The Apprentice Girl // Book 3 in the Rosie Grey series

Chapter Four

"Kitty and I will be back this afternoon. There is no one booked in for any meetings today and I know I can trust you to schedule them if anyone comes in asking. Beyond that, it should be a rather quiet day. Christopher said he would stop by later and Matthew is working not too far away so if you run into any problems, they are to be your first port of call. Don't try to fix the problem yourself and don't break anything," James said as he slipped his arms into his jacket.

"I know, I know. So what happens if one of the shelves fall and I get crushed?" I asked.

"Your mind works in mysterious ways, Rosie Posie." He poked me on the nose.

"Don't do that."

"James," Kitty warned.

"I'm coming. Remember, don't break anything."

"Just go."

James scrunched his face up and buttoned up the front of his jacket as Kitty wrapped a scarf around her neck and held the door open for him. A cold breeze blasted into the room and I instinctively pulled my shawl tighter around me to fight it off as they disappeared out into the cold and leaving me alone in the shop. The cold air lingered in the shop a little while longer, but the snow had yet to fall on the ground and I had started to think it would never fall. James had said it was cold enough, but God thought he would disrupt my plans to build a snowman just a while longer.

With James and Kitty gone and the entire shop to myself, I grabbed the small canvas and selection of pains I had bought from the house and settled myself against the cushions of the sofa. I had known it would be a slow day and with the shop organised in its entirety, I would have had nothing to do had Christopher not suggested I bring along something to paint. Had he not mentioned, I would have started to re-organise the shelves again, or eaten all the slabs of toffee I had hidden in various places when James wasn't looking.

He hadn't been all that agreeable when it came to re-organising the shelves and so he never noticed when I slipped slabs of toffee in places he would never check. Were he to find it I'd have to explain myself but he had never been the most observant of people so I had my doubts it would ever be discovered.

I pulled a pencil out from my dress pocket and started to lightly sketch something on the canvas to fill in with the paint. Even with all the time that had passed, I couldn't paint without having a sketch to follow. A basic outline of where I needed to go and what I had in mind always worked better than swiping the paint on the canvas and having no direction in where it would lead. I had always preferred sketching to painting, but it had certainly grown on me since I had done it more often.

The pencil seemed to glide over the canvas as I drew the faint outline of a small stream running alongside trees, some as tall as buildings. Small clouds dotted the sky and I drew the markings for the sun in the top corner. Once the basic outline had been drawn, I pushed myself off the sofa and left the canvas on the table and stepped into the small backroom and through the door at the far end. It opened onto a thin alleyway with walls encasing it. The privy stood at the end, but a small pump had been placed so we could have water. I used the pun to fill up a small glass jar of water before carrying it back to the shop.

The shop had reminded empty whilst I had been outside, so I placed the jar on the table alongside the canvas and crossed to the other side of the room. I bent down to one of the drawers we used for storage and pulled it open, reaching into the back of it and pulling out a slab of toffee. The bell above the door sounded as I closed the drawer and turned around.

"Doctor Ealing, how may I help you?" I asked, swallowing the anxiety that had started to rise when I saw him.

"This may seem like an odd question, but you happen to have any scrap material lying around? I'm low on bandages and need some more for the day," he said.