The Cinderella Moment

A flicker of movement caught Margaret’s eye; she swung round. ‘Get that fucking dog off the furniture. Now!’ she shrieked at the au pair, who had just appeared through the sitting-room doors.

‘How many times do I have to tell you that the bloody thing’s not allowed in here? Not in here, do you understand? Not – in – here. Put it outside in the run.’

‘But Mr Devlin, he loves Snoops,’ said the girl defensively, stepping between the dog – a wildly over-enthusiastic springer spaniel – and Margaret, to protect him from her icy glare.

‘Don’t you dare tell me what that miserable lying bastard loves. Put the dog out now. Look at the state of that sofa! Sodding animal, hair everywhere, and it keeps cocking its leg up the standard lamps and making the place stink.’

The girl scooped up the dog in her great big arms. It wasn’t just her arms that were big. She was heavyset and clumsy, with a face as flat and round as a full moon, hands like coal shovels, and a body like a pile of wet sacks. Margaret Devlin had gone to the agency and had personally chosen her from all the girls on file, just in case there was a repeat of the blonde Swede incident or the curvaceous Italian accident, which had resulted in Margaret having to whip a hysterical 23-year-old rabid Catholic off to a private clinic and pay her a year’s wages as hush money before sending her on a pilgrimage to Lourdes. Oh yes, James would be so much easier to deal with if he was dead.

‘And then you can go and collect Alison and Christopher from school.’

‘Yes, Mrs Devlin.’

Margaret checked her appearance again; the police had said they’d pop by to let her know how things were going, and she wanted to make sure she looked the part. Maybe black was a bit premature. She hurried upstairs to change into something navy or chocolate brown and put on a touch more lipstick…

‘Devious little bastard has done a runner. I should have bloody guessed. No backbone, no balls. I don’t like it when people take the piss,’ Gordie Mann said reflectively, almost to himself. He spoke with a soft Scottish accent. He was a businessman and banker of sorts – the sort that don’t offer internet access or radio alarm clocks when you open an account, but do come round and break your legs if you miss a payment.

He leaned across the table and looked vacantly into the middle distance for a few seconds before his attention snapped back to the small man in a beige mack seated opposite him.

‘The thing is, Mr Marshall, in a perfect world I’d like to find him and fix him and get my money back. But the problem is I’ve got to find him first – and that’s where you come in. There’s way too much police interest in this one already. He’s not just shafted me but all his bloody shareholders as well. If I go around shaking anybody’s tree, the Old Bill are going to be down on me like a ton of bricks. That bastard owes me. Him and his fucking “sure bets”. I should have known better. I should have sussed him out. Greedy wee git.’

Mr Marshall nodded. Not that he really understood dotcoms or futures or any of that crap, but he did understand revenge and frustration and a decent fee – unlike Gordie, who, he sensed, was more fluent in pain and fear. ‘So how would you like to start, Mr Mann?’

Gordie thought about it for a moment or two. ‘I thought you’d know.’

Mr Marshall nodded. ‘To some extent it was a rhetorical question. It’s usual in cases like this to start close to home.’ He took out a notebook. ‘You say that you know Mrs Devlin?’

Gordie reddened slightly. ‘Aye, I’ve known Margaret a good few years. Fine woman, is Margaret,’ he added, in a way that Mr Marshall suspected was meant to sound casual.

Mr Marshall tucked a stray thought away so that it didn’t show on his face. ‘In that case, I think we should start by paying Mrs Devlin a visit.’

Jake was right: Barney’s shop had to be seen to be believed. The main doorway was so low that you almost had to stoop to get through it and then immediately step down on to a broad flagstone floor. The windows were unmanageably small with deep sills, and Cass assumed that it would be dark and cosy inside. She was wrong.

Inside, the shop opened up like an Aladdin’s cave in a cavernous space. Part of the upper floor had been cut away, adding to the feeling of openness and light. A spiral staircase, made from what looked like a wisp of twisted silver and steel, led up into the room above, while modern prints hung on the chalky white walls, with long mirrors artfully catching every ounce of usable light. Nothing inside was dark or heavy – instead, jewellery was arranged in elegant discreetly illuminated glass cases set with salt-whitened driftwood and plaits of sea-tangled rope. Across the ceiling and down the walls thin curling bronze lighting tracks lit magical corners and hidden recesses. One was full of sea birds; waders and spoonbills made from seed pods and wire and other found objects, picking their way through a landscape of seashells and creamy white pebbles. In another alcove was a selection of silk flowers, so realistic that when she first walked by, Cass thought she could smell them. In a third was a flutter of butterflies made from crinkled handmade white paper, silver filaments and azure blue beads.

Cass stared; it was amazing and beautiful and impossible to know where to look next.

Behind the cash desk a tall languid blonde wearing manically tight jeans, an off-the-shoulder leopard-skin print top and a creamy fur stole uncurled herself slowly and smiled lazily in their direction. Barney extended a hand to introduce her.

‘Cass, I would like you to meet Daisy. She is a little cow. Between them, she and her bitch of a mother are bleeding me dry. She hates me, but other than that she is quite a nice girl. Although her taste in clothes leaves something to be desired.’ He glared at Daisy with what Cass took to be censure; not that the girl noticed. ‘It’s some sort of gift she has. She always manages to look like a cross between a streetwalker and circus performer,’ he said wearily.

Daisy pulled a face at Barney, although in amongst it all her smile broadened and instantly Cass could see the family resemblance.

‘Actually, we both hate him,’ said Daisy, warming to the subject. ‘He plied my mother with drink and drugs, seduced her, and then left her for a younger woman. It totally ruined her life and broke her heart, you know. She’s never really got over him.’

Barney’s jaw dropped and he stared at Daisy aghast. ‘Is that what she told you?’ he spluttered.

Daisy shook her head. ‘Good God, no. But since she can’t talk about you without swearing and throwing things, I’ve had to read between the lines and make it up. Is it all right if I shut up shop now?’

Barney took a moment or two to regain his composure and then said, ‘Another half hour.’

Daisy’s bottom lip jutted out grumpily. ‘Oh, go on. It’s been really quiet today.’

Barney was unmoved. ‘There may be a lastminute rush.’ Daisy was still not impressed, so Barney continued, ‘You see the opening times on the door, on that little sign? Well, when it says on there that we’re open, funnily enough, we’re supposed to be. Bit quirky, I know, but it’s an idea you can get used to over time.’

Daisy sniffed and carried on looking hard done by.

‘If you’ve got Daisy…’ Cass began.

‘Oh, but that’s just it – I haven’t got Daisy,’ Barney said. ‘Not only is she unreliable, but she’s off soon on her travels, on this gap-year thing that everyone does these days – and she is expecting me to help fund it. I told her she would have to work her passage.’

‘And believe me, I am,’ growled the teenager.

Hate had never looked so affectionate.

Barney turned his attention back to Cass. ‘So what do you think of my emporium, then?’

Cass shook her head. ‘I don’t know what to say. It’s amazing.’

‘I knew you’d like it. Wait,’ said Barney, holding a finger to his lips. ‘There’s more.’ Like a mad pied piper he indicated she should follow him upstairs.

‘Daisy, do the lights, will you?’ he said over his shoulder.

The gallery proper was painted white, the uneven walls with their odd-shaped bricks covered in crumbly flat whitewash, which brought out the beauty of the pale sanded wood floors. The ceiling opened up into a pitched roof space set with skylights and tiny twinkling halogen spots. The current exhibition was of abstract seascapes in the most wonderful soft blues, greens and golds. Cass was enchanted. Even more so when she looked at the current catalogue and realised the work was all Barney’s.

She stared at him. ‘For someone so horrible, you paint like an angel.’

He nodded sagely. ‘I know, it’s a complete bastard, isn’t it? I think we would all prefer to believe that talent is visited on the worthy, the humble and the genuinely deserving.’

Cass raised an eyebrow.

‘But you don’t have to worry,’ said Barney. ‘I’m none of those things. Now, how about I show you the studio, and then we can go and have an early supper? I’m starving. There is this wonderful little Italian place down the road. The staff fight all the time and swear at each other – I feel so at home. We’ll take Daisy so’s she doesn’t have to go home to her poor demented mother on an empty stomach. After you…’ He indicated a small door to one side of the gallery, set back in what should have been an outside wall or maybe the wall of the adjoining property. Barney grunted when Cass mentioned it.

‘The arse ache that’s caused me over the years. It’s a flying freehold. To be honest, I’m seriously thinking about renting somewhere else to work. I’ve got a room in my mother’s place, but I can’t work there – she never shuts up,’ he continued as Cass headed up a set of stairs that twisted round so sharply they were almost a spiral, while behind her Barney struggled and swore, puffing and blowing like a train. ‘Nag, nag nag; the woman is a complete menace. I’m sure my father only died to get some bloody peace.’

The room Cass stepped into had to be above someone else’s shop or storeroom. The roof had skylights and, in contrast to Barney’s domestic life, was almost clinically clean and tidy, practically spartan. Painted white, one wall was shelved from floor to ceiling, each shelf neatly stacked with sketchbooks arranged according to the dates running down their spines; albums, magazines and books arranged alphabetically; labelled boxes, jars of brushes, bottles of linseed oil and turps. There was a set of Perspex drawers filled with tubes of paint; neatly stacked tins of charcoal and pastels; a jam jar full of pencils which sat alongside another full of feathers and a third and fourth with brushes and palette knives. One shelf held a row of pebbles that ran unbroken from one end to the other. Against the wall adjoining the shelves, boards stacked in a metal frame, canvas stretched and ready in another. But all these things were so tidily and methodically arranged that the studio felt uncluttered. An easel dominated the centre of the room, the bare floorboards below it covered with a delicate filigree of spilt gold, blue and red paint.

‘Those bloody stairs play havoc with my back,’ grumbled Barney. ‘I keep thinking it would make a decent storeroom, but I’d only fill it up with crap. If you like it, you could use it – if you want to, that is,’ he added grudgingly. ‘There’s a kitchenette thing through there and a toilet.’ He waved towards another door in the far wall and then pulled a cloth off something fixed on a cantilevered arm to the wall opposite the easel. Underneath was a small television monitor, currently switched off.

‘It’s the shop,’ said Barney in answer to Cass’s unspoken question. ‘In theory, you could work up here and mind the fort, although in practice it is a perfect fucking nuisance. You just get into something and you’re interrupted by some bloody moron wanting to know if you sell T-shirts. And if you don’t go down, they get annoyed. Assuming you’re that quick. People are in and out before you can get down the stairs – nicking the stock, stealing money out of the till…Although I suppose the bonus is that at least you’ve got their faces on video for when you take the thieving bastards to court.’ He looked up at her. ‘So, when can you start? You are going to take the job?’

Cass shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ she said, trying hard to sound noncommittal, while knowing that she planned to say yes.

Once they had closed the shop, Barney, Daisy and Cass walked down to the restaurant, Barney and Daisy bickering all the way. Cass smiled to herself. Jake was right: a summer in Brighton was exactly what she needed.

Margaret Devlin looked at the man on the doorstep and said with genuine surprise, ‘Gordie, how are you?’ He was the last person she had expected to see.

He smiled. ‘More to the point, how are you, Margaret?’