Purple Moons and Coffee Spoons

By julie Hodgson

When twenty-eight-year-old Fran Grace takes the journey to Scotland to scatter her father's ashes in the small town in which he was raised, she is expecting a peaceful, emotional opportunity to say goodbye and connect with the man whose essence was lost many years before his death to dementia. However, her pilgrimage is transformed beyond recognition when she stumbles upon a quirky local café.

Purple Moons and Coffee Spoons may look like a simple, quaint eatery in which to read one of the many books lined up on its plentiful bookshelves, but chanting emanates from its walls at night as generations of women dance and sing, giving the books what they need, just as their ancestors had done before them. Because these are no ordinary books, and this is far from an ordinary café …

When the right person walks through the door and sits down to read, dead authors are stirred back to life, and they come with demands but also great gifts of healing. When Fran discovers that she is one of the chosen ones, a simple cup of coffee and slice of chocolate fudge cake quickly evolve into a week-long meet and greet with the dead … and they are a demanding bunch: a spiritual gardener, a bearded lady, a lovesick soldier, even William Shakespeare himself … what lies ahead is a week that she will never forget

When twenty-eight-year-old Fran Grace takes the journey to Scotland to scatter her father's ashes in the small town in which he was raised, she is expecting a peaceful, emotional opportunity to say goodbye and connect with the man whose essence was lost many years before his death to dementia. However, her pilgrimage is transformed beyond recognition when she stumbles upon a quirky local café.

Purple Moons and Coffee Spoons may look like a simple, quaint eatery in which to read one of the many books lined up on its plentiful bookshelves, but chanting emanates from its walls at night as generations of women dance and sing, giving the books what they need, just as their ancestors had done before them. Because these are no ordinary books, and this is far from an ordinary café …

When the right person walks through the door and sits down to read, dead authors are stirred back to life, and they come with demands but also great gifts of healing. When Fran discovers that she is one of the chosen ones, a simple cup of coffee and slice of chocolate fudge cake quickly evolve into a week-long meet and greet with the dead … and they are a demanding bunch: a spiritual gardener, a bearded lady, a lovesick soldier, even William Shakespeare himself … what lies ahead is a week that she will never forget

• Language: English
• Publisher: Julie Hodgson
• Release date: Apr 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393091356

julie Hodgson

I started writing poetry and short stories at the age of 9, a nice way to switch off I guess. Then it just escalated from there. My English teacher at my secondary school Mrs Love was an inspiration to me. In 1985 I moved to Tripoli in Libya, and as the schools did not have any books I started writing for the children of the local British schools. It's amazing that when there are no books you crave anything to read. So we all got together and made something out of nothing. I have continued writing for newspapers, The Times in Kuwait in 89 just before the first Gulf conflict, then, Libya, Sweden, Uk and lots of other countries. And the story could go on and on... I now live in Portugal and I have had many books published in the past and have joined publishers Opera Omnia and they published the first bilingual book back in November 2012. Many of my books are now in several languages.

Book preview

Chapter One

Fran turned the page of the battered copy of Great Expectations at which she had been staring blankly since the train left London. She was trying to read it but found herself reading the same sentence over and over again, so she gave up, lay the book face down on the tin of Quality Street on her lap and glared through the window at the trees and landscape whizzing past, as England become Scotland, and Scotland became beautiful. It would have been spectacular to anyone paying attention, with spring just starting to announce itself, pockets of pink, yellow and purple that would become colour fireworks in no more than a week or so, the world reawakening after losing everything, daring to start all over again from scratch, as it had last year and the year before and for time immemorial, such an immense act of bravery. But Fran was not paying attention. Her gaze was blank and barely made it past the window; her eyes frozen and empty. So much of her time was passing in this blank, lost state, but this time she managed to catch herself from drifting too deep into this fug and snap out of it.

Come on, Fran, she silently told herself, more than aware of the importance of this trip and the need to focus, and tapped out an impatient beat on the Quality Street tin to keep herself present, but within minutes, she was there again, lost in a hazy world of nothingness, like a stunned woodland creature, but she would rather be in the brain void than in the place that stored her thoughts. If she was in a fug, at least she wasn’t crying or going round and round in circles, trying to work it all out, trying to answer the questions that were just too difficult and make things okay that were far from it. And then she was forced out of the gloom as a distince Aberdonean voice came over the speaker.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are now approaching Aberdeen. Next stop Aberdeen.

Her stop had come upon her too soon, and she had left herself no time to get her bag down from the rack and put her things away. Suddenly, her heart was racing as she stuffed her book and empty flask into her smaller bag and stepped out into the aisle, gripping the Quality Street tin awkwardly. She was so concerned with getting her things together in time and not getting left behind that she didn’t see the man whizzing down the aisle, and before she could say, NOT THE QUALITY STREET TIN! he had barged into her and, as happens in these moments, slow motion took over as she lost her grip of the tin, which jumped from fingertip to fingertip, out of her control, before toppling from her grasp altogether and drifting down to the ScotRail patterned carpet.

Nooooooo! she screamed, with her hands on her head, as she helplessly watched the slow-mo crash and waited for the lid to blow and the contents to spill out everywhere, but miraculously, the lid stayed on, and the tin simply thudded to a halt at her feet. The biggest sigh grounded her again. Crisis averted! She should have been happy, but the man was still there, and he did not look happy.

Blimey! he snapped. Are you going to be there all day? He looked like so many of the other anonymous suits, doing the commute for their day’s work at some boring office where he, no doubt, got to push a poorly paid secretary around, just as he was now trying to bully her. Usually, she would just let it go, apologise even, but this man, with his rough Scottish accent and stupid man beard, had nearly destroyed the most important thing in her life, her whole reason for making the journey.

Sorry. Are you in a hurry? she asked.

Yes, I’m in a hurry! he barked back and made a point of looking at his watch, then over her shoulder to where other passengers were queuing at the door. The train hadn’t even stopped yet, so he wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry anyway.

Sorry, she repeated, sounding as insincere as she could and crouched down as slowly as she could to pick up the tin, taking up the whole aisle so he couldn’t pass, before taking all the time in the world and all the space in the aisle to pull down her relatively small suitcase. Sorry, she repeated. I just need to … and she made a whole performance of spinning herself into her winter coat, blocking his way.

Blimey! he groaned, and Fran finally let him pass just as the train screeched to a halt. He looked as if he was going to explode. Instead, he huffed a red-faced noise that showed just how much he now hated her as she moved down the aisle with the Quality Street under her arm and her wheelie case dragging behind her.

---

Just outside the train station in Aberdeen, her hire car was waiting, which would get her up to Banff. She threw her case in the boot and gently set the Quality Street tin on the passenger seat. She considered strapping it in but decided against it and drove through the hustle, bustle and looming granite buildings of Aberdeen, thinking about the encounter on the train. As annoying as the man had been, just for a minute, she felt like her old self again. It had been maddening, but he was the first person in weeks who hadn’t pulled the pity face and awkwardly given their condolences about her dad’s death, and that was something to be thankful for. She turned to the Quality Street tin and managed a weak smile.

Nearly lost you there for a minute, Dad, she told it, and even as she said the words, she could feel the tears pricking through. She turned on the radio to drown out her sorrow, and when she could still feel the sadness and the thoughts trying to break through, she turned it up so loud that it blasted her brain so completely that she could feel it all the way down to her little fingers and big toes. It was better that way. What was the use in going over and over it in her mind? It didn’t change anything. He was still dead, and the Alzheimer’s had stolen away everything she knew about him in the years preceding. She had watched him deteriorate from an earthy, strong man who was always on the go – building, fixing, growing, making, creating, inventing: a man she struggled to remember now – into something that she barely recognised. It had stolen every trace of the man he was before, leaving a stranger who stopped recognizing her many months before his death and sometimes cowered from her when she took him his breakfast or washed him. Why would she ever want to think about that again?

She crossed the busy A92 with the music still blaring before reaching the more sedate landscape of Banff and its neighbouring towns and villages. The clouds parted, and the sun shone all the way there, which helped her mood a little. And as she drove through Cornhill into Banff, she turned the music down and even managed a smile. She didn’t think she remembered anything about Banff, she had only been there once as a girl, but the distinct Georgian architecture was familiar to her, homely even, and definitely welcoming.

Made of sweet cakes and happiness.

However, she had hoped that just driving into Banff would bring her closer to her dad somehow, to the man he had been before, that she would be able to feel him in some way. It seemed silly now, thinking about it, and she didn’t believe in spirits or anything like that. She just thought that setting foot in the town where he was born and spent so much of his childhood might make her feel different in some way, but she felt exactly the same.

Well, we’re here, Dad, she said, once again glancing down to the Quality Street tin.

They had only spoken about his dying wishes once, on a lucid day when they both understood, at least intellectually, that very bad days lay ahead, and he had been very clear in his instructions.

I don’t want a fancy urn or pot or anything like that. Just stick me in a tin of Quality Street and take me home to Banff.

She took a deep breath that seemed to go on forever, surprised by the fresh capacity of her lungs, then reached into her pocket for the address of the Air B&B that she had booked. As she emerged from the narrow lanes towards it, she saw that it was just as the picture had shown her online. Rustic and charming, and she was hit by a pang of guilt. But then Aunt Tessa’s words had come back to her.

Go and have a proper break. You deserve it. Stay a while, be good to yourself. And don’t you dare book into a Travel Inn, she had said with that funny little smile that was always present.

Fran had lost her mother when she was only seven, and her father had been both parents since then – he had been her world – but Aunt Tessa had always been a feature in her life, with her lively stories, wild hair, and imaginative cooking experiments. If there was ever anything she couldn’t talk to her dad about, then Aunt Tessa would get a visit. She had done her best to help throughout her brother’s illness, but she was coping with her own frailty and unable to lighten the load, although talking to her was always a big help to Fran. Following his death, the old