Page 50 of Secrets at the Little Music Shop

‘Whoo-hoo, welcome to Mr Arrogance.’

We glowered at each other for a moment, then Ben’s face cleared into a smile so gorgeous that I found I was smiling back. He still had the sooty streaks all over his cheeks but his eyes had lost that guarded expression; he looked more relaxed than I’d ever seen him. Also very, very attractive, as though somehow his scruffy bony-ness had grown on me and in an awful lapse of taste I was being drawn to men whose hair points in several directions at once and who look like a well-dressed piece of string.

‘You’re staring,’ he said.

‘And you’re very cheerful for a man whose shop just burned down.’ My eyes were quartering his face, taking in the straight brows, the dark lashes, the way his cheeks looked as though someone had detonated a stubble-bomb under his chin and the fallout had fortuitously highlighted his excellent bone structure.

‘You liking what you see?’ He dropped his eyes from mine but kept watching my mouth.

‘Ben, you said it before, we’re friends. That’s all.’

‘Why?’ He leaned back on his stool, resting his back against one of the immaculate cupboards and tilting so that the front legs of the stool rose off the ground. ‘Why is that all? What are you so afraid of?’

I looked him in the eye. ‘You’ve fought your demons, got everything off your chest and now you’re ready for something else. Well, Mr Davies—’ I leaned forward and he let the stool rock back to earth to meet me eye-to-eye over the table. ‘Not everyone’s demons are so easily subdued.’

Somewhere in the house a phone rang.

‘Do you want me to get that?’

‘Get what?’ Ben’s eyes were still flickering over my mouth.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Beethoven.’ I slithered off the stool and located the telephone in the big room with all the sofas. ‘Why do you have a phone, anyway?’

Ben had followed me. ‘It was here when I moved in.’

‘D’ you know, I thought you had a mobile?’

He thought for a second, then pulled from his pocket the slim plastic oblong that I’d seen before. ‘This what you mean? It’s my vibrator.’

I paused with my hand on the receiver. ‘Excuse me?’

‘For the door. When the bell goes, it vibrates. So that I know someone is out there. And, incidentally, giving me an exciting little buzz in the pocket region.’ He wiggled his eyebrows. ‘This baby is why I don’t hurry to the front door. And why are you looking at me like that?’

I unpursed my lips. ‘I’m surprised you’ve got room in those jeans. Now, I’m going to answer this call, so please stop making me think about you vibrating in your own pocket.’

He grinned. ‘Buzz, buzz. Think about it all you want, Jemima.’

I held a brief conversation with the insurance agents, relaying to Ben. ‘I feel like a go-between,’ I complained when I finally replaced the receiver. He didn’t answer, he was staring at his hands, playing his fingers along the back of one of the white leather armchairs. ‘Ben?’

Still nothing. But when he finally looked up his eyes were huge. ‘Arson,’ he said simply.

‘What? The fire brigade said it was an accident, kids playing—’

‘Don’t you ever read between the lines? What that insurance guy — it was a guy, wasn’t it? What he was saying about examining evidence, that means they think it was started deliberately.’

‘Ooh, good, it’ll be like CSI down there in a couple of days.’ I smacked my lips together. ‘Blokes in suits rubbing pencils up the walls and stuff.’

‘Aren’t you even a little bit concerned that someone’s burned down my shop on purpose?’ Ben began pacing up and down, his trainers making squeaky noises on the polished wood of the floor. ‘Who hates me enough to do that?’

‘Like I said, my heart refuses to bleed for someone who’s got as much cash as you have.’ I sat down on the squashy sofa. It was hideously comfortable.

‘What is it with you?’ Ben squealed his feet round to stand facing me. ‘What is your hang up with money? Yeah, okay, I get that you’re broke, well, don’t start grudging me my money ’cos I worked for it, babe. And I won’t have some chippy little cow telling me that I’ve got it easy, that I shouldn’t mind shit happening, just because I’ve got a few houses and a nice car!’ He slumped down on the sofa opposite me, curling his head down so I couldn’t see his face. ‘That place was my therapy, my salvation. If it hadn’t been for the shop, what do you think I would have done? Because I’ll tell you, Jemima, I’d have done what I was tempted to do when I realised my hearing had gone for good — headed downtown, scored a few grammes of best Colombian and not given a shit about anything. Buying the shop, setting up the stock, it all gave me something else to concentrate on while my head got round the facts of what was happening to me.’ A shiver crept its way down my spine. Ben met my eye. ‘But you know how that feels, don’t you?’

My hands on the leather were suddenly sweating. ‘What are you talking about?’ I dug my nails into the seat.

He shook his head. ‘Just — this feeling I’m getting from you. I’ve always been good at faces. Body language, that kind of thing. And you, Jemima, are giving “fuck-off” in clouds. Something bad happened to you, something that means you don’t trust, you don’t give in. That selling your jewellery is something to do to stop yourself thinking.’

I stood up. ‘You spent all this time being a man of mystery, and suddenly there’s no shutting you up is there?’

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