Please Don't Stop The Music Read Free Page A

pretty well for someone who’s never really been at the
sharp end of parenting, and eventually carried Harry back into the
shop, wrapped in every clean tea towel I’d been able to find. My
unlikely saviour was lounging against the till.
    ‘ Good God! He looks like a junior Roman Emperor!’
    ‘ I’ll get them washed and back to you.’
    The
scruffy, tight-trousered man eyed up the little shrouded figure and
gave a small shudder. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’m not sure I could
ever wipe a mug rim again without thinking about, well, you know.
Keep them.’
    ‘ He
is wearing a clean nappy.’ I’d replaced the pram sheet with an
extra-large towel bearing the legend ‘Glasgow, City of Culture’
which, doubled over, completely covered the mattress.
    ‘ Even so. Now, what can I do for you?’
    I gave him the full sales pitch, a guided
tour of my portfolio and then brought out the pièce de résistance , beautifully
apt. It was a belt buckle formed of
interwoven musical instruments with the central pin in the shape of
a microphone. He handled it carefully, running his fingers over the
surface without taking his eyes off my face, as I told him about
the history of the piece and how I’d made it. I described the
heating and twisting of the wire, the careful placement of the
crystals, the way each piece felt as though it had a soul and
called itself into being, with me acting only as the instrument of
creation. He did have nice hands, I had to admit, with very long
and slender fingers. But his eyes – there was something hidden deep
inside them.
    ‘ Ben,’ he said suddenly, as I paused for breath.
    ‘ What?’
    ‘ My
name. It’s Benedict. Benedict Arthur Zacchary Davies. I thought you
asked.’
    ‘ The
middle fall out of the baby name book, did it?’ This was a bit rude
of me. All very well giving him the sales pitch but I hadn’t even
told him my name, so how could he order stuff? Duh. Come on Jemima,
stop being such an amateur. ‘Jemima Hutton.’ Rather late in the day
I held out a hand to shake, which involved a bit of
Harry-juggling.
    ‘ Hutton? Like the place on the moors?’
    ‘ Er,
yeah. I guess.’ Change the subject Jemima. ‘So, would you be
interested?’
    His
eyes were tracing the contours of my face. ‘Interested?’
    ‘ In
my stuff.’
    ‘ Oh.
Right. Your stuff.’
    But
now I was wondering about him. About the weird way he seemed to
keep watching me. He was odd. Implacable. There was something about
Ben Davies that felt like he was layers deep, that there was more
to him than the superficially strange. ‘My stuff. Yes.’
    His
hands played with the buckle, flipping it between his fingers like
a magician doing a disappearing coin trick. His body language was
confusing, at odds with his responses, as though he was saying one
thing but thinking another and letting a little of that internal
struggle seep out into the way he moved. At the moment his eyes
were still firmly on my face but he seemed to be wishing me gone.
‘I’m not sure.’
    I had to get him to change his mind. If Saskia thought
someone else was interested in me she might decide to keep me
exclusive after all. Besides, I was bordering on the seriously
broke. Even this weird guy with his tiny business tucked away down
a back alley was better than nothing.
    ‘ How
about if I come back? Say tomorrow? I could bring some of my
smaller, less expensive stuff? Look, I’ll leave you that buckle, on
trust. To help you think it over?’ Every marketing book said that
you should be definite, give them no get-out, and I’d blown it, I
could tell from his face.
    ‘ I
haven’t got the customers. People who come here already know me,
they want the guitars, the gear, not jewellery.’
    Frantically I stared around the shop. I had
to find us some common point, some mutual interest,
something, anything . My eye settled on a bright yellow star-shaped guitar
hanging at the back of the shop, almost inside the kitchenette
which had saved my (and