She chided as the cat skittered in front of her again. ‘If I break my neck on these steps, you’ll only have me to eat, and I’m not sure you’ll enjoy that.’
Arthur turned at the sound of her voice, gave her a withering look and then bounded ahead to the kitchen, to where his bowls resided in the corner. Giving a hungry yowl, he sprung up on his hind legs and dug his claws playfully into the back of Holly’s knees as she pulled down the cat food from the cupboard.
‘Is it any wonder I can’t wear short skirts, with you lacerating my legs at every opportunity?’ Holly reached down and gave the cat a playful tap on the nose. She filled his bowl with food and then, mission accomplished, Arthur turned his back and began to devour his dinner.
Turning her mind to her encounter with Charlie Thorpe as she prepared her own food, Holly was irritated to feel another blush creeping up her cheeks. It hadn’t exactly been her finest hour, she conceded, although she’d never been one to hide her true feelings. Her father always said that she and Rachel would have made the perfect child if combined; Rachel was diplomatic, and perhaps a little too self-effacing, whereas Holly spoke her mind at every available opportunity, and had done since she was knee high to a grasshopper. Her mouth had got her into hot water more than once in her youth, and while she’d learned to think before she spoke most of the time these days, she was still prone to being more honest than was good for her when she was rattled or irritated.
And Charlie Thorpe had rattled her before she’d even met him. Perhaps it had been a little unfair to write him off before he’d had the chance to settle into Willowbury, but she trusted her gut, and her gut was telling her that having a new MP wouldn’t make a scrap of difference to her, or, more importantly, to Harry.
But what if she was wrong? What if Charlie was being sincere in his desire to make a positive difference in Willowbury? Or was is possible that Holly was just being distracted by the fact he was rather good-looking, in that classic tall, dark and handsome kind of way.
‘Stop it,’ Holly said.
Arthur looked up from his bowl, where he was making short work of his Whiskas.
‘Not you, gorgeous,’ Holly added hastily.
The cat gave her another look and got back to his food.
Holly sighed as she grabbed the jar of linguine from the back of her kitchen counter and slapped some into her pasta pan. There was no point in continuing to think about Charlie Thorpe. She’d probably never cross paths with him again. After all, she couldn’t remember Hugo Fitzgerald ever bothering to visit her shop when he’d been alive, and he’d been the MP for over twenty years. Why should Charlie be any different? Willowbury and Stavenham was a cushy number, and all he really had to do was show his face a bit and kiss a few babies and he’d be guaranteed the seat until he retired.
A few minutes later, having sautéed the contents of her vegetable drawer and thrown in a few of the herbs she’d gathered fresh from the raised bed in her garden, Holly grated some of the Cheddar Gorge Cheese Company’s finest mature Cheddar over her dinner and settled down on the balcony overlooking her garden, where she’d placed a small bistro table and two chairs: one for her, she’d joked to Rachel when she’d bought it, and one for Arthur. Now she was over thirty, she wondered how much of a joke that actually was, these days. Was she doomed to grow older and more eccentric, until she became the tie-dyed kaftan-wearing, wild-haired stereotype of a Willowbury alternative-health business owner? Just her and Arthur, for ever more?
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
