Molly's Millions

To Bridget and Hsin-Yi for reading the early drafts of this book and providing such wonderful feedback.

To Margaret James and all at the RNA London/SE Chapter. Special thanks to Sue Haasler, Jean Fullerton, Janet Gover, Caroline Praed, Jenny Haddon, Rachel Summerson and Pat Walsh.

To Doreen and Martin at The Monument for their time, enthusiasm and insight, and to Clare Donovan for taking part in the Molly experiment at the top!

To Katie Fforde, Liz Young, Deborah Wright, Mags Wheeler, Stephanie Polak, Heather Clark, Louise Nelson, Margaret Connelly, Clare Punchard, Siobhan Curham, Margaret Fotheringham, June Martin, Pat Maud, Yvette Verner and Linda Gillard for encouragement and 
support. Also to Cam and Kate Boden who always support their local artists!

Special thanks to Susanne O’Leary for her dare! And thanks to my wonderful writing girls: Henriette Gyland, Pia Tapper Fenton, Catriona Robb and Giselle Green for sharing the highs and lows along the way.

Thanks to Louise Watson and all at Allison & Busby.

And my own special Molly for making each day a delight and for taking me away from the keyboard at least twice a day!

Most of all, thank you to my family – my mother, father and brother. And, as ever, to my husband, Roy. 

Title Page
Acknowledgements
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
About the Author
Copyright

‘That’s twenty-six fifty,’ the cashier said, looking up expectantly and forgetting to smile in the process.

Molly Bailey opened her purse, her eyes sweeping its depths, knowing there wasn’t enough to pay. She bit her lip and took a deep breath.

‘I’m ever so sorry. I’m afraid I’m going to have to put something back.’

The cashier’s eyes took on a look of the Medusa before she was about to turn some poor soul into stone.

Molly looked at the goods she’d piled into four carrier bags. Something had to go. She knew she shouldn’t have bought the wine but it was on special offer and she hadn’t had a treat for months.

As she made her decision, she heard a woman behind her groan loudly.

‘Maybe if I put this back.’ Molly tried to smile as she returned the bottle of wine to the cashier, doing her best
to ignore the other people in the queue as her face flushed scarlet.

‘Twenty-one fifty-one,’ the cashier said, refusing to return Molly’s smile.

She still didn’t have enough. ‘Well, I guess I don’t really need this,’ Molly said, trying to ignore the woman behind her who’d started up a tutting competition within the queue. ‘Far too heavy for me to carry anyway,’ she said, making a desperate stab at humour.

The cashier took the four-pack of orange juice back. ‘Nineteen seventy-one,’ she said, lips barely moving, face devoid of sympathy.

‘Great!’ Molly pulled out her two crumpled ten-pound notes and handed them over.

‘Thank goodness for that,’ the tutting woman whispered audibly from behind. Molly could ignore her no longer. She turned round and looked at the woman, who had hyphens for eyes and a mouth to match, and gave her a dazzling smile.

‘Thank you
so
much for being so patient,’ Molly said, trying her best to sound unfazed by the whole experience and, collecting her change, she beamed at the cashier before heading out into the car park.

It wasn’t the first time she’d come out without enough money. Plus her maths wasn’t the best in the world. She really should carry a calculator around with her, she thought.

Placing her groceries on the floor of the car, she got into the driver’s seat and started the engine, noticing she was short on petrol. She’d have cycled to the supermarket if she hadn’t already had to sell her bike.

She sighed. It wasn’t that she had aspirations to be rich or anything, it would just be nice not to have to worry so much.
She often thought about buying a lottery ticket, but the odds just weren’t good enough for her to risk a whole pound coin.

As her Volkswagen Beetle, affectionately known as ‘Old Faithful’, spluttered out onto the main road, a shaft of brilliant sunlight filled the car. Molly smiled as though it had been sent down from the heavens just for her.

It was as if she knew she was just four hours away from becoming a millionaire.

Once home, she dumped her shopping bags and released a sigh of pure contentment. She might occasionally be short of change but she certainly wasn’t short on flowers. Her florist’s, aptly named The Bloom Room, was small but perfectly formed. The overpowering smell, which no perfume could ever capture, seeped into her entire body, filling her with a rosy warmth. The olfactory collision of lilies and roses, and the delicacy of freesias, seemed to run through her bloodstream. It saturated her clothes and seeped up through the floorboards into her flat above so that she never needed to buy air fresheners.

She’d never known heaven could come in two hundred square feet. When she’d first moved in, it was nothing but a dusty shell squashed between the baker’s and the grocer’s, but a couple of weeks of tender loving care, and a few cans of yellow paint, had jollified the place up no end. Or rather ‘Mollyfied’ the place, as Marty, her brother, loved to say.

Yes, looking round the shop, she could see that it had definitely been Mollyfied. The warm sunshine walls and polished wooden floorboards were the perfect backdrop to the enormous silver buckets of flowers, and the large local watercolours of the nearby Lake District added to the overall
calmness of the shop. Perfect.

As the bell above the door tinkled and old Mrs Purdie walked in, Molly was brought back into the present. She’d been expecting her and had rushed back from the trip to the supermarket as Mrs Purdie usually popped in last thing in the afternoon, hoping some of the flowers had been marked down in price.

She was relatively new to the village and nobody seemed to know much about her because she kept herself to herself but she was a regular visitor to The Bloom Room and Molly always looked forward to her visits.

She watched as Mrs Purdie bent, gladiolus-like, over the silver buckets, inhaling the sweet aromas of the bouquets. Yes, she thought, Mrs Purdie was definitely a gladiolus: strong yet yielding. It was kind of a hobby of Molly’s to think of people in terms of flowers. It had started when she was about six. She’d been watching her mother walking round their garden one morning, pausing at the fantastic blooms on the rosa mundi and pushing her face deep into their blowsy petals, two-toned, fuchsia and shell pink, so like her personality: gentle yet vibrant.

Molly looked up to see Mrs Purdie standing up to full height after admiring a particularly expensive bouquet.

‘Lovely!’ she sighed, closing her eyes as she was carried away on the scent.

‘I’m marking that one down,’ Molly said, ‘it’s three
ninety-nine
.’

‘Really?’ Mrs Purdie’s eyes sprang wide in surprise. ‘I’ll take it.’

As Molly wrapped the flowers in paper she usually charged for, she remembered when Marty had spent a couple of hours
in the shop with her one afternoon, and had been astounded when Mrs Purdie had spent one ninety-nine on a bunch of carnations, and had then admired another bunch of flowers at four ninety-nine.

‘Here – take them,’ Molly had said.

Marty’s mouth had dropped open, mirroring the surprise on the woman’s face perfectly.

‘Molly!’ he’d shouted, as soon as the old lady had left the shop. ‘That is
not
how you run a business.’

‘Oh, twaddle!’

‘Don’t twaddle your way out of this one!’

‘Marty – it’s four-thirty in the afternoon; they’re not going to sell now, are they? They’ll probably end up on the compost heap. Anyway, Mrs Purdie only has her pension. She can’t afford many treats.’

‘You’re meant to be making a living, not running a charity.’

‘Oh, you sound just like Dad when you talk like that,’ she’d laughed.

And it was true. Much as she tried to deny it, Marty was a Bailey through and through. Slowly, via careful brainwashing from their father, Marty had turned into an old Scrooge.

Molly shook her head as she handed Mrs Purdie her new bouquet. ‘Three ninety-nine,’ she said with a great deal of satisfaction, secretly wishing Marty was there.

Mrs Purdie handed over her money, a huge smile bisecting her face. ‘You’ll never guess what I did today,’ she began. ‘I bought a lottery ticket.’

‘Did you?’

‘Look!’ Mrs Purdie reached into the depths of her voluminous handbag and pulled out the ticket, brandishing it
as if it was a sure winner. ‘I’ve never bought one before. Have you?’ she asked, her eyes watching Molly carefully.

Molly shook her head, her dark curls knocking against her pink cheeks. ‘No. I haven’t.’

‘The odds are astronomical, of course, but just imagine!’ Mrs Purdie’s eyes glazed over for a moment. What was she thinking of, Molly wondered? Rooms full of flowers? A retirement that involved a few luxuries?

‘What would you do if you won?’ Molly asked.

Mrs Purdie looked up, her expression one of perfect surprise. ‘If
I
won?’ she said, giving a little chuckle. ‘I don’t know. I
really
don’t know. But it would be very nice, wouldn’t it?’

Molly smiled and watched as she pushed the ticket back into her handbag and left the shop with her flowers, the bell tinkling as the door shut behind her.

Just imagine!

Mrs Purdie’s words echoed around Molly’s head like an unforgettable song. But she didn’t want to imagine. Not really. She couldn’t afford to for a start. The only money she had was in the till and the petty cash box, and she never touched that. Not unless there was a personal emergency.

It would be very nice, wouldn’t it?

Mrs Purdie’s words, it would seem, weren’t going to vacate Molly’s head easily, not until she did something about it.

She turned round and looked at the little blue cash box nestling amongst the wrapping paper and, even as her hand closed around it, she knew that it was wrong and foolish but the temptation was just too much. This was a grade one personal emergency.

She bit her lip and opened the box. With rebellious fingers,
she picked out a gold pound coin, her eyes, dark as conkers, twinkling mischievously. It wouldn’t be missed. She’d return it as soon as she could. This just had to be done; it was as if something was goading her on.

The odds are astronomical.

Yes, Molly thought, but they were still there, weren’t they?

Her hand swallowed the coin in a tight fist and, grabbing her front door key, she left the shop, hurrying to the corner store to buy her ticket.