Read Online Divas Don't Knit by Gil McNeil - Free Book Online

everything. I won’t be a minute.’
    She’s looking slightly happier as she goes upstairs, having scored points on the kettle front, which is good, because I’d really like to avoid upsetting her if I possibly can. She’s worked here for years, and having her walk out in my first week would be a disaster because apart from anything else she’s the only one who knows how to open the till; you have to wiggle the number eight and press the TOTAL key at the same time, and I still haven’t got the hang of it. And she’s completely reliable, and happy to come in at short notice, because she likes to be out of the house and away from her husband Jeffrey, who’s recently retired, and who’s been a source of constant disappointment to her. They live two streets up from the shop; she’d like one of the new bungalows up by Gran, but Jeffrey’s notkeen, actually he’s not that keen on anything except his allotment, where he grows giant onions that have to be taken to the local shows in his wheelbarrow. They’ve got one of those silent marriages where people seethe away for years never saying anything, like living inside a pressure cooker on a very low heat, where everything goes soft and pulpy, simmering away for ages, forgotten, until the lid finally blows off and you end up with bits of turnip all over your kitchen ceiling.
    I’ve always had a soft spot for Jeffrey, because he made a sledge for me and Vin when we were little, and he used to play cricket with us on the beach with their son, Martin, who was a couple of years older than us, and once chased Vin right along the sea front, wearing his cowboy hat and firing at him with his cap gun. Martin moved to Cheltenham after he got married, but he’s back at home now, and going through a very messy divorce, according to Gran; he works in computers and his wife, Patricia, left him for the UK sales manager and now insists on being called Patsy and drives a Mercedes sports car. Gran says Elsie’s thrilled because she never liked the wife, who once bought her a satin nightdress with a matching dressing gown for Christmas, which wasn’t from M&S so she couldn’t take it back, and now she’s got Martin back home she’s cooking all his old favourites for him, which must be rather mortifying for him, now he’s over forty. But I bet he daren’t tell her to lay off the eggy soldiers, because she’s not the kind of woman you’d want to cross, especially if she happens to be your mother.
    I’m standing looking at the shelves while Elsie’s upstairs, and planning how I’m going to move everything around, with all the nasty pastels in the back room, along with all the white baby wool and the multicoloured acrylic double knitting. Although I think I might wait until Vin gets here, and maybe do it on a Sunday when Elsie’s safely at home boiling sprouts and battling with her Yorkshires. The back room has got the same dark wooden shelving as the front, divided into squares, and the same darkwood floor, but there are quite a few spaces with not very much stock, and a table with a couple of chairs, and all the patterns in an assortment of old cracked plastic folders next to the door to the stairs. The kitchen and loo are upstairs, and the storeroom, packed with old display units that used to twirl round but don’t any more, and boxes full of oddments of material and tinsel, along with all the clutter Gran’s collected over the years. I’d like to try to open it up as a workroom and more shop space, if I can ever work out how to get rid of all the rubbish.
    I’m wondering how much it would cost to hire a skip, and where on earth I’d put one if I did since it would pretty much block the road, when Mrs Davis comes in from next door, with a big bunch of sunflowers.
    ‘I just wanted to say a proper welcome, love.’
    ‘Oh, how lovely. Thank you.’
    Elsie barrels down the stairs to see what’s going on.
    ‘Look, Elsie, aren’t they lovely?’
    ‘Very nice.’ She gives