Two and a half weeks later
‘HURRY UP, AUNTY BEC!’
‘WE NEED TO GO!’
‘WE’RE GOING TO BE LATE!’
Small fists were beating against the bathroom door and Becca gave her hair one last pat, pulling a face in the mirror. ‘Coming! All right! I’m coming!’
All eyes were upon her as she descended into the hall, wearing her sexiest midnight-blue bodycon dress, red siren lipstick and heels. She had straightened her hair and spritzed on perfume and had her best pulling knickers on too, just in case.
‘Is that really my daughter?’ Wendy asked, doing a double-take.
‘Blimey,’ Rachel commented. ‘I know the Poplar Primary School talent show is the social event of the year, but you’re really going for it tonight, Bec.’
‘You look pretty,’ Luke said, lifting up his pirate eyepatch to make a closer inspection. ‘Can we go now?’
Becca stuck out her tongue at her sister. Not only were they heading to the school talent show (event of the year), but she had a date lined up afterwards, as well Rachel knew. Date number five with Adam, in fact, for drinks and pasta at a rustic Tuscan place that had just opened in town. Mamma Mia. She could hardly wait. ‘Let’s go,’ she agreed.
They made a strange parade walking to school together: one pirate, one violin player, one texting teenager, plus her, Rachel and Wendy bringing up the rear. Rachel was much more confident about going out in public again these days, especially as she was almost completely healed now. That morning they had been back to the fracture clinic for the last time and the plaster had been cut away from Rachel’s wrist, revealing shiny pink skin beneath and a fully working joint once more. Next Monday she was due to have the wiring in her mouth removed, and would be free to eat, drink, kiss, laugh, yawn and scream to her heart’s content. She had joked about having a ceremonial bonfire on which to destroy the liquidizer and every last soup recipe in the house – or at least Becca thought she was joking, anyway. (Her soup wasn’t that bad, was it?)
Over the last fortnight Rachel had been building up her fitness levels: walking in the mountains, some gentle jogging around the park and all sorts of torturous core exercises on a mat on the living-room floor, which didn’t half make you feel lazy if you were trying to watch trash television and power through a carton of ice cream at the same time. You could tell it made her feel happy, though – her eyes had started to sparkle again, she joked more with the children, and there seemed a new lightness about her. ‘You’re actually quite a nice person when you’re not mooching about, feeling sorry for yourself,’ Becca had told her, only half-kidding, and promptly had a cushion thrown at her head for her honesty.
That was the lovely thing, though – that they had the sort of relationship now that could cope with a home truth here or there, as well as a hurled cushion. Having a sister you got on with was not necessarily all about spa days, being one another’s bridesmaids and going on villa holidays together. In Becca’s experience, it was shared jokes and knowing looks and taking the mick out of each other. Thrown cushions, too. Nobody said that on the Hallmark cards.
‘So am I going to meet him tonight then, this Adam?’ Wendy asked. ‘Is he coming to the show as well?’
‘No,’ Becca said. ‘Are you mad? Of course he’s not.’
‘We met him, though,’ boasted Scarlet, who was of course eavesdropping in front.
‘He’s going to pay us fifty pounds to make him a cake,’ Luke added happily. ‘He said so!’
‘He isn’t,’ Becca told Wendy, ‘and I’m keeping him away from you too, for at least the first five hundred dates, so just give up now, all right, because it’s not going to happen.’
Wendy pouted. ‘There’s no need to be so melodramatic about it, Becky,’ she said. ‘I was only asking.’
Right. And she could ask away until she was blue in the face, but Becca was going to keep Adam to herself for a while. Partly because she couldn’t resist winding her mum up by doing so, but also because . . . well, she was basically enjoying just having him to herself right now. He was lovely. Funny. Handsome. Can I have a plus-one to your weddings? she had texted all her engaged friends. Am dating total hottie. Get in!!!
So far, the two of them had been out for three more dates since that initial evening at Leo’s. Dinner at Castle House (fabulous). A bike ride together along the river, until they’d found a meadow full of long grass and wildflowers where they had picnicked on deli-bought quiche and salads, clinking together cold beer bottles as they watched a pair of shimmering dragonflies draw iridescent patterns in the air. And then, most recently, he’d cooked dinner at his place, a splendid stone Victorian house up on Broomy Hill, which had a sun terrace out the back and a view right over the Wye Valley. Steak and chips and a bottle of wine. (Yes, she had stayed over. Yes, it had been amazing. Yes, she had woken up the next morning with the most gigantic grin on her face.)
There must have been some kind of romance chemical in the Hereford water that summer because Rita and Michael had been spending a lot of time together recently too, by all accounts. Apparently Rita was teaching Michael how to make rock cakes and a really good bubble and squeak, and he in turn picked her up from the home and took her out for day trips – to Berrington Hall and Croft Castle one day, to Telford another. There was even talk of them taking a little walking holiday in his beloved Wales, so it had to be serious.
Rita’s course of so-called exercise sessions had come to an end now, and she had apologetically told Becca that Michael had offered to take her to the allotment whenever she wanted, so she had no real need of them any more. Nonetheless, she had recommended Rachel’s services to a few of the other residents, and suggested to the manager of the home that Rachel come in and do some gentle ‘pensioner-aerobics’ (Rita’s words) with ‘the inmates’ (also her words), which sounded promising. And even though Becca no longer had any official reason for seeing the two of them now, she was definitely planning to stay in touch with both Rita and Michael, having become very fond of them during her time in Hereford. She’d popped in just the other week to present Michael with the lampshade she’d finally finished – a simple drum shape with a smart striped fabric – and she’d hung it in his hallway with great ceremony.
A few days later she and Rachel’s family had gone to see Michael’s band play in a nearby park as part of a mini festival, and it had been a really lovely, jolly afternoon. Scarlet and Luke had got up to dance, while Rita came and joined them on their picnic blanket. Afterwards Scarlet and Michael had had a long chat about music and writing songs, and then Michael had let Luke have a go on the trombone and offered him lessons over the summer if he wanted, and everyone had left feeling happy.
‘So tell me again about this place you found the other day,’ Wendy said, admitting defeat on the subject of Adam as they turned the corner and approached the school gates. ‘Did you take any photos? I’m dying to see it.’
‘Oh yes! Here, let me show you on my phone,’ Becca replied, getting it out of her bag and flipping through to find the pictures. She still couldn’t quite believe she had done it, taking the plunge two days earlier and signing a six-month agreement on a small, light flat on the west side of town. SAD FACE, Meredith had texted when Becca told her the news. They were going to get very drunk together that coming Saturday night and reminisce before Becca packed up her belongings and moved out for good. Her tummy churned whenever she imagined herself handing the keys back to Meredith and hugging her goodbye. The end of an era! She would miss her flatmate. But as the saying went, as one door closed, another one was about to open. The door to her very own place, no less. Besides, Meredith had already persuaded her friend Alianor to move into Becca’s vacated room, and no doubt the place would soon be humming with lute-playing and the swish of medieval cloaks. It was all good, really.
Her new home was a first-floor flat above an antique-clock shop on a quiet, sleepy sort of road. ‘We won’t disturb you,’ the man running the shop downstairs had assured her when she went to view the flat. ‘We only open three days a week now, and I’m actually hoping to retire at the end of the year, so will probably be leaving the premises then anyway.’
Rachel had come with her and as they tramped up the stairs behind the letting agent, she was nudging Becca and raising her eyebrows at what the clock-shop man had said. ‘Interesting,’ she said in a low voice, ‘don’t you think?’
‘What, that he mends antique clocks?’ Becca had replied, confused. ‘I guess so.’
‘No, that he’s likely to leave the shop at the end of the year,’ Rachel hissed with a meaningful look. ‘Because then it’ll be empty . . .?’
Becca had frowned at her sister in the dingy stairwell. ‘I don’t get you,’ she replied, but then the letting agent was opening the front door – her new front door, as it now turned out – and as she stepped over the threshold, she forgot all about the conversation, too distracted was she by what lay beyond.
‘Here,’ she said now, passing the phone to Wendy to show her. ‘What do you think?’
The front door of the flat opened into a tiny hallway and straight through to a lovely airy living room, whose Victorian bay windows let in great shafts of golden afternoon light spangling the slow-twirling motes of dust. It was, admittedly, filthy in there, with a single raggedy curtain hanging drunkenly off its last few hooks at the window, and barely a stick of furniture in the room, but Becca had gazed around at the high ceiling with its froth of grubby cornicing around the edges, the black marble fireplace with its original rose-patterned tiles, the generous dimensions of the room, and was sold, in a heartbeat. ‘This could be amazing,’ she said under her breath.
The rest of the flat was equally fantastic. Well, it would be anyway, once she’d scrubbed and scoured it free of all the grime, and sluiced gallons of disinfectant and mould killer and damp-proofer around the place, followed by several coats of paint. ‘Potential’, that was the term used by estate agents – which everyone interpreted to mean ‘festering shit-tip’. This place had potential by the bucketload, though. The kitchen was small and rather dated, but functional nonetheless, and the bathroom had an antique claw-foot bath that she could imagine herself wallowing in for many an hour. Best of all, the large double bedroom had French windows that opened out onto – yes! – her own tiny balcony, which had just enough space for some pot plants and a folding chair or two.
‘Needs a bit of a clean,’ Wendy said now, inspecting the photos. ‘But it’s going to be lovely. Your new home!’
Becca smiled back at her. Her new home – she’d have to practise saying that. It sounded really good, though. Kind of momentous, too.
And that wasn’t all. It was Rachel who had seen the full potential of the place, her sharp business brain noticing what Becca hadn’t. ‘What I meant earlier,’ she’d said as she rejoined Becca in the living room, having busied herself checking out the boiler and other useful practical things, ‘about the shop below was, obviously you can see how it goes with your business for the time being –’ (The business! She had an actual business! That was another concept Becca had to get used to) – ‘but if things take off and keep expanding, then you might want your own premises downstairs. A workshop, or a place to hold your hen sessions, or children’s parties, or a sewing club, or . . .’
Oh my goodness, yes. Premises, she thought, her eyes widening, as she let herself dare to imagine. The clock shop had been rather dark and dingy, a forest of polished grandfather clocks and swinging pendulums, chiming and ticking, all those time-tellers jumbled together. But strip them away and there would be two decent-sized rooms down there, she reckoned: a proper dedicated workspace, if she needed such a thing. She could paint the walls white and hang all the loveliest things she’d made from hooks, like a miniature gallery. The back room could be used as her studio, whereas the big front room could hold a few large tables for people to sit around as well as shelves for her art supplies; she could put a kettle in one corner with pretty teacups, make colourful bunting to string across the ceiling . . .
There went that runaway imagination of hers again. Becca knew that she was getting ahead of herself, letting herself become swept up in a daydream. All the same, she could already picture the outside of the clock shop overhauled and cleared out, with Make Yourself Happy painted in bright letters across the shop front – and it looked amazing.
‘What do you think?’ Rachel had prompted, when Becca didn’t immediately reply. ‘I mean, it’s a genuine possibility, what with the business starting so well and all. Worth bearing in mind, don’t you think?’
‘Definitely,’ Becca said. ‘It would be fab. But yeah, let’s see how it goes. I don’t want to start counting any premature chickens.’
Rachel smiled at her. ‘Look at you, all wise and sensible. You’ll be a businesswoman yet, Rebecca Farnham.’
‘God, I know,’ Becca laughed. ‘What’s wrong with me?’
In truth, the business had taken off beyond her wildest dreams in the fortnight or so since Hayley’s article had prompted that initial deluge of enquiries. She, Rachel and Adam had sat down together and planned out a proper strategy: no more here-and-there accidental bits of work, but instead a proper list of who to target in the first six weeks, with a more ambitious long-term plan for the first year. It had all been rather head-spinning for shambling, let’s-see-what-happens Becca. They had written a spreadsheet, and everything. And then she had taken a big, brave breath and thrown herself in right at the deep end.
So far, it was going brilliantly. The water in the deep end was perfect, as it turned out, and she had been swimming furiously ever since, barely pausing for breath. She had over one hundred tiara commissions confirmed already, and two knicker-making hen parties in the diary, as well as a meeting next week with a local youth group about providing some children’s arts and crafts days over the school holidays. Just two days earlier, she had gone to see the manager of Rita’s care home and had pitched the idea of a weekly craft club – knitting or crochet, whatever the residents preferred – and had been offered a trial run for the following week in return. She was also planning to put an ad in the local free parenting magazine, offering to run children’s arts and crafts parties . . . All sorts of things, really. She was busy, anyway, in the best kind of way – and quite literally making herself happy, as her business card suggested.
And so, when the letting agent returned to the room, an enquiring look on his face, Becca had bestowed a beaming smile upon him. ‘I’ll take the flat,’ she’d said impulsively, and squeezed Rachel’s hand in a sudden burst of excitement. ‘Where do I sign?’