by Hannah Pearl
Eli and I were silent for the car ride home. I was fuming at him, but I had no idea why he seemed to be just as fed up with me. As we pulled up outside my house, he got out of the taxi too.
‘I’m sure I can get home safely from here,’ I told him, somewhat sarcastically as I was stood right on my doorstep.
He gestured at the mistletoe that I’d hung outside my shop the week before. I gulped. It had seemed like such a light-hearted tradition when I’d put it up. Half an hour earlier I’d nearly kissed Taylor. But now did Eli really want to kiss me as well, even though he had been so rude for most of the evening?
‘It’s bad luck to refuse,’ Eli said, sensing my uncertainty. So I stepped forward and placed a chaste kiss on his lips. He stood still, waiting for me to finish. I wondered if I had mis-read him somehow, but surely that was what he had wanted? I stepped back, confused. He closed the distance and kissed me back, but there was no mistaking his intent. His kiss was more sure than mine had been and I met him gladly, enjoying how it felt to be so close to him for the first time in almost forever. His arms slipped around my waist and it felt as though I fitted perfectly against his chest. I wondered if he’d be able to feel how hard my heart was beating.
‘I didn’t realise that you enjoyed Christmas traditions so much,’ I said as he moved his head back and stroked my cheek with a cold hand. I waited for the cool air to take the blush from my cheeks where his fingers had touched me.
‘That’s the only decent one,’ he said. Was that why he had kissed me? Just because of the mistletoe? He’d given so few signs that he saw me as anything other than his friend’s sister and yet that kiss, that kiss. Ah, I could still feel the tingle on my lips.
‘So you’re not looking forward to Christmas? It’s only a few weeks away now.’
‘It’s not so much fun on your own,’ he said. Not that Eli was usually on his own at Christmas. He’d joined us every year since his mum had died, but I knew what he meant. Holidays could be a painful reminder of those missing from the celebrations.
I stood on tiptoes to kiss him one more time, trying to take his mind off the path I had set it on by the mention of Christmas, but it was too late. My lips touched his but the heat of a moment ago had passed already. He didn’t make eye contact again. I settled for thanking him for taking me to the wedding before letting myself in to my flat and closing the door behind me.
Chapter Three
I didn’t sleep well that night for thinking about Taylor and Eli. The next morning I had to drag myself out of bed in order to open my shop on time, thankful for my lack of commute. A shipment of bath oils and scented massage lotions arrived, and I kept myself distracted by arranging and rearranging a new display in my window. This was mostly for my own benefit and to make the room look pretty. Most of my business was referral by word of mouth. It was lucky because the shop opened onto a tiny cobbled street, reminiscent of those which had existed in London for hundreds of years, and there wasn’t much footfall, though we were barely a hundred yards from one of the busiest touristy roads in central London. I often commented that we ought to try and reinstate the old gas lights for a more authentic and ethereal experience. Ben would huff at me and point out the fire hazard. Most of the light that Ben was used to came in the form of computer screens.
Lily turned up at noon, yawning and rubbing her eyes. Her shop didn’t close until after midnight, with lots of her customers passing through after the nearby restaurants and pubs closed, so we often met midday for a meal. I made her a coffee and waited until she’d drunk it before offering her some pizza. She wrinkled her nose.
‘How can you eat pizza for breakfast?’ she asked.
‘I’d be having it for lunch,’ I pointed out.
‘Let’s go out to eat. Then we can both order what we need.’
I checked my phone one final time before we left, but there were no texts yet from Taylor, and the battery was almost flat so I plugged it in to charge and let us both out. It seemed to be the only way I’d go more than thirty seconds without checking to see whether I’d received any messages.
London can be ridiculously expensive, especially when you live right in the centre, as I did, but there were one or two hidden gems that only local residents would know. Lily wound her way through the crowds that flocked down Tottenham Court Road until we came to our favourite café, tucked away down a quiet side street not dissimilar to my own. I was glad it wasn’t further, even though I’d wrapped up against the chill in my thickest navy wool coat. Lily must have been freezing in her bright blue PVC mini skirt and vest top, even with the leather jacket that she wore over the top, but she didn’t show any signs of it.
Inside, Lily ordered herself a gigantic fried breakfast, and I wondered where she was going to put it all. It didn’t stop me from ordering the same however, but this time with veggie sausages and no bacon. ‘I thought you wanted lunch,’ she said.
‘There was a lot of alcohol last night. It turns out my tummy needs some grease to soak it up.’ We ordered two more mugs of coffee, and sat quietly sipping until our food came. By the time we’d finished, Lily was fully awake and bouncing with energy again.
‘There’s a trade sale at the conference centre in the Docklands later,’ she said. ‘Do you want to go with me?’
I shook my head. ‘I had nightmares at some of the things I saw there last time. And I didn’t sleep well enough last night to risk it.’
‘Too busy having fun with the dreamboat?’ she asked. I shook my head and she tsked at me. ‘Too bad. You could do with some action. Before you forget what your “lady parts”—’ she waved her fingers in air quotes as she spoke, ‘—are for.’
‘I don’t call them lady parts. I’m more grown up than that at least.’
‘So what do you call them?’
‘Neglected,’ I said, picking up the bill and going to pay for our meal.
Lily came back to Romantic Daze with me and spent an hour telling me how vanilla my selection was. I pointed out that she was welcome to go back to her own shop, but she had an hour before she was due to go to the trade show and she wanted to spend it with me.
I set her the task of doing a stock take on my supply of camisoles and dressing-gowns. ‘They’re so modest,’ she complained, but she counted them and noted the remaining sizes nonetheless. I was just about to set her off to refolding the lingerie when there was a disturbance outside.
It was unusual to hear a crowd on this road, so we both stopped what we were doing and hustled to the window. Eli and Taylor were stood outside. Ben was in the middle, glancing nervously between them. I couldn’t blame him. Whilst they weren’t exactly nose to nose, given their height difference, the tension between them was palpable. Eli’s eyes had hardened, and Taylor’s hands were tightly clenched at his sides.
I opened the door and walked out, Lily right on my heels. ‘Taylor,’ I said. ‘This is a pleasant surprise.’ It sounded sarcastic as I said it, but I hadn’t meant it to. He took one final look at Eli, then turned to face me and smiled.
‘I tried to ring you. I wanted to thank you for a lovely evening yesterday. Your brother answered and said that you were at work so I thought I’d pass by and say hello.’
Eli shot Ben a filthy look which clearly made him feel guilty as he shuffled from foot to foot. ‘I left my phone here when I went out,’ I explained, before thanking Ben for answering it, even if he’d not then realised it might be useful to pass the message on when I got home. He seemed to feel calmer after that and stopped wriggling. A group of young women walked down the high street and paused by the top of the road as they saw Taylor and Eli. They crowded in together and began whispering. I saw one of them point at Eli.
‘Come inside and have some tea,’ I said to Taylor.
‘That sounds lovely,’ Eli replied, and before I could clarify who I meant, everybody followed me back inside. A moment later I could hear the sound of laughter and chatting outside the front door, and when the group of girls entered the sh
op after us, it was too crowded to move. They were too busy smiling at Taylor and Eli to care, but I began to feel claustrophobic. I didn’t often have more than one or two people inside usually. A personal service was important to my customers.
‘Lily, please can you take Taylor, Eli and Ben up to Dad’s kitchen please?’ I asked, hoping that I wasn’t sending Dad up a fight that was waiting to happen. Lily was impervious to the tension, or perhaps she was thriving on all the testosterone floating around, as she shepherded my guests up the winding stairs.
The girls turned out to be a group of twenty-somethings from Italy, taking an early Christmas break to do some shopping. Thankfully they didn’t disappear the moment they realised that the show was over. I introduced them to my range of handmade necklaces and silver drop earrings. By the time they left, clutching their parcels of heart-shaped wooden photo frames, silk scarves and candles, wrapped up in tissue paper and tied with ribbon, I’d made more in one hour than I usually cleared from walk-in custom in a week. I wondered how good business would be if I hired Taylor and Eli to stand outside more often, then I remembered how they’d looked as though they were about to kill each other. I locked the door behind the girls and sighed, before going up the stairs myself to see who was still standing.
‘Sorry Dad,’ I said, as I let myself into his kitchen. I handed him a packet of biscuits from my kitchen to replace the ones that had been demolished from his supplies. He gave me a brief hug and shuffled off. A moment later I heard the TV switch on in the living room.
‘I’d better be off,’ Taylor said, handing Lily his empty cup. ‘I’ve got a meeting at work. Got to see a man about a thing.’ That was about the same level of detail as I was used to hearing from Ben and Eli about their jobs too. He thanked Lily for the tea and kissed her cheek. I had accidentally positioned myself in a corner next to Ben, so he couldn’t get very close to me and settled for a wave from across the room.
‘Did I do something wrong?’ Ben asked, looking at me nervously.
I gave him a squeeze and told him how much profit I’d just made thanks to their luring in the female customers. He looked relieved.
‘At least he’s useful for something,’ Eli scoffed.
‘I could use him for a few things,’ Lily commented, and fanned herself with Dad’s discarded newspaper.
‘Were you here for any reason?’ I asked Eli.
‘I thought I’d come over and see if you needed any help,’ he said. ‘I thought you might need a hand putting up Christmas decorations or something.’
I thought back to him asking for a kiss underneath the mistletoe the night before. ‘That’s really kind but I think I have more than enough up already. Lily and I are off on a buying trip this afternoon. I need to re-stock.’ Lily leant over to high five me, and I wondered just what I’d let myself in for.
Chapter Four
The trade show was fantastic, though I did come away feeling like I’d learnt more there than from any sex ed class I’d ever had in school. There had been hundreds of stalls spread over four floors of the conference centre. I’d seen a greater variety of adult toys than I would ever have believed possible. The ones that were neatly in their boxes were daunting enough. Those that had practical demonstrations terrified me, and Lily had given up trying to persuade me to go in with her after I’d watched the first one with my hands over my eyes. The underwear had been a similar story. There had been some beautiful and elegant pieces on display. Some on racks, and some on stall holders, and some items that covered so little flesh I couldn’t see the point of making them at all, let alone trying to persuade people to buy them. It was a little outside of my usual experience, and I got home feeling exhausted but wired at the same time.
Lily carried a stack of brochures into my flat, where she curled up on my bed, folding over the corners of interesting pages and circling items on others. For my part, despite my prudishness at some of the more exotic displays, I’d found a new supplier of luxury bedding. I also had a box of naughty teddies. Not the underwear kind, the soft toys. I’d fallen for them because the one they’d had on display was a plush, white, furry bear clutching a satin heart. The stall holder had told me that he’d actually got one final box with him and that I was welcome to take them with me. Having haggled over the cost and paid for them, he’d brought out a carton emblazoned with teddy bears in various fetish costumes. I’d tried to change my mind but he’d refused to take them back.
Lily had laughed for the entire ride home on the train. Several of the other passengers had not, and I still felt guilty about the look on a little toddler girl’s face when her mum dragged her away from me. ‘Can’t you sell some of these in your shop?’ I begged Lily.
‘People don’t exactly visit me to buy cuddly toys,’ she said.
‘They don’t come to a specialist romance boutique to buy things like this either.’ I lifted out a teddy bear with a suspicious bulge underneath its leather trousers. ‘Why would a toy ever need to have something like this?’
‘Maybe he met a lady teddy he liked the look of. Or a cute boy one. I wouldn’t want to limit his choices.’ I threw it at her and she caught it one handed. ‘Maybe I’ll take this one home,’ she said. ‘Reminds me of an especially hairy boyfriend I had once.’
‘I’ll wrap it up for you for Christmas,’ I told her. I was about to offer to make tea when I heard the letterbox rattle. ‘Bit late for the postman,’ I said, getting up to see what had arrived. There was a thin white envelope laying on the doormat just inside my shop. I ripped it open and read the letter inside before handing it to Lily.
‘Intriguing,’ she said, raising one eyebrow at me.
‘It’s not that exciting.’
‘You’re just jealous because you can’t do this,’ she said, lowering that perfectly shaped eyebrow and raising the other one. ‘Besides, it just says that a new boutique is opening, directly across from you. I wonder what they’re going to sell.’
‘It’s called “Picture Perfect”. That sounds pretty romantic. I really hope that they don’t offer any of the same services that I do. I mean, I know that most of my clients are pretty loyal, but I’d still be upset to lose them.’ I took the letter back from her and read it again. ‘It doesn’t say exactly what they’ll be offering. It only has a name at the bottom. Cody Rainbow. Is it a man or a woman, do you think?’
‘Probably one of the two, or someone in between,’ Lily said. ‘Let’s take a leaf out of Ben and Eli’s books and go all super spy on them.’ She put down her catalogue and used her fingers to make binocular shapes around her eyes. She was joking but it got me thinking. It wouldn’t take much of a drop in sales to make me feel the pinch come spring. Should I be more worried about having a new shop on my little road?
‘I think you may have had enough caffeine for today,’ I told Lily, and fetched us each a glass of wine instead. Later, after Lily had gone I let myself upstairs to Dad’s house. My floor comprised of my bedroom, the shop and a tiny alcove which just about sufficed as a kitchen given that I rarely cooked. I also had a tiny bathroom which was barely big enough for a loo and a shower, and so I retreated upstairs any time I needed more space, or a hot bath.
I decided to use my pamper time to do some research, or at least that was what I told myself, as I tipped a generous helping of new lavender-scented bath oil that I was thinking about stocking into the tub and lay back to relax. Afterwards, I dried myself with my giant fluffy towel and opened the package of treats I’d bought myself from the trade show. Inside was a red silk camisole and matching French knickers. If I were to choose to stock these I’d probably order them in ivory or pale pink, but Lily had insisted that for my personal set, I choose a more dynamic colour.
I’d forgotten to bring my dressing-gown, so I put my baggy jumper on over the top, opened the door and was met by silence. Dad was probably asleep already and I assumed that Ben was out with Eli, so I let myself out and made for the stairs. I was half-way there when there was a noise behind me and I j
umped.
‘Sorry,’ Eli said, ‘Ben and I were watching a film in his room. I was just going to get us a beer. I didn’t mean to startle you.’ In his black sweater and jeans, he had melted into the shadows until he spoke.
‘You didn’t,’ I lied, pulling my jumper down as low as I could, which really wasn’t far enough. For once I was glad that Lily had dragged me to visit her favourite waxing salon, though at the time I’d sworn that they were sadists and that I was never going to go back.
‘See you soon, Daisy,’ he said, turning away again. ‘By the way,’ he called out over his shoulder, without turning around. ‘Nice pants.’
I blushed and hurried down the stairs, grateful that in the dark he wouldn’t be able to tell that my cheeks were as red as my knickers.
When I got to my flat I closed the door and locked it behind me. I treated myself to an all over application of a hideously expensive moisturising lotion which I’d been thinking about selling. Even making a hot chocolate and curling up in bed with a novel didn’t help. No matter how pampered I felt, I was no nearer to being able to sleep. I grabbed some jogging bottoms and pulled them on over my underwear.
Letting myself back into Dad’s house, I paused outside Ben’s room and made sure that I could still hear the film running. His laptop was on his desk in the living room, and it played a tone as I opened the lid. I tried to quieten it by hugging the machine against me but it was no use. I held my breath for a moment, but Ben didn’t come out of his room so I set it back on the desk and began to type.
Ben was a stickler for secure passwords. The wi-fi in the house had a sixty-four digit randomly selected key. No one hacked it, but it was a nightmare every time I got new device that needed to connect. This was an old family laptop though, and Ben had got so fed up trying to get my dad to remember the code every time he wanted to check the football scores, that the password to unlock this computer was simply our surname, Kirk.