Good Girl or Gold-Digger?

‘It’s human nature,’ Annie said. ‘You know, that policeman over there keeps giving you the eye. Give him a smile.’

‘Annie!’ Daisy looked at her best friend in disbelief. The fairground was in trouble and Annie was thinking about fixing her up with a man?

‘Daze, working here you don’t exactly get to meet many single men, let alone men below the age of fifty,’ Annie said, sounding completely unrepentant. ‘Seize the day. He’s very cute. And he’s definitely interested.’

Daisy blew out a breath. ‘Well, I’m not interested in him, thanks very much.’

‘Mind if I go and have a chat to him?’

‘Do what you like, as long as you don’t try to fix me up on a blind date with him.’ Daisy scowled. ‘Not everyone wants a life partner, you know.’

‘And you’re happy with just your cat?’ Annie asked, looking unconvinced.

‘Yes, I am. Titan’s good company and he’s not demanding.’

Annie scoffed. ‘Not demanding? This is the cat who has a plush bed in every room of your house and a taste for fresh poached salmon.’

‘OK, but he’s still not as demanding as a man would be.’ Her cat didn’t want her to change and be more feminine. He loved her for herself, not for who he wanted her to be. ‘Though he’s not very happy with me right now because I’ve locked him in my office to make sure he doesn’t get broken glass in his paws.’ She frowned. ‘Why are we talking about this? Annie, I know you’re happy with Ray—and I’m really happy for you—but I’m fine as I am, really.’

‘Hmm.’ Annie looked at her. ‘Right. I’m going to chat to that policeman, because I need some information for my copy. And while I’m gone Si’s going to take a picture of you looking distraught.’

‘I’m not sure it’s a good idea to have my picture in the paper.’

‘Tough. I’ve already cleared it with Bill. He says you’re prettier than he is, so you’re doing it.’ She smiled.

Daisy sighed. ‘You’re such a hard-nosed journo.’

‘Annie Sylvester, Super-Hack: that’s me.’ Annie gave her a hug. ‘And once the police say we can start clearing up I’ll give you a hand dealing with the glass and scrubbing all the paint off. I’ll give Ray a ring and he’ll come and muck in, too.’

‘Thanks. I owe you,’ Daisy said.

‘Course you don’t. That’s what best mates are for. You’d do the same for me.’ She paused. ‘Have you called the rest of your family yet?’

‘No.’ Daisy lifted her chin. She was perfectly capable of running her own life, and most people realised early on that she was the kind of person who fixed things efficiently and without a fuss, but her family still insisted on treating her as the baby, the one who had to be bailed out of things. It drove her crazy, even more so than their insistence that career progression and earning a good salary was more important than job satisfaction. If she called them, of course they’d come—but she’d be living up to all their prejudices. ‘Bill, Nancy and I can manage.’

‘Sometimes,’ Annie said softly, ‘you can be too proud, you know.’

‘Let’s agree to disagree.’ Daisy sighed. ‘Look, I love them, and we get on fine—most of the time. But I don’t want a lecture or an I-told-you-so speech, and that’d be the price of them helping. You know that, too. So it’s better to keep things smooth and keep them away from it.’

‘If you say so, hon. But wouldn’t it be better that they heard the news from you than saw it on the front page of the paper tomorrow morning?’

Daisy knew her best friend was right. ‘OK. I’ll talk to them tonight, I promise.’ When she’d fixed as much as she could.

The rest of the day seemed to be spent giving statements and making cups of tea while they waited for the scene-of-crime team to finish gathering evidence so they could start fixing the mess the vandals had left. By the time the light had gone, the cafe windows were boarded up temporarily, the glass had been swept up and they’d made a start on removing the graffiti.

But Monday morning brought more bad news. ‘The insurance company says we’re not covered,’ Daisy told Bill, settling on the edge of his desk. ‘Apparently vandalism’s been excluded from our policy for three years.’ She sighed. ‘It seems they changed our policy terms when Derek was ill, and nobody picked it up at the time.’ Derek was Bill’s best friend and their insurance broker.

‘So we have to pay for the damage ourselves?’

She nodded grimly. ‘They can recommend a glazier, but we’ll have to pay the full cost of repairs.’

‘And plate glass costs a fortune.’ Bill muttered a curse under his breath and shook his head. ‘I know we can’t afford not to fix the cafe, but we can’t afford to fix it, either.’

She dragged in a breath. ‘Because I talked you into buying the chair-o-planes.’

‘Love, they were a bargain, and we would’ve kicked ourselves if we’d missed the chance. It’s not that.’ Bill sighed. ‘The way the stock markets have gone, my investments are worth practically nothing now, even if I cash them in—and you know as well as I do we run this place on a shoestring. If we go to the bank and ask for a loan, they’ll laugh us out of the office because we couldn’t pay it back.’

‘Not from the museum takings,’ Daisy said. ‘But there’s my house.’ The two-up-two-down terraced house her grandmother had left her. ‘I can talk the bank into giving me a mortgage to release some of the equity.’

‘On the salary you draw from here, they wouldn’t lend you a penny.’ Bill shook his head. ‘And I wouldn’t let you get into debt for this anyway. No, love.’

‘It’s my heritage as well,’ Daisy pointed out. Her uncle had often said that she was the child he and Nancy hadn’t been able to have. ‘Your grandfather, my great-grandfather.’ She took a deep breath. She’d been thinking about Annie’s words since yesterday. Maybe her best friend was right. It had been a bit unfair of her to tell her family by text message last night and then switch her phone off so they couldn’t get hold of her. She hadn’t given them the chance to help because she hadn’t wanted to deal with the way they saw her. But maybe it was time she swallowed her pride, for the sake of the fairground. This was something she couldn’t fix on her own; they did need bailing out. ‘We could ask Dad, Ben, Ed and Mikey to help. They’d chip in, because it’s their heritage, too.’

‘No. Ben has a young family to think about, Ed and Mikey have huge mortgages and your dad’s about to retire.’ Bill sighed. ‘His investments are in the same state as mine.’

And there was still the fact that Daisy’s family saw the fairground as Bill’s whimsy, which in their view was stopping Daisy from having a proper career. Which was why she avoided talking to them about it.

Bill looked grim. ‘We’re going to have to get a backer outside the family.’

‘Who’s going to invest in a steam-fairground museum in a recession?’ Daisy asked.

‘The prices of steam engines are rocketing—no pun intended,’ Bill said, with a nod to the model of Stephenson’s Rocket on his desk. ‘So right now investors will see their money as being safer here than in shares.’

Daisy shook her head. ‘Investors always come with conditions attached. And they won’t see this the way we do, that we’re conserving our heritage. They’ll want to see big returns on their money—they’ll want a hike in entrance fees and more stuff in the shop. And what if they decide to pull out? How would we raise the money to buy out their share?’

‘I don’t know, love.’ Bill looked bleak. ‘We could sell the showman’s engine.’

It was worth a small fortune, but it was also the last engine that Bell’s had ever made, and Daisy had spent four years working on its restoration. ‘Over my dead body. There has to be another way.’

‘Short of winning the lottery, or discovering that fairy godmothers are real, I doubt it, love. We’ll have to take on a partner.’

‘Or a sponsor, perhaps.’ Daisy sighed. ‘I’ll stick the kettle on. And then we’ll work out what we can offer a sponsor, make a list of all the local businessmen and divvy up the calls between us.’ She hugged him. ‘We’ll find our silver lining.’

Felix picked the phone up without taking his eyes off the spreadsheet. ‘Gisbourne.’

‘Oh good. I’m so glad you’re there, Felix.’

Felix sighed inwardly; it served him right for not checking the caller display first. Now his sister was going to nag him instead of leaving a message on his answering machine. Which meant he couldn’t fast-forward it, or delete the message unheard and tell a white lie about his answering machine going wrong. ‘Good morning, Antonia.’

‘Mummy says you’re weaselling out of the house party this weekend.’

Typical Antonia: she always came straight to the point. ‘Sorry, sweets. Can’t make it. I’m busy at work.’

‘Come off it,’ Antonia scoffed. ‘You’re perfectly capable of going to the house party and sorting out your business stuff first thing in the morning, before anyone else in the house even thinks of getting up.’

True. But it didn’t mean that he wanted to do it.

‘Mummy really wants you there.’