She wakes up to a day worthy of a love story, crisp and clear and blue. It's the sort of day that should be spent outside, and she wants to go apple picking and cycling, and then have a picnic on a blanket in Regent's Park, drinking colas from those fancy vintage bottles and taking pseudo-artistic pictures of the sky. She wants to do it all and more, so she doesn't do any of it.
Instead, she dons a knitted jumper and patterned scarf and goes shopping, loading up with dresses that shimmer with every move she makes and fine Italian leather driving gloves. She buys a pair of riding boots and a bell shaped hat. They're useless things, but they're pretty, and she likes the strain their pretty packaging puts on her arms as she walks from sleek, all-white boutique to next, all-white boutique.
It's barely two in the afternoon when she returns to her home. She wants to set her packages down, go back out for lunch, and see where the evening takes her. She has great luck in that: sitting around, waiting for something enjoyable to come along.
Always dependant on the kindness of strangers, you are, Niall had once said, shaking his head as she paid their taxi driver with money that a stranger at a bar had, with the sort of sincerity that is only found in the truly drunk, pressed into her hand on her way out of the pub.
(Why shouldn't I be? she grinned back, giving up counting and pressing all of the crumpled bank notes into the driver's hands.)
Shay's cheeks are still flushed red with the breeze when she pauses on the threshold of the drawing room, her bright eyes alighting on the faces within. Many are familiar, people she has known since she was just a little girl, but there are a few strangers - one, a boy who can't be much older than she is, with dark, messy hair and an open, trusting face.
She wonders who he will reveal himself to be. Destroyer, she thinks (hopes, just a little bit), because they're more interesting than the saviors.
(It is not until much later that she realises how very right she was.)
Her father steps to the forefront, putting a large hand at her back. "Sorry, love," he says, gently steering her from the doorway. "Bit of business left to take care of - it'll just be a few minutes. Do you need help with your packages?"
It's a cue, and a tall, broad man called Spencer answers it. He steps forward and collects her things, disappearing up the stairwell with them before she even opens her mouth to answer. It's a carefully choreographed maneuver set to distract her. She knows the tricks, and she plays her part of her father's beautiful little fool, murmuring, thank you to Spencer's back.
Daniel kisses her on the cheek and closes the pocket door, leaving her alone in the hallway. Sunlight pours in through the wide window at the end of the corridor, and she listens to the low rumble of staccato voices inside the drawing room. She can picture most of the bodies connected to the voices as they speak: Louis, Donal, Anderson, Jackson, Niall. Zayn, who is probably sitting on the windowsill, tapping cigarette ash onto the pavement below.
It's the boy's voice that throws Shay off, makes her take a few steps closer to the door. His tone is rich, with plummy tones that make Shay think, public school, and how very interesting that is.
Outside, the wind knocks the first leaves to the ground, and Shay thinks, I've lost my scarf.
-
The knock on her door comes sometime after dinner, when she's sitting on the same bed she's had since she was a little girl, a book in her lap. Daniel waits until she's asked him inside, and he takes a seat on the window seat opposite her, his knees spread wide, filling the space completely.
Shay has both youth and beauty, but her father owes her both an apology and an explanation, and she is content with spending the evening sitting in her bedroom until he finishes with his meeting over gin and cigars in the library. She closes the book she'd been reading, a supposedly fictional story that still manages unkind commentary on the very non-fictional European Union, and folds her hands in her lap.
