“Uh…”
I help him out. “Does any of it match?”
“No?”
We move on until we reach a bookshop. “How about in here?”
“No,” he says more softly, then adds, “It doesn’t look like a shop at all. More like Alice’s living room.”
I hadn’t planned on playing a game of hunt the mismatched aesthetic, but now that Dair knows what to look out for, he joins in. We cross bridges between docks, where I pause to watch a splashy reminder of Harry—big-money speedboats roar past, racing each other. I leave them behind to race after Dair instead, who must have come to the same conclusion as me: There’s a market for the furniture currently filling Alice’s place to the brim.
That realisation does something to him. Something needed, I think. Our hunt ends outside a bistro, where the scent of basil and garlic winds around us, and his stomach rumbles loud enough to hear it.
“Time for lunch?”
“Aye.” He scans a menu. I don’t focus on any of the options. The prices have all my attention. Everyone who eats here must be made of money. I say a silent sorry to my bank balance, but if he’s hungry, I’m gonna feed him.
Dair has other ideas.
“There’s a Greggs over there. I could murder a steak bake.” He points across the water at a takeaway bakery, and yes, a lunchtime meal deal for a fiver is more my price range, but I snag his elbow.
“I’d buy you lunch here if you wanted.”
He looks through the bistro window, perhaps seeing what else I noticed apart from the interior design vibe. It’s an intimate setting. We could share a table for two with a candle flickering between us, and just like that, it’s what I want most—me and Dair on a real date.
His smile is sweet. A little sad too. So is his denial. “Another time.” He says that as if he has more than a few weeks left before heading home to Scotland, and like I’ll have a million other chances to wine and dine him before he has to give his keys up. “You have things to do.” Dair runs a hand through his hair,reminding me that Marilyn will be waiting to give me a haircut. Or maybe he’s conscious that he’s overdue a trim of his own. “If we were going out, I’d want to look better for you.”
I’m not sure he could. Perhaps he reads that thought. Dair’s nose was already pink from the river breeze. His cheeks join in, turning rosy, but he takes a turn at snagging my elbow to tow me back across a bridge, where he lets me buy him the cheap lunch he wanted.
We find a bench overlooking the Thames to eat under a patio heater, and between bites of my own lunch, I slide my phone out of my pocket and ask Siri a series of questions.
Dair eats, listening in silence to my verbal searching for where these businesses sourced their furnishings, because I bet they didn’t do what I did for Flynn, traipsing around endless auctions.
By the time Siri comes up with some links, Dair is done eating. I pass my phone to him. “Take a look.” He does, and I take a huge bite of my lunch to stop myself from asking what he thinks, and the whole time he clicks and reads, a chorus of school kids have a good laugh at my expense in my head.
They shut up the second he asks, “You… you really think this could be an option? Vintage furniture for hire?” He slides closer to show me similar furniture to what he already delivered to my doorstep, no two pieces matching, like in that coffee shop where, according to a retired Horse Guard, Adey is wasting his talents.
Dair reads some more, the tip of a finger touching the text, his lips moving silently before he swallows. “It says there’s a huge demand for rustic furniture.” I wonder if he pictures the same old Welsh dresser as me. “There’s a market for imperfection.”
He scrolls to a photo of a wedding, a shabby-chic bow tied to the back of each chair lined up behind a happy couple. Then hefinds a dining room laid for a wedding breakfast with the same old-money stately home vibe Flynn wanted to fool his investors.
He could have saved a lot of his time, and all my effort, if he’d used this supplier.
But it would have cost him a whole lot more cash than the pennies I paid at auction, which Dair points out.
“They really charge this much just to hire out tables, chairs, and display cabinets?” His finger traces a steep rental price list, but for once he smiles about his finances. “That could be good news for…” He points up, as if at that big bill hanging over his head.
I hate to burst his hopeful bubble. Hate too that being the voice of reason makes me sound a whole lot like my cousin. That’s a surprising insight, because I don’t want to crush Dair’s dreams. I only want to save him from pain. “This is what they charge punters, mate. Not what they’d pay you if they did buy any of your stuff.”
“Oh.” He nods swiftly like he already knew that. “Of course. The real money is in renting it out over and over.” Dair swallows, silent. His smile is gone, and I can’t help working hard to restore it.
“But selling your stuff to someplace like this could raise more than you’d get on Marketplace or at a house-clearance auction. And it would save you a fuckton of time. You could offload it all at once instead of piece by piece. Plus, there’s still all that china.”
He looks up at me, so trusting. “They’d take that as well?”
“Well, no. But that’s where your inventory comes in. It will be easier to shift once you know exactly what you’ve got.” Our conversation about takers is still on my mind. “Before selling any of it, you should double-check that you don’t have anything…” I almost say,that isn’t completely worthless.
I prefer his more optimistic version. It comes with a return of his smile. “That isn’t actually worth a fortune?”
