A Pretty Beach Wish by Polly Babbington (scary books to read TXT) 📗

you remember Sallie mentioning it, but I’m the owner of the podcast Where the Heck is Pretty Beach? - I did the competition with Sallie last year with the wedding.

Anyway, she mentioned you were doing a Christmas in July shoot at the Orangery and then she also showed me your pics of the Christmas teepee. 

Anyhoo, I’m always on the lookout for Pretty Beach success stories and she said you might be interested in coming on the show. I’ve attached some more info on the podcast. I’ve had a cancellation come up which is quite unusual, so I thought I’d get in touch right away.

Let me know.

Regards,

Lucian

Juliette sat in the car and remembered Sallie had mentioned about the podcast when they’d met for tea in Maisy’s a few months before. But what with the move and work, Juliette hadn’t really thought a whole lot more about it.

What she did remember was from what Sallie had said the exposure from Where the Heck is Pretty Beach? was priceless. Sallie had seen her bookings increase hugely since her feature on the podcast and then the subsequent competition.

Juliette read all the way down to the bottom of the email. It seemed simple enough and all it involved was going along to Lucian’s studio in his cottage in Pretty Beach and chatting about her history with Pretty Beach and what she did with her business.

She went to hit reply and then, seeing that she still had a good twenty minutes before Maggie came out of school, she scrolled down to the number and pressed the button to call him. She might as well cut straight to the chase and have a chat with him. The number began to ring, and she waited until it connected.

‘Helloooooo Lucian McIntyre speaking.’ The sing-song voice trilled on the other end of the line.

Sallie had said he was a character, it certainly seemed as if he was by the way he’d answered the phone.

‘Hello Lucian, Juliette Sparkles here. You sent me an email yesterday.’

‘I certainly did! Juliette Sparkles, darling, just love, love, love that name. I mean how far wrong can you go with a surname like that?’

Juliette started to chuckle. Sallie said he was a hoot and she liked the sound of Lucian already.

‘It’s very handy if you're a Christmas addict and own a Christmas store that’s for sure,’ Juliette replied.

‘Darling, I’m sure you’re not wrong. Any relation to the other Sparkles around here?’

‘Oh yes, if you mean Jeremy Sparkles, MP - he’s my ex-husband.’

‘Darling, I didn’t know! Apologies, I hadn’t put two and two together.

‘Well yes, ten years of marriage.’ Juliette replied.

‘And by the sound of your voice we won’t be mentioning that on the podcast if you decided to come on, I assume?’

‘You’d be assuming correctly, Lucian.’ Juliette answered nodding and smiling to herself.

‘Not a problem at all. So, would you like a few more details on what’s involved?’

‘Yes please,’ Juliette replied.

‘Right, darling, hang on a minute, I’m just getting your Instagram account up. Oh my! Oh yes, the teepee thing. How did that slip my mind? My peeps would just love that.’

‘They would?’

‘Indeed they would. Christmas, weddings, births, fetes, you name it if it goes on it’ll be loved by the listeners of Where the Heck is Pretty Beach?’

‘What would it involve from me then?’ Juliette asked.

‘Not a lot darling. I’ll do a run sheet with how it will likely go which I’ll give to you so that you can approve anything and then we simply chat. I ask you a few questions, keep the conversation steered so it doesn’t go too off track.’

‘Okay, seems simple enough to me.’

‘Then, looking at all this, I would run with the teepee thing and the interest it’s had on social media. Off the top of my head, we can pull in how you use local bits and bobs to put in with your parcels, and how the whole operation is run from the best little town in the country.’

‘Sounds delightful.’ Juliette said, chuckling.

‘Darling, my listeners will just adore you!’

‘Really? I’m not that special.’

‘I can assure you they will, and you must be a bit special darling, if you can produce stuff like this. We can’t really go wrong with your story.’

‘Okay, just to clarify, Lucian. How many people would be listening?

‘I've not got this month’s stats together yet as I’ve been sooooo busy darling, but it will be somewhere in the millions.’

‘What? Sallie didn’t tell me that bit! I didn’t realise it would be so many. Wow, I’d be quite nervous about that.’

‘Not at all, darling. You’ll be fine, I do it all the time. Some of the time it even seems like I’m sitting in a room talking to myself. Which in actual fact, I am. Look I’m really full at the moment, but I do have a cancelled recording spot the week after next. But that means that you’d have to come in pretty pronto. What do you think?’

Juliette chewed on the edge of her lip. What did she really have to lose? She was sure she could sit and chat about Pretty Beach and A Christmas Sparkle for an hour or so with this bright as a button Lucian. She chatted to people all day long in her day job. ‘I think we have a deal.’ Juliette answered.

‘Excellent, so I’ll need you in next week - it’ll be a tight turnaround with the editing, but it would then go up into the cancellation spot a week later. I was going to use a filler post in that spot, but having a Pretty Beach small business success story will be about a million times better, darling.’

‘Great, sounds both good and mildly terrifying,’ Juliette said smiling.

‘Trust me, darling. You’ll be more than fine.’

Chapter 12

A few days later, Juliette said goodbye to her last appointment, finished her notes on the computer, and closed everything down. She picked up her bag and leant over the desk to peer out into the car park to see if