And we did make it through. I stuck ferociously to that budget, and we had help over the winters again. They’re doing nicely at school, all three of them, but they still enjoy the summer holidays! Which are just starting…“First day of the holidays – let’s celebrate it,” I said. “Who’d like to do what?”
“Hmmm,” Fern said.
“Beach!” Hazel was a lot more definite.
“Which one?” That was Daisy. “Do we want to take the rods?”
“How about the one at the back of the house?”“But we can go there any time.”
“The big beach then?” The three of them looked at me to see if I was happy with their decision.“That’s fine,” I said.
“I don’t suppose we could eat at the ship restaurant?”
“On your birthdays. But otherwise, no. We can’t afford it.” A phrase they all knew very well!
“When we’re old enough,” Fern said in between mouthfuls of cereal. “We can get jobs and earn some money. And then we can eat out on your birthday too. Just wait until we are at the big school.”“I wish we could earn some money now,” Daisy called over her shoulder as she headed into the house.
The girls being older does make a difference. There is less for me to do: well, no, that’s not quite true. There’s more time for me to fit in all the things that I need to do. I’m managing to grow a lot more food, both for us to eat and to sell. Keeping everywhere clean and tidy isn’t such a battle. We have food in stock, rather than just managing week by week.
“I know how we can earn some money,” Hazel said.“How?” That was Fern, who was very keen to do just that.
“Fawn Annan is selling her lemonade stand. We could buy it and sell lemonade from it.”
“Where would we get the lemons from? We don’t have a lemon tree.” That was Daisy. This was very interesting. I decided to let the girls think about it themselves before I asked any questions. Plus I didn’t want to burn this rather nice fish that we caught on our day out yesterday.
Fern was wishing she’d done the same: concentrated on her fish! Hazel Was talking in between bites.“We do have other things though. Apples, tomatoes, blueberries, strawberries…We could make other drinks.”
“Mmm,” Daisy agreed. “And then buy a lemon tree and grow those too…”
“How are you going to buy it in the first place if you haven’t got any money?”“You’d have to give us the money,” Daisy said slowly. “But that wouldn’t be fair…”
Fern agreed. “So you’d have to lend it to us and then we’d pay you back.”
“So you want me to be an investor in your business?” All three of them nodded.
“Then I need to see your business plan before I decide whether to invest or not.”
“What’s a business plan?”
“Well, what’s your business going to do?” Question one.“Sell lemonade. Or other fruit drinks.”
“Do people want to buy them? Can you prove that to me?” Question two.
“Fawn said she sold quite a few…”
“So why is she selling the stand if it was making money?” Question three.
“Because none of her brothers and sisters wanted to do it with her any more, and she said it was no fun on her own. But we’ve got each other, so that’s not a problem.”
Time for question four, which was the one that was going to pour cold water on their scheme. But I wanted them to work this out for themselves, not just tell them no.
“Okay,” I said. “So where did she set up her stand?”
“Outside her house. There’s always people coming and going, passing by…Oh.”
“Quite,” I said, with a lot of sympathy. “A business needs customers. That means you have to be selling something that people want – which might well be true for the lemonade stand – and you need people to come and buy it. People don’t come past here very often.”
“I’ve had a thought,” Fern said to her sisters. Actually, what she said was “I ad a ought,” but never mind.“What?” Hazel asked, as she trailed in dejectedly to make her bed.
“Ell, if our ustomers on’t ome oo us…”
“Finish cleaning your teeth first!”
Fern did both – finished cleaning her teeth and started talking properly.“We won’t get any customers coming here. But what if we took the stand to our customers?”
“How could we carry it?” I could hear Hazel’s disappointment still strong in her voice.
“We could ask Mr Miller if he’d take it down to the market for us. The Saturday one, and the Wednesday one as well in the summer holidays. He comes past here with the truck to pick up our produce anyway…”
“We could ask,” Daisy agreed. “Mr Miller’s ever so nice – he won’t mind us asking. What do you think, Hazel? About asking, I mean?”“But Hazel’s face had already lightened. “Asking costs nothing! We won’t need a business investor for that!”
Mr Miller was fine with their request! And so, Wednesdays and Saturdays, they were there at the market, one of them manning…“No! Wommaning!”
“But we’re not women yet!”
“Personning?”
“That just sounds silly.”
…the stand and the other two – “Politely, please! And no interrupting conversations!” – trying to improve their sales.
“So how did today go,” I asked Daisy.“We can pay you back for the fruit we had from you. And a bit more towards the cost of the stand.”
“We can pay it all off by the end of the summer if we go on like this,” Fern said happily.
“Ah,” I said. "But what you have to remember is that I’m an investor. That means I want a return on my money.”“We’re going to return it to you,” Fern said happily. “You know that.”
“That’s not quite the same thing…” I said.
“I don’t understand all these percentage things. We haven’t done this at school yet.” Fern was not so happy now!“That’s okay,” I said calmly. “I can teach you. But you do have to learn this.”
“There’s a lot more to running a lemonade stand than I thought,” Hazel commented mildly.
There’s a lot more to running a business than you thought, Hazel. I didn’t say it aloud, but I was so aware that I needed to bring the girls up with the skills they needed to run their inheritance well.
“So the big question is: do we want to try something else for the autumn?”It looked like there was a board meeting going on before breakfast!
“People like the fruit juices…” Hazel pointed out.
“…But you think they won’t want them when it’s colder?” Fern finished. “Well, what do you want when it’s colder? Hot drinks, which we can’t make, or food?”
“Exactly!”
“So my idea is that we sell the stand as soon as we can and move into making cakes and biscuits. That should clear the last of our loan and leave us with a bit of capital to put towards our next…our next venture.” Daisy had taken to the financial side like a duck to water. I’d only had to explain percentages to her maybe a couple of times: Fern and Hazel had had to work harder at it.
“Mmm, I love pancakes. Will you invest in us again?”“I want to see two things – your full accounts from this venture: I know you’ve kept a record, but I’ll show you how to write it all up properly – and your new business plan. You can start that off while I mend the washing machine.” Again.
“Okay, we think this is what you want to see from our accounts.”“And we think this is a good picture of our business plan.”
“So can we present it to you now?”
“Definitely.” I loved their earnestness. And yet, for all that, it had also been a summer game, and a way to get to know new people, and fun to do.
“You’ve done a really good job on these accounts. Well done, all three of you. And I like that you’ve included learning-how-to-cook ingredients in your forecast for your next venture.” I could feel the quiet pleasure coming off them at my praise.“I can afford – we can afford – to invest in this, but it is riskier. Cooking isn’t as simple as squeezing fruit. Depending on how it goes, you might end up with no money spare for Christmas presents. Are you – all three of you – okay with that?” That made them pause.
“I think we’d better have a board meeting about that,” Fern said, and they trotted off out of earshot.
“They came back and sat down again a few minutes later.“We’ve decided that’s a yes to no presents for us if this goes pear-shaped, but we want to put some money aside to buy a present for you,” Hazel said firmly. I was really touched.
“Our risk, our loss, but other people shouldn’t have to suffer.”
“This was …was, you-nanny-mouse,” Fern said proudly and carefully. “We were a united board on that decision.”
Another Wednesday, and the girls were down at the market, selling the lemonade while the weather was still nice enough that people might want it. There was a For Sale sign up on the stand as well, and one or two possibly-interested buyers. And I needed to be getting on with the garden, but there had been a spare paper dropped off this morning so I was enjoying a rest beforehand.And North Chocolates was in the news again. For the first time in ages.
Next year it would be seven years on from Mark and Jill’s “accident”. Murder. And my death would be presumed too, and the business would be up for grabs, and I had a fair idea of who would be doing the grabbing. Garrett-Oldsby, that’s who. I was going to have to contact old Mr Mellish.
But how? Not a letter – I didn’t want to be tracked and found. But I did have an idea.
Like I said, there’s no mobile signal from this side of the ridge (and my phone died a long time ago anyway), and with only two houses on this side now, there’s been no great incentive to change that. But there is a payphone. And seeing as a call from it saved three lives just a few years back, it’s kept in working order. I was going to phone Mr Mellish from here. And see if I could persuade him that I really was who I said I was.
“…The day my mother came to talk to you about making her will, you offered me some sweets. Peppermint ones. Bullseyes, from a paper bag. But they’d been on the windowsill in the sunshine and had melted and all stuck together in a lump…When you tracked down Mark and Jill to tell them about me and they came to the office to meet me, Mark went to hang his coat up on the peg and missed it and his coat fell on the floor…Jill got the giggles when the cat jumped up onto the windowsill and started scratching to be let in out of the rain…”
I managed to convince him I was who I said I was quite easily. It was a bit harder to convince him that I didn’t want to be found – but Mark and Jill’s deaths, and the attack on his own places were undeniable. And I didn’t tell him that the girls were still alive. I was an adult: he couldn’t really tell me what to do. But he might think that this island (and our shack!) was no place for three young heiresses to grow up. And I wasn’t risking them being found. Not while they were still so young.
