Chapter 34
CHAPTER 34
Beau was sitting in the back office at Giuliette’s with Cassady on his knee. She was designing a ring. He’d already drawn about five hundred princesses and unicorns for her and had insisted it was her turn to draw a picture, so he could have a breather.
‘It’s going to be a very big ring,’ said Cassady, pressing hard on the paper with the felt tip. ‘The biggest ring in the world. This big.’ She arced her dear little arms around as far as they would go.
‘Will it fit on your finger if it’s that big?’ said Beau. ‘You’ve only got titchy witchy fingers.’
‘The finger bit will be small, you silly, but the bit on top will be big like a mountain. A rainbow mountain.’
She was spending time at the shop every day after school, because of some logistics with the nanny and the new baby. Beau usually ended up entertaining her. Gwen and Octavia were so grateful not to get landed, they waited on him with cups of tea and biscuits. Gwen had also made one of her lemon drizzle cakes.
Babysitting was no stretch for Beau. He loved kids. He was happy to lie on the floor with Cassady, making up stories involving her extensive collection of rainbow Pegasus unicorns. Jack always said Beau’s affinity with children was because he had never really grown up himself. Beau was fine with that. He’d rather interact at Cassady’s brutally honest level than with the bullshit thrown at him by some adults.
Which was why he was secretly glad to spend time in the back office and out of the shop. He was doing okay in there. He’d sold quite a bit of stuff, and Luiza seemed pleased with him – and he was happy with the commission – but he found some of the people who shopped there so awful it took all his self-discipline to be polite to them. Having to toady up to them to clinch the sale, as Luiza did, was just too much.
Cassady finished her ring design and jumped off Beau’s lap to get some essential extra unicorns out of her bag, just as Luiza came through from the shop.
‘That puta,’ she said about a customer who had just left. ‘Thinks she’s a pop star, she’s a poop star. Says it’s for her video, wants a discount. I put the price up, then gave her “discount”. She bought it. Full price. Rego do cu.’
Beau smiled as enthusiastically as he could. He was getting to know some interesting Portuguese insults – that one was ‘ass crack’, as far as he remembered – so working with Luiza did have an educational element.
‘What did she buy?’ he asked.
‘The pendant with the big eye and the lips.’
‘The one that converts to a belt?’
Luiza nodded, examining her nails.
‘Isn’t that twenty thousand pounds?’
She shrugged. ‘Wasted on that idiota.’
‘Nice commission for you.’
‘I earn it,’ she said, looking at him coolly. ‘While you are working as a nanny, again. No commission for you and I’m alone in the shop. Are you happy with that? Looking after the brat?’
‘Yes,’ said Beau, as Cassady came running in and vaulted onto his lap, dropping two handfuls of small plastic creatures onto the desk. He gave her a little squeeze and tickled her round the waist. She shrieked with delight.
‘I love hanging out with Cassady,’ said Beau. Much more than with you .
‘Well, if that’s your level, you are welcome to it,’ said Luiza. ‘But if this carries on much longer, I will be asking our big puta to get someone else to work with me. You need to make your mind up.’
She treated him to one of the smiles she used on the customers she most despised – Beau had learned to read them – and walked out. As she got to the door into the shop, she turned round to look at him again with what seemed to be an expression of relatively sincere concern.
‘Don’t disappoint me, Bob,’ she said. ‘You’re too good for that shit.’ She gestured at Cassady with her head.
Beau looked down at the little girl on his knee, her head of dark curls bent over the desk as she arranged her unicorns in a neat row by size, and thought he couldn’t imagine anything better than her.
He looked back at Luiza and gave her a smile as fake as one of hers. ‘I hear you,’ he said. I hear you and I don’t like you.
She let the door close with a loud thump.
‘Bob,’ said Cassady, looking up at him expectantly. ‘Let’s do the one where the unicorns jump in your tea and go swimming.’
‘Okay,’ said Beau, ‘but we better do it in the kitchen. We made rather a mess last time, didn’t we?’
‘Yes,’ said Cassady. ‘And I want to make a much bigger mess this time. The biggest mess in the whole world.’
‘You’re a big mess,’ said Beau, lifting her off his lap onto the floor and standing up. ‘You lead the way. I’ll bring the tea and the magical animals.’
Cassady took off at a run towards the kitchen. Beau started to follow her then paused, picking up her drawing of a ring and studying it closely. It was really good. She’d used colours very interestingly with yellow next to orange, pink next to red and lilac next to purple, and the shapes and proportions all worked.
Cassady had definitely inherited her mother’s talents.
He folded the drawing carefully and put it in his jacket’s inside pocket.