Mirren smiled for her friend. She deserved her happiness with Jonathan. A wistfulness settled in her chest, followed by the visceral pang she was growing used to by now. The pang of loneliness and the feeling of being very,verysingle.
Yet this, she told herself, was her chance to take a break from her messy life and to spend time with Kelsey, helping her out with her new business. She could email job applications and CVs from anywhere in the country so she may as well do it somewhere she was welcome.
Mirren kept her eyes on Kelsey who was pink of cheek and still talking, her hands held close around her phone, smiling down at her boots as she scuffed them in the dreamy, distracted way of the newly in love.
Just then, an alert sounded on Mirren’s phone. Pulling the screen into focus, she read the notification.
Four eligible singles meeting your criteria within a ten-mile radius.
Mirren, absorbed, began to scroll.
Chapter Fourteen
‘Lay aside life-harming heaviness,
And entertain a cheerful disposition’
(Richard II)
It was a true English autumnal downpour and neither of them had umbrellas. There was nothing for it but to link arms and run, made all the trickier by Mirren’s wheelie suitcase refusing to go in a straight line and frequently overturning as she hauled it up and down the kerbs on their hurried way to St.Ninian’s Close – that and the fact they’d both glugged three (or was it four?) glasses of business-launch bubbly back at the costume hire shop.
They’d returned from the butterfly house to find Valeria and Myrtle were finished with their interview with Adrian Armadale. By then the shop was busier with a slow stream of curious locals dropping by to investigate the new venture. The cupcakes were all gone as were a scarlet velvet bodice and matching Regency-style silk heeled boots.
Myrtle smiled proudly as she slipped the money into the cash register and finished filling in the sales ledger. ‘Not too shabby; fifty quid,’ she said as she wrote, her accent making heavy work of the English slang.
‘Your first sale?’ Kelsey asked.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Well I might have another for you,’ she replied, smiling mysteriously. ‘Not a sale, as such, but a bulk rental.’
Kelsey had set out her idea, reading aloud William Greville’s text message which had popped up on her phone only half an hour after she ended her call with Jonathan.
Well, well, Kelsey Anderson! Jonathan told me your idea and I got straight on to Dad. The Osprey has fully booked corporate and office party packages every Friday and Saturday in December, ending on Saturday 19th. You can run your dress-up photo stall by the bar in the main ballroom, 8pm–1am. No charge, you can keep all your profits. From one friend to another, good luck. You can do it! Give Myrtle and Valeria a squeeze from me when you see them. By the way, you have GOT to talk some sense into Jonathan when you see him at Christmas. He’s making the company nervous with all his smiling and singing and mooning over some knockout Scottish girl he met this summer. Whoever she is, poor old boy’s whipped for her.
Be good, love Will, x
Valeria and Myrtle had enthusiastically talked Kelsey through their entire stock of costumes fitted with Velcro fastenings at the back, perfect for a quick-change photo booth at a boozy Christmas party. They’d selected various floppy hats, wigs, swords and helmets, all ideal for drunk work colleagues to pile on and pose for daft pictures of events they’d barely remember.
Costings had been drawn up, mates’ rates agreed and hastily noted down onto Kelsey’s phone, and they’d shaken hands and hugged and toasted each other’s success with another glass of bubbly.
That’s when Kelsey spotted the box stuffed with gaudy colours under the sale table. ‘What’s that?’ she asked.
‘That’s the seasonal stuff, I’m going to do a proper display by the door,’ Valeria told her while pulling out Mrs Claus costumes, snowmen suits and pumpkins in various sizes.
Kelsey ran her hands over the smallest of the pumpkin outfits, little stiff felt globes with a hole for the head to pop through. ‘Are these for kids?’
‘Sure are, they were from a production ofCinderellayears ago,’ drawled Myrtle.
‘The Tinkerbell ballet group took part in the curtain-raiser, did a little dance. Gawd, they were so cute.’
‘I know them,’ said Kelsey. ‘They took part in thetableau vivantwith us, remember the little fairy kids, Mirren?’
Mirren squirmed; she didn’t like to think of that night, least of all when she had Kelsey’s friends watching her blushing. ‘Yeah, adorable,’ she muttered.
‘Can I have these too?’ Kelsey asked, her eyes bright, still gripping the littlest pumpkin.
‘For the Osprey Christmas parties?’ Valeria was confused.
