Page 53 of Weave Your Magic

‘Oh. Abel.’

He dropped the sleeve of the orange fur coat as if it had singed his fingers. ‘Hey.’

The silence was a wedge between them.

‘Anything I can help you with?’ Temperance asked at last.

His jaw tightened. ‘Yes. I’m after purple.’

‘Purple?’ She looked him up and down – black jeans, black T-shirt, hair still damp from another surf, maybe. A surprising styling choice, but a sale was a sale.

He cleared his throat, then ran his tongue over his teeth. ‘Gran has decided that her birthday barbeque will have a theme: purple. You know, like the poem about getting old and not giving a shit, wearing purple and eating sausages.’

‘Ohh. I remember that from school.’

‘Me too. It was the kind of thing Miss McKenna could recite off the top of her head, walking about the classroom with chalk smudges on her sleeves, remember?’ It was as if he’d forgotten himself again, sharing an old memory, and after a beat he cleared his throat and went on. ‘Anyway, as she’s decided with only a few days to go, I don’t have time to get to Kingsbridge around my pub shifts. So . . .’

‘So . . .?’

‘Here I am. For something purple.’ He shrugged. ‘Preferably something subtle.’

If this is the doom, it’s got a really creative sense of how to mess up my day. ‘I’m sure I can find you something. Subtle.’

He nodded. ‘Thanks. And Gran said to tell you she’s a modern eight, but an old-school ten, whatever that means. Mum’s a bit bigger, I’d say.’

‘Oh – so you’re shopping for your mum too? You’re going to be busy.’

A blip of panic made his eyes go wide. ‘I was hoping you could . . . if you might be able to . . .’

Temperance decided she might as well enjoy the chance to make Abel feel as uncomfortable as he’d made her feel since he’d set foot in East Prawl again. Albeit gently.

‘Hmm?’ She raised her eyebrows with a quizzical lilt, as if she had no inkling at all of what he was after.

‘. . . help me?’

She nodded. ‘We have some purple. Let me pull up some options and you can choose. Ahh!’ Her eyes lit up, piercing the neutral ‘not bothered’ expression she was aiming for. ‘We actually have just the thing for Margie, only arrived a few months back. It is classy, yet glam, and takes no prisoners.’ Temperance went to the rails on the lefthand side of the store, flicking through hangers at an excited pace.

‘It sounds like Gran,’ Abel replied tentatively.

‘Here!’ Temperance pulled it out with a flourish. A cocktail dress in a rich, plummy purple, lace overlaid on a satin sheaf, three-quarter sleeves and a fitted pencil skirt. ‘Going by the label, it’s early sixties and would have been made bespoke for the woman who wore it.’

Her heart sank a little as she remembered the memories this particular dress had carried when it came to Try Again: glimmers of cheerful resilience skirting around a deep disappointment. Temperance had felt it and seen a very fancy dinner, a table at somewhere like The Ritz, with candles and music and a buzz of anticipation. The woman in the dress expected a proposal – but it never came. It had felt like a personal mission to strip away that memory and Temperance carried out the task with extra care and patience. Now all that remained was an absolute killer dress that was ready for a new adventure.

‘It might be a bit loose in the hips for Margie, but she’s got to try it on at least!’ Temperance held the dress up against herself, leaning back on one heel to take in the juicy sex appeal of the thing.

Abel studied it carefully. ‘Agreed.’

Sheesh. Temperance felt like she’d presented him with the crown jewels and he was thanking her like it was a plastic party tiara. Maybe she should have done that tacky sales patter of offering two crappy things before the good one, so he was too bored/tired/deflated to say no.

‘As it is a one-off, and almost fifty years old, it’s pretty pricey, I should say.’

A huff escaped his nose as he looked out the window. ‘That’s fine. Gran’s sorted. How about my mum?’

Not exactly an overwhelming moment of gratitude, but Temperance chose to feel good about having one significant sale in the bag today, at any rate. ‘Your mum, OK. If I remember it, she’s a bit less showy in her style than your gran . . .’ She tapped her chin and walked around the shop, Abel stepping back to let her past. ‘It’ll be nice to see her again, anyway. I always expected her to drop in and see Margie now and again—’

Abel cut across. ‘Mum liked the new start in Bath. It suits her. The property management business keeps us both really busy, and we have Gran up to stay sometimes. East Prawle was never really the same for Mum once my dad left, not that I can remember much difference. She’s not from here – he was. So there were no real ties.’ He shrugged one shoulder, his eyes still trained on the green outside the window.

‘Of course.’ Temperance watched him under her lashes, her head ostensibly dipped to explore the rails. He said it all so calmly, without a flicker of emotion on his face – detaching himself from his hometown. She just didn’t understand how that could be.