Anything but Vanilla(25)
‘Our?’
‘Scoop! is a family business. My older sister started it with the unexpected gift of a vintage ice-cream van. My younger sister—the animal lover—is an art student. She does the artwork for the PR and runs the website.’
It was probably best not to mention her grandmother, who helped style their events, or her great-uncle Basil, a fabulous maître d’ at the big events and, when called upon, happy to don a striped blazer and straw boater to do a turn for them on an ancient ice-cream bicycle that he had lovingly restored.
‘And you?’ he asked. ‘What do you do?’
‘Me?’ She was the one who was going to turn their brand into a household name but she decided that, rather like the extended family, in this instance it was an ambition better kept private. Alexander’s eyebrow, like her pulse rate, had been given more than enough exercise for one day. ‘I’m the one who’s stuck here making ice cream when I should be in the newly restored Victorian Conservatory at Cranbrook Park, ensuring that the ice-cream bar is installed and fully functioning and that everything is in place for a perfect event.’ The eyebrow barely twitched. ‘Meanwhile, for your information, the biscuit we chose bears no resemblance to cardboard but is a thin, crisp, melt-in-the-mouth savoury oatmeal shortbread.’
‘If Peter Sands baked it, I’m warming to the idea.’
‘You know Peter?’
‘I wouldn’t have a bacon roll from anyone else.’
‘Great,’ she said, not sure whether he was serious, or simply winding her up. The latter, she feared. Unless... ‘You’re his landlord, too, aren’t you?’
‘I am, but I don’t sleep with him, either,’ he said. ‘In case you were wondering.’
‘No.’ She wasn’t wondering that. Not at all. ‘As for the florist, the delicatessen and the haberdashery in between...’
He shifted, as if she’d caught him off guard, and suddenly everything clicked into place. It wasn’t just this corner. The entire area had been given a makeover three or four years ago. Cleaned up, refreshed, while still keeping its old-fashioned charm.
‘Ohmigod! You’re that West!’
‘No,’ he said, waiting for her to catch up. ‘That West died in nineteen forty-one.’
‘You know what I mean,’ she said, crossly. Maybridge had been little more than a village that had grown up around a toll bridge when James West had started manufacturing his ‘liver pills’ in a cottage on the other side of the river. The gothic mansion built in the nineteenth century on the hill overlooking the town by one of Alexander’s ancestors was now the headquarters of the multinational West Pharmaceutical Group. ‘Your family built this town. Could I feel any more stupid?’
‘Why? The name was dropped from the company after some scandal involving my great-great-grandfather and a married woman. You could stop a hundred people in the town and not one of them would know that the W in WPG stands for West.’
‘Maybe, but I did,’ she admitted. How could she not have made the connection? Too many other things on her mind... ‘I did a project on the town history for my GCSE. I got in touch with their marketing department and they gave me a tour of the place.’ She shivered. ‘All that marble and mahogany.’
‘And the building is listed so they can’t rip it out.’ It appeared to amuse him.
‘They have close links with the university, too. Research, recruitment.’
‘They’re proactive when it comes to headhunting for talent.’
‘I know.’ She was going to enjoy this next bit... ‘They offered me a place in their management scheme.’
‘And you turned it down?’ He sounded sceptical. Unsurprising, if rude. No one turned down an offer from WPG. But no one else had Scoop!
‘Why would I want to sit in the office of some giant corporation, moving figures around, when I could be dreaming up ways to make someone’s day with the perfect ice cream?’ She regarded him thoughtfully. ‘I’d have thought a man who chose mosquitoes and bats over the boardroom would have understood that.’
‘Touché.’ He grinned appreciatively and she responded with a little curtsey.
‘Sadly, I don’t have the rents from half Maybridge to support my lifestyle.’
‘Who does? While my great-great-grandfather built this end of the High Street, his property portfolio, like WPG, is run by a charitable trust.’