Page 2 of You’re So Vein

But Augustin Durant is only ever serious.

“Sorry?” My voice echoes in the silent room. “What did you just say?”

Augustin’s gaze flicks over me, like a cat regarding a fly. “Councillor Ahuja, you heard me perfectly fine. Do you have an actual question?”

I stand. My chair squeaks like a toxic ex begging me to return.

“A question implies you’ll give a reasonable answer, and that’s not possible.”

There’s a cough behind me. Councillor Bolger becomes engrossed in the previous meeting minutes. Councillor White mouths “not again” to Mowbray, who is reaching for the plate of Jaffa Cakes.

“As I was saying, shops and businesses will be able to open their doors from six pm onwards, after the work crews have gone home. We will install makeshift bridges to allow access over the open drains. This should mitigate—”

“Let me get this straight,” I huff. “You want every small business in the village to become nocturnal?”

He’s insane. He can’t ask people to do that.

What about Papa’s takeaways? It’s already struggling without him in the kitchen. If we lose our lunchtime customers, we’ll be in trouble. The last thing my parents need right now is more stress.

What about my business? I’ve been spending so much time helping out my family that I’ve been neglecting it, but if I can’t open the tourism office during the day, how will I attract the tourists who stop by the village on the London coaches?

What if the only thing I can do is fly tours at night?

My blood freezes.

Anything but that.

Papa would have a creative solution. He should be the one leading council meetings in his ridiculous hats and presiding proudly over the village fair and approving all of my tourism initiatives without a fight. Instead, we’re going to get stuffy Augustin and his stormwater system and a month of lost revenue.

Cancer is a dick.

“It’s a temporary inconvenience.” Augustin’s eyes flash with exasperation, as if I’m the one being unreasonable.

“You say temporary inconvenience, I say financial ruin. People won’t change their shopping habits to the evenings because you decree it. They’ll go to a nearby village, and Argleton shopkeepers will lose their loyal customers.”

“If they’re so quick to shop outside of the village, how loyal were they?” Augustin spreads his hands. Behind him, I catch the flicker of green. The potted plant by the window almost looks as if it’s trembling in sympathetic rage, which is of course absurd, as plants have better taste than people and would never sympathise with Augustin Durant. “If you’re concerned about the financial implications, the council may be able to offer limited compensation, but it will require us to dip into the arts and culture fund—”

“So you’ll take money from events that bring in much-needed tourism revenue and make people happy to fund some stupid pipes—”

“Kooky festivals are not essential. Delaying the stormwater works further risk catastrophic failure. And with the severe weather patterns forecasted for the winter months—”

Okay, that potted plant is definitely trembling. How odd.

“Whose fault is it that the wastewater system needs repairing?” I fire back. “Could it be a certain councillor who spent the entire village improvement fund on buying retractable sunshades without considering how they would attach to the Grade I listed buildings around the green?”

A murmur of agreement ripples through the room. The retractable sunshades weren’t Augustin’s finest hour. He pauses, his jaw stone, his shoulders tight with tension. The air thickens, like clouds rolling in before a storm.

“Councillor Ahuja,” he says stiffly. “Please sit down and allow me to finish my—”

“Not until you explain how you plan to look the shopkeepers of this village, like Celeste Lucas, and Mina Wilde, and Beth Duncan, and Isis and Dora Meriwether, and my own father, in the eye and tell them you don’t care about their livelihoods.”

Tendrils spill from the plant pot, uncoiling across the floor. The maintenance volunteers really need to get the plants under control. Maybe they should hire the Guerilla Gardener and get a little whimsy into this place.

“I am looking you in the eye,” Augustin says. That’s technically true. His amber eyes are locked on mine, the edges ablaze with flames that bleed into unfathomably dark centres. “And I’m telling you that this village matters more than individual inconvenience.”

That does it.

I think of Papa in his hospital bed, and how Augustin has reduced everything he cares about to individual inconvenience, and I grab the nearest thing, which happens to be a small helicopter-shaped stress ball I had made to give to corporate clients and now require when I’m in the same room as the acting mayor, and lob it at his stupid, unfairly attractive head.