The By Request Collection. Kate HardyЧитать онлайн книгу.
value to them. One scarf in one picture. Was that all it took to go from zero to person of interest?
With this lot it appeared so.
She hurried upstairs, back to their recently vacated suite. It looked different, smelt different with Alex’s belongings casually strewn around. His laptop was set up on the desk in the corner, a pair of his shoes left by the door. His book on the side table—not that he’d been doing much reading. Or work. Neither of them had. She liked it. Liked the casual mingling of their belongings.
Flora’s phone was in a drawer along with her charger. She hadn’t wanted it on, hadn’t wanted to be in contact with the outside world, to be reminded that this short idyll was temporary. She switched it on, her mind whirling while it powered up. Would this mean a run on her small amount of stock? If so would it be worth investing in more fabric? How would she fund it? How could she make and store decent amounts of stock in her small rented room? What if she did invest and demand dried up?
She shook her head. Talk about counting chickens! She might find that Mitzy and Bella were the only people who had even noticed the scarf—and only because she was wearing it.
Her phone sprang into life, pinging with a notification—and another and another like a much less musical one-note version of the sleigh bells. Social-media notifications, emails, voicemails. Flora stared at her buzzing screen and felt her head spin. She had only started the social-media accounts for her business to stop her sister, Minerva, nagging her but rarely used them. She didn’t know what to say to her tiny handful of followers.
‘Flora?’ The door had opened while she watched the notifications multiply. ‘We’re heading off.’ Alex paused, waiting for her to answer but she couldn’t find the words. ‘What is it?’
She handed him the phone and Alex stared at it incredulously.
‘What? Have you just won a popularity contest?’
‘I don’t know. I think it’s about a scarf but I don’t know where to start.’
‘A scarf? Is this the same scarf that has half the women downstairs frothing at the mouth?’
She nodded, the surrealism of the situation disorientating her. ‘Either that or I’ve won the lottery, been photographed kissing a boyband member or I am a long-lost princess. There are over fifty voicemail messages and I don’t know how many emails.’
The phone beeped again. ‘More than fifty...’ he peered at the phone ‘...although it looks as if at least half are from Minerva. Hold on.’ He put the phone back down a little gingerly, as if it were an unexploded bomb. ‘I am going to make our apologies to Camilla and I’ll help you sort this out.’
‘Your glass animals...’
‘Can wait. I’ll pop down tomorrow before the Christmas Ball. Wait here. Don’t touch anything.’
Flora sank onto the sofa, almost too distracted to notice just how uncomfortable it was. Her phone beeped a few more times and then it was mercifully silent. She unlooped the scarf from around her neck and passed it from one hand to the other, the silk cool under her fingertips. A midnight-blue silk with her snowflake design on it. She had only printed one roll of fabric. It was destined for the central square and edging for a handful of quilts, as the cuff lining on the shirts she had made Alex, Greg and Horatio, the lining of a few bags, some cushions and twenty or thirty scarves.
Her fabric design and sewing were a hobby that barely paid for itself. It took up time she should be spending trying to get her talents noticed so she could work in-house again or at least pick up some freelance contracts in her own field and leave the world of temping far behind.
She didn’t do it for money or fame. The truth was it just made her happy.
Just...
‘Right.’ Alex appeared back, the magazine in his hands and open at the fateful page. ‘It looks like this is the cause of all the fuss. I’ve just been asked by at least ten people if I can get them one of these scarves and they are all prepared to pay a great deal more than forty-five pounds.’ His brow wrinkled as he looked at the photo. ‘Who is this woman?’
‘You know who she is. That’s Lexy Chapman.’
He looked blank. ‘Nope. What does she do?’
That was a good question. What did she do apart from look cool and date famous people? ‘Right now she’s making my scarves sought after.’
He took the scarf from her loose grasp and held it up to the light, turning it this way and that. ‘I didn’t know you sold them. I just thought it was a hobby.’
‘It is a hobby.’ She turned away from his scrutiny, jumping to her feet and retrieving her phone from the side. ‘I have a little online shop, to help fund my projects, that’s all.’
‘Is it?’ But he didn’t probe any further. ‘Okay, this is how we’re going to play it. You listen to your voicemails and make a note of all the names, messages and numbers and we’ll see who you need to call back and when. I’ll log onto your email and social-media accounts, put a holding message on them and see if there’s anything really urgent. What do you think?’
Flora nodded. ‘Thanks, Alex.’ It was what she would have done but having some help would make it easier—and a lot faster. ‘I really appreciate it.’
‘Come on, what else are friends for?’ But he didn’t quite meet her eyes as he said it. Worry skittered along her skin, slow and sure as a cat on a fence. Had grabbing a few days’ pleasure meant the end of everything? Like a gambler staking everything on one last spin and losing. Was the thrill of watching the wheel turn and the ball hover on first red and then black worth it? That moment when anything was possible worth the inevitable knowledge that nothing was?
He opened his laptop. ‘I hope you can remember your passwords. Right, where shall I start?’
It didn’t take too long for Flora to open up each of her accounts for Alex, averting her eyes from the dozens of messages and multitudes of new followers. She retreated to the bed with a notebook, a pen and her phone ready to start listening to her messages. Alex was right; Minerva had been calling consistently all day. Flora steeled herself and began to listen.
Minerva, a fashion buyer from Rafferty’s, one of London’s most exclusive department stores, a couple of magazines, Minerva, Minerva—Minerva again. By the time she got to her sister’s seventh message Flora knew she’d better call her back.
‘At last!’ Her sister didn’t bother with formalities like ‘Hello’ or ‘How’s Austria?’
‘Evening, Merva,’ Flora said pointedly. But the point, as always, was lost.
‘I’m glad you’ve decided to emerge from hibernation. I couldn’t get hold of you or Alex.’
‘We’ve been working.’ Minerva hadn’t been able to get hold of Alex either? It was most unlike him not to have one phone in one hand and the other in front of him—although now Flora thought about it she had only seen him check his work phone and emails a few times—and she hadn’t seen his personal phone at all. Not since the ski lodge. Maybe he was enjoying living off grid just as she was. She glanced over at him. He was tapping away, frowning with concentration. Her entire body ached at his nearness.
Minerva’s tart tones recalled her to the matter at hand. ‘Working? Whatever. So who is handling this for you? I’ve asked around but no one has admitted it. Not surprisingly, I would never let you disappear at such a crucial time in a campaign. Unless that’s part of the plan, to drum up more interest? Too risky, I would have thought.’
Handling, campaign? It didn’t take too long for a conversation with her sister to feel like a particularly nasty crossword where the clues were in one language and the answers another. ‘Minerva,’ she said patiently. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Of course it didn’t take too long for people to work out