Luck. Yes, everyone needed a little bit of luck in their life, didn’t they?
Two
House 2 Home, Kensington, London
‘Well, Brandon, tell me, what can your favourite estate agent do for you today?’
Rach was already at her desk when Keeley arrived at the estate agency only a fifteen-minute stroll from her family home. Feet up on her desk, taking advantage of every tilt the chair had to offer, a Santa hat complete with bell over her wavy blonde hair and a green dress that looked straight out of Father Christmas’s workshop, Rach nestled the phone under her face and held up her coffee mug mouthing the words ‘it’s a two-sugar morning’. Then the mug dropped a little.
‘I beg your pardon!’ Rach exclaimed. Her expression was belying the tone and there was a definite spark in her eyes. ‘I was expecting you to ask me about the three-bedroom mews house, not say something that would put you straight to the top of Santa’s naughty list.’ She gave a smutty giggle as Keeley took the mug from her hands and headed through the office towards the kitchen at the rear.
Rach was an estate agent. Keeley wasn’t. Keeley wasn’t anything really. Since the night the taxi had crashed, everything had fallen away, in slow motion, like a snowy nightmare sequence in a film. One moment she was set to start a new life – leaving her job as an assistant to an interior designer and starting her very own business – the next she was in an operating theatre fighting for her life while her sister tragically lost hers. Everything had changed that night. Bea gone. Her career finished before it had even begun. And now, here she was, living back at home and working as a ‘house doctor’ for House 2 Home. It wasn’t exactly how she thought she would be using her artistic eye. She had envisaged her working day to involve the careful designing of a bespoke wallpaper as opposed to deciding what cactus looked best on what Ikea sideboard. But it was a job and it paid OK and there was that short commute. Plus, to ease her mum’s anxiety further, the business belonged to a friend of the family, Roland Krantz, so you could guarantee if she ran a temperature, had a headache or was in any way not one hundred per cent feeling top notch, Lizzie would know about it by lunchtime…
Keeley put the kettle on and leaned back against the worktop, studying the advent calendar Rach had stuck up at least two weeks ago. Only November and doors open already. Surely that was bad luck. She sighed. What was it with the word ‘luck’ today?
Rach marched into the kitchen. ‘Bloody Randy Brandon is up for it already and it’s not even eight-thirty.’ She looked at her watch as if to clarify her statement. ‘It’s not even eight-thirty. What are you doing here already?’
‘My mum accused me of dicing with death by trying to get a giant crumpet out of the toaster with a fork,’ Keeley answered. ‘And then I ate the crumpet… with some blueberry jam none of us were supposed to be eating and, before I left, she hit my dad over the head with an artisan multigrain baguette because some cranberries got burned.’
‘Shit,’ Rach replied. ‘And here I was complaining about being offered a shag before my second coffee.’
‘Yes, well, I definitely have the best excuse for having two sugars in my coffee,’ Keeley said with a smile.
‘Yeah and hold that thought,’ Rach said. ‘Because you might want to make it three sugars when I tell you what Roland has in store for you today.’ She pulled at the hem of her very short costume.
‘Oh God,’ Keeley said, closing her eyes, taking a deep breath and then opening them again, watching as Rach ripped at another door on the advent calendar. ‘It’s nothing to do with the radio station, is it?’
Last year Roland had sent her down there to record a jingle for the new festive advertising he had planned for House 2 Home. It was the last time she had ever joined in with singing in the office. One chorus of ‘It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas’ and Roland had turned all Louis Walsh and said she was ‘through to the next round’ – of which there was one round, the final, having to sing words that were Christmassy and all rhymed with ‘en suite’. She had felt the furthest from festive last year and had only joined the team a week prior to that appointment with Kensington FM and, back then, even a heavy laugh pained both sides of her abdomen. But Roland always took the angle that what didn’t kill you made you successful. Rach said he had once had that phrase printed on compliments slips and a tote bag…
‘No,’ Rach said, laughing as she stuffed a chocolate in her mouth and opened a second advent door.
‘The school? Because, last time I went there, one girl attacked me with an ancient, heavy Bible and three glue sticks.’
‘Shall I put you out of your misery?’
‘Please. I won’t tell my mother it was you.’ Keeley held her breath.
‘Mr Peterson’s put his house on the market again. Roland wants you to get back in there and do your re-styling stuff.’
Keeley carried on holding her breath. She could feel just about everything getting tighter. The waistband of her skirt. Her long socks inside her boots that had definitely shrunk in the tumble drier. Her heart…
‘No,’ Keeley finally said through shaky lips. ‘No, you’re winding me up. Roland said, six months ago, that even if Mr Peterson bought him all the scotch in Scotland he would never ever take him on as a client again.’
‘We-e-e-ell,’ Rach said, drawing the word out, her eyebrows going up under the rim of her Santa hat. ‘Let’s just say it could be a very dry Christmas in the Highlands.’
‘No!’ Keeley said, putting her hands into her hair and squeezing. ‘No, no, no! I can’t do it! I cannot do it!’
She really couldn’t do it. It had been too short a time to even think about stepping over the threshold of Mr Peterson’s house again. Mr Peterson’s two-bedroomed terrace, albeit on an illustrious street in the heart of Chelsea, was crammed with taxidermy animals that had all been hand-stuffed by Mr Peterson in a very dark, windowless basement room that looked more ‘torture chamber’ than it did the ‘family-room with annexe potential’ that Roland had described it as in the particulars. Six months ago, when Keeley had had to restyle it ready for viewings, she had said all the animals had to go, as did some of his rather dated (and blood-spattered) furniture. The house was professionally cleaned, contemporary furnishings were hired, but on the second viewing – a family with three-year-old twins – two beady-eyed pheasants and a mole had fallen out of the wardrobe in the master bedroom and scared everyone half to death. It seemed Mr Peterson’s commitment to selling his property didn’t stretch to giving up his dead creatures even for a few weeks. And the client was the kind of stubborn Keeley knew couldn’t be changed.
‘I’m not sure it’s up for debate if you want to get your Christmas bonus,’ Rach said, patting her shoulder.
‘I’ll forego the bonus.’ It couldn’t be that much. Roland was more frugal than Martin Lewis.
‘He’s promised no animal surprises,’ Rach added.
‘I don’t believe him.’
‘Keeley, that isn’t like you.’
‘What isn’t like me?’