The Little Shop of Hopes and Dreams. Fiona Harper

THIRTY-SEVEN

       CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

       CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

       CHAPTER FORTY

       CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

       CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

       CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

       CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

       CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

       CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

       CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

       CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

       CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

       CHAPTER FIFTY

       CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

       CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

       CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

       CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

       CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

       CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

       Extract

       Endpage

       Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

      ‘What you need is another cosmopolitan.’

      Nicole Harrison swayed on her high heels and frowned at her best friend and soon-to-be business partner, who was starting to look a little fuzzy around the edges. ‘You sure about that?’

      She squinted at the large clock behind the bar of Déjà Vu, a trendy little place not too far from Covent Garden. Quarter to twelve. One more cocktail and she might not stay vertical until midnight, and she really wanted to be conscious when the new year started. Next year was the year when everything was going to fall into place and all her plans and hard work paid off.

      ‘‘Course I’m sure,’ Peggy said, beckoning the bartender with an elegant wave of her blood-red nails. ‘Best remedy for a broken heart.’

      Nicole took a few seconds to unfocus from the clock and refocus back on her friend. She blinked slowly. For a moment she’d forgotten this was a fancy-dress party. The sight of Doris Day sitting on the next stool had momentarily confused her. The real Peggy was loud and curvy, and while she often dressed in vintage, it was always something with a little more va-va-voom than this pastel frock. As Nicole stared at her, the white polka dots started to dance around on the pale pink background.

      ‘My heart’s not broken,’ she mumbled.

      At least not any more. But it had been. Once. What she’d felt today had just been an echo of that.

      ‘It was just an engagement announcement,’ she said, absent-mindedly accepting the glass of ruby liquid that Peggy slid in her direction. ‘And Jasper and I were over a long time ago.’

      It shouldn’t matter any more. It didn’t.

      ‘Well, he’s an idiot,’ Mia, her other best friend, muttered with her usual bluntness. ‘No matter how long ago he let you slip out of his fingers.’

      Mia had been sitting so quietly sipping her drink that Nicole had almost forgotten she was there, although she was hard to miss in her Lara Croft outfit, complete with chicken-fillet enhanced chest and thigh holsters. She wasn’t in the best of moods this evening, seeing as her army fiancé was out of the country on active duty. Lots of women got soppy when they missed their other halves, but Mia just got feisty.

      Nicole raised her glass. ‘To the idiot,’ she said and toasted her friend’s ineffable wisdom by downing the contents in one go.

      Only she knew she was lying. Jasper hadn’t been an idiot. Not at all. He was the most wonderful man she’d ever known.

      ‘Steady there, Nicole,’ Mia said. ‘You don’t normally put this much away.’

      Peggy sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘She’ll be fine. And it was either this or sitting home with six gallons of ice cream in those tatty tracksuit bottoms of hers, and I know which one I’d rather watch her do.’

      Mia frowned but nodded. ‘Forget the jerk,’ she said vehemently. ‘You were too good for him back then and you’re definitely too good for him now.’

      Nicole saluted her with her empty glass. Too right. She’d worked really hard to become the woman she was today, the kind of woman who could bring the Jaspers of this world to their knees, reflected in her choice of costume this evening. Who embodied effortless elegance more than Audrey Hepburn in her Breakfast at Tiffany’s little black dress?

      Okay, maybe Holly Golightly herself hadn’t always been cool, calm and dignified, but it was the overall image that counted. It was iconic.

      ‘Stuff Jasper! May he marry the cow and have a brood full of boys as shallow and stuck-up as he is!’ she said, trying to slide onto the stool next to Peggy’s and missing.

      ‘Exactly,’ Peggy said and ordered another round of cosmos.

      Lara…or Mia…tapped Peggy on the arm. She nodded at Nicole. ‘I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.’

      Peggy turned and studied her friend, pursing her lips. ‘Well, we’ve got to do something to cheer her up. My gran used to say the way you start a new year is the way you’ll end it, and I don’t want her moping around our brand-new office for the next twelve months.’

      Mia sipped beer out of the bottle. ‘You’re all heart,’ she said, giving her a very Lara look.

      ‘Of course, I want Nicole to be happy too,’ Peggy added, pouting a little.

      Nicole listened to her friends debate the merit of a fourth—or was it fifth?—cocktail. She hadn’t kept count. Probably because she really hadn’t planned to drink much this evening.

      She felt oddly detached, as if the room was swimming in and out of focus, sounds waning and then becoming magnified. She tried to fix her gaze on Peggy, but the spots on her dress were now involved in the complicated choreography of a Busby Berkeley number, complete with split-second timing and terrifying symmetry. Nicole could have sworn, as she tried to tear her eyes away from the swimming mass of white-on-pink polka dots, that one of them actually winked at her.

      ‘It’s just because it’s been a while since you’ve had a man in your life,’ Peggy explained, ‘and that can always make you susceptible to the “if only”s.’

      Mia snorted. ‘So that’s your excuse for not having more than a half-hour break