Miles grinned. ‘Show me the way.’
Daisy bent over and gestured to a stack of boxes. Three boxes, all slightly dented, all marked in the spidery capital letters her uncle Dennis had used for all his boxes of books. ‘That top one’s light. It’s mostly catalogues. The ones on the bottom are heavier.’
Miles crouched, balanced the top two against his chest and stood up in one smooth movement as if they weighed nothing at all. The mums at the table stopped mid-sentence as he passed, one of them physically turning to get a better view. Daisy opened the inner door and pointed into the hallway, where the light from the small window above the stairs dropped a wonkyrectangle of brightness across the floor. Daisy pointed to a space beside a shoe rack. ‘Just there’s fine. Thank you.’
Miles put the boxes down carefully, straightened up and wiped his hands on his jeans. ‘You want the third one there, too?’
‘Please. Only if your arms haven’t given out.’
He headed back into the main room, leaving Daisy standing in the hallway, arms folded, watching the light catch on the edge of the bannister. The third box came thudding down a few seconds later, followed by Miles brushing dust from his hands. ‘All done.’
‘Thank you. I’ll sort through them later. It’s mostly stuff from Uncle Dennis’s old collections. A lot of this stuff seems to be things he couldn’t bring himself to bin. I feel bad getting rid of it but I don’t think I can use them.’
‘You don’t have to keep everything.’
‘I know. It just feels like throwing out treasure. Which is daft, I know.’
‘It’s not daft. There’s enough here to keep you sorting through for years. Well, I’ll leave you to it. I’ve got a full-on, extremely tedious and even more boring investor meeting via my laptop in about half an hour. Unless you want me to rearrange the window display or take over for the afternoon.’
‘Don’t tempt me.’ Daisy smiled as she followed Miles back out to the counter, where he picked up his bag and pushed open the shop door. After saying goodbye, as the door clicked shut behind her and she returned to the counter, she caught the mum with the toddler staring. Not in a nasty way, more nosy and too invested or at least that’s what it felt like being on the end of it.
Daisy picked up the biscuit tin, made sure the lid was on securely and tucked it away as she mused Miles popping in. He had kissed her in the middle of the chaos of her morning and carried her boxes like it was the most natural thing in the world.She didn’t quite know what to do with that, but she liked it. She liked it a lot. He could carry her boxes any day of the week.
8
An earlier wind had dropped since the morning, leaving the air still as Daisy turned out of the lane behind the bookshop and started her walk through Pretty Beach heading for the school. From the bookshop, the school run wasn’t long, fifteen minutes on foot at most via the quick route. As she strolled along, the walk always gave her a chance to shift out of bookshop mode and into mum mode. She liked that it took her past the bakery, the florist, along past the wharf and the wide verge near the duck pond where the grass was always a little damp underfoot. The route always made her slow down mentally, even when she was in a hurry. Today, she wasn’t in a hurry; in fact, it was the opposite. She was deliberately strolling, taking in as much of the fresh salty sea air as she could.
Stopping for a moment to look out at the sea, a fishing boat’s engine coughed somewhere off the coast and gulls wheeled overhead, loud and squawking. She passed a cottage with an overgrown gate, and a fat ginger cat asleep on a windowsill eyed her lazily. She smiled as she passed a corner shop where plaits of garlic on a hook outside the door looked as if they had stepped out of a market. It all felt very Pretty Beach. Ordinary and lovely in a way Daisy had loved when she was a girl and had grownto love more and more since moving back into the centre of the little town by the sea.
Smiling and shifting into mum mode, she adjusted the strap of her bag and tucked her scarf snugly under her Breton top. As she strolled, as it often did when she was walking, her mind decompressed and her thoughts drifted to Miles. The kiss in the shop earlier that day had caught her off guard. Not because it had been dramatic, it wasn’t even anything to speak of. In fact, it was simple, nice, happy, fine. Just a kiss in front of a handful of people, but it had meant something from Daisy’s side of the fence. It had said more than the words that had been dancing around her head for weeks. Something about it had wiggled a little antenna on her head, telling her to proceed with caution. He’d slowly slotted himself into the nooks and crannies of her world.
He was still around, still showing up, being consistent and unless she was completely barking up the wrong tree, Daisy was beginning to realise something; he wasn’t going anywhere, anytime soon. They were an item and he was here to stay, at least that’s what everything he did pointed to. Gulp.
Passing a little parade of shops, she glanced at a chalkboard outside: “Dahlias, late bloomers and going strong”, it read. She smiled to herself. That was how it felt with Miles. Late blooming, steady and now going strong. It had grown in the background of her day-to-day life, threading its way in and out without her quite noticing. Turning down the hill past some bunting, it flapped lazily, a little faded, but cheerful. She passed a group of teenagers sitting on a low wall by a post box, all oversized jumpers and loud laughter, and gave them a polite nod.
As she strolled and held up her face to the sky, she mulled over the kiss in what felt to her like the middle of the bookshop. The shop had been full of chat and customers and energy and Miles hadn’t hesitated for a second. The way he’d acted like itwas the most normal thing in the world to show affection in front of a room full of strangers, which it probably was to other people. Daisy couldn’t get her head around it. She’d spent so long keeping things safe, making, or at least attempting, to put neat lines around everything that the kiss had felt odd. She’d kept the girls separate and her real-mum ups and downs apart from Miles just in case things went wrong. She’d told herself it was sensible, protective, that she didn’t want to confuse the twins and that they always had to think that everything was okay. Maybe, though, it was time to ease off a little. To stop thinking of her and Miles as an experiment she might need to back out of. She nodded to herself as she snapped a piece of lavender off a bush, held it under her nose and inhaled; it wasn’t a test, nope, it was her life. Her real, full, busy, noisy life and Miles was becoming a part of it, whether she drew lines or not. At some point, she would need to think about how Miles would become part of her life with her girls.
Having decided to detour and take the long way round to the school, she crossed a small road that led past allotments. Someone had left a crate of windfall apples on a bench with a note reading “Help yourself”. A pair of elderly women stood by the gate discussing how much rain was forecast for the weekend.
‘It’s supposed to bucket it down on Sunday. Oh hey, Daise!’
Daisy smiled at her mum, Susannah's, friend Sue, and kept walking. ‘Hi Sue. Sorry, can’t stop.’
‘How are things?’ Sue called over the road.
Yep, great, thank you.’
‘Shop’s going well?’
‘Yes, I can’t believe it.’
‘The new man? How are you getting on?’ Sue cackled.
‘Yes, that too!’
‘Fabulous. Just what we like to hear!’
Daisy reached the top of the road leading to the school and paused for a second on seeing the roof of the school hall, the bright blue fencing around the reception playground, and a line of scooters already parked up outside the gates. A group of parents was beginning to gather, mums and dads, grandparents, prams and an odd illegally parked car. She didn’t walk any faster; instead, she slowed to enjoy the final stretch and inhaled. The weather had turned a tiny bit. There was a just about evident crispness that always made her think of new school pencils, apple crumble and Sunday roasts. She reached the gate just as the bell sounded and the clatter of children and feet came from inside.
