Rosie’s Travelling Tea Shop: An absolutely perfect laugh out loud romantic comedy. Rebecca Raisin
I bang it shut as if she’s saying, don’t leave me!
I stare in wonderment at the new sights before me. Hay-on-Wye is the prettiest of places with its grassy green fields, thatched-roof cottages and abundance of bright pretty flowers climbing crumbling stone walls. The place is fairy tale-esque, like a story book come to life.
‘You have to see this.’ Aria motions for me to follow her. She leads me down a hidden laneway and we come to identical twin cottages with a big stone wall half secluding their facade from the public. Just their windows peek above, like eyes, but that’s not the most extraordinary part. In front of the walls are rickety wooden shelves packed with hardback books and a sign advertising them for a pound apiece. The books are weathered and warped from the elements, but sit enticingly, some upended whose pages flutter in the breeze as if whispering a foreign language, a code I can’t decipher but Aria surely can. Her eyes widen and her whole faces changes, as she gazes on enraptured.
It seems utterly romantic that any stranger wandering by has a book so close at hand. A bookworm’s paradise right here in a secret little laneway.
‘We’ve got to buy a few,’ I say, inexplicably compelled to adopt my very own even though I have a rule about only owning so many of each particular item, but these are special, and I internally make a deal with myself that I can always donate some of the books I have to Aria.
‘A few? We need to buy them all! Aren’t they just beautiful?’ She goes to the first shelf, pulls down a once cobalt blue hardback – its cover now ravaged and faded with time – and she takes a great big sniff, before she turns to me, her eyes bright as though she’s just discovered the meaning of life. ‘That is the best scent in the world, better than any perfume, any flower. It’s the smell of lives lived, the weight of words …’
‘Well, I guess I never quite thought of books that way before.’ Sure, they could transport you to another place, be there for you when no one else was, but I hadn’t quite pictured secondhand books as having lived their own important lives, being ferried from one person to the next, imparting a little magic along the way.
A doddering old woman wanders out from the cottage on the left, her progress slow as she leans heavily on a cane. She must sense a likeminded soul in Aria, and says, ‘Ah, you’ve found the Heart Seeker edition, I was wondering when it might find a new home. Romance books are on the left.’
‘Consider them sold.’ Aria beams at her.
‘You’re a little early for the festival,’ the elderly woman laments as she bags books as quick as Aria can hand them to her. How does she know we’re here for that?
As if reading my mind she says, ‘I can always sniff out a fellow bookworm.’ She taps her ruddy nose, ‘They have a particular smell, don’t you know?’
The woman, with her crepey skin and wrinkled brow, seems suddenly youthful when she’s talking in riddles. ‘What do they smell like?’ I ask, interested.
‘Tequila!’ she cackles.
‘Tequila?’ I’m not sure if she’s joking or if she’s bonkers but I laugh along with her and, subtle as anything, I take a step closer to Aria and sniff her. Young tequila has an almost agave scent to it, and I realise the old woman is right; Aria does smell a touch sweet, a little citrusy, a lot like forgotten hopes and lost dreams.
‘See?’ The old woman raises a brow.
‘I do indeed,’ I say.
Are all bookworms this … mystical? The pair seem to be communicating by glances alone – an eyebrow raise here, a slight tilt of the head there – as Aria makes her way along the shelves handing over books that catch her attention.
‘That should do it,’ Aria says, handing her one last novel. In her handbag, Aria roots around for her coin purse and hands the woman some money.
‘Thank you, dears. Now, there’s a foodie fair starting up in a few days, you’d both do well to set up there. It’s over by …’ She goes on to explain how we get to the next village, and what we’ll need to do in order to get our permit. ‘I’ll be seeing you again this time next year,’ she says, knowingly.
We wave her off and Aria hands me a book: Romeo and Juliet.
‘Really?’ I ask.
Hand on heart, Aria says, ‘Star-crossed lovers, gets me every time.’
‘A classic. Maybe I should make a Romeo and Juliet inspired tea, a love potion?’
‘It’s romantic! If only they could have escaped together!’ At that her voice catches and I deduce she must really love Shakespeare. Maybe she’s a little in love with Romeo herself? Bookworms do that a lot, fall for the hero in their latest read and get terribly down about the fact they’re fictional.
‘A Romeo and Juliet love potion might be just the thing,’ I say and then snap my fingers as the most sensational idea hits me. ‘What about a whole range of literary inspired teas! Alice in Wonderland for those looking for adventure, Romeo and Juliet for star-crossed lovers, Little Women for friendship, what else …?’
‘Oh my gosh, Rosie, this is possibly the best idea I’ve ever heard!’
‘Even better if we collaborate. If you happen to have the matching books to sell we can use it to send customers from one side to the other?’
‘You’re a genius!’ Aria’s face shines with excitement. ‘Let’s make a list of what you need and get started, then I can order in the correlating books. You marketing whiz, you!’
We head back to Poppy, brimming with ideas. ‘What about packaging, branding? Or do I keep it simple, rustic, handwritten labels with tea in environmentally friendly bags?’
‘Always keep it simple, Rosie.’
We spend the afternoon brainstorming ideas and just what we want the tea to conjure, with the perfect book as an accompaniment.
Later that evening there’s an email from Oliver and I ask Aria if she had a moderator from the Van Lifers forum keep tabs on her when she first started out. I’ve had a number of emails from Oliver, usually at the tail end of the day, checking how I’m going, just shooting the breeze as it were.
She raises a brow. ‘Not a one. Zilch, zip, zero. So what does that lead you to believe?’
‘He’s bored.’
She cocks her head and gives me a strange look I can’t decipher.
‘What?’ I ask.
With a harrumph she says, ‘There’s more chance that Oliver is a little taken with our Rosie, than wanting to remind you to check the pressure in your tyres or whatever excuse he used this time …’
I blush to the roots of my hair and interject, ‘I hardly think it’s that, Aria! And I’m more worried there’s something wrong with him, maybe he’s—’
‘—maybe he likes you and is trying to get to know you by pretending to be interested in every squeak and whine of Poppy’s. Why do you constantly sell yourself short like that, Rosie? You do it all the time.’
‘It’s not that at all.’
Her glossy mane shimmies as she shakes her head. ‘You do, you dream up these crazy scenarios, axe murderers, robbers, prisoners on the run, instead of admitting the guy probably has a crush on you. Or else he’s a lonely nomad just like the rest of us.’
I give her an awkward smile. ‘So you don’t think he’s an axe murderer?’
With a sigh, she lobs a cushion at me. ‘No but I might be if you keep that up.’
‘Eeep! But seriously Oliver is just a name on a screen as I am to him as well. Surely you can’t have even a twinge of a feeling for someone through a few emails?’
‘You’re doing it again,