Page 7 of The Village of Lost and Found

For a brief moment she wondered what it would be like to spend the whole summer in Cranbridge. But she dismissed the thought almost immediately as just a pipe dream, however tempting it sounded.

4

By the time Lucy returned to the hospital after her surprisingly successful interview atThe Cranbridge Times, her optimism about her new temporary job was beginning to wobble.

‘I’m not sure I can do it,’ she said, trying to keep her voice down in deference to the other patients on the ward. ‘What do I know about working for a newspaper?’

As always, she felt that she just wasn’t good enough. It hadn’t helped that she hadn’t excelled academically at the fancy boarding school her parents had sent her to. In their eyes, she just wasn’t bright enough nor driven enough to have any kind of career which is why they had pushed her into various thankless tasks in the business. But she had found a lot of the work tedious, although she had been happy enough to go along with their plans as she was unsure as to what she had to offer any other employers.

‘Did you mention your charity work?’ asked Uncle Frank. ‘Tom would have been interested in that.’

Apart from staying in Cranbridge with her aunt and uncle, the only other place that Lucy had ever felt worthwhile was in the charity work she had volunteered for most weekends in recent years. It didn’t matter what the role was, from washing up at the homeless shelter to helping out at a community hub, the main thing was that she had felt that she finally had something to contribute.

Not that her parents saw it that way. ‘Helping people is not a proper job,’ she remembered her mother telling her. ‘It doesn’t pay the bills nor give you any kind of career.’

The only person that had encouraged her was Uncle Frank.

Lucy shook her head. ‘No, I didn’t mention it. Tom was obviously very busy and I don’t think it would be relevant to tidying up the place.’ She gave him a rueful smile. ‘I’m not sure there’s enough time in the world to sort through all that mess, though.’

She looked at her uncle, who was sitting up and smiling at her.

‘What can you possibly find to smile about in all of this?’ she asked, with a sigh.

Uncle Frank’s smile grew wider. ‘Tom needs a smart, streetwise person who might disagree with him once in a while. I think you might just be the one to push him in the right direction.’

‘As long as it’s not into the river,’ she drawled, slumping into the chair next to the bed. ‘He looked a bit of a mess, by the way. To say nothing about the state of the office.’

Uncle Frank’s smile slipped. ‘He’s had a tough couple of years. But he’s a good man. Just give him a chance.’

‘But what if I muck things up again? You know me. Bad luck seems to follow me around.’ Lucy fiddled nervously with her silver bracelet which had belonged to her Aunt Jane. Why couldn’t she be calm in nature like her beloved aunt?

‘Look, you’re more than capable of tidying up the place,’ said Uncle Frank. ‘Besides, maybe you can find some new readers underneath all that mess. Heaven knows, we need them.’

Lucy looked at him. It was as she had suspected. The newspaper was possibly in trouble. It had been Uncle Frank’s life for so long and his saving grace after he had lost Aunt Jane. At least if she worked there, she could try and help keep it afloat somehow.

He suddenly looked exhausted. Lucy bit her lip, once more cross with herself. She should have come down to Cranbridge before now and realised how bad things were. In trying to please her parents by concentrating on her work, she had ended up neglecting Uncle Frank. She should never have left it for so long, when he had always been so supportive of her.

‘Well, the good news is that you’ll have some company around the place whilst I stay with you,’ said Lucy.

But, to her surprise, Uncle Frank shook his head. ‘It’s a one-bedroom bungalow,’ he said. ‘Where are you going to sleep?’

‘On the sofa,’ said Lucy with a shrug. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘That’ll break your back in about a week,’ he replied. ‘Besides, there’s no reason why you can’t stay above the office.’

She looked at her uncle in surprise. ‘You still own the apartment?’

He nodded. ‘Of course. I own the apartment and the newspaper office too. They’re both mortgage-free, thank goodness.’

The apartment held many happy memories for her as that was where she stayed with Uncle Frank and Aunt Jane, whilst she had loved being in the haberdashery shop below which Aunt Jane had run when she was growing up. She could still remember playing with the vast tins of shiny buttons as a child and all the rolls of pretty fabrics.

After Aunt Jane had died, the shop had been closed up and Uncle Frank had moved into his bungalow. Lucy had assumed that he’d sold the building but obviously not. She hadn’t been up to the apartment in years, she realised.

‘Is it even habitable?’ she asked, wondering how dusty the apartment would be if nobody had lived in there for the past five years. ‘Not that it matters. I can always clean it.’

‘Actually it’s been rented out for the past couple of months by Molly from the newspaper and a friend of hers. Did you meet Molly? She’s the receptionist. Sweet girl,’ carried on Frank. ‘She’s kindly cleaned the place up for me a little. Anyway, the friend has just moved out, so there’s a spare bedroom waiting for you. It’ll be nice for you to have a flatmate.’

Lucy was surprised to find herself pleased at the thought. Having made hardly any friends at boarding school, the only other people she had met outside her parents’ work were those from the various charities she had worked for. But although she had become friendly with a lot of them, she wouldn’t have classed them as people to bare her soul to. She wasn’t sure she would ever trust anyone that much, apart from Uncle Frank.