Find The Lady: A 47th Shopping Precinct Mystery Episode 4

By Stevie Smith

By Stevie Psmith

My sense of euphoria was, if anything, heightened by the sight of the contract awaiting my signature.  A monthly sum to be paid for my exclusive services leapt from the page with promises of a whole new wardrobe to complement myriad cocktails and the future shone before me like a teashop's freshly polished horse brasses.

Financially, it was no contest.

I turned to the accompanying brief, anxious to discover what prodigies of public relations I was expected to perform in order to earn the privilege and pleasure of transforming hopeful lives.  I thought again of those gurgling progeny taking the sea air as they imperiously deposited toys and rattles all around them.  And of their doting attendants' brusquely concluded mobile phone conversations, cut short in the interest of recovering assorted offerings to the childish Fates. 

Mackelston Forest held the clue my eager eye sought.  It lies to the northwest of Brighton, offering a haven for jaded pensioners and lovers alike.  Young and old find solace amidst its glades, nowadays leaving the mechanised din of the city behind them for an hour, morning or day, refreshing themselves in its ancient bosom as their forebears have done for untold centuries. 

According to whichever of Andy's colleagues had prepared a job description for the new PR man, they would long continue to do so.  The difference was, I learned as I rapidly scanned the pages, that I'd be helping to pave the way for a development of nearly a thousand new houses to be built around a supermarket sited at the forest's eastern edge.  The lovers and oldsters, it appeared, could expect quite a lot of company on their forthcoming sojourns.

I put the file aside and gazed bleakly around the office.  Its sparse furnishings offered no immediate solution to what had become a dilemma.  Miss October cocked an enquiring eyebrow as I paced to the open window.  On the street below, shop and office workers were hurrying in the direction of bars and bus stops.

The phone started to ring and I crossed the short distance to my desk to check out the caller's origin.  The Mayflower's six digits had long been made famous by its former resident dance band's performances of a popular hit based upon them that had accompanied youthful jittering.  I pressed a button to switch on the answerphone.

Andy's pink file would fit nicely, along with the piled copies of letters to concerns great and small that had accumulated over the past few weeks, into a large space going begging in the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet, I decided.

As I locked the office door, I could just make out Andy's voice from behind the pane, buzzing like an angry, unswatted fly.  He was a busy man. 

I absently whistled a few notes of the dance band's theme as, descending the stairs, I recalled that my cleaning lady was due in a matter of days. 

She'd surely settle for an Old Fashioned or two, I reflected - given there'd be no bickering between us about unfinished filing preventing her usual efficient exercise with the duster.  With the chores still to do, it suddenly seemed that time - recently so abundant - was becoming a luxury with which I no longer had time to play.