.’

‘Okay. You have ten minutes.’

‘Ten minutes?’

‘Ten minutes to talk about anything else and then we’re going back to this because something’s going on here.’

‘And to think I was thinking of going into business with you!’

‘Business?’

‘Yes. The Clock House. Business. Together. You and me. You running the day spa. Me…’ she took a much-needed sip of her cocktail and then rushed out, ‘and me running a hair salon.’

‘You want to open a hair salon in The Clock House?’

‘Not anymore, I don’t.’ She sniffed. ‘I changed my mind.’

‘This is about the “killing two birds” thing you were talking about earlier this morning? You want to stop being thought of as the Cat Lady and you want to open a hair salon?’

‘Finally. She gets it. So, what do you think?’

Kate took a sip of her drink.

Juliet wasn’t completely surprised to discover she’d already finished hers.

‘I think it’s the most brilliant idea in the world.’

‘You do?’ Juliet let out the breath she hadn’t even been aware she’d been holding. ‘I mean, you really do?’

‘I really do. But Juliet, let’s be serious for a moment. We have zero experience…’

‘That’s not true,’ Juliet defended, suddenly feeling a lot more confident now she hadn’t been laughed out of her own house.

‘Right,’ Kate said. ‘I totally forgot the part where we’ve both had oodles of manis and pedis and the part where we’ve both had our hair cut.’

‘Exactly. Plus, what with your business degree and me actually being a hairdresser…’

Kate smiled. ‘Oh yeah. This calls for more honey martinis.’ She grabbed the shaker out of the sink and pulled the bottle of gin towards her. ‘So, we’re really about to think about doing this?’

‘Seems like. Oh. Wait here. I need to go get my business plan.’

‘You have a business plan?’

‘Of course.’

‘Am I the only one who hasn’t actually done a business plan?’

‘Yes, but that was probably because you needed to be here first and, you know, see if you could, do it.’

‘I guess.’

She left Kate happily hacking the rest of the ice into tiny shards while she raced upstairs to get her laptop and files. Catty McCatface was sitting on the bed and looked up at her when she burst through her bedroom door.

‘What?’ Juliet whispered as she looked at the cat’s permanently dour expression. ‘A girl has to grow up. Move on. Make a life for herself. Find a dream that could actually come true, and work towards that. Oh, you know I’m right,’ she added when the cat merely sniffed and put its head back down on its paws and closed its eyes. Quietly she left her bedroom and jogged back down the stairs.

‘So what’s the other reason you want to buy into The Clock House?’ Kate asked before Juliet had even set the laptop on the kitchen table.

The file Juliet was holding slid to the floor. ‘What happened to me getting ten minutes?’

‘They’ve been and gone and I’m onto my second cocktail of the morning and suddenly I’m thinking something doesn’t add up.’

‘It d-doesn’t?’ she stammered as she dropped to the floor to pick up the file.

‘No. It doesn’t. For starters, what does your mum think?’

‘You know she’s always encouraged me to go it on my own one day. And the timing couldn’t be better,’ she rushed out, blowing a strand of hair out of her face as she rose to her feet.

‘Really? Why is that? And don’t tell me it’s because of cats, because it can’t be.’

‘Well, then let me show you my plan. Let me pitch to you.’

‘Okay, but I get a full Q and A, after.’

‘Fair enough.’ Juliet put down the file, switched on her laptop and then tucked her hair behind her ears. ‘So, as I was saying, mum has always encouraged me to think long-term. You know we’ve always been a team, so in the beginning it felt super-logical to work with her when I qualified. But then I kept working with her because it was easy. Too easy. I find it difficult to…’

‘Push yourself forward?’ Kate inserted.

‘Yes. Push myself forward. Thank you.’ She pulled up some graphics and turned the screen towards Kate. ‘Obviously I didn’t tell the bank manager any of the personal stuff. This is just to help explain to you.’

Kate nodded and then sat forward in her chair, not looking at the screen but looking at Juliet with a serious expression. A completely business-like expression. ‘Juliet, have you thought about how much starting a business is about pushing yourself forward?’

‘I have and… hey, I thought we were going to do the Q and A after.’

‘Okay, Miss Bossy Boots!’

‘I’m sorry, it’s just that I can’t do this if you’re going to interrupt – and I’ve been practising.’

‘No more interrupting. I promise.’

‘Good. So, you know how much I love doing hair and you know how hard I’ve worked to get where I am. But it’s not enough. Not any more–’ she broke off when she saw the questions enter Kate’s eyes, but to Kate’s credit she kept to her promise and didn’t interrupt.

‘Mum’s not going to want to work forever and I know I could take over her clients. Spend my days doing semi-waves and sets. But I want more than that. I appreciate that this is Whispers Wood and the clientele is somewhat older. But with the right location and the right ambience… which is The Clock House all over if you buy it and open it as a day spa… Well, in a nutshell, I want to be able to rent some space from you. If I open in The Clock House I could attract clients from outside Whispers Wood. I know I could.’

‘I know you could too. That’s not what I’m worried about.’

‘Oh.’ From her earliest memories Juliet had somehow understood she’d always be just on the periphery of the bond Kate and Bea had shared. She fiddled with the corner of the file she’d been clutching. ‘Is it – is it that this was all yours and Bea’s dream? Not the salon part but the spa, and you think to do it with anyone else wouldn’t be right. That she wouldn’t have liked it?’

‘No. No not at all. I’m worried that you’re incredibly polished and professional… and I’m not. I have the idea and that’s it. I need to spend hours working out if this is all properly doable. I guess I’m worried that if it isn’t… there wouldn’t be anything to hold me here.’

‘If you don’t want to take the risk, I need you to know I’m going to do this anyway. That’s how serious I am about this. I have a loan from the bank – it’s not huge, but it would be enough to open a tiny salon in one of the empty shops on the green. It won’t be the same, but this is what I really want.’

‘You see? You’ve spent proper grown-up time coming to this conclusion. I’m pretty sure pebble-tossing didn’t even enter your head as a decision-making process.’

‘But Kate, you have thought about this more than that. All those years you and Bea dreamt about opening up the spa. You haven’t forgotten all of that. You’ve just filed it away in a box marked ‘difficult’. You access all of that thinking and you’ll find you’re already halfway there. And I bet you’ve done some thinking these last few weeks. You just don’t want to admit how much.’

‘Okay. Say you’re right – say I’ve had some… thoughts about what it would be like running my own business. Say I think that having a hair salon along with a day spa would only benefit us both…What happens now?’

‘You phone Old Man Isaac and make an appointment with him.’

‘It’s as simple as that?’

‘I think it has to be. If we keep focusing on how big a thing this is, then we might not follow through. And, Kate? I really want the both of us to follow through on this.’ Juliet knew she had to do something to drag herself out of fantasy-land and into fulfilling-a-lifelong-dream-land.

‘I guess there’s no time like the present,’ Kate said, suddenly standing up so that she could push her hand into her pocket. Out came a folded-up piece of paper. ‘It’s the estate-agent deets. I’ll make the call now.’

Juliet smiled. ‘I’ll get us set up in the lounge, there’s at least another four inches of space in there!’

She could hear Kate on the phone as she set about clearing her sewing machine from the coffee table. They were really going to do this. She hadn’t felt this fluttery, excited feeling since… a pair of sinfully gorgeous green eyes popped into her head and with practised concentration she shooed them away again so that she could focus on the task at hand.

‘I’m all set for visiting Old Man Isaac tomorrow morning at ten,’ Kate told her when she re-entered the kitchen. ‘We’re going to have to work our arses off to prep before then. I need to come up with a solid plan as polished as yours in case he asks what I want to do with the place. Hey, you know what we need?’

‘Another batch of martinis?’

‘Nope. Cake. Can you make one of your famous Victoria sponges? Is that still his favourite? I’ll take it with me when I go tomorrow.’

‘Ooh, good idea.’

‘It’s these kinds of little touches that are going to help win him over.’

‘That and the fact that I’m going to lend you one of my dresses.’

‘No daisy-dukes at the meeting?’

‘You want to impress him with your business prowess, not give him a heart attack.’

Kate tipped some of her remaining honey martini into Juliet’s jam jar and slid it back to her before picking hers up and holding it aloft. ‘To Gloria, then’ she said, making a toast.

‘To Gloria,’ Juliet agreed, holding her jam jar aloft. ‘And all the cats,’ she added, as Catty McCatface made an appearance in the kitchen.

Kate grinned as she looked at him and then started singing, ‘Memory, all alone in the moonlight…’

Juliet tipped the last of the alcohol down her throat and joined in.

Catty McCatface looked derisively at the humans as if to say that the sooner cats developed opposable thumbs, the sooner the human slaves would remember their place.

Chapter 11

Birdsong, Baskets and Business Plans

Kate

Kate stood in Juliet’s kitchen, nervously trying to make sure that every single one of the butterflies swarming inside her stayed inside her and under control. If she could just keep a lid on them a while longer, then she had every chance of getting through this meeting and coming out the other side of it with her offer on The Clock House being accepted.

So, no biggie, then.

When she’d been standing in front of the full-length mirror that hung on the back of Juliet’s bedroom door, staring at her reflection with a critical eye, she’d thought that she looked good in the white dress covered in tiny violets. She’d thought she’d looked pretty and professional or at least pretty professional.

But now that she was waiting for Juliet to get back with the cake all she could see as she smoothed her hands down the front of the nineteen-sixties-styled dress, with its gorgeously swishy skirt and nipped-in waist, was her chest.

She frowned. She was a little, and for a little, read a lot, fuller in the bust area than Juliet and as she dragged in a shaky breath and felt her diaphragm push tightly against the material of the dress, she was very grateful there weren’t any buttons that could ping off mid-meeting.

‘I’m back, panic over,’ Juliet said, breezing in through the cottage.

‘Who was panicking?’ Kate harrumphed, feeling sick. She’d only glanced at the kitchen clock eleven million times in the twenty minutes that Juliet had been gone.

‘My bad,’ Juliet said dryly, putting the box she’d purchased down on the kitchen counter in front of Kate. ‘There you go. One perfectly factory-formed Victoria sponge from Big Kev’s.’

Kate stared at the box. Even the photo on the front didn’t look as good as the kissed-by-angels, light-as-air, yummylicious Victoria sponge stuffed with home-made strawberry jam and clotted cream that Juliet had made yesterday. If only they hadn’t eaten it at one o’clock this morning when they were tired, hungry and had needed the pick-me-up.

‘Right, open it up and pop it on this plate,’ Juliet said, putting a pretty floral china plate down on the counter, ‘we’ll have this ready to go in a jiffy.’

Leaning forward, Kate slid her finger under the corner of the cardboard box and pushed it along until the flap popped open. A quick tussle with the cellophane wrapping and then she was plopping the cake onto the plate.

She stared down at it. ‘Um… maybe it would be better to forget the cake,’ she told Juliet. ‘This doesn’t look like it could be placed on the “altar of gingham” or be in with a shot of winning Star Baker.’

‘It will in a moment. Here – hold this,’ Juliet shoved a lace doily into her hand.

‘Again, I’m no Mary Berry but shouldn’t this go under the cake?’

‘No. Hold your hand up higher. Good – now hold it there while I–’

Kate watched as Juliet, her tongue caught between her teeth, shoved her hand down onto one side of the cake to make a dent.

‘Hey,’ Kate swiped at Juliet’s arm. ‘What did you go and do that for? It’s all lop-sided now.’

‘Authenticity,’ Juliet said and then, holding Kate’s hand with the doily a good six inches above the cake, she reached over with her other hand and swiped a shaker off the sideboard and proceeded to waft icing sugar over the whole affair.

When she stopped, Kate moved the doily and stared in wonder at the now pimped-up sponge. ‘Where did you learn how to do all this stuff?’

‘It came with the folder marked “How to be a Crazy Cat Lady”,’ Juliet answered, with a small smile, before she picked up the plate and popped it into a wicker basket so that it was nestled prettily alongside the small posy of flowers she’d picked.

Kate watched as Juliet continued to fuss with the basket. She could honestly kill Gloria for paying out on Juliet and making her in any way doubt herself or her ability to meet some guy and fall in love with him and set up a forever home with him.

‘Seriously, Juliet, it all looks beautiful. You realise one of these days you’re going to make one of those mums that the Mummy Mafia hang around at the school gates discussing how to make disappear, right?’