Page 20 of Queen of Nothing

The golden chandeliers on either side of the grander piece are more Amelia’s style—something she would have picked out for the renovation she put Thornbury Park through.

My bubble of admiration is burst when Serena huffs beside me, like she’s spoken and I haven’t heard her.

I only get the chance to look at her before she’s tugging the bag strap off my shoulder.

Neither one of us has thawed apparently. But I’m stubbornly holding onto the take that only I have the right to be so pissed.

The glare I rinse over her isn’t kind as she turns her back on me and stalks over to the sleek mahogany desk—a desk that looks as though it was snatched right out of the seventeenth century.

There, the man is shuffling papers and putting them away in a drawer, his puffy eyes even more bloodshot in the light.

The desk doesn’t have a plate on it to say what it is, where it’s from, what makes it special—but this whole boutique is like that.

It’s a matter of ‘if you know, you know, and if you don’t, the purchase is not for you.’

Grandmother Ethel would know.

One of her beloved pieces is Bram Stoker’s writing desk.

The man jimmies the stubborn drawer shut. The whitish blonde of his hair glistens under the light as he lifts his tired stare to Serena.

He offers, “Coffee?”

“Yes, please,” I answer before Serena can answer for us.

I’ve been surviving off poverty coffee, and I need something luxurious.

“We are in a hurry,” Serena says, sharp, and throws a look over her shoulder at me.

I force a tight smile back at her. “Then I’ll drink it in a hurry.”

The man hesitates for only a heartbeat before he makes his way to the coffee machine in the corner—a real coffee machine with a milk steamer and everything.

Something warm spreads through my chest, like the luxury and peace all around me is luring me back in.

I wish I was stronger than what I am, stronger than cracking after a few days of travel and stale motels and bad coffee. But all of this just makes me miss home.

Serena starts organising the pieces on a linen cloth draped over the desk.

I leave that business to her.

Not like I would know what to do. How to barter. What I should accept for an offer.

I don’t know how much any piece of mine is supposed to fetch. If jewellers pay eighty percent, seventy, fifty, twenty—how would I know?

How would Serena know?

I just take my coffee when it’s handed to me, and the man smiles, which weathers his face another decade.

He downs his own coffee in one fluid gulp, then joins Serena at the desk.

I sit on the chaise in the middle of the room.

A catalogue rests on the gorgeous gold-legged coffee table, very Louis XI—and it might be. Maybe stolen right out of history, like I suspect most of these pieces have been.

I pick through the catalogue, page after page of antiques up for auction next month.

Again, I think of Grandmother Ethel, and how much she would love this. Maybe she already has it in her calendar to attend the auction.