“Well, anyway, I’d better be off,” Duncan said, looking as though the weight of compliments was crushing him.
“Me too,” said Star a little too eagerly.
“I’ll walk you back,” Duncan offered.
“Thank you.” Star gazed up at him adoringly.
At last you’ve fallen for someone deserving of you, Maggie mused, smiling at the two of them. And it looks like he’s equally smitten. The idea made her feel deeply contented.
Patrick grabbed his coat and followed them out, headed to a party with a mate. “Don’t wait up!” he shouted before pulling the front door shut.
“And then there were two,” said Joe. He took Maggie by the hand and led her toward her bedroom and as always, she was powerless to resist.
24
The drizzle was freezing cold as Duncan walked Star home.
“Wouldn’t it be quicker to go through the shop?” he asked, when Star steered them toward the gate in the wall like she had the night before.
“I don’t really like walking through the shop by myself in the dark. I never did. I guess that sounds silly.”
“Not at all. Some of those Toby jugs are pretty menacing.” He grinned.
“I’m not keen on Dad’s collection of taxidermy either, they’re so creepy. He put a stoat in my room once to keep me company when my sisters were away. I was terrified all night! I was convinced I could see it snarling at me in the moonlight.”
“That actually sounds truly frightening.” Duncan chuckled. Unlike last night, this time he followed her through the gate and round to the door which led up to the flat. “It’s the stuff of all good horror movies,” he went on.
“Right!” She laughed too loudly to cover the beating of her heart. He was making it very hard for her to not kiss him. “I made Dad take it away, and he replaced it with some mangy old bear called Steph, or something like that, who looked much more friendly. He said it had been made for a prince and was gifted to him as a farewell token by a royal clockmaker in Geneva. But that could have been one of his tall tales; there were plenty of them.”
“Could it have been called Steiff rather than Steph?” he asked.
He had a twinkle in his eye that Star had noticed he got whenever he found something really crusty looking in the shop. She loved seeing Duncan’s excitement. He could see magic where others saw trash. She had begun to hope he might look at her like that one day. She stuffed the feeling down.
“Yeah, that was it,” she said. “It was called Steiff bear. It was properly ancient.”
“Is it still here? In the flat?”
“It is. Do you think it might be worth something?”
“Could be. If it is a Steiff bear, they hold their value. It would be even better if there was some proof of provenance.”
“If there is, it’ll be in that pile of papers next to your desk,” she said. “I’m glad I didn’t throw old Steiff out now. I gave him a good old damp dust the other day and sprayed him with body spray to freshen him up.” She noticed Duncan wince. “You can come in if you like, and I’ll show him to you now.” What are you doing? she warned herself. Do not invite this nice man into your bedroom! But she didn’t want this evening to end; she enjoyed his company and she would’ve liked to have it for a little longer this evening; it was a Saturday night after all.
Duncan pulled his coat collar up and became interested in a hanging basket full of long dead stems. “Oh, thanks, but no, I’d better get back to the Stag and Hound.”
She tried not to feel rebuffed. He must have seen her face fall, because he countered, “But I’d very much like to see it on Monday when I’m back at work.”
Stupid Star, he’s reminding you in his own sweet way that this is just another job for him, she thought. This was just like her, always hoping for something more than she deserved. She had nothing to entice him. She moved from place to place leaving no real trace of herself behind. Sometimes she felt like a ghost of a person, a fleeting presence to the people she met, soon to be forgotten. Perdita had always told her that being tied to any place or person was practically imprisonment. But if you had no ties at all, what was to stop you from disappearing without a trace?
After several blind stabs at the keyhole, she opened the door and flicked on the hall light. Stepping inside the threshold she turned back to Duncan standing on the doorstep.
“Well, thanks for walking me home. And thank you for making Verity’s costume. That was really sweet of you, and I know it means a lot to Maggie.”
“I enjoyed it. And the freezer biscuits.”
They stood smiling at each other, not quite sure of the appropriate way to part.
“Well, goodbye.” Duncan took a step backward.
“Goodbye. See you Monday.”
She was holding on to the side of the door, ready to close it, when Duncan stepped toward her and bent to kiss her cheek. His lips were soft, and he smelled of aftershave and cinnamon biscuits. Then just as quickly, he turned and walked to the gate without looking back, closing it behind him. Star stood in the doorway wanting to preserve the moment just a little longer. She bit her lip to keep her smile under control. This wasn’t how her encounters with men usually played out. Typically, men were greedy for her, wanting all of her at once, not thinking she was worth waiting for. To be fair, she’d never really cared to mind; she enjoyed sex and had always been happy to embrace that side of herself. She wondered now if perhaps, though fulfilling on a physical level, her consistent acts of spontaneity had become a bit boring.
Rain pattered down through the trees in an uneven rhythm, and the strings of solar-powered fairy lights swung in the breeze, making the tips of the wet grass below glitter like a lawn of diamonds for the taking. She pushed the door closed and locked out the night. For the first time in years, she felt a thrill of hope, and as she climbed into her old single bed in her old room with Artemis by her feet, she reveled in the luxury of having been kissed by a man who didn’t take a thing.
25
Saturday’s drizzle had been frozen out by Sunday morning, and the ice that’d formed over everything showed no sign of thawing yet. Every roof in the village was thickly white, and every pavement and car had swirls of frost painted over them.
Maggie sipped her double shot black Americano and tried not to be a coffee snob about Simone’s half-fat, one shot latte with sugar-free hazelnut syrup or Star’s decaf oat milk mocha, which were sat on the small table by the window waiting for their owners to arrive. Artemis sat on the chair next to her, taunting the cockapoo at the next table. She had left Verity watching Disney Christmas cartoons on the sofa with a massively hungover Patrick, who looked like a cadaver in a tartan dressing gown. This was her second Americano of the day, and she didn’t imagine it would be her last.
So far, she and her sisters had done a lot of talking about the winter solstice celebration, but they hadn’t actually set anything in motion. It was, she imagined, rather like being part of one of those government think tanks, where they spend endless hours talking about how to solve a problem without ever putting a solution into practice. Time was ticking on. The solstice was on the twenty-first, which gave them just eleven days to organize an entire festival. They had a list of things as long as their combined arms that needed doing and none had a tick beside them. If they didn’t get a move on soon, they would fail without ever having tried.