was holding it up to the light. Or was he using it as an excuse, and really studying Susannah?
‘Coals to Newcastle,’ she snapped. ‘Every other shop in Bath seems to be stacked to the eaves with dried flower arrangements. But I didn’t come to talk about those, Reg. Take a look at this.’
Under Reg’s cynical gaze she pulled back layers of tissue from the parcel she had placed on his counter. ‘Now, you don’t have anything like this in your shop, do you?’
‘Hmm.’ Reg reached out reluctantly to grasp the item with both hands. He tipped his head backwards to view it from under his glasses, then ducked his head forward again to peer at it over the top. Susannah wondered why he bothered to wear the things when they so obviously didn’t help.
‘No,’ was the ultimate verdict. ‘No, I don’t stock anything like this. And do you know why?’ Reg beamed at his victim triumphantly. ‘Because there isn’t any call for the likes of this either.’
Susannah gritted her teeth. ‘But how do you know there isn’t going to be a demand for something,’ she persisted, ‘if you never actually display it?’
She glanced round the shop, avoiding the stranger’s eye. It was crammed with useless junk. In all honesty there was no room for more, and her teapot stand would be lost among the chaos. The world was full of hopeful artists, potters, and makers of useless knick-knacks. What chance did she stand? Then she saw the stranger’s hand reach out towards a rag doll.
‘Display it?’ Reg was muttering. ‘Well, I don’t know about that. The thing is –’ He twirled the stand in one hand. ‘Well, what I mean to say is … what exactly is it?’
‘It’s a teapot stand, of course! Or any kind of pot stand for that matter. Anyone can see that.’
Susannah whipped round in amazement; Reg’s only other customer had come up behind her and stolen her very words. She found the man smiling disarmingly above her head – and rewarded him with a hostile stare. Oh, how she already hated him for his suave, easy-going confidence. Clearly nobody had ever made him feel small, insignificant, and utterly, utterly useless. It was going to take more than a frozen expression from her to knock him off his perch.
‘Harvey Webb,’ he told her, nodding at her agreeably and reaching across to pick up the stand for a closer look. He turned it over in his hands while Susannah cringed. She now wanted nothing more than to throw the thing in the bin, forget the whole project, give up the idea of doing Something and being Someone. Criticism from Paul was bad enough; criticism from the rest of the world was unbearable.
‘This is really rather nice,’ Harvey murmured eventually, his thumbs sweeping the mosaic surface in obvious appreciation. In silence he studied the frame. ‘You made the whole thing yourself?’ he asked, slanting Susannah a glance.
‘Yes!’ she hissed back, taking them all by surprise, and she snatched the piece from his hand. There was one thing worse than criticism, she decided, and that was male condescension. Arrogant sod. At least Paul had been honest. ‘Yes,’ she went on, lisping childishly, ‘I made it all by my little self. Now isn’t that just amazing? And Daddy didn’t help me at all.’
The two men gawped at her as she thrust the stand back in a carrier bag.
‘Now,’ she said, her voice normal again as she dusted off her hands, ‘if you’ll both excuse me, gentlemen, I’ll take up no more of your time. I’ll just run along home and amuse myself some more.’
She pulled open the door, stumbled over the threshold, and let the door clang closed behind her. Reg and Harvey were left still gaping, their eyebrows raised in bewilderment at the swinging ‘Closed’ sign.
Outside on the pavement Susannah ducked her head into the wind and headed blindly down the street, feeling hot-cheeked, light-headed and unreal. She wiped her forehead with a shaking hand. What had got into her lately? She had never behaved like that before in her entire life. Well, not often. She could take a lot of ‘aggro’, but sometimes something would snap and she would go hurtling over the edge. She wished she hadn’t made an exhibition of herself just then, though.
‘Hey!’ a voice said behind her, ‘you forgot to pick this up.’
She stopped. Harvey what’s-his-name hadn’t actually followed her, had he? Not after the things she’d said? But he had. And he was holding out her black leather handbag with SWH stamped on the flap in gold. She had forgotten she had put it on the counter.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured, taking it sheepishly from his outstretched hand, and expecting him to go straight back to the shop. But he didn’t. Somehow he had managed to position himself ahead of her so that he was standing in her path, and she realised for the first time how stomach-churningly good-looking he was, in a Richard Gere-ish kind of way. He stood looking directly at her, his hands now stuffed into the pockets of his trenchcoat for warmth, an infectious smile twitching at the corners of his lips.
Time kicked its heels while she eyed him back belligerently, but eventually she felt that one of them had to say something, so nodding at the doll he carried tucked under his arm with its felt feet sticking out, she said, ‘I hope Reg doesn’t take you for a shoplifter. Hadn’t you better go back?’
‘What?’ He looked vaguely at the shop, then at the upturned doll. ‘Oh, it’s all right, don’t worry. I chucked a plastic card at him on my way out. I’ll go back and settle up properly when we’ve had our cup of tea.’
‘Our –?’ She looked at the hand on her arm – a moderately large hand with broad, straight fingers.
‘Well, I could certainly do with one.’ His eyes roved over her face. ‘And I rather think you could too.’
There was no question of refusing; he didn’t give her a chance. He hustled her down a cul-de-sac before she could even begin to think what was happening. And in no time at all they were sitting opposite each other in the Copper Kettle with the doll propped against a sugar bowl as chaperone.
‘Not as comfortable as I’d hoped,’ he remarked, grimacing as he tried to settle himself on his chair. ‘One of those places that looks better from the outside than it actually is, I’m afraid. I haven’t sat on one of these horrible things since my Sunday school days.’
As he bent to examine the cane seat she saw that his hair grew thick and strong down the back of his head and was hardly streaked with grey at all. Paul’s was entirely grey and it didn’t grow right from the forehead like it used to either. There ought to be a way, she mused silently, of telling a man’s age by the amount his hair had receded. Like the rings on the trunk of a tree. A decade per half-inch perhaps? But that wouldn’t work; it would make this man young enough to be her son, which he was patently far from being.
‘Oh dear,’ he said, coming up a little flushed, ‘I suppose that dates me horribly, doesn’t it, talking about cane seats in Sunday schools?’ It was as if he’d read her mind. ‘In this day and age it’s probably pre-formed plastic, if they have them at all. I mean, I don’t know … do kids still go to Sunday school these days?’
Susannah hesitated. She didn’t want to sit drinking tea with a perfect stranger, making polite conversation about chairs and Sunday schools, of all things. And he hadn’t even asked her if she’d wanted to come; just assumed she’d be delighted to have his company. She firmed her lips and stuck her jaw out a little, making up her mind to answer him only in monosyllables. But he was a difficult sort of person to dislike
