‘Impossible to say, the way he’s been. Is it busy?’ She looked round the shop, as if to locate lurking customers. ‘Where’s Verity?’
‘Out on a delivery. It’s much as usual. No panics.’
Simmy wasted no time. ‘You won’t have heard there was a murder yesterday in Keswick,’ she began.
‘Oh, yes – Ben saw something about that online,’ Bonnie said quickly. ‘Yesterday sometime. He wanted me to ask you about it.’
‘And we want to talk to him, as well. He’ll be pleased to know it’s seriously complicated.’
‘We? You mean you and Christopher? That’s a turn-up. He usually wants to stay well clear, doesn’t he? Especially after what happened in Grasmere. And I’m sure I heard you say, only two days ago, that you weren’t going to allow anything unpleasant anywhere near you and your baby for at least a year.’
‘There’s no avoiding it, Bonnie. It’s somebody Christopher knows. Again. It’s finally dawned on me that antiques are just as dangerous as flowers when it comes to arousing strong passions.’
Bonnie giggled. ‘Most people would say they’re a lot more so. There’s money in antiques, but not in flowers. Unless it’s a black tulip, of course.’ She paused, then asked, ‘So who’s dead?’
‘It’s the woman who manages the office side of the business. His right-hand assistant, who is completely indispensable. It’s rather a disaster.’
‘Blimey! That’s not funny, then, is it? Pretty close to home. Who wanted her dead? How did it happen?’
‘Too soon to say. There are other complications, which I can’t go into now. We need to wait and see what happens today – the police are interviewing everyone as we speak.’
‘Blimey,’ said Bonnie again. ‘That’s going to give Ben something to think about.’
‘What’s he doing today?’
‘Nothing much. He’s in a real tizzy over whether or not he’s going back to Newcastle this week. It’s all got a bit awkward. People want to talk to him. I suppose they think it’s bad for their image if someone as clever as him doesn’t want to stay. They’ll have counsellors and whatnot after him.’ Bonnie shook her head in exasperation. She knew quite a lot about counsellors after her own badly disrupted childhood. Then she smiled. ‘This is perfect timing. A murder’s going to help him decide to stay here for a bit. Shall I get him to come up here? Or what?’
‘It’ll be rather a crowd with Verity as well. But it sounds as if I should talk to him, just in case he commits himself to going back to Newcastle. I could maybe go over there and at least tell him the basics now. Assuming there isn’t anything you want me to do in the shop? I can come back later, if there is.’
‘You need to look over the invoices. The delivery people have whacked on an extra hundred or so, and I can’t work out why. And Verity wants to talk to you – something about paying for fuel for the van.’
‘Urghh,’ said Simmy.
As if catching her mood, the baby began to wake up, jerking his arms and frowning. Within seconds he was wailing at full pitch. A customer walked into a flurry of highly unprofessional activity. ‘Sorry,’ Simmy said. Hurriedly she carried Robin into the small back room and offered him the breast. He took it suspiciously, still scowling.
‘Don’t muck about,’ Simmy told him crossly. ‘There’s no time for any nonsense.’ And then she heard herself and groaned. Already, then, it was starting. Robin was going to have to learn that he was not in fact the centre of the universe, that there would be times when he would be expected to stay in the background and share attention with other matters. And that was patently unfair, given that he was a mere three weeks old. Of course he had every right to assume he took priority over all else. Furthermore, it seemed evident that he could not just read her thoughts but gauge her unarticulated feelings. He knew when she was agitated or impatient or inattentive. He could sense the loosening of her dedication to his every whim and made his feelings about that very clear. And yet, how many infants successfully maintained this intimate bond for more than a few early weeks? Their mothers had jobs, other children, worries, illnesses – they could not guarantee to be there every second of every day. And the kids survived, didn’t they?
But survival wasn’t the goal. Simmy wanted her son to be perfectly happy; perfectly balanced and confident and clever and sociable. Perfectly undamaged, in fact. She supposed that every mother wanted the same things, and not a single one ever achieved them.
The feed didn’t last long, and when she emerged from the chilly little room, Verity had returned. Without waiting to be invited, she almost snatched the baby from Simmy’s arms. ‘Doesn’t he look like his dad?’ she yodelled. ‘Same eyes and mouth.’ Here, it seemed, was yet another woman who found babies irresistible. Verity had two sons of her own, in their late teens and not much to be proud of, according to Bonnie.
‘When did you see Christopher?’ Simmy asked, trying to think of any encounter between them.
‘When he came in to tell us about the baby,’ was the reply. ‘The day he was born.’ She bent over Robin’s face, making exaggerated expressions and cooing. ‘Who’s a lovely boy, then?’ The sheer lack of self-consciousness made Simmy smile, even while hoping the woman didn’t have a cold.
‘Customer,’ said Bonnie, with a hint of relief in her tone. Verity’s blatherings were evidently causing irritation.
The man who came in was vaguely familiar, but Simmy couldn’t put a name to him. Bonnie, however, was quicker. ‘Hiya, Mr Merryfield,’ she said warmly. ‘Bright and early again, I see.’
It was well after ten. Merryfield? Simmy couldn’t place the name at all. Bonnie noticed her confusion and hastened to explain. ‘This is Corinne’s next-door neighbour. He works in Bowness, on an evening shift. This is
