Читать книгу The Bookshop of New Beginnings: Heart-warming, uplifting – a perfect feel good read! - Jen Mouat - Страница 10

Chapter Two

Kate walked briskly along the street, reacquainting herself with the town: its wide cobbled roads and flowering planters pungent in the persistent rain; the county buildings at one end and the bowling green splitting the road into two forks; the arty-crafty havens all along the street; the coffee shops and newsagents.

And bookshop upon bookshop upon bookshop.

What was Emily thinking: opening a bookshop in this town?

Kate thought of the draughty old barn – rustic and romantic, Emily would say – with its mouldy books and pall of damp and cold, and lights that flickered, but only occasionally. How typical of Emily to see none of the pitfalls, but only the potential of the place shining through, like a lighthouse beacon in the fog, ready to save them all, but only if they did some serious work, fast.

Wigtown was accustomed to tourists; the book festival had gone from strength to strength since its first incarnation had drawn the town into cultural focus, and the Solway coast had long been a haven for holidaymakers, with its beaches and forests and gentle, rolling beauty. It was the beginning of June, the festival was some months away and the thick of the tourist season was not yet upon them, and today was a drab, grey Monday, so Kate found the town quiet. For a horrible moment, it seemed too small for her and she felt a wave of homesickness for her city.

And for Ben. She pictured him, luxuriating in his vast bed, giving her a lazy look from sloe-dark eyes. But, no, Ben would not be idling between his Egyptian cotton sheets waiting for her to come home and slip in beside him. He would be getting on with things, working or schmoozing clients in a bid to impress the senior partners at the firm, or having a good time in one of his favourite wine bars.

Kate bit her lip as she felt the first stab of doubt pierce her armour. She was running again, avoiding making a decision about where she and Ben were headed; as if she didn’t know – had she stayed – their inevitable outcome: a glamorous wedding and another reincarnation for Kate, into beautiful, compliant wife and mother. Ben had made no secret of what he wanted – and expected – from her.

So she had come to repay a debt, yes; assuage her guilt, very possibly; but she was also, definitely, running.

*

In her rustic, romantic barn, Emily was trying to reclaim her equilibrium. Kate’s arrival had unsettled her to say the least. Of course she had been in dire need of a shake-up, but she hadn’t really expected this; and now she was worried Kate would be disappointed – in her and in the shop. Dan had been nagging her for weeks to write a proper business plan, get things moving; she had been dodging phone calls from her uber-organised mother who would just love to get her hands on Emily’s project. Ally had been sending polite, cheerful email enquiries, fishing for information and evidence that Emily was on the mend, recovering from the divorce everyone seemed to think she should have put behind her by now. Even Noah had had something to say on the matters of Joe and the bookshop, but Emily wasn’t about to take advice from her youngest brother on any subject, especially given the mess he’d made of things lately. Fergus was keeping out of it, but probably only because he was on the other side of the world and contact with him was sporadic. Her family’s sympathy had run out fast.

Emily sat on the stool behind the counter and took a few calming breaths. Kate felt like a stranger, but achingly familiar at the same time. Emily both wanted her here and feared her presence too. There were things to put right and Emily wasn’t sure she felt equal to doing so; she was still raw and bruised from the divorce, and the inglorious premature end to her teaching career, no matter what they said about it being time to move on.

Kate might expect them all to be the same, Bluebell Bank to be the haven it had always been. What would she make of the changes? Of Lena?

She heard Kate’s tread on the path outside and quickly found a smile. Kate shouldered the door to the shop and burst in. ‘We need to get a shop bell, a cheerful impressive one,’ she said. ‘Say, Em, what was the big idea, opening another bookshop in this town?’

. ‘You noticed?’ Emily bit her lip. Trust Kate to jump straight into the practicalities of the thing.

‘The hundred other bookshops in this town? Yeah, Em, I noticed.’

‘Only a dozen or so. Not a hundred. It’s a book town. That’s what it’s all about. Don’t you remember? Here, I found a notepad for all your ideas, so hit me.’ Fanning the pages invitingly, pale blue lines whispering past Kate’s eyes like a flip book animation, Emily slipped behind the counter and took her seat expectantly on the stool.

Kate looked at the virgin paper awaiting her inspiration, and at Emily’s trusting face.

Placing her coffee on the counter, she unpacked slices of oozing cake. ‘I forgot,’ she grumbled. ‘Never paid much attention to the bookshops. You were the one always with your nose in a book, remember? Dessert first, I think. Then lunch, then planning. That’s the best way round to do things.’ Hoisting herself onto the desk, she crossed her legs. ‘This is not a bad counter you know. We should keep it.’

They were rendered speechless for several minutes, savouring and salivating. Licking the last of the frosting off her fingers, Kate glanced down at the notepad. On the top line, Emily had written: Keep the counter. She supposed it was a start.

After they’d eaten they traded ideas, words pouring onto the page in Emily’s loopy cursive. The list was extensive – and probably expensive, but Emily didn’t want to think about that. Not yet, not when this dream she’d spun was still so fragile and imperative. The bookshop. She and Kate working side by side.

Kate scanned the list and tapped the page with a manicured fingernail. ‘That,’ she said with satisfaction, ‘is how we make this place work.’

‘All of it?’ It was exhausting merely to contemplate. Emily chewed the end of her pencil.

Kate reached across and took it. ‘Eventually. We’ll start small. One step at a time. A good clean up is our first priority, and building better shelving.’ She annotated the list with criss-cross stars to show the order of importance, and handed it back. ‘So, are you quite sure you don’t like my bookstore-boudoir idea? We could be draped over chaise longues in our lingerie, reading Jane Austen aloud and wearing sexy reading glasses? It would certainly make us stand out in this town full of bookshops.’ She grinned.

Emily thought of her grey brassieres and garish pants with cartoon characters and cheeky appliquéd messages. ‘I don’t do draped,’ she said firmly. ‘Or lingerie. And you don’t do Jane Austen.’

Kate sighed theatrically. ‘No, that’s perfectly true. But chaise longues are not a bad idea frankly. Along with the big, comfy armchairs around a wood-burning stove. We could pick them up cheaply and do the reupholstering ourselves. Write that down, Em,’ she ordered.

Kate leapt off the desk to pace. She picked up a book at random and fanned the pages, making a face at the dust clouds blooming from the spine. Picking up book after book, she created unsteady, leaning towers. ‘Some of this furniture is good,’ she said, when she had revealed the wood beneath. Funny, Emily thought, she saw the jewels in the piles of words and stories whereas Kate saw the books as decoration, focusing on the structures and substance beneath.

Kate turned and leaned against the rickety table she had cleared. The book towers wobbled. ‘This probably isn’t the time to mention it, but I’ll need to take a look at the business plan … see the financials, that sort of thing. It would help to know what kind of budget we’re working with.’

Emily paled visibly. ‘Business plan?’

‘Yes. You do have one, right?’

‘Not exactly.’ She dragged out the words reluctantly; she had hoped this moment would not come so soon.

She hadn’t been thinking business plans when she was halfway through the bottle of wine, typing her plea to Kate to come and rescue her. She hadn’t been thinking of anything except how, once upon a time, Kate had made everything better.

‘How did you convince the bank to lend you money without a business plan?’ Kate tamped down a swarm of panic, frowning at her friend. This was Emily; she hadn’t had any grand expectations of fully formed plans, but still … ‘I was expecting it to be rough around the edges, in need of some tweaking, but …’

Emily folded her arms on the counter and regarded Kate calmly. ‘It needs a lot of tweaking. As in, there isn’t one. I didn’t borrow money from the bank.’

Kate raised one eyebrow. ‘O-kay.’ Her doubtful expression asked more questions of Emily.

There was a long, uncomfortable pause. ‘The money came from Joe,’ Emily said, taken by surprise when her voice became a ragged gasp – just the mention of his name could still undo her.

Kate glanced at the glaringly empty space on Emily’s finger, devoid of engagement and wedding rings. Emily rubbed the spot unconsciously as if the absence caused her a physical ache. Even after so short a marriage there was a faint white mark where they had been.

‘I see.’ Kate was gentle now. ‘The divorce settlement? The sale of the house?’

‘Sort of.’ Emily shifted position and didn’t meet Kate’s eye. She didn’t want to be pitied, and yet she knew she had become pitiable: a shade of her former self. Never more so than when thinking or speaking of him. ‘He … he came into some money just after we broke up. He made me a one-off payment; it was enough to buy this place. I moved in with Lena. She … It was a mutually beneficial arrangement.’

Kate pressed her lips together; she had never liked Joe. ‘Yes, I’ve heard him on the radio, quite the star now. So, tell me there’s enough cash left over to make this a viable business.’

‘I guess.’

Kate was wide-eyed. ‘You guess? Emily, don’t you know how much money there is left in the bank?’

Emily shrugged defensively. ‘All that stuff makes me anxious. I don’t care about money like you do.’ The words came out before she could stop them, tumbling off her tongue in an avalanche to swamp them.

‘Right,’ Kate muttered. ‘Thanks.’

‘I didn’t mean …’ Emily raised a hand, gestured wearily at Kate’s expensive cut and colour, the vintage dress more costly surely than the entirety of Emily’s wardrobe, the bracelet she suspected contained real diamonds glittering on one slim, tan wrist. ‘You know …’

‘Sure you meant it, but it’s OK. You’re wrong, though, Emily. I don’t care about money the way you think I do. I have enough. I don’t have to struggle and I’m not going to pretend I do. God knows I did enough struggling to last a lifetime. You remember when getting new clothes for me meant wearing your old cast-offs, don’t you? Taking charity from your parents like a beggar. Scraping together coppers I found down the back of the sofa to buy food?’ Kate’s voice rose and she clenched her hands, already regretting the brief outburst, the loss of cool.

Emily nodded, remorsefully. ‘I know. I’m sorry. Oh shit, what was that – two hours? You haven’t even been here a whole day and I’ve managed to put my foot in it. I’m not good company at the moment. The others will tell you. They think I’m losing it, since … you know.’

‘Joe,’ Kate said sighing softly. ‘It’s fine. We don’t have to talk about all that now. And we don’t have to talk about the financial stuff either. Like you said, I only just got here.’

Emily nodded. ‘I know it might not look much, Kate, but this place is a dream come true.’

Kate held Emily by the shoulders. ‘It doesn’t look like it yet,’ she said. ‘But it will.’

Emily smiled weakly. ‘OK. Why don’t we call it a day and go home?’