customers. It wasn’t the main draw.’ Carola crossed her fingers, still looking doubtful.
Hannah was drawn into conversation with Kitty, mum of one of her old village friends Deanna and a fond grandmother to little Shelby, Deanna’s three-year-old daughter. ‘I’ll tell Deanna I’ve seen you. She’ll be stoked that you’re back.’
‘I’ll call her so we can meet up,’ Hannah promised. ‘I’ll be here at least as long as Nan has the cast on, I should think.’
Meanwhile, Nan was enjoying a chinwag with Melanie from the village shop. When Melanie eventually drifted off to another part of the warm and jolly pub, Nan whispered to Hannah, ‘There’s a job there, if you want it. Poor Melanie’s got to have a hysterectomy. You run shops. You could temp.’
Hannah stared at Nan, whose cap of silvery white curls looked blue because of the Christmas lights. ‘What about you?’
Nan drew herself up indignantly. ‘I’m retired!’
Snorting with laughter, Hannah gave her grandmother a hug. ‘I didn’t mean what about you for the job,’ she explained. ‘I meant that I’m supposed to be looking after you.’
Nan glared at her plaster cast. ‘It seems a shame for you to spend so much time cooped up with me.’
‘It won’t be forever,’ Hannah consoled. She didn’t say that the village shop was hardly what she wanted out of life. Her upscale luxury goods boutique in Stockholm’s gorgeous, colourful Old Town had been only the start of what she’d planned. But bigger, better premises or even a chain of stylish shops selling beautiful things had definitely receded into the land of might-have-been for now.
Despite Nan’s indomitable spirit, she couldn’t cook or butter bread; she needed help with buttons, zips, her hair … dozens of things.
The situation would improve as Nan did but Hannah knew this limbo would continue for several weeks yet. Then Hannah could start again.
Albin had torched her dreams but she’d rise from the ashes.
Chapter Twelve
On Friday, Nan turned quiet and pensive when flowers arrived from Brett, red chrysanthemums with yellow centres. Hannah arranged them in a vase in the kitchen but Nan said she didn’t want to discuss Brett and gazed out of the window at bare branches scratching at the winter sky. For the rest of the day she was abstracted, barely touching her evening meal.
After washing up, Hannah left her grandmother to watch Coronation Street and went upstairs to call Albin. She felt at home now in the little bedroom that smelled of lavender from the sachets Nan put in the drawers. From the bed she could see a black, starry night through the dormer window and gazed at its brilliance while she formulated a plan of attack.
It wouldn’t have shocked her if Albin had declined her call but maybe curiosity got the better of him as he answered on the fifth ring with a brisk, ‘Hannah.’
‘I haven’t received the value of my stock, returned rent and compensation payment yet,’ she said steadily. ‘I know you won’t want to keep me waiting.’ The stars were bright tonight, like a million diamonds, like the lights glittering on the black water beneath Vasabron.
‘I’ll email a list of stock held and what you paid for it,’ he said.
‘OK,’ she agreed, wondering when. ‘I can cross-reference it to the paid invoices in my receipts bank. Then there’s the display equipment I owned and the overpaid rent. I presume you’ve returned the till to the lease company?’ Stars would be hanging over Stockholm, too, but the lights of big cities always dimmed the starry radiance.
Albin said, smoothly, ‘Julia attended to it.’
Good for Julia. ‘What about the compensation for lost income?’ Hannah went on.
Albin assumed a terse, regretful tone. ‘I’ve taken advice and there’s no goodwill in the business because I’m not buying you out, as such. Goodwill is generally established by calculating the assets over the liabilities when taking over a going concern. I’m not buying a going concern. You merely ceased trading.’ He went on talking about ‘intangible assets’ and ‘external sources’.
Hannah looked away from the stars because they were too beautiful to be associated with this conversation. Maybe it was because he drawled the phrase ‘merely ceased trading’ when it had been the greatest disaster in her life and entirely at his instigation, but rage boiled up like molten lava. She halted his flow of business-speak. ‘So you’re breaking your word?’
He tutted. ‘I’m trying to explain—’
‘You offered, and I accepted, a goodwill gesture – which isn’t the same as goodwill in a business – to compensate me for the