The Posy Ring by Catherine Czerkawska

Author:Catherine Czerkawska [Czerkawska, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Saraband
Published: 2018-03-14T10:19:07+00:00

SEVENTEEN

It’s a relief to stop thinking about Auchenblae for a while. On Saturday morning she and her father go to the antique fair as planned. They stuff as many boxes and cartons as possible into Daisy’s car, most of it from the small storage unit they hired a few years ago. This involves getting up so early – a bleeding ungodly hour, says her father – that Rob can hardly keep his eyes open and Daisy drives while he leans back in the passenger seat and tries to doze. They would have packed everything the night before, but it never seems wise to leave it in the car overnight, in the city.

‘This place wouldn’t hold a fraction of the things from Auchenblae,’ she remarks as they lock up the unit. ‘If I wanted to keep some of it. And I’d have to clear the house before I sold it. Or let somebody else do it.’

‘So you’re still thinking of selling it, are you?’ Rob yawns widely.

She had woken up in the middle of the previous night and couldn’t get back to sleep with the worry of it all. But then everything seems so much worse at three or four in the morning. She switches constantly between excitement and panic.

‘I don’t know.’

Half an hour later, they manage to find a parking space not too far from the entrance to the suburban hall where this monthly fair is held, and then lug and trundle everything into the foyer.

‘If I don’t get a coffee soon, I’m going to kill somebody,’ Rob remarks, mildly.

The organisers are late, an accident on the motorway causing a mega traffic jam, and the exhibitors have to wait among the assorted trolleys and boxes until the keyholder arrives. The stallholders are an eclectic mix of young hopefuls, middle-aged and some elderly dealers who are either winding down to full retirement or desperately trying to supplement their pensions. They will cheerfully tell her that they have ‘done quite well’, when they’ve only made the price of the stall, but they’re a kindly bunch on the whole. She and her father have nicknames for some of them: Mr Desperate, Mrs Grumpy, the Hippy Sisters, Green Welly Man. She sometimes wonders what they call her.

The sale is held in a familiar draughty hall that smells of frying bacon from the pop-up cafeteria tucked into a small kitchen at the far end. The smell is appetising at first, but by the end of the afternoon, it always becomes sickening. She’s made up a picnic: sandwiches and fruit and a flask of black coffee that her father falls on as though it is nectar. Around lunchtime Rob will invariably wander off and come back with trays of chips and more coffee in paper cups, because they will have drunk the whole flask before mid-day but never seem to get round to buying a spare flask. Fairs invariably make Daisy hungry. She once managed to secure a stall at a mixed crafts and collectables fair opposite a couple selling home-made chocolates.

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