Death and a Dog

Suddenly, Tom was looking at her and waving. Lacey jerked up, her cheeks warming at the realization he’d just caught her gazing at him like a schoolgirl with a crush.

Tom’s waving gesture turned into a beckoning, and Lacey suddenly realized what the time was. Ten past eleven. Tea time! And she was ten minutes late for their daily Elevenses!

“Come on, Chester,” she said quickly, as excitement leapt into her breast. “It’s time to visit Tom.”

She practically ran out of the store, only just remembering to flip her ‘Open’ sign over so it read ‘back in 10 minutes’ and lock the door. Then she hop-skipped across the cobblestone street toward the patisserie, her heart beat thump-thump-thumping in time with her bouncy steps, as her excitement at seeing Tom ratcheted up.

Just as Lacey reached the door of the patisserie, the group of Chinese vacationers Tom had been entertaining moments earlier came streaming out. Each was clutching an extremely large brown paper bag stuffed full of delicious-smelling goodies, chattering and giggling to each other. Lacey held the door patiently, waiting for them to file past, and they politely bowed their heads in thanks.

Once the path was finally clear, Lacey went inside.

“Hello, my dear,” Tom said, a large grin lighting up his handsome, golden-hued face, making laugh lines appear beside his twinkling green eyes.

“I see your groupies just left,” Lacey joked, coming toward the counter. “And they bought a ton of merchandise.”

“You know me,” Tom replied, with an eyebrow wiggle. “I’m the world’s first pastry chef with a fan club.”

He seemed to be in a particularly jovial mood today, Lacey thought, not that he ever seemed anything but sunny. Tom was one of those people who seemed to breeze through life unperturbed by the usual stresses that got the best of us down. It was one of the things Lacey adored about him. He was so different from David, who would get stressed by the smallest of irritants.

She reached the counter and Tom stretched up on his arms to kiss her over it. Lacey let herself get lost in the moment, only breaking apart when Chester began to whine his displeasure at being ignored.

“Sorry, buddy,” Tom said. He came out from behind the counter and offered Chester a chocolate-free carob treat. “There you go. Your favorite.”

Chester licked the treats right out of Tom’s hand, then let out a long sigh of satisfaction and sank down to the floor for a snooze.

“So, what tea is on the menu today?” Lacey asked, taking her usual stool at the counter.

“Chicory,” Tom said.

He headed into the kitchen at the back.

“I haven’t had that before,” Lacey called out.

“It’s caffeine free,” Tom called back, over the whoosh of a faucet and the banging of cupboard doors. “And has a slight laxative effect if you drink too much.”

Lacey laughed. “Thanks for the heads-up,” she called.

Her words were met by the clink and clatter of chinaware, and the bubble of the kettle boiling.

Then Tom reappeared holding a tea tray. Plates, cups, saucers, a sugar bowl, and a china teapot were on it.

He placed the tray down between them. Like all of Tom’s crockery, the items were completely mismatched, their only linking theme being Britain, as if he’d sourced each one from a different patriotic old lady’s yard sale. Lacey’s cup had a photograph of the late Princess Diana on it. Her plate had a passage from Beatrix Potter written in delicate cursive beside a watercolor image of the iconic Aylesbury duck, Jemima Puddleduck, in her bonnet and shawl. The teapot was in the shape of a gaudily decorated Indian elephant, with the words Piccadilly Circus printed on its bright red and gold saddle. Its trunk, naturally, made the spout.

As the tea brewed in the pot, Tom used silver tongs to select some croissants from the counter display, which he placed on pretty floral plates. He slid Lacey’s toward her, followed by a pot of her favorite apricot jam. Then he poured them both a mug of the now brewed tea, sat in his stool, held up the mug, and said, “Cheers.”

With a smile, Lacey clinked hers against his. “Cheers.”

As they sipped in unison, Lacey had a sudden flash of déjà vu. Not a real one, like when you’re certain you’ve lived this exact moment before, but the déjà vu that comes from repetition, from routine, from doing the same thing day in day out. It felt like they had done this before, because they had; yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that. As busy shop owners, Lacey and Tom often put in overtime and worked seven-day weeks. It had come so naturally, the routine, the rhythm. But it was more than that. Tom had automatically given her her favorite toasted almond croissant with apricot jam. He didn’t even need to ask what she wanted.

It should have pleased Lacey, but instead, it perturbed her. Because that’s exactly how things had been with David to begin with. Learning each other’s orders. Doing little favors for one another. Small moments of routine and rhythm that made her feel like they were puzzle pieces that fit perfectly together. She’d been young and foolish and had made the mistake of thinking it would always feel that way. But it had just been the honeymoon period. It wore off a year or two down the line, and by that point, she was already stuck in marriage.

Was that all this relationship was with Tom? A honeymoon period that would eventually wear off?

“What are you thinking?” Tom asked, his voice intruding on her anxious rumination.

Lacey almost spat out her tea. “Nothing.”

Tom raised a single eyebrow. “Nothing? The chicory has had such little impact on you all thoughts have vacated your mind?”

“Oh, about the chicory!” she exclaimed, blushing.

Tom looked even more amused. “Yes. What else would I be asking?”

Lacey clumsily placed the Diana cup back on the saucer, making a loud clatter. “It’s nice. Licorice-y. Eight out of ten.”

Tom whistled. “Wow. High praise. But not quite enough to dethrone the Assam.”

“It will take an exceptional tea to dethrone the Assam.”

Her momentary panic that Tom had mind-reading abilities subsided, and Lacey turned her attention to the breakfast, savoring the flavors of homemade apricot jam combined with toasted almonds and yummy buttery pastry. But even the tasty food couldn’t keep her mind from wandering to the conversation with David. It had been the first time she’d heard his voice since he’d stormed out of their old Upper East Side apartment with the parting declaration, “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer!” and something about hearing his voice again reminded her that less than a month ago she’d been a relatively happily married woman, with a stable job and an income and family nearby in the city she’d lived her whole life. Without even knowing she was doing it, she’d blocked out her past life in New York City with a solid wall in her mind. It was a coping strategy she’d developed as a child to cope with the grief of her father’s sudden disappearance. Evidently, hearing David’s voice had shaken the foundations of that wall.

“We should go on a vacation,” Tom suddenly said.

Once again, Lacey almost spit out her food, but Tom couldn’t have noticed, because he kept speaking.

“When I’m back from my focaccia course, we should go on a stay-cation. We’ve both been working so hard, we deserve it. We can go to my hometown in Devon, and I’ll show you all the places I loved as a child.”

Had Tom suggested this yesterday before her call with David, Lacey probably would’ve bitten his hand off at the offer. But suddenly the idea of making long-term plans with her new beau—even if it was only one week in the future—seemed to be jumping the gun. Of course, Tom had no reason not to be confident with his life. But Lacey herself had not been long divorced. She’d entered into his world of relative stability at a point when literally every bit of hers had become unmoored—from her job, to her home, to her country, and even her relationship status! She’d gone from babysitting her nephew, Frankie, while her sister, Naomi, went on yet another disastrous date, to shooing sheep off her front lawn; from being barked at by her boss, Saskia, in a New York City interior design firm, to antique-scouting trips in London’s Mayfair with her peculiar cardigan-clad neighbor and two sheep dogs in tow. It was a lot of change all in one go, and she wasn’t entirely sure where her head was at.

“I’ll have to see how busy I am with the store,” she replied noncommittally. “The auction is taking more work than I anticipated.”

“Sure,” Tom said, sounding in no way like he’d read between the lines. Picking up on subtleties and subtext was not one of Tom’s fortes, which was another thing she liked about him. He took everything she said on face value. Unlike her mom and sister, who’d needle and prod her and dissect every word she said, there was no guessing or second-guessing with Tom. What you saw was what you got.

Just then, the bell above the patisserie door tinkled, and Tom’s gaze flicked over Lacey’s shoulder. She watched his expression turn to a grimace before he returned his gaze to meet hers again.

“Great,” he muttered under his breath. “I’d been wondering when my turn would come for Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum to pay a visit. You’ll have to excuse me.”

He stood, and went round from the back of the counter.

Curious to see who could elicit such a visceral response from Tom—a man who was notoriously easygoing and personable—Lacey swiveled in her stool.

The customers who’d entered the patisserie were a man and woman, and they looked like they’d just walked off the set of Dallas. The man was in a powder blue suit with a cowboy hat. The woman—much younger, Lacey noted wryly, as seemed to be the preference of most middle-aged men—was in a fuchsia pink two-piece, bright enough to give Lacey a headache, and which clashed terribly with her Dolly Parton yellow hair.

“We’d like to try some samples,” the man barked. He was American, and his abruptness seemed so out of place in Tom’s quaint little patisserie.

Gosh, I hope I don’t sound like that to Tom, Lacey thought a little self-consciously.

“Of course,” Tom replied politely, the Britishness in his own tone seeming to have intensified in response. “What would you like to try? We have pastries and…”

“Ew, Buck, no,” the woman said to her husband, yanking on his arm to which she was clinging. “You know wheat makes me bloat. Ask him for something different.”

Lacey couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at the odd pair. Was the wife incapable of asking her own questions?

“Got any chocolate?” the man she’d referred to as Buck asked. Or, more like demanded, since his tone was so boorish.

“I do,” Tom said, somehow keeping his cool in front of Loudmouth and his limpet of a wife.

He showed them over to the chocolate display and gestured with a hand. Buck grabbed one in his meaty fist and shoved it straight into his mouth.

Almost immediately, he spit it back out. The little gooey, half-chewed lump splattered onto the floor.

Chester, who’d been very quietly sitting at Lacey’s feet, suddenly sprang up and launched for it.

“Chester. No,” Lacey warned him in the firm, authoritative voice he knew full well he had to obey. “Poison.”

The English Shepherd looked at her, then mournfully back at the chocolate, before finally going back to his position at her feet with the expression of a scorned child.

“Ew, Buck, there’s a dog in here!” the blond woman wailed. “It’s so unhygienic.”

“Hygiene is the least of his troubles,” Buck scoffed, looking back at Tom, who was now wearing a slightly mortified expression. “Your chocolate tastes like garbage!”

“American chocolate and English chocolate are different,” Lacey said, feeling the need to jump in to Tom’s defense.

“You don’t say,” Buck replied. “It tastes like crap! And the queen eats this junk? She needs some proper American imports if you ask me.”

Somehow, Tom managed to remain calm, though Lacey was seething enough for the both of them.

The brute of a man and his simpering wretch of a wife swirled out of the store and Tom fetched a tissue to wipe up the spit out chocolate mess they’d left behind.

“They were so rude,” Lacey said incredulously, as Tom cleaned.

“They’re staying at Carol’s B’n’B,” he explained, looking up at her from his hands and knees as he circled the rag over the tiles. “She said they’re awful. The man, Buck, sends every single meal he orders back to the kitchen. After he’s eaten half of it, mind you. The wife keeps claiming the shampoos and soaps are giving her a rash, but whenever Carol supplies her with something new, the originals have mysteriously disappeared.” He stood up, shaking his head. “They’re making everyone’s life a misery.”

“Huh,” Lacey said, popping the last bit of croissant into her mouth. “I should count myself lucky, then. I doubt they have any interest in antiques.”

Tom patted the counter. “Touch wood, Lacey. You don’t want to jinx yourself.”

Lacey was about to say she didn’t believe in such a superstition, but then she thought of the elderly man and the ballerina from earlier, and decided it was better not to tempt fate. She tapped the countertop.

“There. The jinx is officially broken. Now, I’d better go. I still have tons of stuff to value before the auction tomorrow.”

The bell above the door tinkled and Lacey looked over to see a large group of kids come hurtling inside. They were dressed in party frocks and were wearing hats. Amongst them, a small, tubby blonde child dressed as a princess and carrying a helium balloon, yelled to no one in particular, “It’s my birthday!”

Lacey turned back to Tom with a small smirk on her lips. “Looks like you’re about to have your hands full here.”

He looked stunned, and more than a little apprehensive.

Lacey hopped off the stool, pecked Tom on the lips, then left him at the mercy of a bunch of eight-year-old girls.

*

Back in her store, Lacey got on with valuing the last of the Navy items for tomorrow’s auction.

She was particularly thrilled with a sextant she’d sourced from the most unlikely of locations; a charity store. She’d only gone in to buy the retro games console they had displayed in the window—something she knew her computer-obsessed nephew Frankie would love—when she spotted it. An early nineteenth-century, mahogany-cased, ebony-handled, double-framed sextant! It was just sitting there on the shelf, amongst novelty mugs and some vomit-inducingly cute models of teddy bears.

Lacey hadn’t quite believed her eyes. She was an antiques novice, after all. Such a find must’ve been wishful thinking. But when she’d rushed over to inspect it, the underside of its base had been inscribed with the words ‘Bate, Poultry, London’, which confirmed to her she was holding a genuine, rare Robert Brettell Bate!

Lacey had called Percy straight away, knowing he was the only person in the world who’d be as excited as she was. She’d been right. The man had sounded like all his Christmases had come early.

“What are you going to do with it?” he asked. “You’ll have to hold an auction. A rare item like that can’t just be popped on eBay. It deserves fanfare.”

While Lacey had been surprised someone Percy’s age knew what eBay was, her mind attached to the word auction. Could she do it? Hold another one so soon after the first? She’d had an entire estate’s worth of Victorian furniture to sell before. She couldn’t just hold an auction for this one item. Besides, it felt immoral to buy a rare antique from a charity store, knowing its true value.

“I know,” Lacey said, hitting on an idea. “I’ll use the sextant as a lure, as the main attraction of a general auction. Then whatever proceeds I make from its sale can go back to the charity shop.”

That would solve two dilemmas; the icky feeling of buying something under its true value from a charity, and what to do with it once she had.

And so that’s how the whole plan had come together. Lacey had bought the sextant (and the console, which she’d dropped in her excitement and almost forgotten to pick back up), decided on a naval theme, then got to work curating the auction and spread the buzz about it.

The sound of the bell over the door pulled Lacey from her reverie. She looked up to see her gray-haired, cardigan-clad neighbor, Gina, waltzing in with Boudicca, her Border Collie, in tow.

“What are you doing here?” Lacey asked. “I thought we were meeting for lunch.”

“We are!” Gina replied, pointing at the large brass and wrought iron clock hanging on the wall.

Lacey glanced over. Along with everything in the “Nordic corner,” the clock was amongst her favorite decorative features in the store. It was an antique (of course), and looked like it might have once been attached to the front of a Victorian workhouse.

“Oh!” Lacey exclaimed, finally noticing the time. “It’s one-thirty. Already? The day’s flown by.”

It was the first time the two friends had planned to close up shop for an hour and have a proper lunch together. And by “planned,” what really had happened was Gina had plied Lacey with too much wine one evening and twisted her arm until she caved and agreed to it. It was true that pretty much every local and visitor in Wilfordshire town spent the lunch hour inside a cafe or pub anyway, rather than perusing the shelves of an antiques store, and that the hour closure was very unlikely to dent Lacey’s trade, but now that Lacey  had learned it was a bank holiday Monday, she started second-guessing herself.

“Maybe it’s not a good idea after all,” Lacey said.

Gina put her hands on her hips. “Why? What excuse have you come up with this time?”

“Well, I didn’t realize it was a bank holiday today. There are tons more people around than usual.”

“Tons more people, not tons more customers,” Gina said. “Because every single one of them will be sitting inside a cafe or pub or coffee shop in about ten minutes’ time, just like we should be! Come on, Lacey. We talked about this. No one buys antiques over lunchtime!”

“But what if some of them are Europeans?” Lacey said. “You know they do everything later on the continent. If they have dinner at nine or ten p.m., then what time do they have lunch? Probably not one!”

Gina took her by the shoulders. “You’re right. But they spend the lunch hour having a siesta instead. If there are any European tourists, they’ll be asleep for the next hour. To put it into words you might understand, not shopping in an antiques store!”

“Okay, fine. So the Europeans will be sleeping. But what if they’ve come from further afield and their biological clocks are still out of sync, so they’re not hungry for lunch and feel like shopping for antiques instead?”

Gina just folded her arms. “Lacey,” she said, in a motherly way. “You need a break. You’ll run yourself into the ground if you spend every minute of every day inside these four walls, however artfully decorated they may be.”

Lacey twisted her lips. Then she placed the sextant down on the counter and headed for the shop floor. “You’re right. How much harm can one hour really do?”

They were words Lacey would soon come to regret.

CHAPTER THREE

“I’ve been dying to visit the new tearoom,” Gina said exuberantly, as she and Lacey strolled along the seafront, their canine companions racing one another through the surf, wagging their tails with excitement.

“Why?” Lacey asked. “What’s so good about it?”

“Nothing in particular,” Gina replied. She lowered her voice. “It’s just that I heard the new owner used to be a pro-wrestler! I can’t wait to meet him.”

Lacey couldn’t help herself. She tipped her head back and guffawed at just how ludicrous a rumor it was. But, then again, it hadn’t been that long ago that everyone in Wilfordshire thought she might be a murderer.

“How about we take that hearsay with a pinch of salt?” she suggested to Gina.

Her friend “pfft” her, and the two set about giggling.

The beach was looking particularly attractive in the warmer weather. It wasn’t quite hot enough for sunbathing or paddling, but plenty more people were starting to walk along it, and buy ice creams from the trucks. As they went, the two friends fell into easy chatter, and Lacey filled Gina in with the whole David phone call, and the touching story of the man and the ballerina. Then they reached the tearoom.

It was housed in what was once a canoe garage, in a prime seafront location. The prior owners had been the ones to convert it, turning the old shed into a somewhat dingy cafe—something Gina had taught her was referred to in England as a “greasy spoon.” But the new owner had vastly improved on the design. They’d cleaned the brick frontage, removing streaks of seagull poop that had probably been there since the fifties. They’d put a chalkboard outside, proclaiming organic coffee in the cursive writing of a professional sign writer. And the original wooden doors had been replaced by a shiny glass one.

Gina and Lacey approached. The door swished open automatically, as if to beckon them inside. They exchanged a glance and went in.

The pungent smell of fresh coffee beans greeted them, followed by the scent of wood, wet soil, and metal. Gone were the old floor to ceiling white tiles, the pink vinyl booths, and linoleum flooring. Now, all the old brickwork had been exposed and the old floorboards had been varnished with a dark stain. Keeping up with the rustic vibe, all the tables and chairs appeared to be made from the planks of reclaimed fishing boats—which accounted for the smell of wood—and copper piping concealed all the wiring of several large, Edison-style bulbs that hung down from the high ceiling—accounting for the metallic smell. The earthy smell was caused by the fact that every spare inch of space had a cactus in it.

Gina gripped Lacey’s arm and whispered with displeasure, “Oh no. It’s … trendy!”

Lacey had recently learned during an antique-buying trip to Shoreditch in London that trendy was not a compliment to be used in the place of ‘stylish’, but rather had a subtext off frivolous, pretentious and arrogant.

“I like it,” Lacey countered. “It’s very well designed. Even Saskia would agree.”

“Careful. You don’t want to get pricked,” Gina added, making an exaggerated swerving motion to avoid a large prickly-looking cactus.

Lacey “tsked” her and went up to the counter, which was made of burnished bronze, and had a matching old coffee machine that surely must be decorative. Despite what Gina had heard, there wasn’t a man who resembled a wrestler standing behind it, but a woman with a choppy, dyed blond bob and a white tank top that complemented her golden skin and bulging biceps.

Gina caught Lacey’s eye and nodded at the woman’s muscles in a see, I told you so, way.

“What can I get ya?” the woman asked in the thickest Aussie accent Lacey had ever heard.

Before Lacey had a chance to ask for a cortado, Gina nudged her in the ribs.

“She’s like you!” Gina exclaimed. “An American!”

Lacey couldn't stop herself from laughing. “Erm… no, she’s not.”

“I’m from Australia,” the woman corrected Gina, good-naturedly.

“Are you?” Gina asked, looking perplexed. “But you sound exactly like Lacey to me.”

The blond woman instantly flicked her gaze back to Lacey.

“Lacey?” she repeated, as if she’d already heard of her. “You’re Lacey?”

“Uh… yeah….” Lacey said, feeling quite odd that this stranger somehow knew about her.

“You own the antiques store, right?” the woman added, putting down the little notepad she’d been holding and shoving her pencil behind her ear. She stuck out her hand.

Feeling even more bemused, Lacey nodded and took the hand being offered to her. The woman had a strong grip. Lacey briefly wondered whether there was any truth to the wrestling rumors after all.

“Sorry, but how do you know who I am?” Lacey queried, as the woman pumped her arm up and down vigorously with a wide grin on her face.

“Because every local person who comes in here and realizes I’m a foreigner immediately goes on to tell me all about you! About how you also moved here from abroad on your own. And how you started your own store from scratch. I think the whole of Wilfordshire is rooting for us to become best friends.”

She was still shaking Lacey’s hand vigorously, and when Lacey spoke, her voice shook from the vibration.