Flora's Lot Page 7

  ‘I can see the attraction,' said Flora, spotting a very pretty little tea set with only five cups. 'Are you allowed to bid?'

  ‘You tell Charles if you're interested in a lot and then he'll know to look up here when it comes up. Annabelle won't though. She's just awkward.'

  ‘No one seems to like her, poor woman,' said Flora. 'Poor woman indeed! She comes from a very wealthy family and runs Charles into the ground.'

  ‘Silly Charles for putting up with it!’

  Virginia shook her head knowingly. 'She had her eye on him since she was nine years old. The poor man didn't have a chance.'

  ‘He must have done,' said Flora briskly. 'He's free, white and over twenty-one!’

  Virginia shrugged.

  Flora forgot Charles and his marriage plans when she spotted a small leather case. 'Ooh! Can I play with this jewellery? It looks like a treasure chest, with it all spilling out.'

  ‘You can just put a sticker on it. Annabelle's been through it already. It's all junk - or "costume" as we say in the trade.'

  ‘Oh, let me play, just for a second,' pleaded Flora. 'I just want to look at that brooch of a cat. My cat had kittens at the weekend.’

  Virginia allowed herself to be distracted by this news. While describing the little bundles, with their flat ears and slits instead of eyes, Flora tipped out the box of jewellery on to a table and sorted through it.

  ‘Of course you can come and see them when they're a bit bigger,' she said. 'Geoffrey's Edie is having one, and I might want to keep one myself, but there's still two more.'

  ‘And they were born on top of your shoes?'

  ‘Yes! And we'd made her such a nice bed. She's on it now, of course, and seems perfectly happy. I've used all the towels, though, and have to keep washing them by hand. Just as well the weather's fine. My shoes needed a bit of cleaning, too.'

  ‘You should get a washing machine. Pick one up here for a song.'

  ‘I'll speak to Charles about it. Oh look, these pearls are real.'

  ‘They can't be. Annabelle would have spotted them.'

  ‘They are.' Flora pulled out the long string of small, uneven pearls. 'They're gritty when you bite them. That's the only thing I know about anything.'

  ‘Tell Annabelle when she comes round. She'll be cross that she missed it.’

  Annabelle took some convincing. 'They can't possibly be real. They're far too long a string.'

  ‘I really do think they are,' Flora said, agonised by the thought that she might not be believed.

  ‘It's terribly unlikely. If anyone had a string that long they'd keep them separate and they were just jumbled together in all that diamanté and glass.'

  ‘Well, you test them, then,' said Flora, beginning to doubt herself.

  Annabelle shook her head. 'I can't do that thing with the teeth. So unhygienic.'

  ‘Let's ask Charles,' suggested Virginia, as he appeared on the stage. She waved at him to come over. 'Are these pearls real or not?' she asked.

  Charles raised them to his mouth. 'Yup. Freshwater pearls. Well spotted, Annie-bee. They should definitely go on their own.’

  Virginia opened her mouth to say it wasn't 'Annie-bee' who spotted them, but Flora. Flora frowned and shook her head. Annabelle had enough problems with her without being shown up by the downsizing bimbo.

  ‘You should have said something,' said Virginia when Charles and Annabelle had gone.

  ‘There's no point in antagonising her any more. She already hates me.'

  ‘She hates everyone she thinks stands in the way of her grand plan.'

  ‘Oh? What's her grand plan?' Flora carefully put a label on each of three broken pieces that had once been a Toby jug.

  Virginia regarded the pieces and frowned. 'She wants to close the place down.'

  ‘But why would she do that? It's a good business, isn't it?'

  ‘Could be better, and this building alone is fantastically valuable. There's a nursery school round the back, the rent from that is quite high, and it's used by the locals - drama groups, WI, Cubs and Brownies, Guides- between sales. It would be a real loss to the community if it was sold.'

  ‘So what does Annabelle want to do with it?’

  ‘Divide it up into executive flats and sell them individually for a fortune.'

  ‘Oh my goodness.'

  ‘And then there's the house next door. At the moment there's a flat there that Charles uses sometimes, and the offices. But it would raise a lot of money if it were divided and sold off.'

  ‘I can see it is quite extravagant keeping it, if it's not all being used. But this place is different. It's like a public space.'

  ‘Exactly!' Virginia frowned suddenly and said, 'Who are you again? Apart from being Charles's cousin?’

  Flora wondered if she should keep her exact identity secret, but decided that secrets were a luxury no one had round here. 'I've inherited a bit of the company. Annabelle wants to buy some shares from me.' It wasn't the entire truth, but it should be enough to satisfy Virginia. It wasn't fair to Charles that the whole town should know all his private financial affairs, even if they did know most of them already.

  ‘Well, don't you let her, if you can avoid it. So you're learning a bit about the business?'

  ‘That's the idea. Annabelle and Charles think I'll be a liability, but I'd like to prove them wrong.'

  ‘They're not so good at it themselves. Oh, Charles is a good man, knows everything about anything that's likely to come through the doors and beyond, but he's too old-fashioned in many ways. Marketing is not his bag.' Virginia spotted Geoffrey coming up the stairs with a box. 'Over here, Geoffrey. Is that all the same vendor?’

  While they discussed who owned what and what list it should be on, Flora resisted the temptation to go through the other boxes of costume jewellery, and hoped, very hard, that Virginia wouldn't have forgotten what she was telling her by the time she and Geoffrey had reached a conclusion.

  ‘No,' Virginia said when they were alone again. 'My daughter offered to do them a website, for nothing, for practice, and Annabelle wouldn't hear of it. Said it was quite unnecessary. They put the better items on the Internet, which does get people down here, but they haven't got a website as such.'

  ‘So how do they advertise?'

  ‘The Yellow Pages, and of course the sales are listed in the local papers, but that's not going to get them much new business. All auction houses have websites these days. It's essential. My daughter could do them one very reasonably.'

  ‘Hmm. I'll have to look into that,' said Flora. 'Do you want to do that box or shall I?'

  ‘There's some jewellery and I can see you're keen. You go ahead.’

  Chapter Five

  While Flora was more than competent to drive the Land-Rover, she was a little less sure of the way. However, after finding herself in a village that was definitely not the one with the village shop and the pub which were currently her nearest civilisation, she managed to find her way back to what she now regarded as her cottage.

  It was a heavenly summer evening, and Flora longed to have someone to share it with other than Imelda and her four little kittens. She parked the Land-Rover and got out, enjoying the sudden quiet after the noise of the engine.

  ‘It would be different in winter,' she told herself. 'You wouldn't want to live here then.’

  As she unlocked the front door she realised how tired she was. She'd been on her feet all day and done more physical work than she'd ever done in her life. But she'd loved it. The people were what made it, she decided. Apart from Annabelle, who'd been relentlessly unfriendly and dismissive, and Charles, whom she'd hardly seen, everyone had been so kind and helpful. And more than that, they'd made her feel one of the gang, not like an irritating outsider.

  After she'd dumped her bag on the table she went upstairs to see Imelda and the kitts, who seemed to have grown since the morning.

  Imelda was very pleased to see her, obviously thrilled to have some adult company after a long day
alone with the kids. She purred and purred as Flora stroked her, and then went hungrily to her empty food saucer.

  ‘All right, darling, I'll be right up with a sachet of cat food. I got you some new flavours today!’

  Flora ran downstairs, all her tiredness forgotten in her delight with her cat and kittens. Perhaps she should become celibate and just live with animals from now on. Animals didn't do stupid things like marry people because it was assumed they would. Although, as she ran Imelda's saucer under the tap to wash it, cats in particular did seem to pick owners who'd spoil them. So perhaps men weren't as different from cats as all that.

  She squeezed the food out of its pouch, thinking about her cousin. He was dyed-in-the-wool stuffy and she didn't like him, but unless Annabelle stopped being so controlling about the business, she didn't think he should marry her. What Virginia had told her about Annabelle's plans for Stanza and Stanza had really got to her, and as Flora didn't feel she knew Charles anything like well enough to tell whether he would let Annabelle bully him, she wasn't going to take the chance. She was staying, at least until the old family firm - if not the whole of Bishopsbridge - had joined the twenty-first century.

  Imelda joined her in the kitchen, rubbing against her legs in an attempt to make the food come quicker. Flora sighed, recalling Annabelle's bossiness at the saleroom. With or without control, it would take something cataclysmic to turn Annabelle into a nice person. And she wasn't entirely sure Charles deserved the effort -although everyone else around her probably did.

  Flora opened a bottle of wine and a packet of nuts and then went upstairs to run a bath. Aware it was probably hugely extravagant, she had left the immersion heater on all day rather than risk there being no hot water when she got home. She'd been warned she'd be filthy.

  She found herself nodding off in the bath and decided to abandon supper. She brushed her teeth in a cursory manner and tumbled into bed, the damp towel still around her. And, very quickly, she slept.

  In fact, she overslept. When she woke, still tangled in the towel, she realised it was past eight o'clock and Charles was expecting her at the saleroom at eight-thirty.

  She hurled herself out and started dragging clothes out of the wardrobe. She put on her knickers but clutched her bra and her dress to her, planning to put them on while the kettle was boiling. She was halfway down the stairs when she screamed. There was a man standing in the sitting room, looking at her.

  ‘Please don't be frightened,' he said, a startled look on his face. The speaker was extremely tall and lean and was wearing clothes so faded it was hard to tell what colour they'd started life as. He had long curly hair and the bluest eyes Flora had seen for a long time. His nose was aquiline and his mouth beautifully curved. And his voice was low and melodic with no discernible regional accent.

  Flora screamed again briefly and fled back into her bedroom to put on her dress. She abandoned the bra. She could run out to the Land-Rover without that. She went back to the top of the stairs.

  ‘I won't do anything to hurt you, I promise. I've been here all night,' he said anxiously.

  Flora was tempted to scream retrospectively. All night she'd been sleeping, naked, on her bed with the door half open, while this completely strange, although she had to admit not particularly threatening, man slept on her sofa. It was an outrage.

  Imelda came to rub against her legs, probably wondering what the delay with breakfast was.

  ‘Hello, puss,' said the man, and Imelda, the traitress, tripped down the stairs towards him. She allowed him to rub her ears for a moment and then looked up as if to say, 'Perhaps you'll give me breakfast?'

  ‘Look,' said Flora, 'you can't sleep here. I live here. This is my home. You must leave! Immediately!'

  ‘I've been sleeping here on and off all year,' he said apologetically. 'The window in the kitchen is very easy to open and I spent most of the winter here.'

  ‘Oh God!'

  ‘And I've boiled the kettle. Would you like some tea?’

  ‘No! I mean, you can't offer me tea in my own house!’

  ‘I realise it's not quite usual, especially when we haven't met, officially, but it seems the least I can do in the circumstances.’

  Flora came down the stairs. She was dying for tea. She was desperate to feed Imelda so she could go to work, but there was this man. 'The least you can do -in fact the most you can do - in the circumstances is to leave. Now. So I can get ready to go to work. And feed my cat.'

  ‘I could do that for you.'

  ‘But I don't want you to! I want you to go!' The whole situation was ridiculous and Flora just wanted it to be over.

  ‘I will go, if you're sure, but wouldn't you like tea first?’

  Flora came further into the room and could see through the kitchen door two steaming mugs. She remembered that she'd had two glasses of wine and no water the night before. No wonder her mouth felt stuck together with glue.

  He saw that she was tempted and went to fetch one of the mugs. 'Do you want breakfast? I could rustle you up a couple of scrambled eggs in no time.'

  ‘No!' She sipped the tea. It was heaven, but it was an impossible situation. And she had to get to work or Charles would think he'd been right about her all along. She just didn't have time for this.

  Imelda, having given up on Flora's ability to move, miaowed at the man, making her needs clear.

  ‘Hello, you. Oh, you've had kittens,' he said. 'You must be hungry.'

  ‘She is. I usually give her something last thing at night, but I fell asleep and she's only had a few cat biscuits to keep her going.'

  ‘Are the kittens here?’

  Flora nodded. 'Upstairs. Not that it's anything to do with you, of course.’

  He smiled. 'I'm William.'

  ‘Flora. Listen, William,' she said firmly, 'you must realise how impossible this is.'

  ‘I do see that it's difficult, but not impossible. After all, I haven't murdered you, have I? Shall I feed the young mother? What's her name?'

  ‘Imelda. Yes please, do feed her. But . . .' She hesitated. She was so late. 'William? I've got to rush now, but could you please leave by the time I get home? About half past six or seven? This isn't my house and if the owners found out you'd been using it, they'd die of shock and have you put in prison for ever.' She took another sip of tea.

  ‘You should eat. You obviously didn't eat last night.’

  ‘Obviously?'

  ‘No dishes, no sign of cooking.'

  ‘Well, I haven't time now,' she almost snapped, horribly reminded of how she'd been with her mother sometimes when she'd tried to press breakfast on her before school. She sighed. 'I must find some shoes. And then I must go. And then you must go. But do, please, feed Imelda first.’

  She ran back upstairs and found her sandals. She took a deep breath and reminded herself that he'd had all night to murder her in her sleep if that was his intention, and then ran back down again. Imelda and William were in the kitchen. He was putting food into a bowl and she was tucking into it before he'd even finished.

  ‘I like feeding people, too,' he said.

  Flora found herself smiling and tried to stop. She ran out of the door, scrabbling for her keys as she did so, and shouted, 'Go!’

  It was only when she was in the Land-Rover and had started the engine that she remembered she wasn't wearing a bra. 'I'll have to buy a cardigan, or a T-shirt or something. Charles would die of shock if he caught the outline of a nipple through my dress.’

  As she drove, she thought about William and his silent invasion. It was awful, of course, but somehow not as terrifying as it might have been if she'd been living in London. There the thought of finding a strange man in the sitting room when she woke up was so horrifying, she shivered just thinking about it. Here, it was decidedly odd, but didn't have the same stomach-churning effect, even if she had been frightened at the time.

  Thinking about the differences between town and country life made her realise that if she survived her stint in
the country she could set up the very course she was looking for herself. 'Living without Sushi! How to survive Country Life.' Or she could get sponsorship from magazines. 'The Country Living guide to Country Life.' Or the other way round: 'The Country Life guide to Country Living.' Honestly, she was wasted on an old-fashioned, family-run auctioneers! She didn't feel wasted when she got there, however; she felt needed. Now people had got used to her, had begun to trust her a little, she was sent all over the place on errands. Stickers to put on here, a piece of jewellery that had been mislaid to be hunted for there, vast numbers of cups of tea to be made and distributed, and learning, all the time.

  She loved it. There was no other word for it. She found it interesting, exciting and hugely companionable. Charles and Annabelle might not have run the most cutting-edge auction house in the country, but it could be the most friendly one.

  Virginia took her to buy sandwiches at about half past one, when there was a slight lull in proceedings. They found a bench in the park opposite the saleroom and ate them, and Flora commented on the family atmosphere.

  ‘We do it for Charles,' said Virginia through a mouthful of chicken and mango wrap. 'Most of us knew his father and it was he who made the business like it is. Before they got engaged and Annabelle came, Charles was running it along the same lines. Then Miss Greenwellies-and-pearls decided to smarten us all up. She wanted us to wear nylon uniforms! Aprons are sensible, they keep the dirt off your clothes. But uniforms! We refused, of course.'

  ‘Of course. Nylon! Yuck!'

  ‘The firm does need updating, of course, but not how she's planning to do it, which, basically, is to maximise the property: turn all the buildings into executive homes.'

  ‘I'll talk to Charles about the website. We should have one. Does your daughter still do them?'

  ‘Oh yes, but she'll want paying now. It's her business.'

  ‘Of course she'll want paying. I'll get on to Charles straightaway. There are a few other things I need to see him about, too. Where's he been all morning?'

  ‘Doing a valuation, I expect.' Virginia leant in confidentially. 'The story is that when Annabelle did them, apart from not knowing very much about how much things were worth, she used to offend the customers. They're often recently bereaved, you see. A certain amount of tact is required.'