Secrets at the Little Music Shop
Chapter One
You know you’re in for a bad day when the Devil eats your last HobNob.
All right, it was Saskia, not Old Nick, and any hoofed tendencies were well-disguised in sling-back Manolos, but from there on the resemblance was remarkable, down to the slightly reddish-tinged eyes and the air of immoral superiority.
‘Bad news I’m afraid, Jemima. Well, bad for you , obviously, not for me!’ She tinkled a laugh that I wanted to hit with a brick. ‘I’ve decided to start sourcing elsewhere.’
Her tight little lips mouthed another few crumbs, nibbling slowly around the biscuit’s edge until I wanted to scream, ‘Just eat it!’ but I didn’t dare. ‘Sorry, what?’
‘Your jewellery is very — well, it’s quite lovely of course, very intricate , but it is rather expensive you know.’ It takes weeks to build each piece. That’s why Saskia started stocking them in her shop — because they were exclusive. ‘I’ve been talking to one or two people in the States who make very similar pieces, and they can supply me at roughly half what you charge.’
Half? What are they using, I wanted to ask, plastic and Polyfilla? I’d already got my overheads down as low as I could by renting a room in Rosie’s little house and sharing workshop space in Jason’s barn. ‘I could, maybe, give you discount . . . use less expensive materials . . .’ I tried, but Saskia was already standing up.
* * *
‘Anyway, I’ve decided to give the shop a more cosmopolitan look, buy things in from all over the world. That’s what this darling little rural corner could do with, right? A touch of World Culture? All right, better trot now, busy, busy!’ She dropped the remains of the biscuit casually onto the edge of the table, paused for a moment as if waiting for the butler to sweep it off, and then with a quick shrug, was gone through the door in a waft of Arpège tinged with brimstone.
‘Coast clear?’ Rosie snuck half a shoulder round the bottom of the narrow stairway. ‘Thought I’d stay out of the way until she’d gone, she doesn’t need any more ammunition in the great Unpleasantness War. Sssh, lovey, Cruella’s gone now.’
This was addressed to her baby son, Harry, who lay in her arms like a damp rucksack, grouching slightly.
‘She . . . she’s just dropped me.’
‘Dropped you?’ I tried not to look as Rosie pulled down the front of her pyjama top and fastened Harry to a boob as though buttoning him on. ‘From how high? Ow! Yes, go on, Jem, I’m listening, breast feeding doesn’t leach away your brain you know.’
‘Yes, I know, it’s just . . . distracting, you sitting there with your chest hanging out and Harry grabbing you, farting and squelching.’
‘Sounds like a really good party,’ Rosie said wistfully. ‘Remind me again, Jem, what parties are?’
‘Excuse me, I’m just about to become penniless thanks to the Diamante Demon and you’re smiling indulgently at me whilst having a head full of fluffy mummy-moments! You might want to throw me out into the snow when I can’t pay my bills. And — and this is the clincher — she ate the last HobNob.’
Rosie sighed. ‘She really is evil, isn’t she?’
Rosie supplied the shop with her handmade greetings cards so she was well up on the Awfulness of Saskia. She, however, had long since branched out and now also supplied most of the card shops in this part of North Yorkshire. We’d first met at Saskia’s one afternoon when I was delivering a series of belt buckles, each a bejewelled representation of the Seven Deadly Sins, and discovered that we both loathed Saskia with a passion bordering on unhealthy fixation. Which came in handy six months ago when Rosie’s pregnancy meant that she’d had to ease up on the work front and the short-term lease on my flat in York had begun to seem restrictive. It was a near-perfect situation, except that the result of the pregnancy now had to sleep in a carry-cot jammed in beside Rosie’s wardrobe; when he needed to move into a proper bed we were probably going to have to fence-in the bath.
‘You’ll find another outlet.’ Rosie tucked herself away and hoiked Harry up to her shoulder where he belched like a lager-lout. ‘You’re twenty-eight. Blonde and gorgeous. You make the most exquisite jewellery I’ve ever seen, and you’re thin, you bitch. Honestly, people will be eating their own knees to have a chance to buy your stuff. Anyway, Saskia never marketed you properly, you should have worldwide recognition for your designs, not a cramped corner of a jumped-up knick-knack shop!’ She pondered for a moment, flicking her chicane of black curls out of her eyes. ‘And I can’t throw you out into the snow. It’s not winter.’
‘I was being figurative. Honestly, Rosie, what am I going to do for money? What am I saying, it can’t get much worse, I already share workspace with a guy who reads Shunters’ Weekly , and not in an ironic way.’ Jason is an artiste (his ‘e’) who lives in a beautiful flat in the roof-space of the barn, like a materially successful pigeon, and he builds things out of scrap locomotives. Thicker than a bed sandwich, his chief saving grace is looking like a mixture of Johnny Depp and Jack Davenport. ‘And we both know she only stocked my things in Le Petit Lapin because I’d got friendly with Jason and he put in a word for me. Saskia fancies him so much she’d buy Liverpool FC if he asked her to. I mean, yeah, everyone loved my stuff but they didn’t like the prices.’
‘Le Petit Lapin.’ Rosie sniggered, ignoring my tirade. ‘Honest to God, Jem, I can’t hear that name without thinking that it sounds like a strip club. I’m surprised the York Board of Trade didn’t make her change it.’
‘With a husband as rich as Alex is she could call it “Rub Me With Your Willy” if she wanted to.’ I stared at the walls. ‘I really thought I was making a go of it,’ I said quietly.
Rosie touched my arm. ‘You are making a go of it,’ she said gently. ‘People love your pieces, you only need to read your e-mails to know that. Don’t let Saskia get you down, other shops will take you on, don’t worry. Anyway, what’s she so uptight about money for?’
Saskia’s husband Alex ‘did something’ in property. They lived in the same village as us in a much, much larger house. Saskia regarded living twelve miles outside York as the class equivalent to just-off-Knightsbridge, while Rosie and I privately agreed that she put the ‘colic’ into bucolic and couldn’t wait until she was driven back to town by the pitchfork-wielding locals. Sadly improbable, with the money that she and Alex threw at village institutions, but we still found ourselves backing away slowly whenever she complained about the 5 a.m. cockerel chorus, or the smell of cows.
‘Maybe her marriage is on the rocks?’
Rosie snorted. ‘Yeah, right! She’d take Alex to the cleaners! Anyway, what did she pay you for the last lot? Two grand? Two thousand pounds is the kind of loose change she’d give to a beggar in the street, if she ever gave anything to beggars apart from a sneer and a kick in the ankle.’
‘She doesn’t actually kick them does she?’
‘Well, no,’ Rosie looked down at Harry’s sleeping head and dropped a soft kiss on it. ‘But she looks as though she would if no-one was watching. Anyway, my point is . . . oh sod it, Jem, what is my point? I thought my memory would improve after Harry was born. D’you know I’m beginning to think it wasn’t the placenta that came out after him, it was my brain?’
‘Well thanks for that image. Your point, I think, was that Saskia isn’t exactly short of a few quid.’
‘Yes. Yes, that was it. And she ate our last HobNob? Hang on a minute, nursing mother here, aren’t I entitled to any privileges? Look, I’m going to put Harry in his cot for a sleep and get on and do some cards. I’ve got a few orders to fill before next week so I’d better make a start now while it’s quiet.’
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go to bed for a bit?’ Harry, bless his little babygros, wasn’t exactly the calm, relaxed baby Rosie had somehow been led to believe she’d have, despite all the whale-song CDs and the hours of pregnancy-yoga, during which she’d looked more and more like an egg on a stick. Since his arrival she’d acquired shadows under her eyes and a pale, stretched look as though she was co-existing in several universes at once.
‘Nah, I’d better get on. I’ll catch a snooze later.’
‘Have you thought any more about . . . maybe . . .’ It sounded incoherent but Rosie knew what I meant.
‘I can bring Harry up on my own perfectly well, just as long as Saskia doesn’t decide she wants to turn him into a baby-skin coat or sausages or something.’
Harry’s father was something Rosie never talked about. She’d not had a boyfriend for at least a year, or, obviously she had , for the duration of copulation if nothing else, but she refused to say anything about him. My money was on Jason, but then my money was on Jason for everything from funding terrorism to dropping litter. Despite this, I harboured a kind of hope that he was the father. He was well-off, good-looking and wouldn’t necessarily mean Harry was doomed to being several nails short of a shelf unit; Rosie was quite bright enough to make up that particular deficiency.
‘Well, if you’re sure . . . I’d better get back to the marketing drawing board. Again. “Cosmopolitan” huh! I dread to think what she’s going to turn that lovely little shop into! Should have seen it coming, I guess, she’s always wanted to be El Supremo of York City Centre.’
‘Wouldn’t she have to be black?’
I stared at Rosie for a moment then my synapses managed to switch to new-mother mode of thinking. ‘That’s the Supremes, dear. Look, I’m going into York, trolling round the jewellery shops for another outlet. Do you need anything?’
‘New body? One where all the bits that are meant to go in, go in and don’t flap around in the breeze?’
‘I’ll buy you some big pants.’
Rosie looked down at herself. ‘Can you get them neck-to-ankle?’
‘You’re not that bad. Anyway, you had a ten-pound baby less than two months ago, it’ll take time for it all to go back to where it was.’
‘Yeah.’ Rosie sounded tired and I suddenly had a brilliant idea.
‘How about if I take Harry with me?’
She came over all protective, wrapping her body over Harry’s slumbering form. ‘Why?’
‘Distraction. I mean, last time I went round with my stuff, everyone was so dismissive. If I’ve got a pram and a baby, people might at least feel sorry for me.’
‘So you want my baby just so you can have a crack at the pity vote? Jemima, that is very immoral.’
‘You could get on with your cards. And probably fit in a snooze.’
I watched her eyelids droop as though even the promise of sleep was enough. ‘All right. There’s a couple of bottles of expressed milk in the fridge, in case he wakes up.’
‘But you just stuffed him.’
Rosie gave me a Look, which expressed the gulf between mothers and non-mothers. ‘Just in Case. That’s my motto.’
‘I thought your motto was Biscuits, Bustiers and Orlando Bloom?’
‘Yeah.’ She sighed. ‘Then I had a baby.’