Page 72 of The Wedding Dress Repair Shop
‘Sounds good to me,’ said Thom. ‘And afterwards, we can drive up to the old church.’
‘That sounds lovely,’ I said. ‘But do you and Simon have half-day closing on Thursdays too?’
‘In theory. You know what it’s like when you work for yourself: if we’re busy, we just carry on,’ said Simon. ‘But we are our own bosses.’
‘Bruno’s still mine,’ pointed out Thom.
‘Not really, because you’re partners now,’ amended Pearl. ‘And anyway, he won’t mind what hours you put in, as long as the work gets done. He left you a free hand.’
‘By next Thursday I’ll be hard at work on the dress collection and probably won’t want to stop, day off or no day off!’ I said.
‘We’llmakeyou,’ promised Thom. ‘A bit of fresh air will do you good.’
‘I’m only going to be paying you a part-time wage anyway, after the first couple of weeks when we’re setting up the museum,’ put in Honey. ‘After that, I’ll expect you to be there during opening times, but otherwise, you can arrange the hours to suit yourself.’
‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘Since working on the dresses will be my idea of fun, I’m bound to lose track of the time I spend on them anyway.’
Something I’d thought of that afternoon came back to me. ‘Honey, I was thinking earlier that if the door from the cottage into my workroom was replaced by the kind of stable door Thom’s workshop has, I’d be able to leave the top half open when I was working and keep an eye on Golightly. I wondered if you’d mind.’
Honey thought it was a good idea. ‘If he takes to going outdoors, you might not see so much of him, anyway.’
‘That’s true, but I won’t know until I’ve tried letting him out on Sunday morning, when things are quiet. I just hope he doesn’t leg it out of the mews.’
‘If he does, I expect we’ll all be spending the rest of the day cat hunting,’ said Baz, and then he and Derek went off to play darts.
‘You know,’ said Honey, ‘I think I might have seen a stable door at the junk shop up near Terrapotter. It was out in that covered bit of yard.’
‘Oh? I might measure up the doorframe and go up and look,’ I said. ‘Maybe on Saturday.’
‘I’ll go with you and hold the tape measure,’ offered Thom. ‘I like a rummage round there, anyway.’
‘Happy hunting!’ said Honey. ‘Viv and I had better make tracks now, because I want to do some work. Are you all still coming to Pelican House on Sunday afternoon, to help me start sorting the attics, if I bribe you with a takeaway supper?’
‘We’d do it without the bribe, because we’re dying to explore your attics,’ Simon told her. ‘About half three, or four?’
‘Great,’ said Honey. ‘But I suspect it’s going to be dusty, grimy work, so wear something you don’t mind getting grubby!’
She gave that tilted grin. ‘The first official meeting of the Pelican Mews Residents’ Association and Attic Exploration Society.’
‘The prospect of finding a treasure trove will be what keeps us going,’ said Simon. ‘Like those metal detector societies, always hoping for a hoard of gold.’
‘Live in hope,’ she said with amusement. ‘Mymain hope is that the man from the junk shop will buy all the stuff I don’t want. He’s already had the brass bedsteads from some old servants’ rooms.’
‘You’ll have to be careful not to let anything valuable go by mistake,’ Simon warned.
‘I have a reasonable eye for antiques, and Viv’s good at spotting anything valuable, too, so I don’t think we’ll be letting any heirlooms go for a song.’
‘Does the junk shop man have a name?’ I asked.
‘Yes, but I’ve forgotten it. It’s Galahad, or something like that,’ she said vaguely.
‘He can’t possibly be called Galahad!’ I protested, laughing.
‘No, he’s called Arthur and the shop’s Arthur’s Cave,’ said Thom.
‘Same kind of name,’ said Honey. ‘Come on then, Viv – I’ve got a murder to commit tonight.’
*
