Page 1 of The Happy Hour
Prologue
A Tuesday in July
It was the perfect July day and London shone brightly, as if it didn’t have a care in the world. Ash Faulkner stood on the deck of the Thames Clipper as the time inched towards twelve o’clock, his hands pushed deep into the pockets of his jeans. It was quiet on a Tuesday morning, only a few passengers on board as the boat chugged through the water away from the city centre.
At the beginning, this journey had filled him with nothing but dread, and he’d always had the desperate urge to get off the moment he’d boarded – to disembark at any stop before he reached Greenwich. But that had changed.
He had met Jess at the market, and she had turned his Sundays into a complicated mix of the best and worst
part of his week. She had made him look forward to the journey to Greenwich, had become the good that outweighed the bad. She was the reason he had stopped waking up on those mornings feeling like his chest was full of rocks.
The deck got busier as the boat approached Tower Bridge, and Ash stepped to the side, letting a woman herd her three children to the front, behind the rope barrier that kept travellers well away from the edge. They pointed and gasped at the bridge’s blue steelwork, and at the Tower of London, a small boy asking how many people had been locked away in the turret, and Ash thought of how Jess, living and working in the heart of a popular tourist spot, had been nonplussed by the things he’d tried to show her: the Queen’s House, the foot tunnel, the view of the city stretching beyond the green expanse of Greenwich Park. She knew it so well, none of it had made her eyes light up.
But other things had – things that Ash had said or that they’d done together: a story about a pigeon that he hadn’t expected to tell anyone ever again, and yet he’d been compelled to blurt it out the first time they met; standing on the heath watching a kite soar high above them, her back pressed to his front; a silly hat; when he’d slid one of her ridiculous fluffy cushions underneath her, angling her hips up towards him.
Ash closed his eyes. He couldn’t let himself fall too deeply into the memories, even though he was glad to have them, now; to be able to replay them when, for the last few days, his mind had been a fuzzy, impenetrable fog. It wasn’t the right time to remind himself that all those stolen moments, those Sunday mornings, hadn’t just madehiseyes light up, but had made his whole existence brighter – his heart most of all.
Today, he wasn’t travelling to Greenwich to have another perfect hour with Jess – he couldn’t. He had to stop being so self-pitying, stop thinking about what he needed, and do what was best for her.
He waited until the famous London landmarks were out of sight, and the children had gone back inside, then he walked to the other side of the deck.
He wanted to absorb every minute of their approach, to see theCutty Sark’s elaborate masts appear, like a careful ink drawing reaching up into the sky, to watch the busy Thames foreshore come slowly into view, spread out like an open invitation. He wanted to feel the anticipation and the sadness, the fear of what he was about to do, the regret that was already leeching through him like a slow poison.
Mostly, though, he wanted to add this to his catalogue of memories: Greenwich in the sunshine, the place he had found Jess. Because he was fairly certain that this would be the last time he came.
Chapter One
Before: A Sunday in April
Jessica Peacock stood behind the counter in No Vase Like Home, the pastel-coloured gift emporium that was housed in one of the shop spaces along the side of Greenwich Market, wrapping a stone hare in green tissue paper. Beyond the large picture window, the Sunday morning market was a wall of colour and sound, as people pored over the enticing stalls, picked out gifts, ate pizza slices and took photos on their phones. Inside, everything was slower, the quiet punctuated by the chorus of clocks – alarm clocks and carriage clocks, old-fashioned and modern, analogue and digital – that marked time on the shelves. Inside No Vase Like Home, Jess could watch the bustle from her haven of calm. Except, of course, for the hares.
Why were the sinister creatures so popular as mantelpiece ornaments? Was she inadvertently sending witches off into living rooms, under the guise of tall-eared statues? What had compelled Wendy, her boss and the owner of the shop, to introduce them as their latest stock line? Wasshenow under the control of the hares?
Her thoughts were disturbed by a commotion beyond the glass and she looked up, Sellotape stuck to her thumb, and peered past her oblivious customer, only to realise the commotion was actually laughter.
Olga, six foot two and blonde, with wide shoulders that put Jess in mind of Olympic swimmers, sold hats on the stall outside the gift shop, her designs as quirky and eye-catching as she was. Right now her head was tipped back, her laughter cascading out and up, like the bat signal fired into the sky. The cause of her hilarity seemed to be her current customer. He was shorter than Olga by an inch or so, and was wearing a grey jacket, jeans and – at that particular moment – a felt hat. It was a deep red, the colour of crushed rose petals, and had a gold satin band around the crown. It was far too big for him but he was soldiering on, the hat’s jaunty angle obscuring most of his head, so Jess could only see the sharp line of his jaw, and what looked like a charismatic, pearly-teethed smile.
The loud buzz of the market made it hard for her to make out anything beyond the sharp splinter of Olga’s laugh, but she thought she heard the deep rumble of his voice as he spoke, and then the bat signal sounded again. Jess turned back to her customer, who was tapping away at her phone screen, and to the hare, which was lying on its back and giving her a glassy stare. She was about to shroud it in a final layer of tissue paper when there was a louder sound, a shriek and a ‘Stop!’
Jess raised her head just in time to see figures rush past the window. There was no laughter now, just Olga, staring after the runners and holding the crushed rose hat, her mouth open in alarm.
‘What was that?’ Wendy appeared in the storeroom doorway, tucking her thick auburn hair behind her ear.
‘No idea,’ Jess said. ‘But it didn’t sound good.’
‘Go and see, will you?’
Jess bit back a sigh and slipped out from behind the counter as Wendy took her place. The owner of No Vase Like Home treated the market vendors like her flock, and Jess wasn’t surprised to be asked to go and investigate. As she pushed open the door she heard Wendy address the customer, who was still lost in her digital world. If that hare really was a witch, then its new owner didn’t stand a chance.
‘What happened?’ Jess asked Olga, but the other woman just pointed and, suspecting time was of the essence, she hurried up the side of the market, dodging tourists who were oblivious to anything except their Sunday morning browsing. She reached the side exit, a wide alleyway that was busy with artists’ stalls, a food court that branched out on the right and then, if you kept going straight, led to one of Greenwich’s bustling commercial roads.
It was a bright day at the end of April, the sun enticing people out of their homes despite the chilly wind, and Jess’s stretchy star-print dress felt too thin without her denim jacket over the top. She slowed down, realising she didn’t know who she was looking for, and was about to return to her post and Wendy’s unsatisfied curiosity when she saw him: the man who had been making Olga laugh.
He had the jeans and the grey jacket, and without the hat she could see his walnut-coloured hair, short around the back and sides but thick on top, a wavy chunk falling over his forehead. His smile had gone, his jawline was tight, and he was gripping the shoulder of someone who was no more than a navy shadow, slouchy jeans and a hoody with the hood pulled over their face.
Jess stopped and the man turned in her direction. Their gazes snagged, and his eyes widened in an almost comical expression of fear. She felt the hairs prickle on the back of her neck. This situation did not fit into her neat, hassle-free lifestyle. She worked at the market, hung out with her best friend Lola, created motivational prints and sold them in her Etsy shop, and phoned her mum and dad occasionally, to let them know she hadn’t fallen off the face of the earth. Predictable, small and safe. This didn’t look like it would be any of those things.
‘He’s got him, the bloody blighter!’ The voice, and the accompanying scent of menthol, belonged to Roger Stott, owner of one of the market’s antiques stalls. Hat Man was still holding onto the hooded figure, but he was no longer looking at Jess, instead casting his gaze around as if in search of an escape route.
