Rachel Dove - The Chic Boutique On Baker Street

‘All done,’ he said cheerily, flashing a smile up at her. He stood and, grasping her hands, pulled her to her feet. The sudden movement startled her and she swayed slightly. He tightened his grip, steadying her.

‘Whoa! Are you sure you’re OK?’ he asked, concern clouding his features.

Amanda stiffened in his grasp and extricated herself from him as gracefully as she could.

‘Yes, I’m fine. Thanks for doing that. I just wanted to bring your board back. I … er … had better get back next door, I left it unlocked and we open soon.’

Ben smiled, and Amanda was once again drawn to his full lips. She mentally gave herself a telling-off, and pursed her lips in a businesslike fashion.

‘Well, nice to meet you, Amanda, and if you need anything else, we are just next door.’

Amanda noticed the ‘we’ in the sentence, and winced.

‘Yes, thanks,’ she muttered.

‘What is it you are doing next door, anyway? Antiques and such? Be nice to have one again, good for the tourists. Since Old Bill died, we have been sadly lacking for the antique market in Westfield.’

‘No, nothing like that. Actually it’s a boutique. We sell handmade crafts, doorstoppers, shabby chic decorations, upcycled furniture, craft kits, tea cosies, fairy doors. I make a lot of the items myself and run the upcycling service and I am planning to stock some kitchen table businesses’ designs too, once my website is up and running. Plus, in the front, I have plans for a small coffee area, so people can shop and get a nice coffee, swap ideas. I am going to expand and sell items online too—handmade goods produced in Westfield. My research showed that people love Yorkshire crafts.’

When she paused to draw breath, exerted from talking excitedly about her new venture, she noticed that Ben was now scowling, and looking quite put out. ‘Really? And the town council agreed to all this, did they? Tell them all this, did you?’

Amanda bristled at his abrupt line of questioning. Folding her arms, she suddenly missed her city heels. She drew herself up to her full height, which in flats still meant that she was looking at the bottom of his now upturned and set jaw.

‘Yes, I did tell them, and it was approved. Of course, why I need a town council’s permission to set up a shop that I own myself is a little strange, but—’

Ben huffed. ‘Strange!’ he practically shouted. ‘I don’t think you quite understand, Amanda. Westfield is a historical Yorkshire village, we have a way of life here, I know you mean well but I just can’t see any good coming from any of this.’

Amanda was absolutely dumbstruck. She was about to start apologising and explaining herself when she realised that this was exactly the reason she had left London in the first place.

‘Well,’ she retorted, poking Ben in his chest with an index finger. Well, not his chest, more like his stomach, from her angle. ‘The day I take orders from another man is the day I pack up and quit life, so why don’t you just do me a favour, Ben—stay out of my business and keep your bloody board out of my way!’ With that, she spun on her heel, not easy in flats, and flounced out of the shop, making sure to bang the door on the way out. As she was busy storming out, she heard him mutter, ‘Bloody Londoners.’

She resisted the urge to go back and slap him, and instead spent the next half-hour pummelling stuffing into her new cushion range, imagining she was inserting things into her stuck-up country boy neighbour.

Next door, Ben was doing much the same, only he took out his frustrations on an unamused Border collie, who was shampooed and brushed vigorously to within an inch of its doggy life.

Amanda dragged the silver metal shutter down with tired shoulders. The metal clanged into place, and she cursed as she dropped the key twice in her attempts to lock the deadbolts. Sighing, she secured the last bolt and straightened up. She winced as her back popped and clicked back into place. She had always thought that being sat ramrod-straight in court all day, followed by long nights hunched over her desk, would have been detrimental to her health, but after a long day in her shop, she now realised that the city girl in her had actually had it pretty easy compared to her new country bumpkin self.

The one thing she didn’t miss was the long commute home. She shuddered as she thought of all those early mornings and late nights crammed on the Tube with sweaty, cranky people and drunks, all trying to get somewhere, anywhere else but the tin can they were entombed in most probably. She remembered the stench, the awkward face thrust into an armpit journeys, the glazed eyes all framed within the condensation of the windows of the trains. To say Amanda had a new-found respect for sardines after all those years would be an understatement. Those fish were the Thors of the oceans, albeit that their journeys were done in the afterlife, but still, kudos.

All Amanda had to do now was pirouette on one foot from the shopfront to her own front door, the flat being directly above her livelihood. The living quarters had been one of the main draws for Amanda, one of the catalysts that had enabled her to even visualise embarking into a new life, far away from her old one.

She had kept the property listing bookmarked for weeks, occasionally taking time to moon over it in between sending work emails and IMs to Marcus. It was like her porn, property websites and Pinterest. They made her happy, and growing up in the dysfunctional family she had, Amanda had soon realised that happiness had to be grasped where it could.

Being the daughter of two law partners, Amanda’s childhood was less My Little Pony and more Mandarin lessons after school and organic vegetables on her dinner plate. Her parents worked hard, played hard and treated their only daughter like a science project, something to be worked on, altered and trotted out to show off at dinner parties. They worked all the time, and Amanda soon found a refuge: Grandma’s house. Dad’s mum lived alone in a neat bungalow on a leafy street in Muswell Hill not far from the impressive and sterile Highbury house she shared with her parental units. Amanda loved staying with her gran, a woman who despaired at her son’s clinical, detached treatment of her only grandchild.

Looking around her new flat, Amanda thought of the happy times she had spent in that house: the smells of cooking, washing on the line, life. That bungalow had more life and joie de vivre within its crooked walls than could be contained, and Amanda learnt everything from her grandmother, Rose. Sewing, cooking, baking: Rose could turn her hand to anything, and showed Amanda another side of life. One where work and money did not rule the world, and where creativity and enjoying life had more value.

She was thirteen when Rose died. She could still remember the bungalow, the smells, the laughter, but now it was tainted, tainted with the memory of her parents picking through Rose’s life, selling and discarding her possessions. She could still picture her mother’s face, full of disgust at the layer of dust on the surfaces, the baskets of wool around the rooms. Grandma Rose’s death affected Amanda deeply, whilst it was barely registered by her own son. After that, Amanda threw herself into schoolwork, working most nights in her room, and when she finished her schooling, she made her escape to university, the promise of a law career already mapped out since her infancy.

She wondered what Grandma Rose would have thought of her actions now; she suspected that she would be watching somewhere, geeing her on. Her parents, however, would not. She shuddered at the thought. Changing her life completely was something they would never understand. She reached out and touched one of the walls of her abode. It was cool to the touch. Perhaps that bookmark was fate, she thought to herself. Maybe it finally brought me home.