“Accept what, dear?”
Ellie knew she had to say it all, just like with Sammy and the password at the pub. “I’ll run this place for you. You can be as involved as you want or not.” Looking around the room, she saw a blank set ready for her to put things right and added, “I think I can handle this. Attention to detail and making old things look their best? I might have the perfect transferable skills for this.”
Maggie was holding back her smile. “Any DIY skills?”
“Ah, you’ve got me there,” Ellie admitted with a sheepish grin. “But there’ll be people out there who can do things, and I’m a fast learner.”
“And you always have been,” Maggie pointed out. “Skilled tradespeople will need a wage.”
“Then our first order of business is to get those doors open as soon as possible so this place can start making some money. I’ll do what it takes.” Her eyes landed on a gap by the front counter. “How about we invest in a coffee machine? Whether I like it or not, I know how to make all the drinks now, and coffee and books go together like...”
“Ellie and Meadowfield?” Maggie finished, a warm smile spreading across her face.
Ellie pulled the pen off her ‘I Love Meadowfield’ pad and decided it wasn’t ironic, after all. The scratchy nib bled out the black ink—no doubt about its visibility—as she added ‘coffee machine - second hand’ to her to-do list, now two days strong, double-columned, both sides.
What did Ellie know about reviving a neglected bookshop? With Maggie and the combined minds of everyone on South Street, there would be a way, and she was excited to find out. Besides, her mother hadn’t raised a quitter. Turning to the first page of the list, she added a title for this next chapter:
Meadowfield Books and the Big Comeback
Perfect. No. Not quite. She crossed out ‘Big.’
Spectacular Comeback.
“Perfect!” she announced, snapping the pad shut before dropping it into her trusty backpack along with her new favourite pen. “Since I’m the boss now, I’ll be taking an extended breakfast to go with my friends,” she said, “and ‘the rest’, apparently.”
“And now my granddaughter is a social butterfly too?”
“I will be,” she said, checking her phone as she dug in her bag, “in twenty minutes. But first, there’s something I haven’t done for over a week, and if I don’t do it soon, I think I may just lose my mind.”
Ellie shimmied the hardback copy of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen—the copy Maggie bought her for her fifteenth birthday—from her bag and kicked off her shoes, curling up in the old chair by the fireplace. Bird nests still blocked the chimney, but the sweep was booked in and written on the calendar. She found her bookmark in what looked like the exact middle and let the pages fall open.
“And now I can breathe,” Ellie said, inhaling the pages before burying herself deeper in the corner of the creaky leather, settling the book over her legs. She was glad to see she’d left it for herself on a fresh chapter. “Right, Miss Austen, time for you and me to run away from Meadowfield together.” Checking her watch, she added, “You have eighteen minutes, so where are you taking me?”
Thank you for visiting Meadowfield! I had so much fun bringing this village to life. If you want to support the series and me, the best way is to let people know what you thought.
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Return to Meadowfield with Ellie Swan in…
THE PLOT THICKENS
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