‘Not like that, I hope,’ said Jemma, eyeing his dressing gown.
Raphael looked down at himself, and seemed surprised. ‘Good point,’ he said, and disappeared, returning a very short time later in a surprisingly normal combination of cream linen trousers and a white shirt. ‘Back soon,’ he said, and loped off. As he opened the door the bell rang, and a fine mist of dust floated down.
‘I give up,’ said Jemma. ‘No, I don’t. I am going to get this filthy shop clean if it kills me.’
Outside, the sun went behind a cloud.
‘That’s actually an improvement,’ said Jemma, and faced the window again.
A few minutes later the window was, if not sparkling, not noticeably dirty. On the inside, at least. Jemma looked at her watch. Fifteen minutes until opening time. I can nip out and do the outside as well, she thought. With fresh water. Whistling, she went to refill her bowl, and found that, without knowing it, she had managed to use all the washing-up liquid. Well, hot water is better than nothing.
Ten minutes later Jemma re-entered the shop, reasonably pleased with the state of the window, and found Folio chewing the broom which had been part of her Harry Potter window display.
‘That’s a good idea, Folio,’ she said. ‘If I can’t wash the floor, at least I can sweep it.’ She knelt and attempted to take the broom from Folio, but he responded by leaping on top of the bristles and digging his claws into the wooden handle.
‘If you won’t let go,’ said Jemma, ‘then I’ll have to sweep the floor with you as well.’ She picked up the broom by the end of the handle, since she didn’t like the look of Folio’s claws, and took it to the back of the shop.
‘I think Raphael is overfeeding you,’ she said to Folio as she wielded the broom. ‘You really are a bit heavy for a cat.’
Folio hissed, and attempted to swipe at her.
She had swept most of the dust to the front of the shop when Raphael returned. ‘If you hold the door for me,’ said Jemma, breathlessly, ‘I’ll just sweep all this outside, and then we can open.’
Raphael raised his eyebrows. ‘Aren’t you going to clean the window first?’
Jemma followed his pointing finger and saw that within the last few minutes, the entire local bird population had used the shop window for target practice. Her jaw dropped, and the breeze from the open shop door blew a long thread of cobweb into her mouth. ‘Ugh!’ she exclaimed, trying to spit it out.
‘I’ll deal with the window,’ said Raphael soothingly. ‘You go and get a drink of water.’
‘I need something stronger than water,’ muttered Jemma.
When she returned from the back room, having taken several deep breaths to calm herself, the window was clean again, and somehow the shop seemed considerably less dirty. Raphael had procured a feather duster from somewhere, and was winding cobwebs around it like candy floss. Folio had abandoned the broom, and was sitting in the shop window between copies of Catwatching and The Unadulterated Cat. A couple stopped, pointed at Folio, then entered the shop.
Jemma’s fists clenched automatically, and she uncurled them with an effort. ‘Good morning, how can I help you?’ she said, stepping forward. Don’t think you’ve won, she told the shop, in her head. I’m not going to be beaten by a shop with a mind of its own. And if you think this is over, you are so wrong.
She felt something drop on the back of her neck and scuttle under her top, but her smile, now rather forced, never left her face.
Chapter 7
The rest of the morning passed without incident, possibly because Jemma confined herself to normal duties such as restocking the bookshelves and serving the customers. Perhaps I tried to do too much, she thought. It was a bit ambitious for a Monday morning. The sun came back out, and Folio spent his morning reclining in the shop window, shifting himself along every so often to stay in the sunshine. Jemma found a box of books on pet care in the stockroom, put them in the window, and sold half the box within an hour.
‘Have you trained him to do that?’ asked a woman in cycling gear, nodding at Folio.
‘Do what?’ said Jemma.
‘Stay in the window like that.’
Raphael came to join them. ‘Folio is very much his own cat,’ he said. ‘He does as he pleases.’
Folio opened a lazy yellow eye, regarded them all, and closed it again with a contented whiffle.
It was a pleasant morning, but truth be told, Jemma found it dull. What about my action plan? How will I implement it if the shop is determined to thwart me at every turn? Then she laughed. Listen to yourself, Jemma James. This is a shop. An inanimate object. It’s all just – coincidence. She went to get more books from the stockroom, tripped over the broom which definitely hadn’t been there before, and almost went flying.
‘Steady now,’ said Raphael, grabbing her arm. ‘I don’t want to have to use the first-aid kit.’
‘I’m glad to hear you’ve got one,’ Jemma said grumpily, as she had stubbed her toe.
‘I think we have,’ said Raphael. ‘It sounds like the sort of thing a shop ought to have.’
‘Yes, it does,’ said Jemma, hoping that her stern expression would prompt Raphael to go and look for said kit and thereby prove that it existed. Given that morning’s experience in the shop, she had a feeling that a well-stocked first-aid kit was an essential item.
Raphael opened the cupboard under the sink and pulled out a square green box with a white cross on the lid. ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘I knew we had one somewhere.’
‘But that wasn’t—’ Jemma stopped. Certainly she hadn’t noticed a first-aid kit when she had searched for cleaning materials that morning, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been there. It was just that she hadn’t been looking for it. Of course, that was it. There was no other explanation. None at all.
Raphael gave the lid of the box a pat and put it back into the cupboard. ‘Good to know it’s there,’ he said. ‘One never knows, does one.’ He gave Jemma a stern look of his own. ‘But it still pays to be careful. Health and safety, you know.’
‘That’s a point,’ said Jemma. ‘Is there a course I should go on?’
Raphael shivered, though the temperature in the shop must have been at least twenty degrees. ‘I hardly think that’s necessary,’ he said. ‘Really, it’s a matter of common sense, isn’t it. Staying out of trouble. Avoiding temptation. Not – not overdoing things.’ From his serious expression, Jemma gathered that she was supposed to be deriving wisdom from these vague comments.
‘That is true,’ she said. ‘But nothing ventured, nothing gained.’ She went into the stockroom, and closed the door behind her.
I can’t believe he’s lecturing me, she thought. Raphael, who barely knows one end of the till from the other! The shop’s profits have gone up by … a lot since I started working here. She pulled out the first box she saw, reopened the door with difficulty, and carried it through to the counter. When she opened the box, the book on top was Accidents at Work: A survey of the most common workplace injuries, with notes on how to avoid them.