‘Grow your hair again and I’ll shave it off.’
It was an update of the arguments they’d used to have about the clothes she’d worn. The girls he’d dated. The music she’d listened to.
‘If you hold shares in a razor-blade company, sell them now,’ she advised.
Perhaps recognising that step back to a happier time in their relationship, he looked up, smiled.
And it was as if he’d never been gone.
For a moment they allowed the comfortable silence to continue, but finally Josh shifted, said, ‘Do you want to tell me about the funeral?’
She sketched a shrug. ‘Michael and Phoebe had left instructions…’ She swallowed. ‘How could they do that? They were much too young to be thinking about things like that.’
‘I imagine they did it for one another. So that whoever went first wouldn’t be faced with making decisions. What did they want?’
‘A simple funeral service in the local church, then a woodland burial with just a tree as a marker for their grave. I imagine that was Phoebe’s choice. Your father wasn’t impressed, but there was nothing he or your mother could do.’
‘One more reason for Michael to lay it all out in words of one syllable.’
‘Josh… He was their son,’ she said helplessly.
‘Not in any way that matters. His mother is living in Japan with someone she isn’t married to. His father is in Strasbourg, raising his second family. He hadn’t spoken to either of them in years.’
‘You’re their son, too. Have you spoken to them?’
‘We have nothing to talk about.’
She said nothing. What could she say? That they had both been dealt rubbish hands when it came to parents?
In a clear attempt to change the subject, Josh said, ‘How are you coping with your business? I heard your answerphone message cancelling your classes for the time being and obviously Posie needs full-time care at the moment, but what are you doing about the craft centre workshop? Private commissions?’
‘Beyond asking someone to hang a “closed until further notice” sign on the workshop door?’ she asked. ‘Not much.’
‘Have you actually been out of the house in the last few days? Apart from the funeral?’
She shook her head.
‘Go into Maybridge tomorrow. Pick up your post, at least. You need to keep some semblance of normality in your life.’
‘Normality?’
How on earth did he expect her to think about something as frivolous as jewellery at a time like this?
‘It’s all you can do, Grace. It’s what Michael and Phoebe would want.’
Of course it was. She didn’t need Josh to tell her that. But knowing it and doing it were two entirely different things.
‘I’ll drop you off there when I go into town tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I have to talk to Michael’s lawyers. I spoke to them from the car on the way from the airport. They’re expecting me first thing.’
‘Right. Well, I suppose I should go to the workshop. Process what orders I can fill from stock, send notes to people about anything that’s going to be delayed, give them the chance to cancel.’
‘Maybe you should think about taking someone on to help out for the time being,’ he suggested. ‘Who takes care of things when you’re gallivanting off to the Isle of Man?’
‘I wasn’t gallivanting. The craft centre received an invitation from a fair being held over a holiday weekend and a group of us went.’
‘You’re getting very adventurous.’ Then, ‘A group?’
‘I wouldn’t have gone on my own, but Mike Armstrong sent some of his smaller pieces of furniture, there was a candlemaker, Toby took some of his toys and one of his rocking horses and there was—’
‘So who took care of the shop while you were away?’ he asked, cutting her off.
‘Abby. She started as one of my students. She’s very gifted.’
‘Then call her. You can’t afford to turn down business.’
‘That’s the tycoon speaking. I’m sorry, Josh, but the world won’t end if Baubles and Beads is closed for a few weeks. I promise you it’s never going to trouble the FTSE 100.’
‘No? You don’t see yourself as a franchise operation with a shop in every shopping mall five years from now?’ he asked, with a smile that she remembered from the days when he’d been planning to be the world’s youngest billionaire.
Did he make it?
‘Er… No.’ She liked the way things were. Controllable. Totally hers.
‘No surprise there,’ he said.
Did he look a touch disappointed in her lack of ambition? He was the one who, when she had made jewellery for college fund-raisers, her friends, had pushed her into taking a Saturday stall at Melchester market. It was Josh who’d printed flyers on his computer, handed them out, called the local press who’d sent out a photographer to take pictures. He’d gone out of his way to prove to her that it wasn’t only friends and family who would pay good money for something original, different.
‘I’m not into mass production, Josh. People come to me because they know they’ll never see anyone else wearing the same pair of earrings. The same necklace.’
‘Then you need to find some other way to grow. A static business is a dying business.’
‘Possibly, but not now.’ Then she groaned.
‘What?’
‘I promised Geena Wagner that I’d make a wedding tiara for one of her brides. It’s almost done. I can bring it home, finish it here.’
‘No,’ he said, and she looked up, startled by the insistence in his voice. ‘I really don’t think that’s wise.’
‘But Posie…’
‘You need to keep your work and your home life separate.’ Again he had the look of a man with something on his mind.
‘Easy to say. Elspeth would take care of her, but Posie needs continuity, Josh. She’s already confused. Leaving her with anyone who has an hour to spare just so that I can keep working won’t do.’
‘I know,’ he said. Then, more gently, ‘I know.’
‘I suppose I could take her with me.’ Was that his point? That she was about to become a single mother with a business to run and she needed to think about how she was going to manage that. Answering herself, she said, ‘I’d have to install some basic essentials if it’s going to be a permanent thing.’
‘Like what?’
‘You want a list?’ she asked, smiling despite everything. ‘How long have you got?’
‘I’m in no hurry.’
‘Do you have the slightest idea how much stuff a baby on the move needs?’ It was a rhetorical question and she wasn’t expecting an answer. ‘Actually, I suppose I could ask Toby to partition off the far end of the workshop so that I could turn it into a little nursery.’ Then, irritated at how easily he’d manipulated her into thinking about the future when she didn’t want to think about anything, she said, ‘Okay, that’s my life sorted. Now tell me about yours. About Nepal. China. What are you doing there?’
He began to talk about a major engineering project which should have bored her witless, but just being the centre of his attention,