With Love from Wish & Co. by Minnie Darke

Author:Minnie Darke [Darke, Minnie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2022-08-16T00:00:00+00:00

Thursday

At the wrapping table, Marnie fussed with the pleated folds at the base of a cylinder, now and then glancing over at Saski, who was eating her lunch. A salad sandwich. Which was worryingly full of ingredients that might drip. There was even beetroot, and beetroot and expensive pale pink rag-paper did not mix. With a cheeky smile, Saski brought a tissue out of her pocket and laid it on the surface of the table in front of her as a makeshift placemat, patting it to placate her friend.

‘Thank you,’ Marnie said, a little more crisply than she’d meant to.

Saski tilted her head. ‘You all right, Bunny?’

‘Ah, I’ve had a bit of a shit week.’

‘What’s been happening, honey?’

‘Nothing serious. Just shot myself in the foot with a new client. I so nearly had him, but then I lost him on the fine details. My fault. I was stupid.’

All the way back from Rafaello’s, and on and off for the couple of days since, she’d kicked herself for losing Hugh Cosgrove’s business. The email he’d sent, sharing his decision not to take her up on her quote, had been polite. But devastatingly brief. She shouldn’t even have tried with the whole honourable thing. Why change a winning formula? Why? Just because she’d copped a little bit of criticism from a man with very nice hands and forearms. And good taste in art. And shoes.

Before she started berating herself in earnest all over again, Marnie refocused her attention on getting every single narrow pleat in the pale pink paper to be the same width as every other. Brow furrowed, she tucked the very last fold underneath the first with just a shred of double-sided tape to keep it in place. The whole thing was seamless; perfect.

‘Honestly,’ Saski said, watching on with an expression of disbelief. ‘Why don’t you go buy a gift bag?’

‘Wash your mouth out,’ Marnie said, a little bit of good humour creeping back into her voice. ‘I could make a gift bag, but even that is tantamount to an admission of defeat.’

‘I seriously do not know how you can be bothered.’

‘No, but when Christmas comes, you’ll be grateful for my superpowers.’

They had a standing arrangement. Mo made Marnie a bottle of something she called Christmas milk, which was wildly alcoholic and very sweet, and which they drank in copious quantities while Marnie wrapped every single one of Saski’s and Mo’s Christmas presents.

The moment Saski finished her lunch, Marnie swept up her sandwich wrapper, binned it and wiped her hands on her apron. Saski, amused rather than perturbed by Marnie’s fastidiousness, pulled a folder out of her bag.

‘You ready?’ she asked Marnie.

‘Hit me with it.’

‘Right, so I’ve talked with three separate brokers, and there’s very little difference between the products they can offer you. This is how much you can borrow.’

Saski affixed a sticky note to the surface of the table. Marnie looked at the figure. It was about what she expected, but not quite what she’d hoped for.

‘This is really the most? The absolute most I can borrow?’

‘Full disclosure: no, it’s not.

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