Christmas At Thrush Green Read Online Free

to it in the row had retained the steps up, although none sported such fine handrails as the Lovelocks’ house.
    Yes, thought Nelly, if they were decorated in the same style as each other they would look pretty good. She knew that Little Pressies only occupied the ground floor - a good-sized room in the front, and a couple of smaller back rooms that held the shop’s stock.
    ‘Hmm . . .’ she said to herself. ‘I wonder . . .’
    At eleven o’clock that July morning, Clare Border arrived, and settled down in the little office to look after the order books.
    Nelly took her a cup of coffee but instead of just putting it down on the desk and returning to the kitchen as usual, she sat down somewhat heavily on the spare chair. ‘Do you have a moment, Clare? I’ve something I wants to ask you.’ And she proceeded to tell Clare of her half-formed plan for the premises next door.
    ‘I’ve been a bit concerned recently,’ she said, ‘that we don’t - that we can’t - give enough room to the sandwiches and rolls for the office workers’ lunches. What we prepare is gone in a flash. I’ve tried to make more but, to be honest, they get in the way when we’re serving lunches.’
    Although The Fuchsia Bush was officially a tea-shop and its busiest time was generally in the afternoon, it had always served light lunches as well.
    Nelly proceeded to tell Clare about the lease of Little Pressies being for sale and asked whether they could afford to buy it, and turn it into a sandwich bar. There was no doubt that sandwiches were a growing market. Office staff no longer made their own sandwiches to take to work, and few of the workers seemed to come in for a proper lunch. The Fuchsia Bush’s clientele was mostly shoppers and visitors to the little town.
    It was agreed that Nelly would enquire from the commercial agent who was selling the lease what price was being asked, and then Clare would see whether, with a mortgage, Nelly could afford to buy it.
    In due course, Clare reported back to her employer. The long and the short of it was that Nelly couldn’t. The mortgage would put an impossible burden on the business.
    ‘Oh,’ said Nelly, feeling deflated when Clare told her, ‘that’s a real disappointment. I’d begun to think how I would plan it. I’d even started to think of names. Foolish of me, I know, to have pipe dreams.’
    ‘Well, there is one way you could afford it,’ Clare said.
    Nelly’s heart did a little jump. ‘Yes?’
    ‘You could sell the catering side, and expand into the sandwich business instead.’ Clare looked at some figures she had written on a piece of paper. ‘You should be able to sell the catering business as a going concern, staff and everything, and have enough to buy the lease of next door and what it would need to convert and decorate the place. And, if you did need a bit more, then you could get a small bank loan.’
    Nelly stared at her, and then her big face broke into a smile. ‘That sounds just the biscuit!’ she exclaimed. ‘I don’t have any great affection for the catering side. I’m so remote from it now. The kitchen here shares a wall with the back room of next door. Do you think we would get planning permission to knock the two together?’
    The two women’s faces shone with excitement.
     
    And so it came about that a new sandwich shop opened in Lulling High Street. Nelly had originally thought she would call it Peter’s Sandwich Parlour, with a nod to her benefactor’s memory, but no one seemed very keen on the name.
    Clare Border, who was never backward about coming forward, robustly disagreed with her employer. ‘I don’t think that’s a very good name. People will endlessly ask who Peter is. Unless, of course, you have a Peter in mind to run it for you?’
    Nelly explained her thinking behind the name. ‘Mustn’t have anything too twee,’ she said firmly. ‘Nothing like Little Pressies.’
    ‘Well, if not the last owner of The Fuchsia Bush,’ said Clare,