Page 34 of The Happy Hour
‘Of course. I’ll finish my muffin, then get started on the new display before I leave. The owls aren’t in yet?’
‘Next couple of days,’ Wendy said. ‘I promise you’ll love them.’
‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep,’ Jess said, suppressing a shudder.
At ten to eleven, with Felicity’s address and the route from the market memorised, Jess went to get the boxed water feature from the storeroom.
‘Bend your knees!’ Wendy called, and Jess rolled her eyes.
She tottered onto the shop floor, her hands clasped under the box, her chin resting on top. ‘I’ve got it.’
‘Are you going to be OK carrying that?’
‘It’s not heavy, just awkward. Felicity definitely wouldn’t have managed it.’
‘She wouldn’t have been brazen enough to nudge people out of the way, either.’
‘That too,’ Jess agreed. ‘Right, I’m off.’
‘Take as long as you need,’ Wendy said.
‘You always say that!’
‘I always mean it.’
Jess walked carefully through the market, tryingnotto nudge people with the sharp corners of the box. Whenever visitors shot her curious glances, she glared back until they looked away.
The last part of the journey was uphill, on a residential road that ran parallel to the park, and the houses were large and well kept, with tiny front gardens sporting manicured rose bushes or potted marigolds, front doors gleaming white, sage green or pewter grey. There was no cracked plasterwork, no wheelie bins on show. Kerb appeal was clearly an important factor in this neighbourhood.
Number sixty-seven was smart too, though not quite aspolished as its neighbours. The door was a glossy primrose yellow, but there were weeds creeping up between the pathway flagstones, and all the blinds were drawn; no vases of peonies visible in the windows, no high ceilings on display. The door was the only welcoming thing about this house, and Jess felt a spike of unease.
She walked slowly up the path and lowered the box onto the porch, then lifted the brass knocker and slammed it down twice. She waited, listening for footsteps, and wondered if Felicity had forgotten. Then the door swung inward, making her jump.
Felicity was wearing biscuit-coloured linen trousers and a thin, grass-green jumper. Behind her, Jess could only see darkness. ‘Hello Jessica,’ Felicity said, smiling thinly. ‘Are you sure this is all right? You taking time out of your day to bring this to me?’
Jess wanted to laugh, because she was already here. She wasn’t about to say it was inconvenient and walk all the way back to the market with the box tucked under her chin. ‘Of course,’ she said brightly. ‘Shall I bring it in? I can help you set it up too, if you like.’
Felicity bit her lip like a self-conscious teenager. ‘Yes, please. Do come in. And please excuse the mess.’
Now Jess did laugh, because ‘mess’ to Felicity probably meant a book left out on a coffee table, or mugs upside down on the draining board. But then Felicity pulled open the door, letting sunlight flood into the house, and it was...
Jess clamped her jaw shut so hard it hurt. The entrance hall, which was wide and high-ceilinged, a staircase with a wooden banister running up the left-hand side, was full of... stuff. She could see piles of newspapers, clothes or fabric shoved into plastic bags that were tearing at the seams, a stack of tatty-looking wicker baskets. As she left behind the fresh May morning and stepped into Felicity’s house, the mustiness was a scorch in her nostrils, the stale air cloying and thick. The walls, she could just about see, were covered in wallpaper: little white daisies on a blue and green foliage background, but most of it was obscured by clutter.
‘I’ll just get this.’ Jess bent to pick up the box again, not recognising her own voice.
‘Absolutely. Of course!’ Felicity was back to the strong, in-control woman Jess had got to know a little in No Vase Like Home. ‘I’ll take you to the garden.’ Was it denial? It had to be denial.
This turned out to be the hardest part of her journey, because there was only a narrow walkway through the mess, and she couldn’t see her feet. She tripped a couple of times, but Felicity didn’t turn round, though she slowed her pace, never leaving Jess behind.
The kitchen was a bright room, with a long window that looked out over the back garden, but the sunlight showed that this space, too, was buried under detritus. Jess tried not to wince at the piles of papers, books and leaflets, unopened post in towers next to the hob. There was no area to prepare a meal or sit down to eat one. Panic and claustrophobia clawed at her, tightening her throat.
‘Felicity.’ It came out as a scratch.
‘This way, Jessica.’ She walked through the narrow gap she had left herself, and unlocked the back door.
Jess followed, the box colliding with papers and bin bags, threatening to send them toppling into the limited space that remained. She breathed an audible sigh of relief when she was back in the fresh air, in a garden closed in by high, red-brick walls, the space a colourful tangle of unkempt trees and shrubs. The patio, hosting an iron table and single chair, was the most looked-after part of the house so far.
‘On here?’
