Dulcie Kay twitched back the net curtain and stared out though her front room window for the third time that morning. The view was uninspiring, a busy suburban street choked with weekday traffic, but it was the building across the road that held Dulcie’s attention as it had for four weeks now.

“Still no clues, Ginger,” she murmured to the orange and white tabby sitting on the window sill. Her fingers played gently with the fur on his head and Ginger responded with a squeak of pleasure, half rising and pressing his head against his owner’s fingers.

“What ARE they doing there?” she said to herself as she turned away from the window and her gaze fell on a framed photograph standing on the immaculately polished old fashioned sideboard. Like everything else in Dulcie’s house, it showed a devotion to pride in one’s surroundings not often seen today. The spotless net curtains and the gleaming inside glass of the window that Dulcie had been staring through echoed that loving care. It was only the outside glass, smeared and streaked with rain adulterated with diesel fumes, that let the side down.

“You’d have known what to do, Billy, I’m sure you would.”

Her thoughts turned back to her dear departed Billy, husband for forty years and departed these last ten. A good and caring man, steady and reliable.

He would have made a good father, thought Dulcie. It was a shame there had been no children.

Still, she had her sister Rita’s grandchildren to spoil, instead. Dear Rita, her husband (also dead now) had been the more ambitious of the two men.

“You have to go where the work is,” he had said, so often that Dulcie could imagine the exact intonation of his voice even now, and travel he and Rita

had. From the South to the North of England, even abroad for a while, until they returned to a job in the industrial North but which had allowed them to live in some style in a pretty Yorkshire village.

Yes, thought Dulcie, Rita got the more ambitious man but I didn’t do badly with dear Billy. It’s just that his pension hadn’t been that great and the cost of living just kept going up whatever the Government claimed. In the end, with just herself to think of, Dulcie had had to accept that the cost of running the spacious between-the-wars semi in a nice suburb on a quiet road were getting beyond her means. So she did what many do and ‘downsized’ in modern Estate Agent-speak to a smaller, cheaper terrace house on an inner city street. The money released had been a boon for sure but, in the seven years Dulcie had lived there, she had seen what had once been a relative backwater off of the city centre become an unstoppable rat run for every form of traffic by day and by night.

And she missed dear Rita. With her more successful husband’s enhanced pension, Rita could still afford the thatched cottage in the country and, more importantly, the car to go with it as there was no public transport out in that part of Yorkshire.

Meanwhile, all of this reminiscing didn’t solve the conundrum of the building opposite.

Ever since Dulcie had lived in the street, the big building with its sizeable forecourt just opposite had been a car showrooms. It had gone from representing one manufacturer to another over the years but it had been a steady presence and, surprisingly, a friendly one for Dulcie.

Every night at five thirty pm sharp it closed its doors and Sundays it didn’t open at all so there was no noise or activity when she wanted to rest. The bright security lights added a welcome patch of safety, no thug was going to hang about opposite, sizing-up Dulcie’s home as a possible target, when he was illuminated by five thousand watts of high intensity lighting and recorded on the dealership’s closed circuit television system covering all the cars left out on the forecourt.

But suddenly, it closed. All the cars went and the building stood empty for weeks. Then, just a month ago, builders had moved in. An extension was suddenly erected at the rear of the building, windows were replaced or added, even the roof line was altered as extra dormer windows appeared.

Now Dulcie understood only too well that change was inevitable but to see this friendly face of so many years getting a severe makeover was worrying. Particularly as she knew that, before it had become a motor showrooms, it

had been a public house and had been erected in the nineteen twenties especially for that purpose.

Dulcie had little time for newspapers, suspecting them of inventing more trouble than that they honestly reported and exaggerating either way to sell copies through fear as much as anything else. Even so, she was well aware

of the forthcoming changes to the licensing laws which meant landlords could apply for all day and all night opening if they wished. There was every reason to suppose that, with this added flexibility, the building opposite might make a viable and profitable venue especially if it opened twenty four hours a day, added a night club (Dulcie thought of the extension), function rooms (she thought of all those extra windows) and could provide enough car parking (bags of space on the old forecourt).

Not just her peace of mind but her peace, full stop, would be shattered if that were the case. Dulcie was not so old that she wasn’t well aware what

drunken mischief occurred in the town centre every weekend and to have that brought opposite her on a daily basis, was too much to contemplate.

Of course, she tried to find out what was happening. She approached the builders and asked for the foreman. When she found him, he was clearly a very harassed individual with about a dozen things to do – and those all at once.

“What’s it going to be?” he echoed Dulcie’s question. “I’m sorry but I’m not permitted to tell you; commercial considerations. Anyway, we just carry out the work. You’d be best off writing to the developers.” And he gave Dulcie a slip of paper with a scribbled name and address of a company she had never heard of and didn’t know what they did.

Still, she wrote to them, of course. And, to date, had received no reply.

Dulcie’s next step was to call in at the local council and ask for the planning department. Directed to the right room and floor in the rabbit warren of a building, Dulcie was met by a young girl (who should still be in school, Dulcie thought), chewing gum and practicing her bored ‘I’m above all this’ look for when she tried to pull at the next night’s club disco.

“What address?” she asked for the third time and “what yer wanna know?”

Dulcie patiently explained her mission yet again and the girl disappeared into the back somewhere. Returning a while later, she said “Nah, don’t know anythink abaht that, can’t find no record. But yer’d a bin told anyway if there was a planning application, if yer live nearby. Didn’t yer get any letter from us?”

Dulcie shook her head but then remembered that there had been some official looking letter a while ago. Fearing that it might be about another rise in Council Tax, she had put it to one side to look at when she felt stronger – and then forgotten it. And where on earth was it now?

She was aware the girl was still talking.

“If yer want ta find out abaht pub licensing, yer need to look for a notice in the local paper or see if there’s a notice on the premises.”

Dulcie hardly ever walked by what had been the car dealership because the traffic was too bad to cross the road safely and she rarely bought a local paper, so any licensing renewal notice would never have been seen by her.

So she walked home none the wiser.

A few days later, she saw a white van pull up outside the former car dealership. It just squeezed onto the forecourt between the builders’ lorries

and, as the van’s rear doors opened, numbers of chairs and tables could be seen.

Dulcie moved away from the window and sat back down in her comfy chair. Ginger came over and jumped up on the arm of the chair purring happily.

“Oh Ginger, it IS going to be a pub, I’m sure of it. All those chairs and tables, they must be having a restaurant, too.”

That night, Dulcie was unable to concentrate on even her favourite TV programmes as her mind went back over the changes opposite. She just dreaded what seemed inevitable now but also knew she no longer had enough money or energy to move again.

She lay awake most of that night, tossing and turning, wishing she had someone in whom she could confide – other than Ginger, of course!

By early morning she had made up her mind; she would visit Rita and ask for her advice. Dulcie quickly made arrangements with a neighbour to feed Ginger for two or three days and, by mid morning, was on her way to the station for a train to Yorkshire.

The journey took longer than expected and the station she finally alighted at was still a long way from Rita’s remote village home. Daylight was failing

and a cold wind beginning to blow before Dulcie found herself outside Rita’s house.

As she paid off the taxi and walked up the path, the door opened much to her relief. She had had some horrible thoughts that Rita might be away and that she should have phoned first.

The surprise on Rita’s face was matched only by her genuine pleasure at seeing her sister after so long. They both talked at once. Dulcie apologised for not phoning but explained she had meant to call from the nearest big town when she arrived but it was later than expected and she was afraid of being stranded if she missed her connection, etc, etc. Rita was just very glad to see Dulcie but worried, too, about whatever emergency might have brought her here so urgently.

Sitting in front of the fire with a reviving cup of tea and a slice of cake, Dulcie began to feel foolish about involving Rita so urgently in what might seem a trivial concern to her.

“Well, now, Dulcie,” said the ever brisk and business-like Rita, “what’s brought you up here? You’re not, ah, ill or anything, are you?”

“No, I’m fine. It’s, well, it seems rather silly now. I almost feel I shouldn’t be bothering you.”

“Nonsense, I’m always pleased to help, just don’t get the opportunity usually. Anyway, that’s going to change. Let me tell you my news first; I was going to write but this is much better, face to face.”

“News, Rita?” said a surprised Dulcie, “what news?”

“I’m moving! Yes, at last. In a couple of weeks.”

“Whatever for? It’s so lovely here.”

“Yes, lovely and bleak in the winter. In the summer, it’s fine but in the winter

it’s just so cold that my joints ache all the time, even indoors. These old cottages may look pretty but damp’s a problem and the upkeep is never ending. And I don’t want to have to drive more than absolutely necessary at my age. The village store’s just closed down and it’s a good few miles to the nearest supermarket.”

Dulcie just shook her head in amazement. “Well, I never. Where are you moving to?”

“Ah, that’s the best bit! I’ve got the brochure here, I know I put it somewhere. It’s ideal. Back down South where it’s milder. Right in the heart of things, just a stroll to the shops. No need to drive unless I want to. I can just afford it by selling this place.

“It’s got warden assistance, if needed. Designed for the older person, you know. It was an old showrooms or something. They’ve made it into lovely new flats all fitted out with labour saving devices; no old thatch and crumbling stone walls to worry about. Best of all, it’s going to have a little cafeteria part so there’s no need for me to cook if I don’t want to.

“I’m surprised you haven’t heard about it. It's opposite you! Yes, I thought you’d be surprised!

“Now, what was it you wanted to tell me?”

THE END

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