Jumping to Conclusions by Christina Jones

the Munchy Bar's counter. The whole place was heaving with people. Jemima looked around with delight. Dozens of potential customers. They could all pile out of here in a couple of months' time – and straight into her bookshop.
    'We've ordered Knickerbocker Glories,' Levi informed her as she eased her way through the closely-packed Formica tables to join them. 'Is that okay?'
    'Lovely.' A ceiling fan was working overtime, but it was still stifling. The woman behind the counter, who Jemima guessed was the eponymous Maureen, was trying to serve everyone at the same time. 'Is there anywhere to sit?'
    'On yer bum!' they chorused together, giggling.
    Two middle-aged ladies, looking like cloned Mrs Mertons in floral polyester, cross-over sandals, and tight perms, glared from the nearest table.
    Zeke smiled at them. 'Hello, Mrs Cox. Hello, Mrs Pugh.'
    The matching perms bobbed down towards their teacups.
    'We hate them,' Levi said cheerfully. 'They're horrid about Mum.'
    Maureen, who had a bleached beehive and sparkly eye-shadow and had obviously been informed all about Jemima by the twins, placed three overflowing sundae glasses on the counter. 'They are, too. You want to ask Gillian about Bathsheba and Bronwyn. Go to church twice every Sunday and think that gives them the right to slag everyone off for the next six days. They fancy the pants off the Vicar, of course, but that don't give 'em the right to be bitchy to Gillian.' She huffed her spectacular chest in the direction of the tightly permed heads. 'They can be venomous old cows if you gets on the wrong side of them.'
    Jemima paid for the ice-creams. Milton St John's chocolate-box idyll was beginning to melt as quickly as the Knickerbocker Glories.
    'Mum always says to Dad that they needs a good man,' Zeke mumbled through his ice-cream. 'We always think that's funny 'cause they're married to Ted and Bernie an' they're Dad's churchwardens an' you can't get much betterer than that.'
    'Christ!' Maureen grinned, showing lipstick-stained teeth. 'Gillian's not far wrong neither. Did you see the poster they've just put up? Load of rubbish but they has tea here twice a day, so I don't object. Doubt if anyone'll read it anyway.'
    Jemima hadn't seen the poster. In the crowded Munchy Bar it was impossible even to see the walls.
    To the twins' evident delight, Maureen leaned chummily across the counter displaying a vast amount of cleavage. 'Bathsheba and Bronwyn are always crusading for summat or other. At the moment they've got a bee in their bonnet about books.' Maureen cast a wary eye at Levi and Zeke who were engrossed in their ice-creams, and leaned even closer to Jemima. 'You'd know all about them, of course. The ones with bonking an' that in. Them Fishnet Publications. Sort of sex for women. I love 'em myself.'
    'Oh, right. Erotica.' Jemima spooned the cherry from the top of her Knickerbocker Glory. Bookworms had stocked Fishnets. They'd been very popular. She'd already ordered the new July ones for her own shop. 'But surely they don't have to read them?'
    'They don't want anyone else to read them either.' Maureen straightened up and moved away to serve another customer. 'That's why they had the meeting in the Cat and Fiddle this afternoon – them an' all the other sad saps in the village. Waste o' time if you ask me. Poor Vicar's got enough on his plate.'
    So that's where Glen had been, Jemima thought, mixing in peach ice-cream with raspberry syrup, on an anti-erotica campaign. She'd be sucked into the fray herself if she wasn't very careful. She'd chosen a wide range of books from the publishers' lists – something for everyone, she'd thought, at least until she'd got a feel for the village and her customers. It looked as though she could be heading for trouble even before she opened. Just for a moment, she wondered if she should in fact mention her Fishnets order to Glen. Perhaps not. Probably just a storm in a teacup. Hopefully, Bronwyn and Bathsheba would be campaigning