Friends on foxglove stre.., p.1
Friends on Foxglove Street, page 1
FRIENDS ON FOXGLOVE STREET
A FOXGLOVE STREET NOVEL
BOOK TWO
ALIX KELSO
LAKE FALLS PUBLISHING
Copyright © 2023 by Alix Kelso
The right of Alix Kelso to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or transmitted into any retrieval system, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.
Cover by dmeachamdesign.
ISBN (paperback): 978-1-913098-12-4
Published by Lake Falls Publishing
For my husband, David.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
A MESSAGE FROM ALIX
About the Author
Also by Alix Kelso
1
Jess Shepherd flicked the mop across the bathroom floor and glanced again at the clock on her phone. If she didn’t get a move on, she’d never make it to work on time. The last thing she needed was another grumpy telling off from Pat Gallagher, her supervisor at the ice cream and dessert shop on the high street where she worked part-time as a server, but she hadn’t realised the bathroom would take this long to clean.
How could one tiny bathroom get so filthy? And where did all the dust come from? Considering Jess and her mother were the only two people who lived in the house, the state of the place didn’t add up.
“Are you nearly finished up there, love? I’ve put the kettle on if you want a cuppa?” Sally, Jess’s mother, called up the stairs.
“Thanks, but I don’t have time for tea,” she called back down before giving the bathroom floor one final scrub with the mop. “My shift starts in half an hour.”
She wrang the mop out in the bucket, gave the taps on the sink one last rub with the cloth to make them shine, and squirted some bleach down the loo. The place looked lovely and clean now, but give it a few days, and the mysterious bathroom dust would start to appear again, gathering beneath the radiator and along the rim of the bathtub. Annoying toothpaste stains would spring up in the sink, too, even although both Jess and her mother were vigilant when it came to rinsing after they brushed.
Jess’s theory was that evil bathroom fairies lurked inside the plumbing and sprang out of the plug holes during the night to entertain themselves by making a big, mucky mess. It was the only explanation that made any sense, considering how often she and her mother scrubbed the place.
Gathering up her cleaning things, Jess took one last look at the sparkly bathroom.
“Do your worst, evil bathroom fairies,” Jess muttered. “I suppose I’ll be back here in a few days to clean up after the whole miserable lot of you, yet again.”
She turned for the stairs. Down in the kitchen, she put the cleaning things away while her mother stirred the tea pot.
“Who were you talking to just then?” Sally asked.
“The evil bathroom fairies,” Jess replied, rinsing the mop and bucket at the sink. “I’ve had it with the dust and grime they scatter around up there, and think we ought to bar them from this house for life.”
Sally laughed softly. “If only we could blame evil bathroom fairies.”
“I do blame them. Neither of us is responsible for all that dust on the floor. I mean, where on earth does it all come from?”
“It’s dead skin cells, sloughed off our bodies when we wash and dry,” Sally announced cheerfully as she poured her tea.
Jess pulled a face. “Yuck, please don’t start again with your dead skin cells theory.”
“That’s what causes the dust, I’m telling you.”
“Well, what about all the grime around the sink? You rinse the sink after you’ve used it, and I rinse the sink after I’ve used it. So, why is it so filthy all the time?”
“Maybe we’re just muckier than we realise,” Sally said, biting into a custard cream. “I used to blame your father for making a mess in the bathroom and was always telling him off about it. It was only after he moved out, and the sink still somehow ended up grimy not long after I’d cleaned it, that I wondered if maybe that’s just the way of things. Sinks and bathrooms get dirty and we just have to make our peace with it.”
Jess laughed and shook her head. “Poor Dad, getting the blame for stuff that wasn’t his fault.”
Sally waved this off. “He didn’t mind. He was messy. He still is messy. I don’t know how Lorna puts up with him. He used to drive me mad when we were married, with his constant untidiness and always leaving things at his backside. Magazines chucked on the floor when he’d finished reading them. Shoes and hats and gloves abandoned all over the place. Cables and gadgets and who knows what else all left lying around on coffee tables and any other surfaces he could find. It was like living with a teenager.”
Sally rolled her eyes and Jess couldn’t help laughing again at her mother’s character assassination of her father.
“Well, Dad must have changed his ways because any time I pop round to see him and Lorna, their house always looked as neat as a pin,” Jess said.
“That’s because Lorna likes cleaning.” Sally wriggled her eyebrows, as if this concept was incomprehensible. “She actually likes cleaning the house, from top to bottom, constantly. In fact, I think she likes having your father there, so there’s always an endless list of messy chores to be tackled and that will keep her busy.”
What Sally had said was at least partly—maybe even mostly—true. Lorna really was a cleaning addict. Walking inside the house where she lived with Trevor, Jess’s father, was like walking into a show home. The woman even kept her extensive range of cleaning supplies in an impeccably tidy organiser underneath the sink, alongside reams of folded yellow dusters and freshly laundered cloths. Lorna’s household cleaning cache was in stark comparison to Jess and Sally’s, which comprised a few bottles of spray cleaner, washing up liquid, some bleach, and a bundle of old cloths and sponges that had seen better days. Sometimes there might also be a can of air freshener to be found beneath the sink too, but only if one of them had taken an odd notion at the supermarket and thought to purchase one.
Both Jess and Sally were clean, tidy women who kept their home looking nice and presentable. But Lorna’s approach to household hygiene was in another league entirely.
“At any rate, your father and Lorna are a perfect match,” Sally said with a sage nod. “I’ve always said so, ever since the first time I met her, when she and your father invited me over for coffee and Lorna almost had an aneurysm when I didn’t use a coaster underneath my mug.”
There was not a shred of malice in Sally’s comments. Jess knew her mother genuinely believed that her father, Trevor, had made a great match when he met and married Lorna. She also knew that her parents were far happier apart than they had been together.
Jess’s parents had divorced when she was fifteen, but their separation had been amicable and in the twelve years since, they’d stayed on good terms. Jess was grateful for that. When they’d separated, there had been no huge drama or falling out between the two of them. They’d simply stopped loving one another enough to stay together as husband and wife, and although the split had seemed devastating to Jess when she was only fifteen years old, she knew now, at twenty-seven, that her parents had done the right thing. They hadn’t been happy during their final years together, and there was no point in clinging to a relationship if it didn’t make anyone happy.
Jess’s father had remarried four years after the divorce, and Lorna was a lovely woman who her father clearly adored. If Lorna really did enjoy cleaning up after Jess’s messy father, as Sally claimed, then it wasn’t a one-way street, because Jess knew Trevor loved nothing more than doing all the cooking in their household and taking care of all the meals, having become a passionate home cook after taking early retirement. Trevor especially enjoyed spoiling Lorna by preparing fantastically complicated recipes from his vast collection of cook books, and Lorna seemed to enjoy eating everything he made.
“Lorna likes to clean and Dad likes to cook,” Jess said. “They balance one another out.”
“Which reminds me, one of those posh glass food storage containers that belongs to your father is still sitting over there on the counter.” Sally pointed to the item in question. “You keep forgetting to return it, and if it doesn’t leave this house soon, I’m worried I’ll accidentally knock it off the counter and smash it to smithereens. And there ’s no way I’m paying to replace it. Those things cost a fortune. I don’t know why your father can’t give you leftovers to bring home in a plastic tub, the same way any other normal person would do.”
Jess was a regular guest at her father’s house on Maxwell Avenue, just a few streets away from where Jess lived with her mother on Foxglove Street, and she never turned down an invitation to join Trevor and Lorna for dinner. She especially loved it when her father made coq a vin, one of his specialities which he served with rich, creamy Dauphinoise potatoes and herby carrots that Jess reckoned were the stuff of dreams.
It was leftover coq a vin from a meal Jess had shared with her father and Lorna last week that had made its way into the glass container her mother was now pointing at on the kitchen counter. As usual, Trevor had cooked enough to feed an army, and Jess had been only too happy to cart some of it home with her. Also, as usual, Trevor had filled the container with a double portion, one for Jess and one for her mother. While Sally had wolfed down her share as soon as Jess had arrived home that same night, declaring it to be delicious and Trevor’s best effort with the recipe to date, Jess had saved her portion to enjoy after one of her gruelling evening serving shifts at The Sugar Rush, the popular and busy dessert shop on Hamblehurst high street.
After hours spent preparing ice cream sundaes and waffles drenched in syrup and hot chocolate brownies loaded with cream, and with her teeth almost aching from the fuggy scent of so many sweet treats, Jess loved nothing more than getting home, kicking her shoes off her throbbing feet, and curling up on the sofa with a bowl of her father’s wonderful, savoury comfort food.
Which is exactly what she’d done with the leftover coq a vin. With another late evening finish looming at The Sugar Rush, and no more leftovers from her father going spare in the fridge, Jess realised she’d have to make do with toast or cereal for dinner when she finished work tonight. She didn’t get off until nine, which was too late to think about cooking a proper meal. Her supervisor at The Sugar Rush, Pat, always grudgingly told her to help herself to waffles or ice cream when she took her mid-shift break, but Jess didn’t have much of a sweet tooth, and even if she had, it would have vanished after her first shift working in the place.
Just thinking about her father’s food made Jess’s stomach rumble. She’d skipped lunch in order to clean the bathroom and deal with other chores around the house. Jess and her mother split the housework evenly between them, and Jess liked to make sure she was doing her share, considering her mother had been kind enough to let her move back into her house on Foxglove Street after Jess’s life had been suddenly and dramatically turned upside down three months ago.
But between her afternoon and evening shifts at The Sugar Rush, and her part-time early morning job working as a cleaner in an office block over at the local enterprise park, Jess didn’t have a lot of time going spare, and things often fell by the wayside. Today, lunch was the casualty, and she’d be lucky to grab an apple on her way out the door.
With some effort, she pushed thoughts of Trevor’s delicious coq a vin from her mind.
“Anyway,” Jess said, sweeping the dustpan detritus from the upstairs bathroom into the kitchen bin. “That’s the bathroom nice and clean.”
“Until next time, when it has to be done all over again,” Sally grinned over her mug of tea.
“Thanks for that uplifting thought, Mum.” Jess laughed as she stored the cleaning spray beneath the sink and pulled off her rubber gloves. “There’s nothing like a spot of futile housework to put a spring in a person’s step right before they start a seven-hour shift.”
“The time will fly by. That dessert place is always packed on Fridays. Think of the tips you’ll make.”
“Never mind the tips. Pat will dock my wages if I don’t get there on time, and I haven’t even changed into my uniform yet.”
Sally tutted at this. “That Pat Gallagher is all bark and no bite.”
“I can tell you from bitter experience, Mother, that Pat definitely has a nasty bite,” Jess said unhappily. “Which means I’d better get a move on.”
Sally’s expression softened, and before Jess could turn for the kitchen door, her mother reached across the table and caught her arm. “Are you okay, love? I mean, are you coping okay with that job in the dessert shop?”
When Jess saw the troubled look on her mother’s face, she wished she’d just agreed with her about Pat being all bark and no bite. The last thing she wanted was her mother worrying about her, especially considering there was nothing Jess could do about Pat Gallagher except grit her teeth and put up with her. Jess’s mother had already done enough for her these past few months, without Jess adding a dollop of pointless worry into the mix, too.
“I’m doing fine, Mum,” she said with a wide smile that took some effort to force into place. “Honestly, you don’t need to worry about me.”
“Of course I worry about you.” Sally patted her arm and sighed. “What kind of mother would I be if I didn’t worry about my own daughter?”
“Well, there’s nothing to worry about. I’m fine.”
Jess offered another too-bright smile and kissed her mother’s cheek, then headed back upstairs to change before Sally saw the stupid tears that had unexpectedly sprung into her eyes.
The uniform Jess wore at The Sugar Rush comprised a bubble-gum pink polo neck t-shirt and matching trousers, and Jess winced at the lurid colour as she pulled the items from her wardrobe. The shade did nothing for her pale complexion and made her feel ridiculous every time she wore it.
The interior and signage at The Sugar Rush was an on-brand mix of bubble-gum pink, hot red and neon orange, a combination that was enough to make anyone over the age of eighteen wince in order to protect their eyes from the technicolour assault. Once you threw in the grating, overloud pop music that played on a constant loop inside the place, not to mention the sugar-laden desserts on sale, it was a wonder people didn’t collapse from sensory overload the moment they walked through the doors.
Although Jess had started work at The Sugar Rush eight weeks ago, she was still getting used to the place. The bright pink polo neck top and trouser combination was in stark contrast to the demure navy blue skirt and jacket with pale blue shirt she’d worn in her previous job as a bank clerk. Jess had always liked wearing her smart suit with its sensible tones, and she’d loved her job at the bank, too. When she’d found out that the branch was closing, and that she was being made redundant from the job she’d enjoyed and on which she’d hoped to build a long-term career, Jess had been shattered.
Bank closures were happening everywhere, Jess knew that, but she’d thought her own little branch in Hamblehurst would be saved. Hamblehurst was a reasonably large town, nestled amongst the pretty chalk hills of the South Downs in Hampshire, and lots of people relied on the local bank branch. But four months after the head office announcement, the branch had been closed and shuttered, and Jess found herself out of a job.
Being made redundant hit her hard and turned her life upside down. Although she knew the branch closure wasn’t personal, being told she was being made ‘redundant’ left her feeling worthless and a bit useless. She’d put on a brave face and pretended it was just one of those things, but the truth was she was heartbroken. Thanks to her job at the bank, she’d made a good living, and Jess had liked her colleagues there a great deal. On Friday mornings, they’d all taken it in turns to bring cakes and cookies into the staff room for their coffee breaks, and Jess had enjoyed the camaraderie of the place. She’d also liked learning new skills that would help her progress at the bank and perhaps get promoted one day. Just a week before the branch closure announcement, Jess’s manager had authorised her to take an in-house course that would train her to help customers manage their debt problems, and she’d been excited at the opportunity.
