Read Online The Tea House on Mulberry Street by Sharon Owens - Free Book Online Page B

up in a new suit, an investment from Dodds & Sons of Chichester Street, and made his way to a fancy nightclub in the city centre, not far from the river. They were advertising a New Romantic night, whatever that was. Daniel thought it might attract revellers from the more select neighbourhoods of Malone and Cultra. His hand trembled as he handed over the five pounds entrance fee to a teenage doorman with two earrings in his left ear. He made his way to the bar and ordered a soft drink with ice and a slice of lemon. He leaned one elbow on the counter, struck a pose that he thought suggested worldly sophistication, and he waited. A spider on his web. Waiting for a juicy bluebottle.
    Penny Muldoon was that bluebottle. She was waiting near the bar for her best friend, Millie, to arrive. She fell for Daniel the moment she laid eyes on him. She was wearing a new pair of shoes that crushed her toes together, but when she spied the mysterious stranger in the brilliant white shirt, the pain in her feet melted away. She felt as if her two legs were filled with fizzy lemonade and her heart began to batter like a whole regiment of drums. She thought the man at the bar had a look of Bryan Ferry about him, gazing into the middle distance with his ice-blue eyes. And he doesn’t even drink pints, she thought, as he sipped his tall glass of lemonade in a genteel way. A refined-looking, sober man. A rare enough sight in Belfast. And no sign of a girlfriend either. Or a wedding ring. Bingo!
    Penny walked straight up to Daniel. He noticed a golden necklace glinting against her white throat. It said: Penny .
    “Excuse me,” she said. “Are you waiting for anyone?”
    Daniel looked at her necklace, which was catching the light.
    “Penny,” he said. “Is that your name?”
    “Yes,” she replied, forgetting the necklace, and thinking of the gypsy’s words.
    “That’s a lovely name,” he said.
    “Thank you. What’s yours?” She sat up on a high stool, beside him.
    He was rigid with embarrassment, but he managed to stay calm. Some waiters from The Imperial Hotel had just come in and were standing near the bar, and he knew they were watching him. The woman was very young, about seventeen. He did not think she was rich enough or lonely enough to be of any use to him, but he put on his brightest smile, for the benefit of the watching waiters. He liked her name. It was a suitable name for the wife of a thrifty man like himself. The lights dimmed and the glitter-ball began to twirl. The music became louder. Daniel offered to buy the young lady a drink. It was either that, or he would have to ask her to dance. He had never danced in his life, and he was not about to start now, with his ex-colleagues looking on. Penny ruffled her hair and smiled and asked for champagne.
    “Thank you, I just love champagne,” she said. “Although I must warn you, the bubbles make me quite giddy. I haven’t seen you around here before. Are you new in town?”
    “No,” he replied. “I was born and reared in the city. I just don’t go out socialising much, that’s all. I’m not much of a dancer, I’m afraid.”
    They began to talk. By the time Millie came hurrying into the nightclub half an hour later, Penny was already in love.
    The waiters, watching keenly, were amazed to see Daniel Stanley in a nightclub, all dressed up in a fancy suit. Brand new, by the look of it. Shiny shoes, fashionable haircut. A white shirt, open at the neck to reveal a golden chest, tanned by several months selling stolen goods in the open air. And talking casually to a pretty girl half his age. “It just goes to show you,” they said. “You never know what is round the corner.”
    There used to be talk in the hotel that Daniel Stanley was not interested in women at all. That he might have leanings in the other direction. Why else would a man of acceptable appearance stay well away from the women, when other, plainer men spent all their waking hours in pursuit of the fairer