The Little Shop of Hopes and Dreams

Peggy’s red lips stretched slowly into a smile. ‘I know what I’d do with a man who’d discovered his inner Bond…’

‘Oh, there you are, darlings! Doesn’t the Hamilton look super? I’m sure Minty and I are going to use it for one of our next parties.’

Nicole’s stomach sank, but she turned round, smiling—if not genuinely—widely. ‘Celeste…Araminta…How are you?’

The two women were both tall and had cascading, thick honey-coloured waves. They looked as if they’d blown in off the King’s Road after an afternoon’s shopping. The dresses were bang on trend, the make-up artfully suggesting a healthy glow, and the legs went on for centuries.

However, despite her irritation at their presence, Nicole couldn’t help taking a mental note of how their outfits were put together, noting details like designers, fabrics, cut…As much as she didn’t like them, Celeste and Minty always looked fabulous, and it was never good to be outshone by the competition.

It was a habit she’d picked up at school, when fitting in had been as necessary as breathing. She might have not had as much money as most of her school chums, but that hadn’t meant she’d wanted to stand out in cut-price highstreet polyester knock-offs. As a result, she’d developed a talent for breaking down an outfit into its component parts, working out how she could copy it on a shoestring or use what she already owned to pull off the look. It had helped her blend into the privileged world of Hurstdean Academy.

‘Marvellous!’ Celeste said, beaming. For some reason her smile reminded Nicole of a chihuahua baring its teeth. ‘And how’s your cute little boutique agency doing? I don’t seem to have heard much about it in ages. I Do, I Do, I Do is going great guns. Did you hear we just did the Patterson–Henley proposal? She said yes, of course. Who wouldn’t when daddy-in-law is a viscount?’

Celeste broke off so she and Minty could congratulate themselves with throaty, slightly horsey laughter.

Nicole kept smiling and gently put a hand on Peggy’s arm. She was sure she’d just heard a snarl from under her flatmate’s breath.

Minty sighed and flicked her hair in a manner that got the attention of all the men in a ten-foot radius. ‘They’ve asked us to do the engagement party as well, you know. Fabulous exposure.’

‘I’m sure it is,’ Mia said tightly. ‘Congratulations.’

Celeste started scanning the crowd. Obviously, they’d ceased to be entertaining now the gloating had finished, and she was looking for her next victim. ‘Ooh! There’s the new owner of the Hamilton, Jayce Ryder. He did say he wanted a word with us. Come on, Minty.’ She waved above the crowd. ‘Yoo-hoo, Jayce…!’

Both girls flashed identical smiles at Nicole, Peggy and Mia and then headed off into the crowd without bothering to air-kiss a farewell.

The name Peggy called them when they were out of earshot wasn’t nice.

Nicole shook her head. ‘We shouldn’t criticise the competition in public. It’s not professional.’

Peggy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Professional, schmessional. Sometimes I just can’t help myself, and I don’t know how you can be so calm, cool and collected about it, either. Not after they copied your idea and set up a rival proposal-planning agency right under your nose!’

Nicole sent a laser-targeted stare after the two disappearing willowy figures. ‘They only got that job because Minty’s daddy plays polo with Hugo Patterson’s daddy.’ Mia followed her gaze. ‘Oh, yes. I forgot you used to work with them at that big event-planning firm.’

‘Me and my big mouth,’ Nicole muttered, turning back to her friends and sighing. ‘I shouldn’t have bragged to them that I was branching out on my own.’

Mia nodded understandingly. ‘And have you seen a drop in business recently? I know you said you were worried about that when you started out.’

Nicole sighed again. She’d hoped for a fun, glitzy evening after a hard week with sleepless nights and ten-hour days. ‘A bit. I run a full range of services. The lowest tier is personalised proposal ideas that clients buy for a small fee and then they do the rest themselves—inspiration, if you like. Next is helping to find venues and vendors who match the client’s requirements, but the top tier is the no-holds-barred planning service, where I take care of everything. Not only are those the most fun to do, but they’re the ones I make most money on, and it’s interest in those kind of proposals that seems to have tailed off.’

She glanced over again at her rivals, who were busy fawning over the hotel tycoon who’d been responsible for the Hamilton’s upswing in fortune. ‘And I have a feeling I know who’s hoovering up all that kind of business.’

Peggy glared over at them. ‘Those two are toxic on so many levels it isn’t funny.’

Nicole angled her body away from Celeste and Minty. She didn’t even want to look at them. They didn’t count. She wasn’t going to let girls like that get the better of her ever again.

‘Ever since school I’ve had to deal with girls like that, girls whose lives are charmed, because someone waved a magic wand over them at birth, so they get everything their hearts desire. So life comes easy to them. So success drops easily into their laps because of their names or their connections, but it doesn’t mean they have to have it all, leaving nothing for us.’

Nicole was prepared to work for it. Work hard. She’d get there in the end.

‘It doesn’t matter how well they’re doing now,’ she said slowly. ‘Celeste was slapdash when we worked together at Elite Gatherings and I bet she’s slapdash now. She was always swanning around doing what she felt like doing and palming off the boring stuff on other people.’

‘Sounds about right,’ Peggy said grimly. ‘Look up “entitlement” in the dictionary and you’d see her ugly mug staring right back at you.’

Nicole nodded and smiled. ‘That was all fine and dandy while Celeste was working for a big event-planning firm, with plenty of victims to take up the slack, but now it’s just her and Minty, and Minty’s just as bad. It doesn’t matter if they’ve got the connections, access to the Old Boys’ Club through their fathers…They’ll trip themselves up eventually. What matters are drive and talent, and Hopes & Dreams has plenty of that, especially now Peggy has come on board part-time.’

All three women stared after their number one—well, their only—competitors.

‘Won’t matter if we go under and they continue to float around London like it’s their own personal garden party,’ Peggy muttered darkly.

Mia, ever the practical one, laid a hand on Nicole’s arm. ‘Well, if you ever want a hand with the books, just let me know. I might as well use all those fancy letters I got after my name for something I really care about.’

Nicole smiled and nodded. Mia hated her job as an accountant in a big city firm. If she could have joined her and Peggy at Hopes & Dreams, she’d have done so in a heartbeat. In fact, that was the plan if the business survived into next year.

Peggy hated any talk of boring things like numbers and spreadsheets. She let her head loll and pretended to snore softly, and when Mia poked her in the arm with a sharp fingernail she lifted her head and said, ‘Time for another drink.’ She handed her glass to Mia, who rolled her eyes but waved at the barman anyway.

‘I’d settle for a glass of fizz and change of subject,’ Nicole said. She’d been on a nice little high after Warren’s triumph that evening, but Celeste’s news about Hugo Patterson and Sarah Henley had thrown cold water all over it. Somehow, a draughty office building in Lambeth just didn’t have the same cachet. It was great having satisfied clients, but what she really needed was high-profile satisfied clients. Ones who would shell out a ton of money on a high-end proposal, then brag about it to all their friends and get Hopes & Dreams mentioned in Celebrity Life.

‘Change of subject? Oh, well in that case…Guess who dropped by our flat while you were out being a Bond girl?’ Peggy waggled her eyebrows and waited, smiling.

‘The Sultan of Brunei,’ Nicole replied, not missing a beat.

Peggy tutted. ‘It’s no fun if you don’t play along.’

‘It’s no fun for you, you mean…’

Mia leaned over and put a hand on Nicole’s arm. ‘Just humour her. You know she’ll bug you until she gets it out of her system one way or the other.’

Peggy grinned at Nicole. ‘Well, if you’re going to be boring, I’ll just tell you…Your dad came in to check that damp patch on the bathroom ceiling this afternoon, with hunky plumber Steve in tow. They were sad to have missed you—especially Steve.’

Nicole shrugged.

‘And when I say “sad”, I mean very sad. You ought to put him out of his misery and call him sometime, you know. I’m sure the only reason he keeps coming back to check the work he did on the boiler is because he wants an excuse to see you.’

‘Sorry, Peg. Steve just isn’t my type.’

‘Then find someone who is your type!’ Peggy said, flicking her artfully curled platinum locks. ‘It’s been too long since you’ve been out on a date. It’s making you very crabby.’

Nicole opened her mouth to say there was a difference between ‘crabby’ and ‘taking your life seriously’, but Mia jumped in ahead of her.

‘A woman can exist without a man in her life, you know, Peg. It’s not the 1950s any more, even though you dearly like to pretend it is. Sometimes it’s about the quality, not the quantity.’

Peggy gave Mia a well-worn look. ‘There’s not going to be any quality at all if the quantity is zero.’

‘Well, we all know you like to prove that point with a different man every week.’

Nicole could see where this was going. Mia and Peg were firm friends really, but sometimes they really could rub each other up the wrong way. ‘Calm down, children,’ she said in a soothing tone. ‘We’re supposed to be here to check out the Hamilton and schmooze for new clients, remember?’

Both women nodded reluctantly, but Peggy had to get the last word in, as always. ‘You can’t chip in anyway, Miss Mia, seeing as you’ve now got a ring on your finger, are sickeningly loved-up and can’t even remember what it’s like to be single.’