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‘It’s human nature,’ Annie said. ‘You know, that policeman over there keeps giving you the eye. Give him a smile.’
‘Annie!’ Daisy looked at her best friend in disbelief. The fairground was in trouble and Annie was thinking about fixing her up with a man?
‘Daze, working here you don’t exactly get to meet many single men, let alone men below the age of fifty,’ Annie said, sounding completely unrepentant. ‘Seize the day. He’s very cute. And he’s definitely interested.’
Daisy blew out a breath. ‘Well, I’m not interested in him, thanks very much.’
‘Mind if I go and have a chat to him?’
‘Do what you like, as long as you don’t try to fix me up on a blind date with him.’ Daisy scowled. ‘Not everyone wants a life partner, you know.’
‘And you’re happy with just your cat?’ Annie asked, looking unconvinced.
‘Yes, I am. Titan’s good company and he’s not demanding.’
Annie scoffed. ‘Not demanding? This is the cat who has a plush bed in every room of your house and a taste for fresh poached salmon.’
‘OK, but he’s still not as demanding as a man would be.’ Her cat didn’t want her to change and be more feminine. He loved her for herself, not for who he wanted her to be. ‘Though he’s not very happy with me right now because I’ve locked him in my office to make sure he doesn’t get broken glass in his paws.’ She frowned. ‘Why are we talking about this? Annie, I know you’re happy with Ray—and I’m really happy for you—but I’m fine as I am, really.’
‘Hmm.’ Annie looked at her. ‘Right. I’m going to chat to that policeman, because I need some information for my copy. And while I’m gone Si’s going to take a picture of you looking distraught.’
‘I’m not sure it’s a good idea to have my picture in the paper.’
‘Tough. I’ve already cleared it with Bill. He says you’re prettier than he is, so you’re doing it.’ She smiled.
Daisy sighed. ‘You’re such a hard-nosed journo.’
‘Annie Sylvester, Super-Hack: that’s me.’ Annie gave her a hug. ‘And once the police say we can start clearing up I’ll give you a hand dealing with the glass and scrubbing all the paint off. I’ll give Ray a ring and he’ll come and muck in, too.’
‘Thanks. I owe you,’ Daisy said.
‘Course you don’t. That’s what best mates are for. You’d do the same for me.’ She paused. ‘Have you called the rest of your family yet?’
‘No.’ Daisy lifted her chin. She was perfectly capable of running her own life, and most people realised early on that she was the kind of person who fixed things efficiently and without a fuss, but her family still insisted on treating her as the baby, the one who had to be bailed out of things. It drove her crazy, even more so than their insistence that career progression and earning a good salary was more important than job satisfaction. If she called them, of course they’d come—but she’d be living up to all their prejudices. ‘Bill, Nancy and I can manage.’
‘Sometimes,’ Annie said softly, ‘you can be too proud, you know.’
‘Let’s agree to disagree.’ Daisy sighed. ‘Look, I love them, and we get on fine—most of the time. But I don’t want a lecture or an I-told-you-so speech, and that’d be the price of them helping. You know that, too. So it’s better to keep things smooth and keep them away from it.’
‘If you say so, hon. But wouldn’t it be better that they heard the news from you than saw it on the front page of the paper tomorrow morning?’
Daisy knew her best friend was right. ‘OK. I’ll talk to them tonight, I promise.’ When she’d fixed as much as she could.
The rest of the day seemed to be spent giving statements and making cups of tea while they waited for the scene-of-crime team to finish gathering evidence so they could start fixing the mess the vandals had left. By the time the light had gone, the cafe windows were boarded up temporarily, the glass had been swept up and they’d made a start on removing the graffiti.
But Monday morning brought more bad news. ‘The insurance company says we’re not covered,’ Daisy told Bill, settling on the edge of his desk. ‘Apparently vandalism’s been excluded from our policy for three years.’ She sighed. ‘It seems they changed our policy terms when Derek was ill, and nobody picked it up at the time.’ Derek was Bill’s best friend and their insurance broker.
‘So we have to pay for the damage ourselves?’
She nodded grimly. ‘They can recommend a glazier, but we’ll have to pay the full cost of repairs.’
‘And plate glass costs a fortune.’ Bill muttered a curse under his breath and shook his head. ‘I know we can’t afford not to fix the cafe, but we can’t afford to fix it, either.’
She dragged in a breath. ‘Because I talked you into buying the chair-o-planes.’
‘Love, they were a bargain, and we would’ve kicked ourselves if we’d missed the chance. It’s not that.’ Bill sighed. ‘The way the stock markets have gone, my investments are worth practically nothing now, even if I cash them in—and you know as well as I do we run this place on a shoestring. If we go to the bank and ask for a loan, they’ll laugh us out of the office because we couldn’t pay it back.’
‘Not from the museum takings,’ Daisy said. ‘But there’s my house.’ The two-up-two-down terraced house her grandmother had left her. ‘I can talk the bank into giving me a mortgage to release some of the equity.’
‘On the salary you draw from here, they wouldn’t lend you a penny.’ Bill shook his head. ‘And I wouldn’t let you get into debt for this anyway. No, love.’
‘It’s my heritage as well,’ Daisy pointed out. Her uncle had often said that she was the child he and Nancy hadn’t been able to have. ‘Your grandfather, my great-grandfather.’ She took a deep breath. She’d been thinking about Annie’s words since yesterday. Maybe her best friend was right. It had been a bit unfair of her to tell her family by text message last night and then switch her phone off so they couldn’t get hold of her. She hadn’t given them the chance to help because she hadn’t wanted to deal with the way they saw her. But maybe it was time she swallowed her pride, for the sake of the fairground. This was something she couldn’t fix on her own; they did need bailing out. ‘We could ask Dad, Ben, Ed and Mikey to help. They’d chip in, because it’s their heritage, too.’
‘No. Ben has a young family to think about, Ed and Mikey have huge mortgages and your dad’s about to retire.’ Bill sighed. ‘His investments are in the same state as mine.’
And there was still the fact that Daisy’s family saw the fairground as Bill’s whimsy, which in their view was stopping Daisy from having a proper career. Which was why she avoided talking to them about it.
Bill looked grim. ‘We’re going to have to get a backer outside the family.’
‘Who’s going to invest in a steam-fairground museum in a recession?’ Daisy asked.
‘The prices of steam engines are rocketing—no pun intended,’ Bill said, with a nod to the model of Stephenson’s Rocket on his desk. ‘So right now investors will see their money as being safer here than in shares.’
Daisy shook her head. ‘Investors always come with conditions attached. And they won’t see this the way we do, that we’re conserving our heritage. They’ll want to see big returns on their money—they’ll want a hike in entrance fees and more stuff in the shop. And what if they decide to pull out? How would we raise the money to buy out their share?’
‘I don’t know, love.’ Bill looked bleak. ‘We could sell the showman’s engine.’
It was worth a small fortune, but it was also the last engine that Bell’s had ever made, and Daisy had spent four years working on its restoration. ‘Over my dead body. There has to be another way.’
‘Short of winning the lottery, or discovering that fairy godmothers are real, I doubt it, love. We’ll have to take on a partner.’
‘Or a sponsor, perhaps.’ Daisy sighed. ‘I’ll stick the kettle on. And then we’ll work out what we can offer a sponsor, make a list of all the local businessmen and divvy up the calls between us.’ She hugged him. ‘We’ll find our silver lining.’
Felix picked the phone up without taking his eyes off the spreadsheet. ‘Gisbourne.’
‘Oh good. I’m so glad you’re there, Felix.’
Felix sighed inwardly; it served him right for not checking the caller display first. Now his sister was going to nag him instead of leaving a message on his answering machine. Which meant he couldn’t fast-forward it, or delete the message unheard and tell a white lie about his answering machine going wrong. ‘Good morning, Antonia.’
‘Mummy says you’re weaselling out of the house party this weekend.’
Typical Antonia: she always came straight to the point. ‘Sorry, sweets. Can’t make it. I’m busy at work.’
‘Come off it,’ Antonia scoffed. ‘You’re perfectly capable of going to the house party and sorting out your business stuff first thing in the morning, before anyone else in the house even thinks of getting up.’
True. But it didn’t mean that he wanted to do it.
‘Mummy really wants you there.’
‘Only because she’s lined up yet another suitable woman for me.’ Felix sighed. ‘Look, Toni, I’m not interested in getting married. I’m never getting married.’
‘Don’t try and con me that you’re not interested in women. I saw that picture of you in the gossip rags the other week, with a certain actress draped all over you. Or are you going to tell me you’re just good friends?’
‘No. It was a…’ He compressed his mouth and shook his head in irritation. ‘Toni, for pity’s sake, you’re my little sister. I am not discussing my love life with you.’
‘The lack of it, more like. Your women never last more than three dates.’ She sighed. ‘You know that Mummy just wants you to be happy. We all do.’
‘I am happy.’
‘Settled, then.’
‘I have a nice flat in Docklands and a successful business. That counts as settled in most people’s eyes.’
‘You know what I mean. Settled with someone.’
‘I’m allergic to women with wedding bells in their eyes.’ He paused. ‘I just wish our mother would get off my case.’
‘If you hadn’t got cold feet over poor Tabitha, you’d be safely married off by now and Mummy would be happy,’ Antonia pointed out.
Maybe, but Felix certainly wouldn’t have been. His marriage would have been an utter nightmare. For a moment, he wondered if he should’ve told his family the truth about Tabitha. But then they would’ve been even worse, treating him like a victim, crowding him and pitying him, and he would’ve hated that even more than he hated their constant attempts to fix him up with someone. On balance, it was better that they thought him a heart-breaker who just needed the right woman to tame him.
Except he didn’t need anyone. He was perfectly happy with his life as it was: with a job that fulfilled him, and dating women who understood right from the start that he wasn’t looking for long-term, just for fun. Because he was never, ever going to put himself in another situation like he had with his ex-fiancée. He would never let his heart be that vulnerable again. ‘Maybe,’ he said.
‘Come on, Felix. It won’t be so bad.’
Oh yes, it would be. His mother must have introduced him to every single blonde with long legs in the whole of Gloucestershire, because she thought he liked leggy blondes.
Well, he did.
He just didn’t want to get married to one. Didn’t want to get married to anyone.
‘Toni, I really am busy, so I’ll call you later, OK?’
She sighed. ‘OK. But you’d better, or I’ll ring you.’
‘Message received and understood. Bye, sweetie.’
He put the phone down and leaned back in his chair, frowning. Time to find a cast-iron excuse to avoid his parents. The sad thing was, he would’ve enjoyed a weekend in the country, had it been just the family there. He liked his parents and his sisters, and even his brothers-in-law were good company. But Sophie Gisbourne had decided that her only son needed to be married, so she always insisted that weekends at their Cotswolds estate would involve a house party. And every time she invited a ‘suitable’ woman to be his partner at dinner—with the subtext being that she would be a suitable partner for life as well.
Sometimes Felix thought that his mother had been born two hundred years too late. She would’ve made the perfect Regency mama, brokering marriage and offering advice to friends. But in this day and age it was just infuriating. He went into the small kitchen and made two mugs of coffee, adding sugar to his PA’s mug before returning to the office. ‘Here you go, Mina.’ He noticed that his PA looked uncharacteristically upset. ‘Are you OK? What’s wrong?’
Mina flapped a hand at him. ‘Don’t mind me, it’s silly.’ There were tears in her eyes. He perched on the edge of her desk. ‘Talk to me. Someone’s ill? You need time off?’
‘No, nothing like that. Mum sent me this.’ She handed him a sheet of newspaper that had clearly been folded neatly and sent through the post:
VANDALS PUT FAIRGROUND MUSEUM IN A SPIN
‘She used to take me there when I was little. It’s a really magical place.’ Mina’s mouth compressed. ‘I can’t believe vandals would wreck it like that.’
Felix skimmed down to the picture of a woman sitting on an old-fashioned fairground ride, looking heartbroken. There was something about her, something that made him want to see what she looked like when she smiled.
Which was crazy. You couldn’t make decisions on the basis of a photograph of someone you’d never met. He wasn’t that reckless.
Besides, she wasn’t his type. For the last three years he’d dated mainly tall blondes with long legs, plus the occasional redhead. But petite and brunette was definitely out: it would remind him too much of Tabitha.
But it seemed that the fairground needed rescuing. That was his speciality: rescuing businesses before they went to the wall. And this was a business with a difference, something that might give him the challenge he felt that his life had lacked lately. It wouldn’t hurt to take a look.
When he’d finished reading the article, he looked at Mina. ‘Do you know the Bells?’
She shook her head.
‘Can you get me the manager’s number?’ He smiled at her. ‘This looks as if it could be an interesting opportunity.’ And if he checked the place out for himself at the weekend, that gave him a valid excuse to avoid his mother’s latest ‘suitable women’ onslaught without hurting her feelings.
Just perfect.
Chapter Two
‘SO THAT’S us,’ Bill said with a smile. ‘Well, me, anyway. You really need to meet my number two.’
Daisy Bell: the woman from the photograph, according to the article. Deputy manager of the fairground.
Felix was annoyed with himself for being so keen to meet her. For all he knew, she could be married or involved elsewhere. And he wasn’t in the market for a relationship anyway.
But her face had haunted his dreams for the last week, and his heart rate speeded up a notch at the thought of finally meeting her.
‘She’s supposed to be here, but she’s obviously forgotten the time,’ Bill said.
How on earth could she forget a meeting that might make the difference between the museum being a going concern or heading straight for bankruptcy? This really didn’t gel with the picture of the devastated woman in the paper. Or had it been a set-up? Drag in a pretty woman with tears in her eyes to give a human dimension to the piece and the saps would be flocking here in droves, wanting to protect her and invest in the fairground…
No, he was being cynical, letting his past get in the way. William Bell seemed genuine enough. And Daisy had been dressed in trousers and a plain shirt, not a floaty dress and impractical heels. She wasn’t the frivolous, frothy type that Tabitha had been. Just because Daisy was petite and brunette, like his ex-fiancée, it didn’t mean that she shared the same personality traits: shallower than a puddle and a liar to boot.
But, now he’d started on that train of thought, he found it hard to stop. Why wasn’t she at this meeting? Maybe the fairground wasn’t really that important to her. Or maybe she didn’t pull her weight, and her uncle put family loyalty before sound business practice and let her get away with it because she batted her eyelashes at him and told him he was her favourite uncle. Well, Felix was good at pruning dead wood and giving more able people a chance to prove themselves. If he was going to invest in the museum and turn the business around, and Daisy turned out to be a liability, he’d give her her marching orders. Very, very quickly. Pretty or not.
‘It’s going to be quicker to fish her out of the workshop,’ Bill said. ‘And I can show you round a bit at the same time.’
Felix’s expectations hit a new low as they reached a single-storey building with breezeblock walls and a corrugated-iron roof. What was Daisy doing in the workshop—chatting up the mechanic when she was supposed to be working?
But as Bill opened the door Felix could hear someone singing—a female voice, giving a surprisingly good rendition of ‘I Can See Clearly Now’.
‘I thought as much,’ Bill said with a wry chuckle. ‘Her work’s going well and she’s lost track of time. You can always tell, because she sings. It’s when things go badly that she’s silent.’
‘What’s going well?’ Felix asked, mystified.
‘Work on the engine.’ Bill looked puzzled. ‘Didn’t I tell you she’s my chief mechanic as well as my number two?’
‘No.’ Felix blinked. It hadn’t been on the website, either, or in the article. ‘Mechanic?’
‘A word to the wise: she’s a bit touchy about sexism,’ Bill said. ‘And she gives as good as she gets—it comes from having three older brothers.’
