The Secret of Happy Ever After (13 page)

The word ‘eclectic’ seemed to mollify Michelle; it was one of her favourites. ‘OK. You’re the expert. I want this shop to have that . . . pick-up-ability.’ She rubbed her fingers in the air, trying to find the right words. ‘I want . . .’

‘Discovery. Adventure. Magic. I know.’ Anna smiled. ‘I get it. I saw your sketches for the shop sign.’

Michelle raised her eyebrows, stretching the cartoon flicks of her eyeliner into Betty Boop wideness. ‘You like it?’

Owen had shaped Michelle’s sketches into a neat image of a spotty dog leaping over a stack of novels, through a ribbon reading Longhampton Books.

‘I do,’ said Anna. ‘Dogs and books – what’s not to love? Pongo likes it even more. But you know people’ll be disappointed when there isn’t a Dalmatian in here?’

‘They’ll be relieved.’ Michelle grinned. ‘Owen, you could get going on clearing around the fireplace.’ She pointed towards the corner. ‘I want to get it unblocked and tidied up. The sweep’s coming in at two to check it’s safe to use.’

Owen pocketed his phone. ‘Yes, miss. Do you want me to go up it as well, give it a clean?’

He was skinny enough, thought Anna. His heavy biker boots were the only thing that might stick in the flue.

She shook herself; Michelle was directing another stream of manager-instructions at her.

‘Lorcan’s got keys, so if you need to go out for lunch or whatever just give him an idea of when you’ll be back. What else? Oh yes, I’m aiming to get the floorboards sanded in here by the end of tomorrow, so we need to shift some of these boxes. Not sure where yet.’

‘Is there a flat upstairs like next door? Could you use that?’

‘There is, but it’s in use.’ Michelle sank onto a crate and looked thwarted for the first time since she’d started this project. ‘It’d be much easier to rent the whole building, but apparently it’s not available. I’m working on that.’ She flicked the pad, and Anna feared for both the solicitor and the tenant upstairs, whom they hadn’t met – surprisingly, given the amount of noise the builders were making.

‘I guess in the meantime we could use my flat,’ Michelle went on.

‘Er, no, we couldn’t,’ said Owen. ‘I’m virtually sleeping on boxes up there as it is, thank you.’

‘But you’re not going to be there forever,’ Michelle countered. ‘Are you?’

‘That depends on how long you make me do DIY instead of getting on with your website.’

‘That depends on whether you spend as long texting your girlfriends and chatting up my staff when you’re doing DIY as you do when you’re supposedly doing my website.’

‘Am I wrong, Michelle, or does DIY stand for Do It Yourself ?’

‘Shut up, Owen.’

Anna watched the pair of them bicker back and forth, and felt a sort of envy at the easy sibling grumpiness they had. It was something she’d noticed with the girls; their rows reached levels of hysteria that shocked Anna, but then they calmed right down again, because they knew underneath it all there was a bond bigger than any disagreement. Anna hated conflict; it made her tense up inside. She sometimes hadn’t even been able to bring herself to charge the stroppier borrowers library fines.

‘Should I be making coffee for the builders?’ she asked, before Owen could retaliate.

‘Not if you’re busy. You can tell them there’s coffee and biscuits in the back kitchen, so they’ll have to come past you to have a coffee break. Which should keep
that
to a bare minimum.’

Michelle tapped her clipboard again, this time in a more final way. ‘Right. I’m off next door, but if there’s anything you need, give me a shout.’ She beamed. ‘If we get this sorted out, then I can get started on some actual decorating tomorrow!’

‘Michelle, tomorrow’s New Year’s Day,’ said Anna, surprised. ‘You’re not planning on working tomorrow, are you? Aren’t you going to your parents’? Or having a hangover at least?’

Owen looked at her too. ‘I’m not working New Year’s Day,’ he said. ‘I’m going up to London tonight. I told you that. And Mum’s having everyone over again for New Year’s Day. Didn’t you say you were going to come too?’

‘That was before I decided to take the shop on.’ Michelle looked a bit shifty. ‘I’m definitely working tomorrow,’ she said. ‘This is my priority.’

‘But Harvey’s—’ Owen started.

‘I’m coming in tomorrow,’ said Michelle firmly. ‘If you two can’t, that’s fair enough.’

Anna glanced at Owen, who seemed genuinely surprised. If he hadn’t been there, she might have pushed Michelle further, tried to persuade her to come over to theirs, rather than be on her own.

‘Right then,’ said Michelle brightly. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a sale to run next door!’

Next door, in Home Sweet Home, a queue was forming at the cash register as Kelsey jabbed tentatively at the machine, and Michelle felt an unwelcome ripple of doubt that maybe trying to open a new shop at the same time as keeping her core business going wasn’t a good idea, but she pushed it aside.

No doubts. From now on, it was all about looking forward. That was something her dad had drilled into her, ironically enough, way back when she’d started in his dealership instead of going to university. ‘Don’t worry about what you did yesterday,’ he said, often, ‘worry about what you haven’t done yet today.’

Michelle could hear him saying it, his easy smile and funny tie hiding his sharp commercial brain. He’d said it to Harvey too, his main protégé, golf partner and co-wearer of funny ties. There were some similarities between her dad and Harvey – enough for Michelle to have persuaded herself that maybe dating him, then marrying him, wasn’t such a bad idea – but kindness wasn’t one of them. She’d realised soon enough that Harvey wasn’t kind. He never did anything that didn’t have a directly beneficial effect on himself, no matter how small or hidden.

Michelle felt her phone buzzing in her back pocket as she was persuading a customer to buy a set of holly-stamped espresso cups, and flinched when she saw who was calling.

Mum.

It would be a very loaded question about when she’d be arriving for New Year’s Day lunch.

‘Do you want to take that?’ the customer enquired, and Michelle shook her head quickly.

‘No, no. Now, did you see the matching cake plates? They’re in the sale too.’

A couple of minutes later, Kelsey approached her with the cordless phone and a very apologetic expression. ‘Your mum.’ She waggled the phone as if it were red hot. Clearly she’d already had an earful.

‘I’m busy,’ said Michelle.

‘She said you would say that. She says she wants to talk to you, because it’s very urgent.’

Michelle started to ask Kelsey if she could hear sirens or the sound of the house burning down, but didn’t have the energy to spare. Instead she held out her hand for the phone and went to click the mute button off, whereupon she found that Kelsey hadn’t actually clicked it on in the first place.

Great.

‘Hello, Mum.’

‘Finally,’ said Carole. ‘I was beginning to think I’d have to come round to the shop to see my daughter.’

Michelle cleared her throat and forced herself to smile, so her voice would sound more cheerful. ‘Well, it’s a busy time. Are you OK? Kelsey said it was urgent.’

‘It is urgent. I need to know if you’re coming to us for lunch tomorrow. The boys are expecting you. We all are. You haven’t even seen your new nephew yet. Is there some kind of problem, Michelle? Is that what it is?’

Michelle looked around; there were six customers in the shop, two engrossed in the half-price wrapping paper, one balancing too many fragile baubles in her hand, and three hovering around the jewellery cabinet. Impatiently, she caught Kelsey’s eye and made a ‘basket!’ gesture towards the bauble shopper, then nodded to Gillian to open the case.

‘Can we talk later? The thing is, Mum, it’s not a brilliant time for me right now, the shop’s heaving.’

‘Some things are more important than work, Michelle. Like family. If you’d been here over Christmas . . .’

‘Mum. I explained about Christmas. And I’ve taken over the shop next door too, so—’

‘When?’ There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the phone. ‘You didn’t mention this to me or your father. Is that a good idea, with the economy the way it is?’

‘Actually, yes, I think so,’ said Michelle. ‘The rent was cheap, I’ve got plans, long-term plans for . . .’ She gave up and stalked into the back office where she wouldn’t be distracted by the need to tidy up or serve customers.

Carole was still talking. ‘I really think you
should
have taken advice, Michelle. You rush into things without thinking properly. Why didn’t you ask your father? Or Harvey?’

And Anna wonders why I don’t want to go home.

‘Because I’m an experienced business owner,’ she said, ‘who’s perfectly capable of getting a loan and making a success of something. Mum, I’ve been doing this for a while now, I don’t need to run things past Dad.’

She deliberately didn’t mention Harvey. If anything, he’d probably been the one to drop the seeds of doubt into Carole’s head about her abilities. He’d been good at that. ‘No wonder you sold so many cars with legs like yours,’ had been one of his favourites. No mention of her encyclopaedic knowledge of the range.

‘But you’re clearly not coping properly as it is with
one
business if you can’t even take a day off to come and see us,’ said Carole. ‘Can you put it on hold until you can show your dad your business plans and—’

‘No, stop there, Mum. You don’t tell Owen to phone home before he agrees to build a new website.’ Michelle picked up the stress ball from her in-tray and started to squeeze. ‘Did Ben ring you before he got Heather pregnant with their
fourth
child? I’d say that’s much more risky in this current economic climate. Why is it just me who has to check in?’

Any mention of her grandchildren always tipped Carole over the edge.

‘Don’t take that attitude when all I’m doing is expressing some very justified concern,’ she snapped. ‘If you came home more often, we wouldn’t have to have these conversations over the phone. And if it all goes wrong with this second shop, I suppose you’ll just run away again? Leave someone else to pick up the pieces?’

The wind whistled out of Michelle’s lungs, and she felt her skin shrink under her clothes. She knew her mother wasn’t just talking about Harvey. Harvey was the end result of a much earlier problem, one they spoke about even less than her failed marriage, but which hung in the background, just out of sight, never referred to but never forgotten. A metallic taste coated the back of her throat, and slowly she released the stress ball, but it stuck to her damp palm.

When is this going to stop? she wondered bleakly. How long do you have to keep being reminded about mistakes you made when you were too young to even know they were mistakes?

‘Poor Harvey,’ said Carole finally, seeing Michelle wasn’t going to rise to the bait. ‘We had to have him here for Christmas, or else he’d have been spending it on his own with a microwave meal.’

The idea of Harvey sitting alone with a lasagne for one almost made Michelle laugh. Not when there were restaurants and old girlfriends, and the golf club.

‘There’s no
way
he’d have done that,’ she scoffed. ‘Whatever he told you, it was just to make you feel sorry for him so you’d invite him round.’

‘He’s still your husband, Michelle!’ said Carole, clearly reaching the point of the phone call at last. ‘And he’s still my son-in-law. Harvey’s a proud man, but I honestly believe he’d have you back if you just came home and said sorry. I think you should. Put whatever silly thing it was behind you and patch things up. You’re not going to do any better than Harvey, if that’s what you’re imagining.’

‘
I
should say sorry?’ Michelle was so surprised by this that her voice came out in a squeak.

But why are you surprised? she asked herself. Mum thought the regulation haircuts were a sweet sign of his interest. She thought Harvey was being caring, never letting me out on my own, insisting on buying my clothes (always a size too small). And that’s only the stuff she knows about. There was plenty more that Michelle was too ashamed to tell anyone.

‘Of course you should! You should be saying sorry to that poor man until the day you die. I don’t know many women who’d walk out on a kind, reliable provider like that, without so much as a backward glance. Not women with
brains
, anyway.’

‘Mum,’ said Michelle, and her voice was strangled with the effort of not slamming down the phone then and there. ‘I’m not getting back with Harvey. Ever. And if he’s now going to become a regular at yours, please tell him to stop sending me flowers. It makes me feel like I’m being stalked.’

‘Flowers? You’re
complaining
because someone’s sending you flowers?’ Her mother managed to sound amazed, with a loud top-note of disapproval. ‘I wish I had your problems, Michelle, I really do!’

There, thought Michelle. That’s exactly what Harvey wanted everyone to think. Me being unreasonable. Job done. And my own mother reckons I’m too thick to know when I’m on to a good thing.
Thanks
.

The tightness in her chest increased until she found it hard to breathe properly.