Fiona Harper - The Little Shop of Hopes and Dreams

Cheesy line, she knew. But the clients loved it.

Saffron exhaled and her shoulders relaxed. ‘Thank you. You don’t know what this means to me.’

Nicole smiled again. She hadn’t expected to like Saffron, but she did. There was a lack of guile about her that was surprisingly disarming. Suddenly she understood why it was this girl and not the hundreds of other bright young things like her that the tabloids followed round.

‘I don’t even know where to start…’ Saffron said mournfully, flicking through one of the folders in front of her. ‘Just that I want it to be monumental, spectacular. And that I want to do it the weekend before Christmas, so it’s all done and dusted by the time I get together with my father, step-mother and step-sister on Christmas Eve.’

‘Well, I’ve got a questionnaire I can run through with you that will throw up some ideas, but we don’t have to decide anything right now,’ Nicole said.

‘I usually do a little homework on the fiancé-to-be when someone comes to me to plan a proposal. I also try to engineer a face-to-face meeting so that we can get a feel for their personality and tastes.’ After Mr Arrogant she wasn’t taking any chances.

It had turned out to be a genius idea. While a lot of the men who came to her knew their partners very well, she’d discovered that there were also things many women hadn’t communicated to their significant other, secret wishes that the man of their dreams should just instinctively know without being told. After her mock interview, Nicole was well placed to weave them into her proposal ideas and let the proposer take the credit.

Saffron looked a little panicked. ‘You won’t tip him off, will you?’

Nicole shook her head reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry. We’re very discreet. Usually, I pose as a journalist or a market researcher doing a questionnaire and ask them a few key questions about themselves, what they feel about love and romance. It’s all very quick and painless.’

She didn’t add that it was usually a bit easier when the target was a woman. It wasn’t hard to run into someone in a coffee shop or in a high street and start chatting about weddings and boyfriends. Saffron was spooked enough as it was. Nicole wasn’t going to scare her off by mentioning this would be her first girl-asks-boy proposal.

‘What we need from you is information on how we can informally “bump into” him. Preferably a public place where there’s an opportunity to chat, hopefully within the next week.’

Saffron thought hard for a moment. ‘I have the perfect event! Oh! It’s tonight…like, in a couple of hours. That’s not too soon, is it?’

Nicole shook her head. It wasn’t impossible, even if it wasn’t the way she liked to do things. Usually, she preferred a couple of days to do some homework before she met the ‘target’, as Mia jokingly called them. It would mean she’d have to meet the guy first and do her research later. She mentally leafed through her diary and rescheduled her gym session for the following morning. ‘No, tonight is fine.’

Saffron immediately brightened, clapping her hands together and bouncing a little on the sofa. ‘Oh, that’s amazing! I am so excited we can kick-start this straight away. I detest waiting for things.’ She pulled a scrap of paper from her handbag and scribbled down an address on it. ‘It’s a photography exhibition. I may well turn up at some point. That’s okay, isn’t it?’

Nicole nodded. ‘I might not speak to you when you do. It will be better if we’re not seen together at this stage, but I’ll chat to your man and come up with some personalised ideas from the information you’ve both given me. Then we can meet again in a few days to start setting something up.’

She rose and indicated that Saffron should follow her back down the little corridor.

‘Money’s no object,’ Saffron said loudly as they emerged into the office.

Nicole saw Peggy’s ears prick up, but she kept her head down, hiding her smile as she tinkered with a design on her computer.

‘I want the whole of London talking about this proposal for months. Years, even!’

Both Nicole and Peggy smiled broadly at the socialite. So did they.

‘I have one last question before you go…’ Nicole said. The whole time she’d been talking with Saffron, one big thing had been puzzling her.

Saffron raised her eyebrows. ‘Fire away.’

Nicole cleared her throat and asked the question she knew Peggy was also thinking. ‘Why did you choose Hopes & Dreams instead of…instead of another proposal-planning agency?’ She knew that Celeste and Minty ran in the same circles as Saffron and her buddies. Surely they would have been the natural choice.

For the first time since she’d entered their offices, Saffron dimmed a little. ‘Well, I won’t lie. I did hear of another agency first, but then I discovered who ran it and I kept searching using Google.’

Peggy shot a look at Nicole.

‘I hate to speak badly of anyone,’ Saffron continued, ‘but I wouldn’t trust Araminta Fossington as far as I could throw her.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Peggy piped up, before Nicole could stop her.

Saffron nodded vehemently. ‘She once stole a boyfriend right from under my nose. There’s no way I’d let her within fifty feet of my man.’

Nicole tried not to show it visibly, but inside she was jumping up and down. She sent a glance at Peggy that said, See? I told you stuff would come back and bite them in the butt some day. Peggy rolled her eyes and pretended she hadn’t understood.

‘Well, we’re very glad you chose us,’ Nicole said, shaking her hand. ‘And you’ll find us professional in the utmost, in every area of our service.’

Saffron gave her another of her light-up-the-city smiles. ‘I have a good feeling about this,’ she said as she hitched her handbag up onto her shoulder. ‘See you in a few days!’

And then she swept out of the office in a twirl of fur-trimmed camel cape and a waft of perfume. It seemed her exits were every bit as impressive as her entrances.

They waited until Saffron had disappeared out of the courtyard below before they started jumping up and down and hugging each other.

‘Take that, Celeste and Minty!’ Nicole said, punching the air.

Peggy picked up the swear jar and thrust it her direction. Nicole smiled and dropped a pound coin into the bottom. She didn’t care. That victory shout had been worth every penny.

When Saffron had mentioned an exhibition, Nicole had assumed it would be an upmarket gallery in Bloomsbury or Chelsea. She hadn’t expected a church, tucked away down a dusty side street in Blackfriars on the south bank of the Thames. Most of Saffron’s circle wouldn’t be seen dead in this postcode. She checked the slip of paper with her client’s large and looping scrawl once again. Trinity Arts Centre. Yep. This was the place.

She walked up the stone steps and pushed one of the glazed wooden doors open enough to slide through. She then stepped through a second set of doors and into a large, bright space.

The original beams and pillars of the large church remained, as did the parquet floor and the organ pipes on the far wall, but the interior had been cleared and everything was painted crisp white, making the stained-glass windows sing with colour.

Off to one side as she walked in was a bar and seating area, while the other held a small shop, and deeper into the church was the exhibition space, carved into different sections by slabs of white walls about seven feet high. Some were set at right angles to each other, arranged near other walls to make a large and open maze, where the artwork was displayed.

There was a small crowd wandering around, wine glasses in hands, perusing the large black-and-white prints that adorned the display space. Before joining them, Nicole checked her phone. Still nothing from Saffron. They’d chatted not long after she’d left the office and Saffron had promised she’d send a photo through of her intended. It had yet to arrive. Until it did, Nicole would just have to mingle and enjoy the exhibition until she found the man she was here to stalk—Alex Black.