Page 18 of The Village of Lost and Found

She also thought that perhaps it was too quiet a place for someone as young as Molly to be happy working in.

‘And do you know what any of this is?’ she asked, waving her arm around at the mess of papers and files.

Uncle Frank made a face. ‘There’s a whole load of files from when we moved in. It’s all pretty ancient stuff, I imagine. I honestly don’t know what’s in them. It’s all in a bit of a muddle, I’m afraid.’

‘Leave it with me,’ said Lucy, sounding more confident than she felt at the sheer volume of the task.

But what really worried her was that it sounded as if the newspaper was on a downward trend. With staff leaving and not being replaced, it didn’t seem very hopeful.

After Uncle Frank had left and Lucy began to get stuck into the mess, she saw that there was some kind of order in the chaos. There were both new and old copies of the newspaper, which she moved to one side in piles according to which year and month they were from. Lucy was fascinated by the many older copies of the newspaper, some were at least forty years old.

After an hour of sorting and making new mountains of papers, she had just sat down to smile at the retro fashions from the 1980s when Tom came out of his office.

‘Working hard, I see,’ he said, raising an eyebrow.

Lucy blushed and instantly leapt out of her seat. ‘I was just looking at the front page from 1980,’ she replied.

He nodded but didn’t look as if he believed her.

‘Actually, I’ve managed to sort out this first desk,’ she quickly explained, pointing to a number of large piles of newspapers. ‘They’re now in date order.’

‘Right,’ said Tom.

Anxious to prove that she was more than capable of tidying up a few newspapers, she went on, ‘So what shall I do with them all?’

Tom blew out a sigh. ‘I’ve actually no idea.’

‘How about I recycle the old ones but keep one copy from each edition?’ she suggested.

Tom looked surprised but pleased. ‘That’s a good idea,’ he said.

Lucy pressed forward. ‘And these other newspapers are all from the last week. Are they spares as well? Shall I recycle them too?’

‘Not unless you want to upset our paying customers,’ said Tom, with a grimace. ‘They’re supposed to have been delivered on Friday, but the courier let us down and so they’ve been piled up in here. I should have organised something, but it’s somewhere buried on my to-do list.’

‘Right,’ said Lucy, nodding. ‘OK. Well, if you give me the addresses, I can deliver them this afternoon.’

‘You will?’ He looked astonished. ‘I thought you were only working part-time?’

‘I’ve got to take Uncle Frank to the doctors, but that’s not until five o’clock,’ said Lucy. ‘Anyway, it’ll clear them out of the way here and if those people have paid for them, then we’d better get them delivered.’

‘Right,’ said Tom, still looking surprised. ‘Well, thanks. That would really help us out.’

And keep the customers happy as well, thought Lucy. Which was the point.

Tom went into his office to find the mailing addresses before returning with what appeared to be quite a long list.

‘I think this is the first batch of people who have emailed to say they’re missing their copies,’ he said, handing over the piece of paper to Lucy.

She stared down at it. ‘There’s at least twenty names on here,’ she said, before looking up at him in shock.

‘Is that a problem?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘Nope. No problem at all.’ She headed over to find the car keys in her handbag. ‘Well, I’d better get loading up the car. Oh and by the way, there were some bills amongst some of these. I think they’re for the electricity.’

‘Right,’ said Tom, taking them from her. ‘I’ll deal with those.’

‘I can take them to Uncle Frank, if you like.’