Page 53 of The Little Shop on Silver Linings Street
Hi Daisy. Hope you’ve thawed out after last night. Just wanted to let you know that your car is fine. It was still somewhat wedged this morning, but I went early enough so there was no one else about and was able to retrieve it no problem. Now parked in its usual spot, and have posted the keys through your letter box. Hope that’s okay, Kit xx
She couldn’t believe she had actually forgotten all about her car this morning. Bless you, Kit. She read the message again, smiling. Two kisses.
Clearing her throat she looked at the second message – a notification from her Instagram account.
NickCarr1: I’m so sorry I didn’t get back to you yesterday, my business overran and I missed my flight. I’ve been wracking my brains all week to think of things to tell you about my girlfriend, but it’s even more difficult than I thought! I could tell you that she makes me feel more alive than anyone I’ve ever known, but how do you make that into a necklace? Or that in certain lights her skin looks like alabaster, so pale that when she arches her neck it makes me want to lay my fingers against her skin to feel her heart beating? That she’s the first thing I think of every morning when I wake up, and the last thing at night, and when she smiles at me it’s like there’s no one else in the room. Sorry, I’m not being any help at all… but she reads a lot, does that help? Also, she doesn’t like frilly stuff, except on flowers (which she loves), no lace, plain colours, that kind of thing, and she’s very tidy… Please ask me anything you think you need to know, maybe I’ll be better at that? Hopelessly, Nick.
Daisy sat back, staring at her phone. And then she reread the message, her heart lifting at the words. Maybe his message didn’t help her at all, but how could anything be wrong in the world when you had someone who loved you the way Nick did? She thought for a minute, trying to compose a reply, but realised that she couldn’t. She needed a little time to think about things, to let her brain sift through all the information she had and see if it couldn’t come up with an idea. After all, that’s what had happened with Grace’s necklace; she had come up with the design almost without trying. She picked her bag up again and this time she did take out her sketchbook, turning to a fresh page, before rummaging for a pencil.
With Grace firmly in her mind, she started to sketch, committing her ideas to paper with a few light strokes. She was sure what she had in mind would work, it was just a question of getting the design elements balanced so that the piece sat properly. She added another detail and then paused, tapping the end of her pencil against her teeth. She wasn’t thinking about Grace now at all, but of her wreath, and how the jewellery she had made to sit at its centre allowed it to be a part of something else. Because something else had been brewing in the back of her mind since the day she had gone on the course at Hope Corner Farm. Framed on the wall of the old cow shed had been a series of Flora’s prints; bold botanical designs and, because they were linocuts, very simple in their execution. It had struck her at the time how easily they could be embellished.
She turned a new page and sketched a quick image of a daisy that she remembered from one of the prints. Might she be able to make a simple pendant, for example? Replicating an element of the design and then adding it to the print so that it could be removed if necessary; much as she had designed the brooch at the centre of her wreath. That way the jewellery became so much more than just a pendant and the picture became so much more than just a print.
The excitement was bubbling inside of her. She was on to something, she knew she was. She thought back to the words from Nick’s message, and the perfect idea came to her. She sketched it quickly in case it evaporated during the course of the busy afternoon ahead, and then she stared at the sketches she had made. Oh my God, they could be gorgeous! She shot a glance at the clock and picked up her phone.
Hi Nick, thanks for your message. Actually you’ve been more help than I think you could possibly have realised. I’m at work just now so can’t give you all the details yet, but I actually do have some ideas! Can you leave it with me until later tonight and I hope to be able to send you some sketches then. Hopefully, Daisy.
She pressed send before she could change her mind and grabbed her sandwich, praying that the afternoon would go just as quickly as the morning. She was itching to get home and make a start.
17
Sunday 15th December
Ten shopping days until Christmas
Daisy rolled over and opened an eye to squint at the clock. She hadn’t gone to bed until past midnight but, instead of falling into a deep sleep, she had still been so excited that she’d woken nearly every hour, itching to get back up again. She almost did at five o’clock but then willed herself to sleep again until a more sensible hour. The clock now showed six forty-five and she flung back the covers with relief.
It was cold in the bedroom and she thrust her feet into her fluffy slippers, pulling her dressing gown from the end of the bed as she did so. There’d been another light fall of snow in the night and the view from her window was breathtaking. But first things first.
She relit the fire in the sitting room before setting the kettle to boil and contemplated the day ahead. She was meeting Amos at eleven and he was the first visitor she’d had to her little cottage in what felt like years. She looked around it with a critical eye as she sipped the first cup of tea of the day. It was clean and tidy and, beyond that, simple and homely. Besides, there was nothing she could do about it now, and today wasn’t about winning awards for her interior design. The thought made her stomach leap in nervous excitement.
She had rushed home from work the night before, eaten several quick slices of toast and got straight to work on Grace’s present. By eight o’clock she had done enough to know that she could go no further without Amos’s approval. So, with an apology for the lateness of the hour, she had sent a text asking if she could see him. His reply had arrived within five minutes and he declared it to be perfect timing: he would be running some errands for the farm the next morning and so would call in on her if she could provide directions to where she lived. Daisy hadn’t given it another thought but sent them straight back. It was only afterwards that she had realised what a first this was for her.
After finishing her design for Amos last night, she had turned her attention to everything else that was humming through her brain, shocked to discover as she had laid her pencil down quite how late it was. But she had covered the pages in her sketchbook with ideas that flowed out of her as if she’d opened a tap. And they were good, she could see that. It was as if something had shifted inside of her but, whatever it was, the results were plain to see. The very last thing she had done before she went to bed was annotate some of her designs and photograph them so that it was clear just what she was trying to achieve. Then she attached them to a message which she sent toNickCarr1with a simple query:
On the right track?
She hadn’t received a reply yet, but that was hardly surprising given the hour.
Rinsing out her mug, she set it ready for her second cup of tea which she would have with her breakfast and then went to get dressed. She needed some stillness back inside of her and there was only one place she could get that.
The canal path was deserted. Even the regular dog walkers weren’t up and about yet, but Daisy was glad of it. Her feet were the first to lay a trail through the soft snow, or at least the first human feet. The blackbirds had been out dancing and, by the look of it, something small and furry had scurried past on more than one occasion. Other than that, however, the landscape was a clean white sheet and Daisy breathed in deeply as she made her way through the wintry world.
It wasn’t just the rising tide of excitement about her jewellery that was occupying Daisy’s head, there were a whole cast of characters clamouring to be heard, not least of all Kit. The transformation of the day she had shared with Lawrence couldn’t have been more pronounced and, ever since, she had found herself thinking about Kit more than she cared to admit. And he hadn’t just posted her car keys through the door as he’d described. He’d slipped them inside an envelope with part of a poem by Walt Whitman. How did he even know that she loved his work? It was such a lovely gesture, it made her feel, well, a little bit gooey inside, if truth were told, and that was usually only something that happened to the heroines in the books she read.
And thinking about Kit inevitably led her to thinking about Bertie, and Lawrence too to some degree. Bertie had ended up staying at the shop the whole of the afternoon yesterday and it had been fun – busy, but he was such a natural with the customers that the banter had kept them all going. It made her think what it could be like to have Bertie there the whole time… and what Bea had made of it all.
Daisy had caught Bea watching her and Bertie on a couple of occasions and, given their conversation in the morning, she was dying to know what her boss had been thinking. In fact, it had crossed her mind on more than one occasion to come clean to Bea about her jewellery-making, but she knew she mustn’t, it would make a mockery of the whole competition.
Her breath hung in the air as she walked and she lifted her head to scent the smoke which was drifting along from the narrowboat moored further up the canal. A thin coil of it rose straight into the air from the chimney and she’d always loved the smell. As she drew closer she could see that a little Christmas tree had been put up on the stern at some point over the weekend, just like the one she’d seen in Nottingham, and that Robin was already up and about enjoying his first cigarette of the day.
He raised his hand in greeting.
‘Land ahoy!’
She smiled. It was his regular greeting.
‘Beautiful morning,’ she said.
