As if he could read her thoughts, having demolished his own food, Arthur came padding out to the balcony and sprang up onto the other bistro chair, settling down on the cushion to take in the early-evening sun’s rays.
While not a compulsive phone checker, Holly had her mobile at the side of her dinner plate to hear from Rachel about Harry’s afternoon check-up. On cue, her phone pinged. Heart thumping, Holly swiped the screen, hoping that the news from the hospital would be good. Harry seemed to be having a settled few months and was remarkably stoical about the huge amount of medications he had to take every day, but she still breathed a sigh of relief when she read Rachel’s update. Harry’s lung function had been as expected, and his meds hadn’t been increased, so that was a definite win. Texting back a quick reply, Holly relaxed into her chair and finished her dinner. If nothing else, Harry’s condition had taught her to take each day and count each blessing as they came. Who knew what tomorrow, or the next day, might bring?
While she had her phone open, Holly decided to check to see if anyone had signed up for a massage, now that the online booking had gone live on ComIncense’s website. Since she’d have to offer the massages after ComIncense had closed for business, given that most of the time she was on her own at work, she didn’t intend to take more than one or two bookings a week. Tapping through to the admin pages on her site, she smiled to see that there had been a fair bit of interest. But, just as quickly, her heart sank when she saw the name of the person who’d made the first booking. Of all the people she wouldn’t have wanted to get her hands on, she had to be the worst. Oh well, Holly thought, at least I’ll have the chance to practise on her, and she’ll certainly tell me if I’m no good.
Swiping the screen to confirm the booking for tomorrow and send an automatic confirmation email, Holly stood up again and took her plate back through to the kitchen. She’d better spend the evening mugging up on some of the techniques she’d learned on her massage course, to make sure she did the best job she could on her first paying client. What a shame, though, that it had to be Rachel’s irritating next-door neighbour, Harriet Meadows. With more bark than a Jack Russell, the woman barely kept quiet long enough to relax and enjoy anything, let alone a massage.
If nothing else, having her on the table might help Rachel’s stress levels a little, since Harriet had a tendency to complain about everything, from the height of the fence in Rachel’s back garden to the sound of Harry playing out with his little friends in the summer.
Holly grinned to herself as she put her mind to the kind of massage that would best suit Harriet the Harridan and found she was quite looking forward to trying out some of her firmer techniques.
6
At around eleven o’clock the next day, Charlie decided he’d had enough of unpacking, both in his new home, which was a charming town house a stone’s throw from the High Street, and in his new office, which he’d virtually had to gut to make it more to his tastes. When he’d walked into the door of what had been Hugo Fitzgerald’s erstwhile office, he’d imagined, for one terrible moment, that he’d be confronted with the corpse of the MP, still face down in the scones. Cursing himself for his childishness, he’d been only slightly less horrified when he’d realised the MP and his constituency agent, who’d retired when his boss had died, hadn’t exactly been experts at filing. He’d spent the next eight hours sorting out the box files and papers on subjects as diverse as the much-disputed Willowbury bypass (thirty-five years at least in the discussion) and a complaint from a resident of the High Street that one of the shop owners was sunbathing nude on the flat roof of their establishment during their lunch hour. Given Willowbury’s long tradition of embracing all things alternative in terms of lifestyle, religion, spirituality and music, Charlie wasn’t as surprised by this complaint as he could have been.
When nine-tenths of the paperwork had gone the way of his brand new office shredder, and he’d relocated the rest into relabelled box files, he decided it was time for a break before his constituency agent came in for a meeting. Assured by the chairman of his local branch of the party when he gained the seat that Tom Fielding would be an excellent candidate to fill the role of party liaison and constituency agent, especially for a rookie MP, Charlie hoped that Tom would be able to brief him on what the really important issues were in Willowbury and Stavenham. He’d met Tom briefly after he’d moved in and had already established a good working relationship with the man, who, being in his late fifties, was the kind of authority figure it was useful to have on your team.
Charlie could have made a coffee from the jar of instant he’d found stashed away in the kitchen area of the office, but when he’d opened the lid, a moth had flown out, so he decided to get some fresh air before his morning meeting with Tom and head over to one of the cafes on the High Street he’d spotted when he’d dropped in on ComIncense. Locking the door, he pocketed the key and headed up the road.
As he wandered back along the row of the weird, wonderful and decidedly wacky shops that lined Willowbury High Street, the variety made him smile, as it did every time he walked this way. There was a bookshop called Vale Volumes most of whose titles in the window seemed to focus on either spiritual healing or the search for King Arthur; a musical instrument shop, which, from the looks of it, didn’t stock anything that was instantly recognisable to Charlie as anything that might be found in an orchestra; a shop front full of crystals of various sizes all glinting in the sunshine; and an artisan handmade candle shop with wax creations of all kinds. Added to that, was a brightly painted shop front emblazoned with ‘Fae Floristry’ and bedecked with all kinds of blooms, local and more exotic.
Charlie’s back stiffened as he found his footsteps drawing closer to ComIncense Health and Well-being, where he’d encountered Holly Renton yesterday. A prickle of embarrassment and irritation prodded at the back of his neck as he recalled her casual dismissal of him – both before she’d been aware of his presence in the shop and, even if she had blushed a bit, after. He wasn’t sure what was worse, really: indifference to politics or firm opinions, forcefully held. He was sure he’d come across plenty of both in this new job.
Drawing level with the door of ComIncense, he found himself pausing to look at the window display. A mixture of tall altar candles, sparkling crystals of all colours and hues that caught the light and the odd sprig of dried herbs, it looked exotic and inviting, and Charlie had to admit that Holly had an eye for the enticing. If he had the slightest clue what any of the items in her shop window actually did, he was sure he’d be sold on them. As it was, he couldn’t imagine having use for any of them in his life, even if the comedy voodoo doll was funny.
Suddenly aware he might be seen to be loitering, and definitely not wanting to be caught, Charlie quickened his pace again, but not before he caught sight of Holly again, with her back to the window, hair in the same unruly updo that was escaping in tendrils down her shoulder blades almost to her waist, atop a ladder and pulling down one of the large apothecary’s jars that resided behind the counter in a tall dresser. She had the kind of hair he longed to touch, and he was astonished to feel that prickle of irritation he’d felt turning to something else altogether as he allowed himself another moment to watch her. There was something so familiar about the curve of her shoulders, the gentle sweep of that long back into her waist… why did he feel as though he’d encountered her before?
Shaking his head, he tore his eyes back to the High Street, in search of the coffee shop he knew was up the top of the town somewhere.
Picking up his pace, he was tickled to find, on entering Willowbury’s number-one coffee establishment (as dictated by the sign in the window, at least), that even the hot beverages in this place had a twist of the alternative about them. Among the Americanos, lattes and flat whites that could be found anywhere was a smattering of exotic twists from all around the world, from Turkish to Egyptian to Vietnamese blends and varieties. Charlie wondered wryly whether air miles were factored into the costs.
‘Morning, sir!’ A cheery voice greeted him as he walked up to the counter. The owner