“No,” said Maeve. “If she were written by a man, he’d have made her a whore. She’d have had dark hair and dark eyes and massive tits! She certainly wouldn’t have begged Sir Michael Audley for a platonic relationship; she’d have straddled him the moment she’d met him and trapped him under her sex spell.”
“Crikey!” said Gemma.
“Is that what happened with Max on Sunday?” asked Sally. Annie stuck two fingers up at her.
“No matter how good a Victorian woman tried to be, if she had sex outside of the marriage bed, she was destined for a sticky end in literature! And let that be a lesson to you, Annie.” Sally wagged a finger in Annie’s direction.
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about me,” said Annie. “From now on my only relationship is with Mr. Knightley.”
“Good girl,” said Maeve, as though praising one of her sheepdogs.
Gemma giggled.
“I’m glad to hear he’s come in handy,” she said.
The book club disbanded a little before eleven o’clock, with all the women promising they would be back tomorrow night for the fireworks. Annie still wasn’t quite sure what the plan was for tomorrow evening, but she had been given to believe that John and Paul would have it in hand and she was happy to leave it to them. For her part, she had decided to make a vat of soup and serve it in mugs with sausage stirrers. It meant another long day at work, but if it turned out to be as profitable as Halloween, it would be well worth it.
* * *
—
It was a profitable decision and thank goodness for it, because Annie’s credit card was maxed out and she needed to start paying it off before she found herself in a financial hole too deep to climb out of. Damn Max, she brooded as the fireworks began. She hated that he had her over a financial barrel. He hadn’t answered his phone since their argument, and she still had no access to their account. What little she’d had saved in her own account was down to single figures, and she cursed herself for being so complacent with their shared monies. She fantasized briefly, among the whoops and bangs, about taking a leaf out of Guy Fawkes’s book and blowing up the Pomegranate Seed—maybe even with Max still in it—and claiming on the insurance.
The flare of the firelighters briefly illuminated the shadowy figures of Paul and John as they lit the touch papers and then melted back into the darkness. They had been setting up all afternoon down by the cove—poor old Alfred had been evicted for the day, but he had taken it good-naturedly, and Annie had plied him with sausage sandwiches to soften the blow.
“Many thanks,” Alfred mumbled as Annie handed him a gingerbread latte. He dropped three sugar lumps into the already sweet coffee, and Annie’s teeth ached.
“Thank you for tidying up the garden; I recognized your handiwork. The borders look lovely.”
“You still haven’t sorted that fence,” said Alfred. “It won’t last the winter.”
“No, I know. I’ve been so busy. Sorry.” Annie marveled at the strange relationship she had with this grumpy man.
“I’ll do it for you when I’ve finished my other jobs,” grumbled Alfred with all the resignation of a disappointed father.
“Oh, Alfred, would you? That would be marvelous. I’ll see if I can get some new fence posts.”
“No need.” Alfred cut her off. “I’ll get the wood. I know what’s needed. You’ll probably get all the wrong stuff.”
Annie’s feminist feathers ruffled, but she conceded that he was probably right. What did she know about fences?
“Someone owes me a favor anyway,” Alfred went on. “I’ll get better wood from him than that rubbish they sell in the DIY shops.”
Annie wondered what Alfred could have done to be owed such a big favor, but then she reasoned that Alfred used a different currency than most; she wondered, again, how this lifestyle translated in the city. And then she remembered that he would be gone soon and felt a niggle of worry for him, sleeping out on the streets in the cold, with all the dangers that sleeping rough presented.
The fireworks weren’t half bad. There were a couple of duds, which fizzed and died before they’d begun, drawing jeers and claps from the revelers. But other than that, all the crowd-pleasers were present and correct. The darkness spangled and glittered with lights so bright they left blobs before Annie’s eyes as she watched with Lennox and Esme—who were frightened by the noise—through the windows.
Maeve strode in midway through the display, rubbing her hands together against the cold.