On the edge

Chapter 15: Apple candy green

Over the next month, Sue tried to think of a way to pay back the enormous amount of money her father had borrowed from... Well, she wasn't quite sure who, but just in case they'd come and ask for it, she wanted to have a solution handy.
"Oh, hi, Mister O'Connor," Sue said when a man's voice greeted her on the other side of the phone line.
"It's Susannah Reid," she introduced herself, "From Reid's antiquities and souvenirs in St. Margaret's Bay."
"Right," the voice replied, "I remember. How may I help you, Miss Reid?"
"Well, I know that back in February I said I wouldn't sell, but things have changed," Sue began, "I need to move on, and I don't think I ever will, if I stay here, right here, in my father's shop."
A moment of silence followed her speech. Mister O'Connor then went on to make a noise which suggested that he would go on to say something that made him feel rather uncomfortable and that he didn't know how to phrase it yet.
"I absolutely understand what you mean, Miss Reid," he eventually said, "And I totally agree with you..."
"But?" Sue took the burden from him to choose the right moment to break the bad news to her.
"But..." Ronald O'Connor continued, "Unfortunately, your property is no longer of interest for Green Shoppers."
Another silence followed, and all Sue could hear was a little crackling sound in the line of the old rotary phone her father had saved from modernisation.
"I see," the red-haired replied slowly, "Of course, it's been ten months."
"I'm sorry, Miss Reid," Mister O'Connor apologised.
"Don't worry," Sue said, "I'll be fine. Thank you, Mister O'Connor, have a good day."
And before he could even answer, Sue hung up. She hadn't told James yet, and she was determined that she wouldn't until she had found a way out of this tricky situation. She didn't want him to worry. Sue didn't even know herself if there was anyone else besides Stephen, who would claim the money. Maybe there wasn't, although she had quite a hard time believing that. People who lend amounts as high as two-hundred and fifty thousand pounds at an average interest rate of three percent, don't just keep that money in one of their kitchen drawers; and neither do they work alone, of that Sue was sure. She had seen enough movies to know as much. After the supermarket chain obviously would no longer help her out of her misery, Sue went on to try to sell her property to someone else; on the net, through a real estate agency; she even drove to Dover, to leave flyers in several shops and other public places. But nobody seemed interested.
Time past, days came and went by; became shorter, darker, and colder. Soon, December and the first snow claimed the little town. Everybody was getting ready for Christmas, and in almost every window one would walk past, one would see fairy lights, advent calendars, Christmas trees, and such lovely little things as snowmen, made out of giant cotton balls.

"We don't have to get a tree," Sue said one day, and her husband looked at her as if she had just suggested to completely ignore Christmas as an entity.
"Of course we do have to have a tree!?" he exclaimed, to which his wife only shrugged.
Sue hadn't had a proper tree for Christmas since her mother had left. Each year, her father would get that puny plastic thing he hid in the attic during the rest of the year. It was old and almost didn't look like a fir anymore. More like a badly failed experiment, and if Frankenstein had created an animal, a dog maybe, rather than a man, this thing George Reid called a Christmas tree could easily have passed for it.
"I'll get you into a cosy Christmas mood," James promised, and Sue wished him good luck with that mission.
"Oh, come on Grumpy!" the blond teased her and wrapped his arms around her, as she was filling up the fridge in the back of the shop.
He buried his one side of his face and his nose in Sue's copper hair and gently kissed her left temple. James closed his eyes for a minute or two and took a deep breath. And as he softly held Sue in his arms, he once more was sure that of all people, her hair smelled the sweetest; her skin felt the softest, and the warmth of her body was the most comforting.
"How about I get us a bottle of red wine, and we'll discuss the Christmas decoration over a glass, or two, upstairs... On the carpet," James suggested.
"Why would you sit on the carpet?" Sue wanted to know.
"We don't have a bearskin, and neither do we have a fireplace. That's the closest I can get you to that experience," her husband joked, and the red-haired admittedly chuckled a little as well.
"Alright," she said and turned around to kiss him tenderly.
"Sounds like a plan," Sue agreed with a smile.
"Then I'll be on my way, my lady," James replied, grabbed his feather down jacket and his scarf, and left hastily.
He wanted to get to the grocery store in time, and they would close in about thirty minutes. Sue watched her husband leave into the cold and dark streets of the little town, and although it was only twenty minutes past six in the evening, one would have thought it was well past midnight.