Simone beamed at Maggie, proud. She stood up straight, allowing Stu the space to shuffle out of the planter, shingle skittering onto the pavement. He dusted himself off.
Up close, she could see the addiction that held him in its grasp. His eyes were bloodshot, darting too quickly from one thing to another, his movements jerky. She’d worked with addicts and ex-addicts, tried with physiotherapy to ease the ravages that the drugs had taken on their bodies. It wasn’t only the damage done by the drugs themselves—bones that became chalky and fragile—but the lifestyle: bad diet, dangerous crowds, and rough sleeping caused skeletons to crick and crumble. It was a slow and painful way to kill yourself.
Simone the sister still wanted to knock seven bells out of Stu, but Simone the health-care professional knew that Stu had a hard life ahead of him and a short one if he didn’t get clean soon.
“I’m only going to give you one chance. Just one. Go now and leave Star alone. Don’t try to find her again, don’t try to speak to her or contact her in any way. If you leave now, I won’t take this any further, but if you don’t, I will bring the full force of the law down on you. And next time you’ll be banged up for a lot longer than two years.” She pushed two twenty-pound notes into Stu’s hand. “Train fare,” she said, though they both knew that money was unlikely to ever see the inside of a ticket machine.
Stu took a few seconds to compute this information before nodding just once and shoving his hands deep into his pockets. He had only walked a few paces when he stopped and turned. “I do love her, you know.”
“Then you need to leave her be,” she said with as much firm kindness as she could summon. “You and I both know there’s no future for her if she’s with you. And I don’t think you really want to drag her down where you’re headed.”
Stu’s eyes darted between Simone and Maggie, his hands still in pockets, shoulders hunched forward as though walking against rain. He nodded again and walked away. They watched him until he rounded the bend in the high street and fell out of view.
Maggie rubbed her arm. “Well done,” she said. “You handled that really well. Even though I could tell you wanted to chop one of his ears off and dance around him singing ‘Stuck in the Middle with You.’？”
Simone snorted a laugh, and when she breathed in the cold air felt fresh against her lungs, as though she’d been breathing shallow for the longest time. Star was standing on the doorstep of the shop, an oversized chunky knit cardigan wrapped around her. Simone marched over with Maggie a step behind.
“Block his number,” she said without preamble. “And get your number changed. Fresh start.” She made a shooing motion at Star. “Come on, in you go, you’re heating up the whole village.”
Star gave a small smile and turned into the shop, followed by her sisters.
12
“Right, first things first. Wine. Let’s find some glasses,” said Simone, holding up the blue plastic bag containing the wine bottles. “We can rinse them out in the kitchenette. Second thing, what the hell was all that out there?”
Star swung her arms out from her sides and puffed out her cheeks in a gesture of flummoxed exasperation. “He just doesn’t seem to get the message. I don’t know how to make it any clearer for him.”
“A restraining order?” Simone suggested. “What would have happened if we hadn’t come along?”
“I’d have called the police. Or someone else would.”
“And what if he’d got to you before they arrived?”
“He’s not violent. Not to other people and never to me.” She saw the incredulous looks from her sisters and added, “I know he has a temper; he shouts his mouth off and throws things, but the only person Stu ever hurts is himself.”
“I don’t know whether to believe you.” Simone was shaking her head.
“It wouldn’t be the first time.”
Simone’s head snapped up, and Maggie prepared to get between them as mediator, but to her surprise, Simone said, almost defeatedly, “I know you didn’t have anything to do with the robbery.”
“Oh.” Star looked as taken aback as Maggie felt. “Thank you.”
“Promise me you have detached yourself from Stu once and for all. No going back because you feel sorry for him and no being charmed by his romantic histrionics; I know what you’re like about wounded animals.”
Star quailed beneath Simone’s head-teacher tone. “I promise,” she said in a small voice.
A moment followed during which any normal sisters would have hugged and broken the tension, but Star and Simone stood awkwardly like a couple of wallflowers at a school disco.
“Okay, let’s find those glasses, shall we?” Maggie chivied. Baby steps, she thought.
Star managed to find two glasses hiding in the shelves, a pale pink champagne flute and an ornately cut crystal goblet. Maggie spotted an etched wineglass, yellowed with dust, and extracted it from an old shoebox filled with metal toy soldiers. Her eye fell upon a wicker basket full of tarnished cutlery and kitchen utensils, and she rummaged around until she found a corkscrew. She also found a red Monopoly house, which she held aloft with the corkscrew, standing on tiptoes and waving to be seen over the top of a shelving unit.
“Now we’re talking,” said Simone. “Bring it over.”
Maggie sidled down a skinny aisle and joined her sisters at a mahogany sideboard on which the cash register—an antique in its own right—sat, dusty and sad looking.
With glasses thoroughly washed and wine poured, they began their search in earnest. Maggie had compiled a list of things Augustus had been fond of—though this wasn’t easy since he seemed delighted by almost everything—and they used this as a rough guide of where they might focus their attention.
Star dusted off the gramophone, and soon the shop was filled with the tinny crackle of old jazz. Simone positioned the Calor gas heater in front of the sideboard and after a few minutes a gentle heat slowly wended its way along the aisles, warming the merchandise and awakening fragrances of old book bindings and beeswax polish. They worked as methodically as possible in the chaos, taking an aisle each, starting at the end nearest the front door and working slowly down. Their thematic approach to the search was short-lived as the sheer farrago of stuff overwhelmed them. Every trinket box was shaken, every watch, ring, and jewelry box was opened. Vases were tipped out and knickknacks rifled through. Artemis had a habit of leering unexpectedly out from the shelves or jumping up to inspect what they were doing. Maggie thought the cat gravitated toward whichever of them was about to find a house, but she dismissed the idea as nonsense.
As they worked, they called out the names of unusual items found.
“Ceremonial tribal staff!”
“Didgeridoo!”
“Victorian clockwork bird in a cage.”
“China figurine of man sitting on a chamber pot!”
“An actual chamber pot!”
At the end of each aisle, they would refill their wineglasses before disappearing back into the mountains of jumble. Each Monopoly house they discovered received a cheer and a celebratory wine top-up.