The morning was beautifully quiet and sunny, so Holly busied herself in tidying up a few of the shelves, rearranging the altar candles into a more regular pattern, instead of the slightly random configuration that had grown organically as the range in one corner of the shop had expanded. She smiled sadly as she remembered selling the beeswax ones to the hesitant new Pagan, and Charlie’s suggestively raised eyebrow as she’d wrapped them. She’d loved his slightly schoolboy sense of the naughty.

She had a look at the apothecary’s jars behind the counter, too, and made a note of which ones needed reordering. The lavender needed a top-up, and, so did the heartsease. She wasn’t sure what would ease her heart, though, no matter how busy she kept herself.

As she turned away to her notebook again to add it to the reorder list, she didn’t notice someone coming through the front door of the shop. In fact, he made it all the way to the counter before she realised. Glancing up, she blinked in shock, then composed her face into a more welcoming smile.

‘Oh hi,’ she said quickly. ‘You startled me. I was just sorting out some order notes.’

‘Sorry,’ Tom Fielding smiled tightly but apologetically. ‘I wasn’t sure I’d find you here today. Didn’t know if the demonstration was still going on.’

‘No, not until next month now,’ Holly replied. ‘And I do have a business to run.’

‘Of course.’ He paused. ‘Have you spoken to our mutual friend?’

Holly felt her cheeks start to burn as she shook her head. ‘I thought it would be better to put some distance between ourselves and that crappy news story. And, as far as anything else is concerned, there’s not really a lot to say now, is there?’

‘He really is very sorry, Holly,’ Tom said quietly. ‘He knows that, in your eyes, and the eyes of pretty much everyone else, he’s acted reprehensibly. But you must understand that he had some quite significant pressure put on him from a higher power. He might have been a researcher for most of his career, but it didn’t quite prepare him for the machinations of Westminster life as an MP.’

‘So, someone put pressure on him. What about his principles, his beliefs? He told me he would help us.’

‘I know that, but you must know that things change very quickly in this game. What seems right one day can cause all sorts of problems the next.’

‘So that’s all me and my family are to him now?’ Holly could feel her temper rising, but, realising she’d be lashing out at the wrong person, she tried to quell it. ‘Harry’s just a problem, is he?’