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He’d been a big part of the London theatre scene in his youth, but fifteen years ago he and his husband had decided they wanted a change of scenery, and pace, and had moved to Heather Bay. I still wasn’t sure why here, given how far the small North Yorkshire town was removed from the bright lights of London—or even any city—but Norman had always shrugged and said he and Sidney liked the peace.

To keep himself busy, Norman worked for me part time, and I was forever grateful for his theatrics and his ability to charm people. He was also very good at dealing with anyone rude or demanding, reducing them to silence with a calm stare and one or two devastating sentences.

Luckily, I’d never been on the end of any of his truly cutting remarks. And I never wanted to be.

I was not well equipped to handle being emotionally devastated.

“Really. So, if we hear screaming, it’s likely just his friends finding out. I think it suits him though.” There were a couple of beats of silence as both of us strained to listen. I could have sworn I heard arguing through the walls.

“Screaming really isn’t becoming,” Norman said, smoothing out the front of his waistcoat, which today was a gorgeous deep plum with gold buttons. “Oh, before I forget, Mrs. Lambert wants to know if we’re starting to take Christmas orders. She wants to send hampers again.”

I sighed and reached into my trouser pocket for a glasses cloth. “It’s not even October yet.”

“I know, I told her, but she wouldn’t listen. Frightful old bat.”

“I’ll get some order forms printed, and the online one set up. We can start from the first.” I had another few days before then and it wouldn’t be difficult to adjust last year’s forms.

Despite my push to move things online, we had a lot of customers who struggled with digital literacy and asking them to order via the website would simply make things more difficult. I didn’t have the time, or the patience, to spend hours explaining to people what they needed to do or how things worked. It was just easier to get paper order forms printed and leave them on the counter for anyone who wanted one.

Although it would mean more work for me in the sense of having to remember to add them to my list of orders to be filled, but I was apparently a sucker for punishment because I was always adding more to my plate. And I’d need to add a note to my diary to do the forms before Norman and Mrs. Lambert came to blows.

If I didn’t write it down, it would never get done, because it would simply cease to exist to my ADHD brain. However, it did give me an excuse to buy beautiful diaries each year, so I supposed that was one tiny positive.

“Make it the seventh,” Norman said. “That will give me time to summon up an ounce or two of Christmas spirit. And I shall enjoy the look on Mrs. Lambert’s face when I tell her she has to wait another week.”

I chuckled. Norman was nothing if not petty. “The seventh it is then.”

“You’re a good boy, Rupert. Now, I need you to help me get those boxes of bonbons off the shelf in the storeroom. I can’t lift them this morning.”

“No worries. Did I put them up too high? Maybe next time I⁠—”

“Rupert, half of the storeroom is too high for me these days. And besides, Sidney will kill me if I fall off another ladder. He’s already upset with me because I told him he couldn’t wear that dreadful yellow waistcoat of his to Angelo’s birthday next weekend. Yellow has never been his colour, and he refuses to accept it. At this rate, I’m sure he’ll wear it to my funeral, just to spite me.”

“I don’t think he would,” I said, biting back an amused smile as I followed Norman to the storeroom and began lifting down the heavy boxes of sweets we needed to restock.

“Oh yes he would. It’s how he’d punish me for daring to die before him. He’s vindictive like that.”

“And yet you’ve been together for, what, fifty years?”

“Exactly. It’s why he’d be so cross if I died first. He’d consider it stealing the spotlight again. You know, he still hasn’t forgiven me for the glowing reviews I got as Puck when we did A Midsummer Night’s Dream in seventy-nine. But it’s not my fault he spent his entire run as Oberon looking constipated and utterly revolted by Titania. I mean, she was played by an utterly dreadful woman—no manners and style at all—but it’s theatre, darling. One has to act around these things.”

“I’d have liked to have seen you both on stage,” I said as I moved a box along a shelf, looking for the lemon sherbets I knew we had. They’d only been delivered last week. I simply had to remember where I’d put them.

“Oh, you would have loved it. We were both so beautiful in our youth.”

“You’re still beautiful now.”

“I am a wrinkled old queen, darling, but that’s very sweet of you to say.” He smiled at me and I knew his compliment was genuine.

That was one of my favourite things about Norman: I always knew where I stood with him. If he didn’t like something, or if I’d upset him, or if he had a problem then he’d tell me. And while it always hurt to hear, he was very good at making sure we talked it through. I appreciated that.

We finished getting everything we needed to restock, and I carried things through into the shop while Norman opened the blinds and unlocked the door, flipping the little sign on the glass from Closed to Open.

I didn’t know how busy we’d be today, especially with the rain, but Saltgate Sweets had existed for long enough that it had built up a steady stream of regular clients alongside our tourist base and the online orders I’d started taking to help fill the gaps and allow those tourists to take us home with them.

“Oh, I meant to say, Milo said they’re going to be closing next door for a couple of months over the winter,” I said, as I weighed out some pineapple cubes to fill an order which had come in overnight.

“Sounds sensible. It will save them some money,” Norman said. “Ice cream is a very seasonal business, no matter how good it is.”