Читать книгу The Wish List - Sophia Money-Coutts - Страница 13

LATER THAT WEEK, I was dealing with Mrs Delaney and didn’t notice the blond man loitering in the biography section. It was raining, which drove more people into the shop since it was a peaceful place to pass time until the clouds moved. Unhurried. Relaxed. No assistant ever approached you in a bookshop and said, ‘Would you like to try a pair of heels with that?’ Customers could browse undisturbed while their coats dripped quietly on the Turkish rugs.

Mrs Delaney had been visiting Frisbee Books for decades. She lived in a big house overlooking St Luke’s Church, a short wobble away on her walking stick, and liked to come in every week to discuss new gardening books. She was exceptionally keen on gardening (although she didn’t do it herself, she had a man called Cliff who did that), and Eugene and I took it in turns to deal with her. This morning it was my turn, so I was leafing Mrs Delaney through a new book about rewilded gardens. It wasn’t going well because she declared every photo of daisies and cow parsley ‘a disgrace’.

‘That’s even messier than the last!’ she said, as I reached the final page, a picture of a butterfly on a clump of grass. ‘Not for me,’ she said. ‘I’ll be off.’

Mrs Delaney waved her stick in the air as a goodbye before tottering out into the rain. I stepped under the wooden beam separating fiction and non-fiction to slide the rewilding book back onto its shelf.

‘I’m so sorry to trouble you,’ said the man.

I turned to help him, my automatic smile in place.

‘It’s only that I’m here to pick up a book my mother ordered.’

My mouth fell open like a trapdoor but no words came out. It was his old-fashioned clothes that struck me at first. Over a white shirt he was wearing a pair of blue braces which fastened with little buttons to the top of his trousers. Then I stared at his face and wondered whether his pale blue eyes and almost invisible blond eyelashes meant he was Scandinavian.

‘She said she got a message saying it’s in,’ he persisted. ‘If you wouldn’t mind…’

‘Yes, sure, sorry,’ I said, shaking my head as if to wake myself up. He didn’t sound Scandinavian. He sounded very English. ‘What’s she called?’

‘Elizabeth Dundee.’

‘OK, give me a second.’

I stepped behind the till into a small side room that led off from it and ran my finger up and down the shelves until I found the order slip that said Dundee.

‘Here you go,’ I said, carrying the book round to the front of the shop again. I held it out and only then saw what it was called: The Art of Arousal: A Celebration of Erotic Art Throughout History. There was a painting of a woman having sex with a swan on the cover.

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘Ah,’ said the man, in a low, clipped tone. ‘Yes. I might have known. It’s Zeus. He transformed himself into a swan and seduced Leda. Quite odd, those gods.’

‘Looks like it,’ I replied, and we both gazed at the book in silence for a few moments before he spoke again.

‘I’m also looking for something else.’

‘What is it?’ I asked, keen to alleviate the awkwardness of discussing bestiality with this handsome blond man.

‘A book called The Struggle. You don’t happen to have it, do you?’

‘Should have, but it’s a novel so it’ll be back through here.’

I waved him into the fiction area after me. The Struggle was a book as fat as a brick, one of the summer’s biggest sellers, partly because the Irish author had given a series of interviews in which he denounced anyone he was asked about. The Prime Minister? A gobshite. The English in general? A load of gobshites. The Queen? A rich gobshite.

I leant over to scan the table of hardback fiction to find a copy, suddenly very aware that the handsome man was behind me and I was wearing my biggest knickers, the ones with an elasticated waist that pulled up to my belly button and gave me a very obvious VPL. Mia had once insisted that I needed ‘to give thongs a chance’ and left a couple at the bottom of my stairs from one of her fashion clients. But when I’d carried them to the safety of my bedroom for further inspection, I couldn’t work out which bit to put my legs through, and when I finally got them on and glanced over my shoulder in the mirror, my bottom looked so exposed, so vast and white and wobbly, that I wondered why anyone wanted that effect anyway. I’d stashed them at the back of my underwear drawer where they’d remained ever since.

I found the book’s gold spine on the edge of the table. ‘Here you go,’ I said, sliding it free and handing it to him. ‘Have you read any of his others?’ I wanted to distract him from my enormous pants.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘Should I?’

‘I’ve only read his first one. This is better, but that was good too. A coming-of-age tale. Growing up in Dublin in the Seventies, trying to escape family politics, actual politics and then he…’ I stopped. ‘Well, I won’t give it away. But it’s good, yes,’ I said, blushing as he held my eye.

He turned the book over where, on the back cover, the author, Dermot Dooley, glared up at us.

‘Looks pretty angry with life, doesn’t he?’

I snickered. ‘True.’

Up close, he smelt fresh, of a lemony aftershave. Without moving my head, I raised my eyes from the book to his face. It was as if part of me recognized him. He felt familiar. But if he’d been in here before I would remember it, surely? Eugene and I would have fought to serve him and Eugene was normally quicker than me with the hot ones.

His eyes met mine and I blushed again. Busted.

‘Thanks for finding it. And my mother’s book. You’re brilliant, er…’

‘Florence,’ I said, smiling back at him, ‘and not at all. It’s my job.’

‘Thank you all the same.’

‘You’re into contemporary fiction then?’ I ventured, stepping back behind the till and taking the books from him.

‘Absolutely, when I get the time. Why?’

‘Sorry, nosy of me. Just…’ I stopped. ‘Well, I shouldn’t really say it but most men come in here looking for Wayne Rooney’s autobiography.’

‘Oh Christ,’ he said, clapping a hand to his forehead. ‘That was the other one I was supposed to pick up. Don’t suppose you’ve got a copy?’

I looked up from the till and laughed.

‘What about you?’ he asked.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘What do you read? I suppose I’ve never really thought about it before, but does someone who works in a bookshop have to read all of these?’ He gestured at the shelves.

‘No! Luckily not. We share it. I’m novels. Eugene, that’s my colleague, he takes on non-fiction and plays. There’s a system so that if someone comes in we can help them, er, find a book they fall in love with.’

I felt embarrassed for describing it like that but he didn’t seem to hear because he was concentrating on the cards in front of the till. ‘Sorry, can I chuck these in too?’ He handed me a pack of cards with Vermeer’s Girl in a Pearl Earring on the front, except the woman’s face had been replaced with a cat. It was part of a series of greetings cards that I’d insisted to Norris we should stock. And I’d been right. There had been Mona Lisa as a cat, a Van Gogh self-portrait as a cat and a cat dressed as Holbein’s Henry VIII, but they’d all sold out.

‘You like cats?’ He looked more of a dog person. Wellington boots on the weekend, three Labradors, a tweed hat.

‘I do. My mother has three Persians.’

‘Cute. And altogether that’ll be £36.45 please. Do you want a bag?’

He shook his head. ‘No, not to worry.’

‘But it’s raining,’ I said, nodding towards the windows. Outside, people scuttled under umbrellas like giant black beetles.

He grinned again. ‘A bit of rain won’t hurt.’ He tucked the books and his cards under his arm. ‘Not sure I’m going to fall in love, though,’ he said.

‘Huh?’ I said. I’d been gazing at his chest – at a small triangle of blond hair exposed at the top of his shirt – and misheard.

‘With him,’ the man said, flashing Dooley’s headshot at me again. ‘You said you find books for people to fall in love with.’

‘Right,’ I replied, laughing too loudly. He meant Dooley. Obviously he wasn’t talking about me. Come on, Florence. People don’t go about their lives falling in love with others they meet in bookshops. That only happened once in Notting Hill.

‘Thanks so much for all your help,’ he said.

‘You’re welcome,’ I replied as he made for the door. ‘I hope you enjoy it.’

He held his fingers to his temple, saluting. Then he was gone into the drizzle.

I felt a pang of disappointment at his disappearance but heard Norris coming upstairs, so tried to rearrange my face.

‘Pass us the order book,’ he said, standing on the other side of the counter. I handed it over in silence.

‘You all right?’ he added.

‘Yeah, fine. Why?’

‘Just look a bit flustered. Where’s Eugene?’

‘Upstairs, restocking travel.’

Norris opened the book and reached for a pen.

‘You missed Mrs Delaney,’ I went on.

‘My lucky day. She buy anything?’

‘No. But someone came in to collect an order and I sold another copy of The Struggle.’

Norris blew out heavily through his nostrils. ‘I’m not sure one hardback a day’s going to keep us open. Ah, we’ll see,’ he said, closing the book and handing it back to me.

‘I’ve been thinking about this and I’ve got a plan,’ I said, straightening up and deciding to broach my ideas.

Norris’s eyebrows waggled with suspicion.

‘We need to sort out the website. And I thought about a petition. Online and in here. I’ll get everyone who comes in to sign it.’

He didn’t reply.

‘And we really should have Instagram by now, Norris. I can run it, it’s easy. And Twitter.’

‘Twitter?’ Norris barked it as if it was a dirty word.

‘It’s free marketing, quite literally.’

‘No, no, no,’ he replied, shaking his head as he made for the stairs. ‘Can’t think about all this now. I’ve got enough on as it is.’

I stuck my tongue out at his back. ‘Didn’t want to think about it now’ was always his excuse. It was maddening. And irresponsible.

Then came the noise of Eugene clattering downstairs. He dropped an armful of empty boxes on the floor in front of the till.

‘They can’t stay there,’ I said.

‘Calm down, bossy boots,’ he replied, leaning on the counter and panting. ‘I’m famished. Do you mind if I have first lunch? Not sure I’m going to make it to second.’ Lunches in the shop were divided into first (an hour at twelve thirty) and second (an hour at one thirty), decided between us every day.

‘Nope, you go.’

‘Thanks,’ replied Eugene, yawning and stretching his arms over his head. ‘See you in a bit,’ he said, already halfway through the door before I could shout at him about the boxes.

‘Men,’ I muttered to myself. At home, I lived with two sisters who never put a mug in the dishwasher; in the shop, I worked alongside men who only thought of their stomachs. I wondered which was more trying. Not that long ago, Mrs Delaney had told me that gladioli plants were asexual. Sounded a much easier life, being a gladioli.

As I bent to slide my fingers under the boxes, the doorbell tinkled behind me so I stood up quickly, aware that another customer was being subjected to my bottom. ‘Sorry,’ I said spinning around, ‘I’m just tidy— Oh, hello.’

It was the man in the braces.

‘Hello again,’ he said, grinning. His hair was damp and there were dark spots on his shirt front from the rain. ‘I only… Well, I hope you don’t mind… The thing is I don’t go around London asking women I meet in shops this, but I wondered if you might be free, or might be interested, in perhaps having a coffee with me?’

‘A coffee?’ I repeated, as if I didn’t know what coffee was.

‘Or a drink,’ he said. ‘Whatever you like. I’d just like to talk to you more about books, if you wanted?’ He ran a hand through the wet strands of his hair and looked expectantly at me.

‘Er…’ I was so surprised by his reappearance that, as if witness to a baffling magic trick, I went mute.

‘If you can’t, or don’t want to, or if you’re taken and don’t for some reason wear a wedding ring – it’s often very hard to tell these days – then forget I ever asked and I’ll never come in here again. Although that would be a shame since it’s a splendid bookshop. But if none of those things apply then I would like very much to buy you some sort of beverage – hot or cold, it’s entirely up to you.’

‘Er…’ I started again, willing my brain into action. ‘Yes, lovely,’ I said, over the top of the boxes. It was only two feeble words but it was better than no words.

‘Good. I was hoping you’d say that. What’s your number?’ He reached into his trousers and pulled out his phone.

Number, I told myself, you can do this. I duly read it out to him.

‘Marvellous,’ he said, pocketing his phone. ‘I’ll text you. Maybe this weekend?’

‘Lovely,’ I said again, feeling dazed.

‘It’s a date,’ he said. ‘See you soon.’

‘See you soon,’ I repeated, although he was already gone. I dropped the boxes on top of the fiction table and exhaled slowly, then squinted at my reflection in the window pane. Did I look different today? Was my hair less like a spaniel’s?

‘Florence, duck, you know those shouldn’t be there,’ said Norris, appearing on the stairs again and pointing at the boxes. ‘Put them out the back, please.’

I didn’t even protest that, actually, it was Eugene’s fault for abandoning the boxes and I was moving them for him. I just did it.

And it was only while flattening them with my feet in the stockroom that I realized two things: firstly, I didn’t even know the man’s name. And secondly, Gwendolyn’s list! I froze and my hands flew to my cheeks as I remembered what I’d written. He was a tall, absurdly attractive and seemingly funny man who read books, liked cats and clearly didn’t think a drop of rain was going to kill him. But that had to be a coincidence?

Course it was. I laughed and shook my head as I started stamping down the boxes again. As if the universe had anything to do with it. Obviously it was a coincidence. There was no way that lunatic in her daisy dungarees had sent that beautiful man in here.

I had a NOMAD meeting that evening so I left Eugene to lock up and walked to the primary school where they were held, a few streets from the shop. Peering through the classroom porthole, I saw my friend Jaz already sitting in one of the child-sized plastic seats. A man I didn’t recognize had folded himself into a front-row seat and was scowling at the finger paintings. We were a small group, normally about eight or nine, and we sat in rows surrounded by colourful finger paintings and art made from pasta. At the front, under a large whiteboard, our leader Stephen would try and encourage a sensible group discussion while we ate custard creams. It was always custard creams. Stephen brought them himself, along with a travel kettle, several mugs and tea supplies.

I pushed open the door. ‘Hi, Stephen,’ I said, waving at him.

He spun around from his plate of biscuits and beamed at me. ‘Good evening, Florence. All well?’

‘All pretty brilliant, actually,’ I said, dropping my bag on the small red seat next to Jaz. Her 4-year-old, Duncan, was sitting cross-legged on the floor in his sweatshirt and school trousers, earplugs in, watching a video on her phone. ‘How come Dunc’s here?’

Jaz sighed. ‘Because his dad’s a premier league asshole who didn’t make pick-up.’

She said this loudly enough to make Stephen’s shoulders twitch. Dunc, fortunately, was too engrossed with his phone to overhear. I ruffled his hair and he looked up and grinned happily before dropping his gaze back to the screen.

Jaz’s ex, Dunc’s father, was a plumber called Leon. He and Jaz had been together for a few months when she got pregnant. She’d presented him with the happy news only for Leon to admit that, actually, Jaz wasn’t the only woman whose pipes he was seeing to. They’d split and Leon had been a sporadic father ever since. Occasionally he’d take him to the Battersea zoo to see the rabbits and the frogs (Dunc, very into animals, wanted to be a vet when he grew up), but he and Jaz were generally on bad terms.

Dunc was the reason she’d started coming to these meetings. Jaz was a hairdresser who worked in a Chelsea salon but, when he was a baby, she’d started obsessing about his food: his food and her food. She panicked that he’d eat or swallow something – a crisp or a grape – that had been contaminated by her own hands with chemicals from the salon. She began to only eat food with a knife and fork, and nothing could touch her fingers at any stage of the cooking process, which had drastically shrunk her diet.

By the time she started coming to the meetings on the advice of her GP, she was only eating ready meals since she could just peel off the cellophane. Ready meals for breakfast, ready meals for lunch, ready meals for supper. It was the same for Dunc – a 2-year-old reared almost exclusively on Bird’s Eye. When I joined the group a few months on, Jaz (and Dunc) had graduated from just ready meals to ready meals along with pasta and vegetables so long as they came in a frozen bag and she didn’t have to touch them before cooking. Now, she let them eat most things, apart from fruit by hand, but she still came along every other week so we could whisper in the back row. We made an unlikely pair – me, the bookish 32-year-old in ugly shoes and Jaz, the forty-something hairdresser always wearing animal print – but we’d become close. Although outwardly very different, we both knew what it was like to feel as if we’d lost control of our own brains, as if we were being operated by an internal puppeteer constantly giving us pointless and exhausting tasks.

‘You all right?’ I checked, looking from Dunc on the floor to Jaz. Today she was wearing a white T-shirt over a pair of snakeskin leggings.

She sighed again. ‘Yeah, just dead as a dingo.’ Jaz often confused her expressions. A couple of weeks ago she’d complained to Stephen of feeling as if she was between ‘a sock and a hard place’.

‘Dodo,’ I corrected.

‘One full colour and three perms today. Three! Honestly, these women. What were they thinking? And then I had to rush to school to get this one.’ She nodded at Dunc and I glanced at the phone screen to see he was watching some sort of nature documentary, a lioness tearing into the hind leg of an unlucky zebra.

‘What’s going on with you though?’ she added. ‘Why the good mood?’

I didn’t immediately answer. I just smiled at her.

Jaz leant forward in her small seat. ‘Why you looking like that?’

‘Got asked out today.’ I’d been bursting to tell Eugene all afternoon but every time I nearly did, the door would ring and someone else came in to escape the rain.

‘What d’you mean? By a guy?’

‘Yes! Thank you very much for looking so astonished.’

Jaz whooped and jumped up, clapping with delight. ‘Serious? You going?’

‘Everything all right, Jasmine?’ Stephen looked up from his custard creams. He was a man almost as round as he was tall who could have been mistaken for an IT teacher – short grey hair, black glasses, always wore short-sleeved shirts with a tie. Nerdy but kind. He saw himself as a south London shepherd, trying to help his flock every other week with a ninety-minute discussion and biscuits.

‘All fine, Stephen, don’t you worry,’ said Jaz. ‘Just found out that your woman here’s got a date.’

I hissed as I sat. ‘Shhhhhh, not everyone needs to know.’

‘My congratulations to Florence,’ said Stephen. ‘And, Jasmine, as you’re clearly so full of beans, you can be today’s tea monitor.’

Jaz winked at me and headed for Stephen’s kettle, plugged in in the corner behind the classroom sandpit. I fished my phone from my bag. No message yet but it was probably too soon.

I put my phone face down in my lap and looked around as the others started arriving. Notable members of our group included Mary, a middle-aged accountant who had a phobia of buttons; Elijah, who ran a nearby dry cleaners and was obsessed with conspiracy theories; Lenka, a nurse who suffered hypochondria, and Seamus, a Dubliner who’d been diagnosed as a compulsive hoarder and lived in a Pimlico flat full of newspapers that dated back to the Sixties. The council was trying to kick him out but Seamus kept coming up with legal reasons to stop them.

The meeting started as soon as Jaz had poured the right number of teas into the right number of mugs and handed them out. To the background noise of slurping, Stephen introduced the newcomer, a man called Paul, before asking how everyone was.

Lenka immediately jumped in. She was often suffering from something new she’d read about on the Internet.

‘Not so good today, Stephen,’ she said. ‘I am not sleeping so well at the moment.’

Stephen tutted. ‘Oh, Lenka, I am sorry. Would you like one of these while you tell us about it?’ He held out the plate of custard creams.

‘I am not sure why all of a sudden I am having these troubles,’ she went on, taking a biscuit. ‘I think perhaps it is my bad neck, and then I wondered if it was maybe too much coffee when I am at work, so I have stopped drinking the coffee. But then I read on my mobile that if you cannot sleep it might be a sign that you maybe have that disease where you forget things, what is it called, it is named after that man who used to be on the telly?’ She bit into her custard cream and looked around at the rest of us.

‘Alzheimer’s?’ volunteered Mary.

Lenka shook her head. ‘No, no, the other one. You see? I am forgetting these things already.’ She had another mouthful of biscuit.

‘Parkinson’s?’ said Stephen.

Lenka’s eyes widened and her head went up and down like a nodding dog.

‘All right, Lenka,’ said Stephen, who was careful never to rubbish any suggestion in this classroom. ‘I think what we should perhaps do is look at other factors which might be preventing you from sleep. For instance, are yo—’

‘You mustn’t use your phone so much, Lenka,’ interrupted Elijah. ‘The government can see everything you can, they know what you’re searching for, they know what you’re rea—’

‘Yes, thank you, Elijah,’ said Stephen, wrestling back control. He had to do this quite often. In a session last month, Elijah insisted that Prince Philip had ordered Princess Diana’s death, which made Seamus, a staunch monarchist, threaten to leave the room. The situation was only resolved when Stephen changed the subject by asking me how I was getting on with my Curtis the counting caterpillar story, a project which had been his idea in the first place. Knowing I loved books, he’d suggested that I give story-writing a go. He’d been right. With the encouragement of the other NOMAD members, I’d come up with the idea and slowly – very slowly – started writing it. I found the process soothing. On bad days my brain would play Consequences with everything I saw (if the next car is red, today will be bad. If there are an uneven number of biscuits in the tin, today will be bad. Three pigeons in the square not four? Bad). Finding a spare hour to write helped calm my mind down, but I guess Stephen had known that.

‘How did this date come about then?’ Jaz asked from the corner of her mouth.

‘Came into the shop,’ I whispered. ‘Although he suggested a coffee. Is a coffee definitely a date?’

‘A coffee with a man you don’t know is a date.’

‘What if it’s a job interview?’

‘Give me strength. Then it would be a job interview. Is he interviewing you for a job?’

‘I don’t think so.’ I explained the episode in more detail: his mother’s book. His intriguing clothes. His return twenty minutes later to ask me for the coffee.

‘There we go,’ said Jaz, folding her arms. ‘It’s a date. A coffee can be a date. They do it in America all the time. What’s he called?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know?’ she replied, so loudly that it attracted Stephen’s attention.

‘Jasmine and Florence, are we OK?’

‘Yeah, all good,’ said Jaz. ‘And top story, Mary. Really compelling. Carry on.’ Jaz stuck her thumbs up at the front.

Mary, who’d turned her head to look towards us, glanced back at Stephen. ‘Er…’ she faltered.

‘Go on, Mary,’ said Stephen, staring at Jaz with a pointed expression. ‘You were telling us how you feel on the sad anniversary of Humphrey’s death.’

‘Oh no,’ whispered Jaz, slumping forward on her desk. Humphrey was Mary’s parrot. Late parrot. He’d died last year and been the main topic of discussion at these sessions for months afterwards.

We sat in respectful silence for a few minutes while Mary continued, but I knew Jaz wouldn’t be able to zip it for long.

‘So when you going to see him?’

‘Not sure,’ I said, between my teeth.

‘So you don’t know his name, you don’t know anything about him and he dresses like a Victorian undertaker.’ She paused. ‘I dunno about this.’

‘What do you mean?’ I said. I felt as if she’d pricked the bubble in my stomach with a pin.

‘Just be careful. Could be a weirdo.’

‘OK, but there’s one more thing I need to tell you about.’

‘What?’ she hissed.

As quietly and succinctly as I could, I explained about Gwendolyn and the list. ‘Is that weird?’ I whispered when I’d finished. ‘I don’t believe in that stuff but it seems a weird coincidence, no?’

‘You got this list?’ she said. I nodded and reached under my chair to pull the piece of paper from my rucksack.

Jaz smoothed it across her thigh with the side of her hand and read it.

I counted them off on my fingers. ‘One, he dressed well. Two, he was into books. Three, his mother collects cats. And he made me laugh, so he’s funny too.’

‘What was his bum like?’

‘I didn’t see. He looked like he was in pretty good shape. But what if it’s like that Tom Hanks film?’

Jaz snapped her head up and frowned. ‘Which one?’

‘The one where he makes a wish and it comes true, and he’s an adult when he wakes up in the morning. What if this is like that?’

‘You think you’ve written a list describing your perfect man and now it’s come true?’ Jaz looked at me sideways. It was the sort of look you’d give an adult who’d just announced they’d believed in fairies. ‘Girl, you need to get laid.’

‘Yes, all right, so everyone keeps telling me,’ I said, remembering Eugene’s joke about his mum as I snatched the piece of paper back. I felt a flash of bad temper. Yes, I was unpractised when it came to dating, but it wasn’t as if Jaz was the relationship oracle. After Leon, there’d been a succession of boyfriends and the last one, who she insisted was ‘the one’, turned out to have a wife and kids in Solihull.

‘Just be careful, babe,’ she went on, making me feel guilty for such mean thoughts. ‘Listen, why don’t you tell me where you have this coffee, and I’ll come along too? I can sit at a different table like a bodyguard? You won’t even notice me. I’ll be totally incoherent.’

‘Incognito.’

‘Exactly.’

Luckily, Stephen called out Jaz’s name and asked if there was anything she wanted to share, to show Paul how it was done ‘as a valued and long-standing member of the group’. Jaz, inflated with pride, stood up and started explaining her story, beginning with how she knew she had to get help when she was eating Bird’s Eye chicken jalfrezi for breakfast. I sat in my small chair thinking. Should I be worried? He didn’t seem like a psychopath. But maybe that’s what psychopaths wanted you to think? I folded the list before shifting in my tiny chair. Jaz was just being overprotective. I’d meet him in a public place and all would be fine. I just had to remember not to wear my work shoes.

The shop was already unlocked when I arrived the next day. I dropped the keys in my bag and pushed open the door.

‘Hello?’

I expected to hear Norris’s voice from downstairs but no reply. Then I noticed the counter. Usually it was tidy. Order book in place, the previous day’s Post-it notes thrown away, pens in the pot, any paperwork that needed to be looked at by Norris in the in-tray. But the till drawer was open and loose papers covered the counter, held down by a motorbike helmet.

I glanced at the rest of the shop. Books had been moved, too. The biography table was a mess and a pile of hardbacks had cascaded to the floor. I stepped towards it and noticed a mug rolled on its side, its contents making a dark pool on the floorboards. ‘Oh my God,’ I murmured. A burglary! This was a crime scene!

I froze as I heard steps behind me.

‘Hello,’ said a male voice.

I spun round to see a stranger looming over me, a mop in one hand and a bucket in the other.

‘Are you a burglar or a new cleaner?’ I asked, confused. He was huge and, in my defence, dressed like someone who operated mostly at night: black T-shirt that stretched across his broad shoulders, black jeans and black Doc Martens boots. He also had wild, curly black hair and black tattoos that snaked down both arms.

‘Neither, as it happens,’ he went on, brushing past me with his cleaning equipment and stepping down into the non-fiction section. ‘But I dropped my coffee while checking this place out so thought I’d better clean it up before Norris gets in.’

How did this giant know Norris?

‘I’m Zach, by the way, nice to meet you.’ He put down the bucket and held out a large hand, forcing me to step towards him and shake it. I felt annoyed at his casual manner. What was this man doing in here throwing coffee?

‘How do you know Norris?’

He started mopping but he was an inefficient mop wringer who transported more water from the bucket to the floor than vice versa, moving it around the floorboards, before dunking the mop back into the bucket and repeating the process. I couldn’t bear it.

‘Give it to me,’ I said, holding my hand out.

‘OK,’ he said, handing the mop over. More dripping on the floorboards. ‘I’m going to make another coffee. Want one?’

‘No thanks. And I hope you don’t think me rude but who are you exactly?’

‘I’m Zach.’

‘Yes, you said. But what do you mean? There isn’t a Zach who works here.’

‘Norris’s nephew,’ he said. ‘Did he not mention me? I’m coming in for a bit. To help with the website. And the social side of things. I’m a photographer but between jobs at the moment and he needed help so, here I am.’ He flung his arms wide as if to demonstrate his physical presence even further.

‘Right,’ I said, as I bent over and tried to get the water from the floorboards back into the bucket. ‘Did you need help with the till?’ I nodded at the counter.

‘Yeah, sorry,’ he said. ‘I was trying to find Norris’s password.’

‘Password?’

‘For his computer, downstairs.’

‘Oh. It’s bottom123.’

‘Bottom?’

I looked up from the mop. ‘It’s the donkey in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, my colleague’s idea of a joke.’

‘You guys sound wild. I’ll be in his office if you need me.’

He headed for the stairs before I could reply and left me mopping with the fury of a woman who’d just found an alien pair of knickers in my marital bed. Such an air of entitlement! And how typical of Norris not to have mentioned him. Improving the shop’s website and social media had been my idea. If this tattooed nephew couldn’t even wield a mop, how was he going to improve our financial situation?

Eugene came through the door minutes later. ‘Good morning, fair colleague,’ he said, sweeping an arm out in front of him. Then he stopped and frowned. ‘What are you doing?’

I wrung out the mop for the last time. ‘Cleaning up after our new colleague.’

‘What new colleague?’

‘Norris’s nephew. Called Zach.’

‘I didn’t know he had a nephew,’ said Eugene, rotating his arm around his neck to unpeel his silk scarf. Then he snapped his fingers at me to get my attention. ‘Maybe he’s related to Shirley?’ he whispered.

‘No idea. Didn’t ask him.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Downstairs.’

‘I might go and say hello.’

I followed him downstairs to stash the mop and bucket back into the cupboard. Zach was hunched over Norris’s computer in his cramped office, muttering at the keyboard.

‘Zach, this is Eugene, Eugene, this is Zach,’ I said, pausing in the office doorway before carrying on towards the windowless basement room that served as both stockroom and staff dining room. On one side of it were boxes and shelves of pristine books, spines uncracked, waiting to go out to customers or replace sold books upstairs. On the other, a rickety wooden table decorated with coffee stains. The loo and cleaning cupboard led off from another door behind the table.

‘Are you joining us full time?’ I heard Eugene say to Zach as I tipped the water into the loo.

‘Not sure, to be honest, mate,’ Zach replied. ‘You don’t happen to know the password into this thing, do you? That girl upstairs said it was to do with a donkey?’

I slammed the cupboard door closed on the bucket and mop while Eugene helped him.

‘Yes, it’s Bottom123 but you need an uppercase “B”.’

‘Ah, thanks, mate, you’re a genius.’

Eugene, the traitor, laughed with pleasure. ‘Not at all. Do you need anything else?’

‘Nah, don’t worry. I’ll wait for my uncle to get here.’

On my way back to the counter, I paused at the office door. ‘I’m going to man the till. Eugene, can you deal with the deliveries?’ Then I looked at Zach. ‘Is that motorbike helmet on the till yours?’

‘Ah, that’s where I left it. Yeah. I’ll come grab it.’

‘You ride a motorbike? That’s very manly,’ said Eugene, in an awed tone.

Oh good, I thought as I climbed the stairs, more testosterone. Just what this place needed.

Norris arrived an hour later as Eugene was telling me about his latest audition for a cross-dressing role as the nurse in Romeo and Juliet.

Eugene opened the door for him. ‘We’ve met Zach.’

Norris looked blank, as if he’d never heard of a Zach.

‘Your nephew,’ I clarified.

‘Oh him,’ Norris replied, unbuttoning his duffel coat. ‘Yes, Zachary. Did I not mention him?’

‘No,’ I replied coolly.

‘He’s very good with computers and all that sort of thing so I asked if he’d help out here. We can all work together on it, of course, but Zach’s a photographer and seemed to have a few ideas so I thought, why not?’

Childishly, I refused to smile back at him as I held out a few envelopes. ‘He’s downstairs having hacked your computer and here’s the post.’

‘Thank you. Everything all right up here?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Eugene, quickly.

‘Grand. Shout if you need me.’

Norris went downstairs and I made a noise of disgust from the back of my throat.

‘I don’t get what’s so bad about him?’ said Eugene, picking up his copy of Romeo and Juliet. ‘He seems nice.’

‘I’m sure he is. It’s just that I’ve been banging on to Norris about the same ideas for months. It’s irritating to have someone else swoop in and take over.’

‘OK, but do you know what I think will help?’

‘A personality transplant?’

‘Maybe, but my suggestion is more immediate.’

‘What?’

‘More rehearsing. We’re about to get to the bit where Shakespeare makes a bawdy penis joke. Come on. It’ll cheer you up.’

‘Go on then.’

We recited lines all morning, breaking off to help the odd customer before getting back into character, then I took first lunch and went downstairs with my Tupperware.

‘Florence?’ shouted Norris, as I tried to scurry past his office to the stockroom unnoticed.

I stopped, briefly closed my eyes and retreated two steps.

I tried never to go into Norris’s office. It was too claustrophobic and untidy: dusty books and yellowing manuscripts were piled on the shelves, ketchup sachets and little salt packets lay scattered across his desk like confetti, pens and dirty forks protruded from an old mug. There should have been health and safety tape criss-crossing the doorway: Enter At Your Own Risk.

Zach, I noticed, had already carved out a small space for himself and a laptop at the end of the desk.

‘Yes?’

Norris cleared his throat. ‘I’ve told Zachary that he can take photographs of the shop floor later.’

‘Content, for the website and Instagram,’ added Zach, turning from the laptop screen to look at me.

‘Oh I see, we’re allowed Instagram now, are we?’ I raised my eyebrows at Norris.

He flapped a hand at me as if I was being hysterical. ‘Yes, yes, well, Zachary’s explained it and it seems like a sensible idea, so could you and Eugene have a tidy up?’

‘After lunch is fine,’ said Zach, his eyes dropping to my Tupperware.

‘Good of you,’ I muttered.

‘What?’

‘Nothing, nothing. Anything else? Can I get anyone a cup of tea? Coffee? A foot massage?’

‘A coffee would be amazing if you’re making one,’ Zach replied.

‘I’m not but the kettle’s in the kitchen.’ I gave him my best fake smile before heading to the stockroom.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. I didn’t even realize I’d counted each mouthful of my sandwich until I’d finished. The arrogance! What did a photographer know about running a bookshop? I’d been here for nearly ten years and suddenly this smug nephew was bossing me about. I tried to read my book but I couldn’t concentrate, so I went back upstairs, told Eugene he could go for lunch and straightened the tables of books in silent fury.

Zach appeared upstairs an hour later, by which point I was back behind the till discussing the previous night’s Masterchef with Eugene.

‘Do you mind if I leave these here?’ He put his laptop and camera on the counter and strolled around the shop floor, squatting every few minutes and narrowing his eyes across the floorboards as if he was on safari and trying to spot a lion in the distance.

‘This all seems very professional,’ Eugene said admiringly, so I kicked him in the ankle.

‘Ow! What was that for?’ he grumbled, bending to rub his leg. Such a baby. It wasn’t even that hard.

‘Trying to work out the best angles,’ Zach said, stepping back towards us and leaning over the counter to look down at Eugene. ‘You all right?’

‘He’s fine,’ I said. ‘And can you not leave your coffee there, please, because it’ll stain the wood.’

Zach picked up his mug and grinned at me. ‘Sorry, madam. Won’t happen again.’

‘Hand it over,’ said Eugene. ‘I’m going downstairs to make tea. Anyone want one?’

‘I’ll do tea,’ I said, intercepting the mug just as Eugene reached for it. I suddenly very much wanted to be in a different room.

‘Thanks. And I’d love another coffee,’ said Zach. ‘If that’s not too much trouble?’

‘No trouble. Milk? Sugar?’

‘Just milk, please.’

‘Sweet enough already,’ joked Eugene as I headed for the stairs, which made me want to kick him again.

Downstairs, I flicked the kettle on and decided to take much longer than I normally would with the tea run. I could probably stretch it out to twenty minutes or so if I really tried, but my thoughts about tea-making vanished when I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket and pulled it out to see a message from a strange number.

Hello! It’s Rory, who bought the books from you yesterday. Might you be free for a spin round the Royal Academy and a coffee on Sunday afternoon?

I stared at the screen. Rory seemed the right name for him. Posh, unquestionably, but that was fine so long as he wasn’t the sort of man who still talked about what school he went to and that he wanted to marry a rugby ball. Putting my phone down, I held my breath as I opened the fridge (it always smelled like a very old mouse had died in there) and thought about what to reply. Should I wait a bit? I couldn’t. I was too excited.

That would be lovely! I typed. Was an exclamation mark immature? But the words looked too severe without, as if I was texting a grandparent. That would be lovely! Let me know what time works for you, I decided, adding an ‘F’ and a small ‘x’ before clicking send.

I’d often scrutinized couples in restaurants or in the parks I walked through, watching them laugh together. How had they got to that point? What was their secret? Maybe now it was my turn. Maybe Rory would hold my hand on Sunday and other people would look at us and think, ‘What a nice couple.’ Then I told myself to calm down. This was exactly what had happened in the past: I’d been too eager about someone, wondered how many children we’d have after the first drink and then they’d vanished. But not this time. No, no, no. This time I would get it right.

Before I could hold hands with Rory at the Royal Academy, however, there was a hurdle to clear: dress shopping with Mia, Ruby and Patricia on Saturday afternoon. Mia had made a wedding dress spreadsheet and emailed it to us all so we were ‘prepared’. There were dictators who’d put less effort into military coups than Mia had put into this spreadsheet. It was colour-coded with multiple columns for each dress and space for a final mark out of ten. Who was it by? Was it strapless? A-line? Did it have a fishtail? What kind of silk was it? Where was the lace from? My favourite column on this spreadsheet was the one that asked, ‘Have any celebrities worn this dress?’ I wasn’t sure whether Mia deemed this a good or a bad thing but guessed it depended on the celebrity. Meghan Markle would presumably score higher than Kerry Katona.

Mia, Ruby and I took the Tube from Kennington together. Mia and Ruby discussed dresses while I brooded on what to wear for my date the next day. I hadn’t mentioned this to them. Half of me wanted to scream about it. More of me knew that talking about it would invite unwanted speculation.

We walked down Bond Street towards the boutique. As Mia pushed open the door, I heard Patricia bullying the receptionist.

‘I don’t want too much chest on show,’ she was telling her. ‘Can’t bear these modern brides with their bosoms racing down the aisle before them.’

‘Morning, Pat,’ Ruby said loudly. Calling their mother this was a long-running joke between her and Mia.

Patricia turned round. ‘Ruby, please. You know I hate that. And Mia, I was just saying we’re after something demure. Not too much…’ she flapped her hand around her own chest and then lowered her voice, ‘cleavage.’

‘Mum, it’s my wedding. I could go down the aisle in French knickers if I wanted,’ she replied, as Patricia kissed us all in turn. Her lips left a damp patch on my cheeks.

‘You could but your father and I might not pay for it.’

Mia pulled her laptop from her bag and waved it at her mother. ‘I’ve done a mood board.’

I could already detect the roots of a headache from the candles burning in the boutique. I picked one up and squinted at the label. Meringue-scented. Candles were getting sillier.

‘This is Hilda,’ said the receptionist, as a middle-aged lady with blonde hair pulled into a neat doughnut appeared in front of us. ‘She’ll show you to your changing room.’

Hilda ushered us into a large, well-lit room with one cubicle in it. Cream walls, cream carpets, cream sofa. More meringue candles. An array of bridal magazines fanned on a coffee table.

I flung myself on the end of the sofa and picked up a magazine as Mia opened her laptop.

‘OK, so I’m thinking along these lines,’ she said. ‘Grace Kelly, but with a contemporary twist. Big skirt but structured body.’ She swivelled the screen at Patricia and Hilda.

‘Oh yes,’ said Hilda, smiling approvingly at Mia, ‘a classic.’

I looked back to my magazine. On the front was a model in a strapless dress holding a bunch of white roses. ‘White hot!’ said the cover line beside her. Underneath that, another line read: ‘Cake crazy! The most fashionable flavours this summer.’ How could a cake flavour be fashionable?

‘What his mother REALLY thinks of you,’ screamed another headline.

Our kitchen table had become increasingly weighed down with these magazines in the past two weeks, Mia’s neon Post-it notes sticking up from the pages. Fourteen days. That was all it had taken for her to transform from semi-normal person into a bridebot, incapable of having a conversation unless it was about the thickness of an invitation card.

She stepped into the cubicle but didn’t bother to pull the cream curtain closed as she stripped. For someone so uptight, Mia had a curiously relaxed attitude towards her own nudity. I’d rather have eaten spiders than stand in front of my family in a bra and thong. It made me wonder whether I had to dig out one of Mia’s lacy thongs from the back of my pants drawer for my date. Surely my underwear didn’t matter much for a trot round an art gallery?

While Hilda helped Mia into something that looked more like a marquee than a dress, Patricia’s attention shifted.

‘Florence, darling, how was your session with Gwendolyn? Was it helpful?’

I held my breath, debating how much to share. ‘It was fine,’ I replied carefully.

‘Shit, the love coach!’ said Ruby, dropping her phone in her lap. ‘Sorry, Flo, I forgot to ask.’

‘What did she say?’ my stepmother went on.

‘You guys ever heard of patient confidentiality?’

‘Oh, come on, darling, it’s only us. And Hilda. And we won’t tell anybody, will we?’

Hilda, unsure what she was agreeing to, shook her head at Patricia.

‘She made me write a list,’ I said resignedly.

‘What kind of list?’ asked Mia from the cubicle.

I leant my head against the back of the sofa, eyes closed. ‘A list of whatever I’m looking for in a man. Must be tall and have all his own hair, that sort of thing.’

‘What was on your list?’ asked Patricia.

‘I’ve read about this online,’ piped up Hilda. ‘It’s like a sort of… wish list?’

‘For God’s sake,’ I muttered, opening my eyes. ‘Yes, it’s like a wish list. You write a list of traits; mine included likes reading, is adventurous, has an interesting job and, er, is into cats. And then you put it out to the universe and supposedly the universe will deliver him.’

‘Sounds mad,’ said Mia.

‘Agreed,’ said Ruby. ‘Where did you find this woman again, Mum?’

‘In Posh! magazine. She’s very well respected,’ said Patricia. ‘When’s your next session, Florence? I think you need to take it more seriously. What have cats got to do with anything?’

I placed my palms on my knees for strength. ‘In a couple of weeks, unfortunately. You said I only had to go to one session and then I find out you’ve booked a package of them. I’d rather enter a convent than go back to that room.’

‘You might have to enter a convent at this rate.’

‘Actually, I’ve got a date tomorrow.’ I hadn’t meant to let it slip out but I wanted to silence her.

Needless to say, she was the first to reply, ‘Darling! How exciting.’

‘With who?’ said Mia.

‘So it’s worked?’ added Ruby.

I shook my head. ‘It’s nothing to do with the list. He came into the shop and we chatted, not for very long, but then he asked me for a coffee. So I’m meeting him tomorrow.’

‘What time tomorrow? Can I do your make-up?’ said Mia.

‘Afternoon. And yes, but can you not make me look mad? Nothing too over-the-top. You know I don’t wear much make-up.’

‘Oh, Flo, stop fussing. A bit of eyeshadow never killed anyone.’

‘Who is he though, darling?’ persisted Patricia. ‘Do you know anything about him? Is he safe?’

‘I can’t tell you anything else,’ I said, shrugging. ‘Only that he’s called Rory and he likes books.’

‘Rory, what an excellent name!’

‘Just remember we’re dressing you for it,’ said Mia sternly, before looking at herself in the mirror. The dress was sleeveless with a skirt that billowed to the floor and was covered in little crystals. ‘Fuck no, not this one. I look like I’m going to my prom.’