These Days of Ours by Juliet Ashton

Author:Juliet Ashton [Ashton, Juliet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781471155062
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK

The shop, on the intersection of two narrow roads, was the cornerstone of Kate’s empire. Her first, her favourite, she’d come through its door as a Saturday girl in her early teens. The old shop had been chaotic and gloomy, with a stockroom that defied her efforts to streamline it. The day she bought it Kate had begun the process of ripping everything out, commissioning box shelving and painting everything a celestial white.

Called in at short notice to cover for her flu-stricken manager, Kate was enjoying a day behind the counter. Like the fond husband of a plastic surgery devotee, she remembered the shop’s original, more homely looks with fondness.

‘No, those don’t go there!’ Her temporary assistant was hopeless. Too short to reach the shelves and prone to tearing open whatever took her fancy. ‘Come and help me test these whistles, Flo!’

Flo’s emphatic advice was useful when customers dithered in Fancy Dress Corner. ‘Don’t be a princess,’ she said. ‘Princesses are sissies.’ In combat trews and a camouflage tee, Flo defied her mother’s attempts to pretty her up. Often mistaken for a boy, she liked her dark hair kept short, glossy as a surfacing seal.

The night before, Becca had come to Kate’s for supper, a weekly staple in their diaries. In between over the top compliments – ‘Kate, that lipstick gives you a mouth like Marilyn Monroe’ – and her usual carping – ‘When are you going to leave this blah rental and buy a proper home?’ – Becca had touched on a subject she returned to from time to time.

‘I’m going to tell him.’ She’d cut into her steak with gusto. ‘I am. I’m going to tell my sodding ex that Flo isn’t his.’

‘No, you’re not. You only say that after a few vinos.’

‘He should know. It’s only right.’

This high and mighty reasoning had been absent when Flo was conceived. ‘Today you had another row with Charlie, so you want to lash out. You know the person you’d hurt most is Flo, so you’re not going to do it.’ Kate had popped a chip into her mouth. ‘So let’s change the subject. Who’s in love with you this week?’

A fan of internet dating, Becca was evangelical about its delights. Not for Becca a toe in the water: she immersed herself up to her neck, seducing whoever took her fancy.

Such promiscuousness had gone down badly with the older generation. Kate’s mother declared it ‘a cry for help’, but Kate couldn’t perceive any sadness in Becca’s stream-of-consciousness tales of rumpy pumpy. It was obvious to Kate that Becca would return to Charlie in the blink of an eye, but her cousin was canny enough to accept that when such a mild mannered man reached the end of his generous tether there was no going back. So, instead, Becca went through males/25–50/gsoh like a hot knife through butter. Careful to keep her hectic love life from Flo, there were no gentlemen callers at home: Flo’s stability was a priority for both parents throughout and after the divorce.

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