whole place smelt of lavender and beeswax polish and she hoped was tempting enough to encourage would be buyers to linger, to savour, to buy. There were lamps and bowls and objets d’art on the side tables, shelves and floor, but not so much that people felt overwhelmed, or so cluttered that special things got lost in the melee.
Beyond the window display there were armchairs and a sofa, two Windsor chairs and a deep-buttoned brown leather chaise. Folded into a big basket on one of the dining tables was a pile of household linen, another basket on a little cabinet had paperweights in it and another held old keys.
There was a linen press of snow-white sheets and pillow cases, a period tailor’s dummy dressed in a black felt coat and cloche, and behind that a cabinet from a milliner’s shop, filled with dress jewellery, watches and tie pins. In a bowl by the door to the workshop were antique buttons, some still on their original cards, along with hair slides and combs, brass doorknobs and more keys, and beside that a letter rack in which were a collection of Victorian cards.
Cass spent a lot of time making sure things were shown off to their best advantage. It was almost as big a labour of love as re-upholstering, restoring or re-finishing the furniture in the first place. She trailed her fingers through the basket of buttons. Once customers had found the shop they tended to come back again and again.
Pleased with the way things looked, Cass picked up her apron and headed into the workshop, letting Buster out into the yard en route.
The shop and cottage spread untidily over three floors, with a little workshop and storeroom at the back of the shop and beyond that a small courtyard garden. On the first floor were the kitchen, sitting room and two bedrooms, with a bathroom tucked between them, French windows opening from the kitchen out onto a tiny roof garden that extended out over the workshop. Up under the eaves on the floor above were two long attic bedrooms with dormer windows and a shared bathroom, overlooking the pan-tiled roofs of the hippies across the way. Cass rented the attic rooms out to foreign-language students during the summer to help make ends meet.
Over the years, Cass had built a reputation for dealing in interesting things at good prices and was happy to customise, re-cover, re-stain or even rebuild to order, so that there were several interior designers who used her regularly. Which meant, between selling furniture, collectables, rugs and curtains, some nice dress jewellery, and re-upholstering for herself and customers, as well as renting rooms to students, and doing odd design jobs for Rocco, life was usually very full and just about paid for itself. Although some days she thought it would be brilliant to have a man in her life to share things with, Cass didn’t feel she needed a relationship to make her whole.
She settled down to work and by half-past five had almost finished the work on the armchair, sold a nice gilt mirror and an occasional table, one of the Windsor chairs, a set of cuff links and silver picture frame. Not great, but not bad at all for a slow day. And, as the afternoon crept past, Cass started to think more and more about the evening’s concert. As the clock crept closer to five, Cass was beginning to get twitchy, feeling as if time was ticking by faster—she needed to shower, iron her frock, walk the dog, feed him and the cat…the jobs started to stack up in her head, all clamouring for attention.
Just as she was locking up, humming through the opening bars of a medley of Gershwin numbers, someone rang the shop doorbell. When Cass ignored that, they banged on the shop window. Hard.
She considered her options; the window display was good but not that good. Who was so desperate for a bent-wood rocker and three table lamps that they couldn’t wait until tomorrow? The workshop and most of the shop, where the back stairs led up into the cottage, were in almost complete darkness now the lights were off. Cass edged forward round a particularly pretty rosewood screen and peered out from the shadows into the lane.
Outside, her mother and Rocco were standing back to back under the streetlight. Her mother was wearing a black full-length fun fur coat and a leopard-print hat. They had their mobiles out and were busy tapping in numbers, like busy bookends. An instant later the shop phone rang, followed a nanosecond later by the house phone; three rings later and her mobile rang. They were obviously desperate. Cass watched as they waited and then peered up at the first-floor window of her sitting room, which looked out over the green.
‘Cass, Cass are you in there?’ shouted Rocco.
‘For goodness’ sake, don’t do that, it’s really common shouting in the street,’ growled her mother. Behind her, Cass could hear Buster shuffling around trying to make up his mind whether it was worth his while breaking out his famous big bad bark.
‘Oh right,’ said Rocco. ‘So have you got a better idea; I mean, where is she? It’s barely knocking-off time. What are we going to do if she’s not in?’
‘Cass!’ yelled Nita. ‘Where are you, darling?’
Under cover of darkness, Cass crept up through the shop and opened the front door, surprising the pair of them. ‘What do you want?’ she said.
They looked a little sheepish. ‘Oh there you are, we were worried about you,’ said her mother. ‘You’re okay?’
‘Cock-a-hoop. What are you doing out here?’
‘Bit snappy today, aren’t we? I thought we’d just drop by.’
‘Did you ring Mike? He was really keen, you know,’ said Nita.
Cass lifted an eyebrow; if their Discovery was parked any closer to the shop doorway it would be a ram-raid.
‘No, I didn’t ring him. I’ve told you before that I can make my own terrible mistakes without any help from you two.’
‘He said he thought you were really interesting,’ said Rocco.
Cass stared him down. ‘So is the mould on whatever it is in the back of my fridge, but I wouldn’t want to wake up next to it. Now—what are you both doing here?’
‘Oh come on, he seems nice,’ said her mother. ‘And very nicely turned out.’
‘Okay, I went out to lunch with him today and before you ask I have no plans to do it again—now what do you want?’
‘Really,’ continued Nita. ‘Why not? We thought you two had hit it off.’
‘He has a purse…’
‘Ah,’ said her mother.
‘He asked me out to lunch and assumed that going halves was okay.’
‘Ah.’
‘Not that I mind going Dutch. Not that I’m against sharing, but he counted out the exact money—to the last penny. You have to admit that is tight.’
Her mother looked suitably shocked. ‘My god, I’d got no idea. Mind you, that explains why he is so good at bringing things in on budget.’ She paused. ‘Aren’t you going to invite us in?’
Cass looked at the pile of boxes in the back of their 4x4. ‘Probably not.’
Rocco’s mind was still elsewhere. ‘Did we ever introduce you to Dirk?’ he said. ‘I mean, there’s got to be someone.’
Nita elbowed him. ‘Not now, sweetie—look, Cass, darling, we thought we’d just bring a few things round now so’s there’s not a last-minute panic. Just sort out where stuff’s going. Get the grand tour
