Sunshine, with an Ulterior Motive

On the morning our shop began raining indoors, I sold a woman six pounds' worth of sunshine she intended to use against her sister.

“Eight minutes,” I told Mrs Pelling, setting the yellow packet on the counter. “Open it beside the plants. Not above them.”

“My sister's get eleven.”

“Her window faces south.”

“Yes, well. She married a man with an accountant.”

I wasn't sure how many people were included in that marriage, so I left it alone. Mrs Pelling inspected the packet as though it might be trying to conceal some superior sunshine underneath. Through the window, the bakery van attempted a turn it had been attempting every Tuesday for as long as I could remember. A gull stood on the pavement, supervising.

“Will it work through glass?” she asked.

“Not well. The glass scatters the release. Take the pot outside, use a stand and don't leave the packet unattended.”

“You sound exactly like your aunt.”

I tried not to look pleased. Aunt Agnes had left me in charge for three days, with a list of approved sales, two emergency numbers and instructions not to sell anything involving thunder, even to someone who said they had bought it before.

I was seventeen. I had been helping at Halden's Weather & Small Repairs since I was seven, when helping mostly meant returning fallen pins to a tin nobody subsequently dared put a hand in. Three days of ordinary transactions ought to have been within my abilities.

The first drop landed beside the card reader.

We both looked up.

There was a wet patch on the ceiling above the till. As we watched, another drop formed, enlarged and fell into the receipt printer.

“That will be your gutter,” Mrs Pelling said.

“It isn't raining.”

“Doesn't mean it isn't your gutter.”

She had the confidence of a woman whose gutter had once been repaired incorrectly by three separate men. I unplugged the printer, moved the card reader to the other end of the counter and put the biscuit tin beneath the drip.

Outside, the bakery driver lowered his window to argue with the gull.

“I'll pay cash,” Mrs Pelling said.

“Thank you.”

She counted out six pounds with the unhurried precision of someone who didn't have rain falling on the receipts for the last financial quarter. I put the packet into her hand just as the drip became a small but committed stream.

“Perhaps fetch a larger tin.”

“I was thinking a bowl.”

“That would show initiative.”

She lingered at the door. It had three bells because Grandad had been unable to decide which sounded most inviting. The middle one was cracked. Agnes said replacing it would make customers think we had been bought by a chain.

“That man who was looking at your windows last week,” Mrs Pelling added. “Was he here about the gutter?”

“What man?”

“Grey jacket. Folder. I thought he was measuring.”

“I don't know.”

“Ask Agnes.”

She left carrying eight minutes of competitive sunshine. I fetched the washing-up bowl.

The rain stopped before I reached the counter.

That was almost worse.

A leak ought to offer a source. An unreliable leak could spend all afternoon making you feel foolish. I stood beneath the wet patch, bowl in hand, and considered the ceiling above it. There was no bathroom there. Agnes's sitting room occupied the front of the flat, with a dry radiator, three unhealthy plants and an armchair she refused to replace because it understood her back.

Then I felt the breeze.

It came from behind me, cool and faintly sweet, lifting a receipt from the counter. Our back door was shut. The front window had been painted closed by a person who apparently considered fresh air a personal weakness.

On the worktable, the blue coat moved.

Not dramatically. Nobody was inside it. One sleeve shifted an inch, as if the person who had left it there was still warm enough to disturb the air.

Dad had brought it on Sunday in a trunk from Gran's loft. Gran was reducing what she called her accumulated obligations. The trunk had contained two old tablecloths, a brass instrument missing most of the parts that would have identified it and this coat, folded under a sheet.

I had taken the coat out yesterday. It was beautiful: blue until you held it to the light, when it became the colour of a mussel shell, with soft cuffs and tiny stitches along the collar. The lining had come loose at the hem. I had put in twelve stitches to mend it before opening the shop this morning.

Twelve neat stitches. I had planned to show Agnes when she returned. I had pictured her turning the hem over, checking the tension and making the little approving noise she used instead of praise when something was genuinely good.

Now the coat was breathing cold air into the room.

I put the bowl down and approached it.

A pale petal slipped out of the left pocket.

There were no flowering plants in the shop. The nearest actual tree stood two streets away, behind the dentist's, and spent most of its life being described as a nuisance.

I touched the lining with the back of my finger. It was colder than the table. Beneath the section I had repaired, a small handwritten label had folded into a seam allowance. I worked it free with the blunt end of my sewing scissors.

Grandad's handwriting. I knew its blunt capitals, the way the R leaned forward impatiently.

DO NOT CLOSE THE RETURN.

I looked at the twelve neat stitches.

Then I looked at the ceiling, where another drop had begun to form.

What I had wanted, that morning, was for my aunt to think I could look after the shop. I had also wanted to redesign the window display, using a folding frame I'd been sketching and not telling anyone about.

I had not wanted to open a weather system.

The bowl began to fill.