Chapter 4
Bonnie pulled up outside 39 Greenwood Crescent with a boulder-like heaviness in her stomach. Her mother’s philosophy didn’t work so well for her. She unclipped her seat belt slowly, anything to delay walking into the house. It had never felt like her home, not the way the house she grew up in had done. That house had closed its arms around her when she walked through the front door and she felt safe and calm there; this one was just bricks held together with mortar that she slept in, ate in and cleaned. She and Stephen hadn’t chosen it together: he was already living there when she moved into it thirteen years ago and his personality was already firmly stamped upon it. It was a nice enough midsized detached house in the bowl of a cul-de-sac with neat front and back gardens. It had three bedrooms, one with an ensuite, and a house bathroom upstairs, a long lounge and dining kitchen downstairs and a rectangular conservatory at the back where Bonnie liked to sit and read when Stephen was playing opera on his ancient CD player tower system or watching highbrow programmes on the TV. There was a single garage where he parked his Mondeo; Bonnie always used the drive. The garden was devoid of a single dandelion, the edges precise, the square of lawn spirit-level flat. The borders were full of run-of-the-mill bedding plants: Lobelia, Busy Lizzie, Dianthus. Everything was trim and ordered and balanced . . . and totally without character. Bonnie played a game with herself when she switched off the light at nights and settled down to sleep. She used to plan her dream house, right down to the contents of the cupboards. She had a few of these houses, depending on how she was influenced by Grand Designs that week but she wished herself into them all with the same kind man and the same large red dog. One of them was a mansion with secret passages and a lake, one was a cosy canal boat. Another was a small cottage covered in ivy with a wild garden at the back which attracted all sorts of butterflies, all very different but what they shared was that they screamed out colour and individuality. And all of them were free of the great dark cloud that hung above Greenwood Crescent.
Stephen would be furious that she was out of a job. He wouldn’t shout, because he rarely shouted but he would convey his displeasure with a series of sighs and lifts and drops of his shoulders as if she were a child in whom he was dreadfully disappointed. As for why she lost her job, well, he wouldn’t see it that she was trying to stop an old lady from being ripped off, he would view her intervention as poor business sense, idiocy, treason. He would tut and shake his head quite a few times over the next couple of days, reminding her that her ‘disloyalty’ was still playing in his brain. Oh, the irony that he could think of her as disloyal.
As she opened the car door, her mobile phone rang in her bag. She didn’t recognise the number that came up on the screen.
‘Hello,’ she said, answering it tentatively.
‘Hi, it’s Lewis Harley. From Pot of Gold.’
It took Bonnie a couple of beats to realise that this was the nice man from the antiques shop. Taking her details was the equivalent of ‘keeping her name on file’ which is what Ken Grimshaw used to say when anyone came in looking for a job, then he’d slam-dunk those details in the bin behind his counter.
‘I’d like you to come in and see me if you would. It’s about a job. I have an unexpected vacancy.’
Bonnie gulped before answering him. ‘Really?’
‘Erm, yes, really.’ He seemed amused by her tone.
‘I’m free now,’ blurted Bonnie. ‘If that’s not too soon.’ Anything not to have to confess to Stephen that she was unemployed.
‘If that’s convenient for you, then it’s convenient for me.’
‘I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’
Such was Bonnie’s enthusiasm that she was there in fifteen.
*
Bonnie had to stop herself from racing to Spring Hill Square. She had to get this job. Surely life wouldn’t be so cruel as to present her with this quirk of fate only to snatch it back from her.
Lew smiled as she opened the door. That was the second time she had been in his shop and the second time he felt as if she brought something in with her that whipped up the air, adding a sprinkle of lightness to it. Vanda weighed it down with her presence, and her industrial-strength perfume that smelled like fly spray.
‘Hello there,’ he called and lifted his hand in a wave.
‘Hi,’ said Bonnie, feeling breathless with nerves. The Pot of Gold was so much nicer than Grimshaw’s, at least as it was now, but it reminded her very much of how Grimshaw’s used to be when her dad and Harry styled it. A step over the threshold and you were in a different world, an older, calmer place. People used to say that it was better than therapy going into the shop, soothing and relaxing.
‘I’m so glad you could come back,’ said Lew, going to the door and locking it. He hung a sign in the window which had a clock with adjustable hands. The shop would open again at three, it read. ‘We won’t be disturbed if I close for twenty minutes,’ he said. ‘Would you like a coffee?’
‘I’m fine, thanks.’
‘Well I’m having one,’ said Lew. ‘Have a look around whilst the kettle is boiling.’
‘Oh,’ Bonnie shrugged. ‘Okay. A coffee would be nice then. Just a dash of milk for me, please.’ She took herself on a quick tour of the shop whilst she waited for him to return and thought it was a shame that so many of the units were empty. She would bet that her friend Valerie, who dealt in quality vintage clothes, didn’t know about this place, and if Valerie didn’t know about it then Jackpot and the dealers they hung around with wouldn’t know either. She recognised the long display cabinets of Thimble Simon, and a small bay in which the walls were covered in framed signed photos. The unit was called ‘Autograph Hunters’ and she knew that the seller was called Starstruck, because many of the autographs were ones he’d collected himself over many years and had provenance for. She could see a sign with the name ‘Mart Deco’ on it. Martin dealt with fabulous antiques from the Deco era: 1925–1939. But there were many familiar traders’ names missing who would help to draw in custom.
Lew returned with two mugs and set them on top of the huge central counter which had once graced a gentleman’s outfitters.
‘You’ve got some good dealers in here,’ said Bonnie. ‘I recognise most of them. You did well to get Uncle Funky and his toys because last I heard he was giving it up. He’s particularly bonkers, isn’t he?’ She laughed and Lew thought what a nice sound it was. Vanda had a shriek of a cackle which he was always afraid would start cracking all the glass.
‘Oh yes, Uncle Funky. I’m presuming that isn’t his real name,’ grinned Lew, picturing the wild-haired tall thin gent, always in a suit complete with waistcoat and novelty bow tie.
‘I have no idea what his real name is. I’m not sure he does any more,’ replied Bonnie. He had stopped renting a unit from Grimshaw’s months ago. He’d been the first person to ever rent a cabinet from Harry and yet Ken hadn’t even bothered to try and persuade him to stay.
‘They’re quite an eclectic bunch of people, aren’t they?’ smiled Lew. Which was a polite way of saying that a lot of them were absolute nutters.
‘I was only a little girl when I first met most of them,’ said Bonnie, sipping her coffee. ‘Billy Boombox must be eighty-five if he’s a day. He deals in ghetto blasters and Walkmans, radios, that kind of stuff. If you haven’t heard of him, you soon will because he’s not selling anything at Grimshaw’s. But then, no one is.’ Bonnie sighed then thought she’d better add some sort of an explanation to that. ‘It’s not my sales technique that’s at fault, just in case you’re wondering. Ken Grimshaw would be better running one of those bargain bin shops. He doesn’t have the passion for antiques that his dad had and he’s not big on fairness or goodwill. And his accounts are a mess which doesn’t help and the dealers expect you to be dead straight with money . . . ’ She realised she was talking too much and apologised. ‘Sorry. I’d better let you get a word in, hadn’t I?’
Lew liked her. He wasn’t the sort of man who would use phrases such as ‘he got a good vibe from someone’ but today he would have broken a rule and said that. He got a very good vibe from Bonnie Brookland.
‘I’m looking for someone full-time,’ he said, putting his professional cards on the table. ‘Someone that I can trust to leave in charge, someone who knows their onions. Nine to four-thirty, Tuesday to Saturday, Sundays ten till two and I shut Mondays, though that might change. I’m pretty easy going if you have a doctor’s or dentist’s appointment or anything like that. Coffee-making duties are split fifty-fifty between us.’ He grinned, a lopsided, lazy and genuine grin that any male Hollywood star would be proud to own, thought Bonnie. He went on, ‘You’ll know lots more about the business than I do, so I’ll be happy for any tips. Seven pounds fifty an hour is what I was thinking as a starting wage. Is . . . does that sound all right to you?’
He knew it wasn’t a lot for her expertise at thirty pence per hour above the minimum wage and he fully expected her to pick up her handbag and say they were both wasting their time, but she didn’t. Bonnie nodded approvingly.
‘That sounds fine,’ she said. She would be up on what she earned at Grimshaw’s by over a pound an hour – Ken didn’t acknowledge the minimum wage – and this looked an infinitely nicer place to work.
Lew knew that he shouldn’t offer her the job straightaway. He should ask for a reference, quiz a few of the dealers who might know her. Acting impetuously had gained him Vanda Clegg, but he found himself sealing the deal without heeding his own warnings, thanks to that ridiculous ‘good vibe’.
‘So, when could you start?’
‘Tomorrow,’ Bonnie replied, barely leaving a beat after his question.
‘You don’t need to work any notice?’
‘No.’ Bonnie shook her head and saw his tilt slightly, the way her dog’s used to when he was trying to make sense of something. Maybe he was thinking that she was walking out of her job and leaving Grimshaw’s in the lurch, not exactly loyal. Oh, that word again.
‘I left Grimshaw’s today,’ said Bonnie and a voice in her head warned her to stop at that. But what if he rang Ken asking for a reference, asked another voice. Tell him the truth. She dropped a heavy sigh, ‘Look, Ken Grimshaw caught me telling an old lady to go somewhere else to sell a big box of items that she’d brought in. He was going to rip her off. She had a white Gulvase in there and he was only going to offer her a pittance for the lot. I couldn’t let him do it. He threw me out on the spot.’
Lew looked back into her large hazel eyes, widened in anticipation of his opinion on that. She was wondering if she’d told him too much, he knew. But he respected her honesty. In comparison to Vanda Clegg, she was like a breath of fresh air in more ways than one.
Lew held out his hand to seal the deal. ‘So I’ll see you tomorrow at nine, Mrs Brookland. Welcome to the Pot of Gold.’