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regularly.’
    ‘Yeah, right. In the spare time you’ve got between sorting out this lot and getting the place up and running.’ Lilly pulled
     a face then peered out of the door at the rain-swept market square.
    ‘Yes, but,’ Frankie sighed, ‘I’m missing so many tricks here. It’s nearly Christmas – I need a Christmas window display.’
    ‘Yeah.’ Lilly nodded. ‘At Beauty’s Blessings Jennifer has hada Christmas window display in place since October. So you’ll need to get a shift on. You’ve only got a month.’
    ‘I know.’ Frankie nodded. ‘Don’t remind me. Christmas is obviously an optimum trading time. Everyone wanting to buy things,
     and that’s what I’ve got to give them. Things to buy. I’m going to have to sort out all the party frocks and stick them in
     the window, drape a lot of twinkly, sparkly stuff round them, find some holly and baubles and—’
    ‘Ohmigod!’ Lilly suddenly shrieked. ‘No way!’
    ‘What?’ Frankie looked at Lilly in alarm. ‘What’s the matter?’
    ‘Out there!’ Lilly turned wide-eyed. ‘Come and have a look! Out there! Quick!’
    Frankie frowned. She couldn’t imagine anything remotely exciting happening in Kingston Dapple’s marketplace. Nothing ever
     had or did.
    Kingston Dapple’s cobbled market square was really three-sided, with the fourth side opening on to the sleepy High Street.
     Traffic meandered up and down there, as did the village shoppers, and any deliveries to the rear of the marketplace’s prewar
     shops were made from a narrow horseshoe-shaped service road looping off the High Street. The buildings were Victorian, tall
     and close-packed, the roads hundreds of years old and almost single lane. The twenty-first century had had very little impact.
     In fact, Frankie reckoned, nothing much had changed in Kingston Dapple for at least a hundred years.
    Apart from Rita’s, no,
her
shop, there was the Greasy Spoon caff, a small stationer’s-cum-newsagent’s, a shoe shop selling sensible sandals and cosy
     slippers, a toy shop, a gift-type shop selling postcards and collectibles of the rather ugly plaster variety, a greengrocer’s
     and a butcher’s.
    And, of course, the Toad in the Hole pub.
    The Toad had, for centuries, been the Kingston Arms Hotel, coaching inn and hostelry, until becoming very rundown in the 1970s.
     It had mouldered for quite some time before being bought by an up-and-coming brewery chain. As it was a listed building, outside
     the ancient architecture remained the same as it had ever been, but now alienated most of the village’s beer ’n’ a bag of
     crisps pub-goers by incon -gruously housing a very minimalist glass, chrome and spotlit gastro bar. The Toad currently provided
     Kingston Dapple’s only nightlife.
    Unless, Frankie thought vaguely, you counted the various weekend shindigs in the village hall. Which very few rational people
     ever did.
    So, the only other additions to the market square were the space where Brian parked his kebab van every evening, after doing
     his rounds of the villages, from ‘ten ’til midnight depending on the weather and the number of munchy-headed revellers staggering
     from the Toad’, and Ray Valentine’s closed-down flower stall.
    There was nothing out there, especially on a wet and windy freezing cold November day, Frankie thought, likely to warrant
     Lilly’s reaction. Then again, she thought as she negotiated the heaps of second-hand clothes to reach the door, Lilly was
     always a little bit OTT.
    ‘Frankie!’ Lilly urged again. ‘Quick!’
    ‘What?’ Frankie peered over Lilly’s shoulder. ‘What am I looking at? Where?’
    ‘There!’ Lilly, wide-eyed, jabbed a midnight-blue sparkly talon across the square.
    Frankie peered some more. A few hardy souls, heads downagainst the storm, were attempting to fight their way into the shops, but apart from them, she could see nothing.
    ‘Look!’ Lilly grabbed her arm. ‘Him! Just opening up Ray’s flower