Miracle at the Museum of Broken Hearts Read Free Page B

woman? ‘So you left your job to set up the museum?’ Double wow.
    Heath nodded. ‘Yes. S he’d done so much for me . . .’ That same pained expression crossed his face, and he shrugged. ‘Once everything is good to go and the museum has been open for a while, I’ll hand things over to someone and go back to the City. There are always jobs for lawyers,’ he added wryly. ‘This is just a necessary detour.’
    ‘ Right.’ My heart jumped. If Heath returned to the City, did that mean I might be promoted to curator one day? One day soon, all things being well? Already I was picturing myself sitting upstairs in the office. Oh, hello, yes, I’m the curator at London’s hottest new museum, I’d say to all the cool people I’d meet at . . . well, wherever the cool people hung out.
    I looked at the boxes in front of me with deter mination. I’d work around the clock to get everything whipped into shape. This museum would be more than ready to open by the fifteenth of December. It would be there with bells on! Given that it was Christmas, it probably would have bells. And garland and holly . . . and maybe I could even throw in a bit of mistletoe. Sure, it was the Museum of Broken Hearts, but even bad relationships responded to seasonal greenery, right?
    Gareth used to love mistletoe. Our first Christmas together, he’d covered almost every surface of the flat with it, and we’d kissed nonstop for the Twelve Days of Christmas. Secretly, I’d renamed it the Twelve Days of Chapped Lips, since he’d been a tad overenthusiastic. But that was romance, and I was hardly complaining.
    ‘ I’ll just grab my coat,’ I said hastily, aware t hat for the second time today, I’d drifted off into my own thoughts. After heading upstairs, I threw on my jacket – practically melting with relief at its cozy confines – then carefully made my way back down the narrow cellar steps. The last thing I needed was to fall over and break a leg.
    As I eased into the dimly lit room, I noticed Heath staring intently at a gold locket dangling on a chain from his fingers. With the shadows falling across his face, I couldn’t make out his expression, but I could tell by the rigid set of his shoulders and the way the chain was threaded through his fingers that it meant something to him. Could this have something to do with his negativity toward love and relationships? Who had that locket belonged to?
    ‘ Um, hi,’ I said quietly, wanting to alert him to my presence. It felt like I was intruding on a private moment.
    Heath jerked at the sound of my voice. The chain slithered from his fingers and the locket plopped into a large box on the floor. He kicked it into a corner, then set another box on top of it. ‘Sorry, just examining the, er, artefacts.’
    ‘ Okay.’ Obviously there was way more to it, but Heath’s face had that shuttered look I was rapidly becoming familiar with. Maybe I could probe more later, when – if – I got to know him better. ‘So, I’ll just start cataloguing everything. Once I’ve finished, we can see what we’ve got and how to organise it all.’ It was going to be a big job, but I couldn’t wait to begin.
    ‘ Fine.’ Heath glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve got some paperwork to do, then a meeting with the council at eleven. Help yourself to coffee and tea in the kitchen. I’ll leave you to it.’
    I watched him disappear up the stairs, then rubbed my hands together for warmth, and plunged in.
     
    Several hours later, I was knee-deep in objects, including chopsticks from a couple’s “Last Supper”, a pair of red Y-fronts (from the pair’s final romp . . . thank goodness for plastic gloves), and a raggedy stuffed toy poodle that had belonged to a terminally ill patient. If it wasn’t for the accompanying letters Heath’s grandmother had neatly bagged with each item, the artefacts would be better suited to a jumble sale than a museum. But each yellowed note detailed the object’s story, giving it an