An Autumn Crush Read Free Page B

Sunday before they called by on the ridiculous pretext of borrowing a hammer.
    ‘Dad, you’ve got more hammers than B and Q and Wickes put together!’ laughed Juliet down the door entryphone.
    ‘Yes, but I can’t find my pin hammer anywhere,’ said Perry Miller. His real name was Percy but the last person ever to call him that was a horrible old nun, Headmistress of
Holy Family Infant School, County Cork.
    ‘And it takes two of you to come over and carry it back, does it?’ Juliet went on, winking over at Floz.
    ‘Oh, let them in and stop teasing,’ said Floz, whose eyes lit up like green emeralds when she smiled. ‘They just want to make sure you haven’t opened up your home to a
homicidal maniac.’
    ‘Come on up then,’ sighed Juliet, pressing the lock-release button. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
    Floz braced herself for their scrutiny. Years of shutting herself away at home to work had made her shy of strangers. She really need not have worried though, because Perry and Grainne Miller
breezed into the flat, embraced her like a long-lost daughter, and soon they were all sitting at the dining-table sharing a pot of tea and a tin full of date-and-walnut scones which Grainne –
‘Call me Gron’ – had brought over.
    Grainne and Perry were a very tall couple and Juliet was physically like both of them. She had her father’s cheeky grey eyes and high cheekbones and her mother’s large generous mouth
and sexy small gap between her front teeth. Grainne’s hair was short and greying now, but it had been long and jet black in her youth; curly though, where Juliet’s was poker straight.
Perry had a lovely thick head of snow-white hair and the air of a very calm and gentle person.
    ‘So, what is it you do for a job then, Floz?’ asked Perry, looking over at the tower of notebooks on the dining-table which she had been perusing that morning.
    ‘Don’t be so nosy, Perry,’ Grainne admonished him, her soft Irish accent as strong now as it was when she moved to Barnsley forty-five years ago.
    ‘I’m not being nosy,’ said the placid Perry. ‘It’s called making conversation.’
    ‘I don’t mind answering,’ Floz said and laughed. ‘I’m a freelance greetings-card copywriter.’ She was forced to elaborate in response to the blank looks the
Miller elders gave her. ‘Basically, I sit at my computer and churn out jokes and rhymes day after day. The greetings-card companies buy them from me.’
    ‘Well, would you believe that?’ said Grainne. ‘I never thought before who writes all the stuff you get on cards.’
    ‘Mum will have bankrolled your companies in her time,’ said Juliet. ‘She sends cards for any occasion. “Congratulations on getting rid of your big spot”.
“Sorry to hear you’ve fallen downstairs and bust your skull open”. “Well done on throwing your scumbag of a husband out of your life”.’
    Grainne jumped up and went over to the handbag she’d left with her coat by the door.
    ‘That reminds me.’ She came back holding a red envelope which she presented to Floz. ‘It’s a “Welcome to your new home” card,’ she beamed.
    ‘See?’ said Juliet. ‘QED!’
    ‘Thank you, that’s very kind of you,’ smiled Floz, wondering whether to open it in front of everyone or save it until later. She decided on the former as Grainne was waiting
with a wide arc of grinning anticipation on her face. Inside the envelope was a card with a big bun on the front with doors and windows in it. Inside, the message read: Welcome to your new home,
with lots of love from Grainne, Perry and Guy Miller .
    ‘Thank you, that’s very thoughtful of you,’ said Floz. ‘Is Guy the cat?’ She knew that the Millers had a cat because there was a photograph of her father holding
one on Juliet’s kitchen noticeboard. An ancient black cat, with one eye and no teeth. Obviously Guy wasn’t the cat, from the hilarity that comment caused.
    ‘He’s my twin brother,’ said Juliet. ‘He