How to Find Love in a Book Shop (2 page)

All the rooms seemed drained of warmth. The kitchen, with its ancient pine table and battered old units, was chilly and austere. The living room was sulking behind its half-drawn curtains. Emilia couldn’t look at the sofa in case it still held the imprint of Julius: she couldn’t count the number of hours the two of them had spent curled up on it with tea or cocoa or wine, leafing through their current read, while Brahms or Billie Holiday or Joni Mitchell circled on the record player. Julius had never taken to modern technology: he loved vinyl, and still treasured his Grundig Audiorama speakers. They had, however, been silent for a while now.

Emilia made her way to her bedroom on the next floor, peeled back her duvet and climbed into the high brass bed that had been hers since she could remember. She pulled a cushion from the pile and hugged it to her, for warmth as much as comfort. She drew her knees up and waited to cry. There were no tears. She waited and waited, but her eyes were dry. She thought she must be a monster, not to be able to weep.

She awoke sometime later to a gentle tapping on the flat door. She started awake, wondering why she was in bed fully clothed. The realisation hit her in the chest and she wanted nothing more than to slide back into the oblivion she had been in. But there were people to see, things to do, decisions to be made. And a door to answer. She ran downstairs in her socks and opened it gingerly.

‘Sweetheart.’

June. Stalwart, redoubtable June, arguably Nightingale Books’ best customer since she had retired to Peasebrook three years before. She had stepped into Julius’s shoes when he went into the cottage hospital for what looked like the final time. June had run her own company for more than forty years and was only too willing to pick up the reins along with Mel and Dave. With her fine bone structure, and her thick dark hair, and her armful of silver bangles, she looked at least ten years younger than her three score years and ten. She had the energy of a twenty-year-old, the brain of a rocket scientist and the heart of a lion. Emilia had at first thought there might be a romance between June and Julius – June was twice divorced – but their friendship had been firm but purely platonic.

Emilia realised she should have phoned June as soon as it happened. But she hadn’t had the strength or the words or the heart. She didn’t have them now. She just stood there, and June wrapped her up in an embrace that was as soft and warm as the cashmere jumpers she draped herself in.

‘You poor baby,’ she crooned, and it was only then Emilia found she could cry.

‘There’s no need to open the shop today,’ June told Emilia later, when she’d sobbed her heart out and had finally agreed to make herself some breakfast. But Emilia was adamant it should stay open.

‘Everyone comes in on a Thursday. It’s market day,’ she said.

In the end, it turned out to be the best thing she could have done. Mel, usually loquacious, was mute with shock. Dave, usually monosyllabic, spoke for five minutes without drawing breath about how Julius had taught him everything he knew. Mel put Classic FM on the shop radio so they didn’t feel the need to fill the silence. Dave, who had many mysterious skills of which calligraphy was one, wrote a sign for the window:

It is with great sadness that we have to tell you
of the death of Julius Nightingale
Peacefully, after a short illness
A beloved father, friend and bookseller

They opened a little late, but open they did. And a stream of customers trickled in throughout the day, to pay their respects and give Emilia their condolences. Some brought cards; others casseroles and a tin full of home-baked muffins; someone else left a bottle of Chassagne Montrachet, her father’s favourite wine, on the counter.

Emilia had needed no convincing that her father was a wonderful man, but by the end of the day she realised that everyone else who knew him thought that too. Mel made countless cups of tea in the back office and carried them out on a tray.

‘Come for supper,’ said June, when they finally flipped the sign to CLOSED long after they should have shut.

‘I’m not very hungry,’ said Emilia, who couldn’t face the thought of food.

June wouldn’t take no for an answer. She scooped Emilia up and took her back to her sprawling cottage on the outskirts of Peasebrook. June was the sort of person who always had a shepherd’s pie on standby to put in the Aga. Emilia had to admit that she felt much stronger after two servings, and it gave her the fortitude to discuss the things she didn’t want to.

‘I can’t face a big funeral,’ she said eventually.

‘Then don’t have one,’ said June, scooping out some vanilla ice cream for pudding. ‘Have a small private funeral, and we can have a memorial service in a few weeks’ time. It’s much nicer that way round. And it will give you time to organise it properly.’

A tear plopped onto Emilia’s ice cream. She wiped away the next one.

‘What are we going to do without him?’

June handed her a jar of salted caramel sauce.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘There are some people who leave a bigger hole than others, and your father is one of them.’

June invited her to stay the night, but Emilia wanted to go home. It was always better to be sad in your own bed.

She flicked on the lights in the living room. With its deep red walls and long tapestry curtains, there seemed to be more books here than there were in the book shop. Bookcases covered two of the walls, and there were books piled high on every surface: on the windowsills, the mantelpiece, on top of the piano. Next to that was Julius’s precious cello, resting on its stand. She touched the smooth wood, realising it was covered in dust. She would play it tomorrow. She was nothing like as good a player as her father, but she hated to think of his cello unplayed, and she knew he would hate the thought too.

Emilia went over to the bookcase that was designated as hers – though she had run out of space on it long ago. She ran her finger along the spines. She wanted a comfort read; something that took her back to her childhood. Not Laura Ingalls Wilder – she couldn’t bear to read of big, kind Pa at the moment. Nor Frances Hodgson Burnett – all her heroines seemed to be orphans, which Emilia realised she was too, now. She pulled out her very favourite, in its red cloth cover with the gold writing on the spine, warped with age, the pages yellowing.
Little Women
. She sat in the wing-backed chair by the fire, slinging her legs over the side and resting her cheek on a velvet cushion. Within moments, she was by the fire in Boston, with Jo March and her sisters and Marmee, hundreds of years ago and thousands of miles away …

By the end of the following week, Emilia felt hollowed out and exhausted. Everyone had been so kind and thoughtful and said such wonderful things about Julius, but it was emotionally draining.

There had been a small private funeral service for Julius at the crematorium, with just his mother Debra, who came down on the train from London, Andrea, Emilia’s best friend from school, and June.

Before she left for the service, Emilia had looked at herself in the mirror. She wore a long black military coat and shining riding boots, her dark red hair loose over her shoulders. Her eyes were wide, with smudges underneath, defined by her thick brows and lashes. Her colouring, she knew from the photo kept on top of the piano, was her mother’s; her fine bone structure and generous mouth her father’s. She put in the earrings he had given her last Christmas with shaking fingers and opened the gifted Chassagne Montrachet, knocking back just one glass, before putting on a faux fox fur hat that exactly matched her hair. She wondered briefly if she looked too much like an extra from a costume drama, but decided it didn’t matter.

The next day, when they had put Julius’s mother back on the Paddington train – Debra didn’t like being away from London for too long – Andrea marched her over the road to the Peasebrook Arms. It was a traditional coaching inn, all flagstone floors and wood panelling and a dining room that served chicken Kiev and steak chasseur and had an old-fashioned dessert trolley. There was something comforting in the way it hadn’t been Farrow and Balled up to the rafters. It didn’t pretend to be something it wasn’t. It was warm and friendly, even if the coffee was awful.

Emilia and Andrea curled up on a sofa in the lounge bar and ordered hot chocolate.

‘So,’ said Andrea, ever practical. ‘What’s your plan?’

‘I’ve had to jack in my job,’ Emilia told her. ‘They can’t keep it open for me indefinitely and I don’t know when I’m going to get away.’ She’d been teaching English at an international language school in Hong Kong. ‘I can’t just drift from country to country for ever.’

‘I don’t see why not,’ said Andrea.

Emilia shook her head. ‘It’s about time I sorted myself out. Look at us – I’m still living out of a backpack; you’re a powerhouse.’

Andrea had gone from manning the phones for a financial adviser when she left school to studying for exams at night school to setting up her own business as an accountant. Now, she did the books for many of the small businesses that had sprung up in Peasebrook over the past few years. She knew how much most people hated organising their finances and so made it as painless as possible. She was hugely successful.

‘Never mind comparisons. What are you going to do with the shop?’ Andrea wasn’t one to beat about the bush.

Emilia shrugged. ‘I haven’t got any choice. I promised Dad I’d keep it open. He’d turn in his grave if he thought I was going to close it down.’

Andrea didn’t speak for a moment. Her voice when she spoke was gentle and kind. ‘Emilia, deathbed promises don’t always need to be kept. Not if they aren’t practical. Of course you meant it at the time, but the shop was your
father’s
life. It doesn’t mean it has to be yours. He would understand. I know he would.’

‘I can’t bear the thought of letting it go. I always saw myself as taking it over in the end. But I guess I thought it would be when I was Dad’s age. Not now. I thought he had another twenty years to go at least.’ She could feel her eyes fill with tears. ‘I don’t know if it’s even viable. I’ve started to look through the accounts but it’s just a blur to me.’

‘Well, whatever I can do to help. You know that.’

‘Dad always used to say
I don’t do numbers.
And I don’t either, really. It all seems to be a bit disorganised. I think he let things slip towards the end. There’re a couple of boxes full of receipts. And a horrible pile of unopened envelopes I haven’t been able to face yet.’

‘Trust me, it’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before.’ Andrea sighed. ‘I wish people wouldn’t go into denial when it comes to money. It makes it all so complicated and ends up costing them much more in the end.’

‘It would be great if you could have a look for me. But no mate’s rates.’ Emilia pointed a finger at her. ‘I’m paying you properly.’

‘I’m very happy to help you out. Your dad was always very kind to me when we were growing up.’

Emilia laughed. ‘Remember when we tried to set him up with your mum?’

Andrea snorted into her wine glass. ‘That would have been a disaster.’ Andrea’s mother was a bit of a hippy, all joss sticks and flowing skirts. Andrea had rebelled completely against her mother’s Woodstock attitude and was the most conventional, aspirational, law-abiding person Emilia knew. She’d even changed her name from Autumn when she started up in business, on the basis that no one would take an accountant called Autumn seriously. ‘They would never have got anything done.’

Julius was very easygoing and laissez-faire too. The thought of their respective parents together made the two girls helpless with laughter now, but at the age of twelve they had thought it was a brilliant idea.

As they finished laughing, Emilia sighed. ‘Dad never did find anyone.’

‘Oh come off it. Every woman in Peasebrook was in love with your father. He had them all running round after him.’

‘Yes, I know. He was never short of female company. But it would have been nice for him to have met someone special.’

‘He was a happy man, Emilia. You could tell that.’

‘I always felt guilty. That perhaps he stayed single because of me.’

‘I don’t think so. Your dad wasn’t the martyr type. I think he was really happy with his own company. Or maybe he did have someone special but we just don’t know about it.’

Emilia nodded. ‘I hope so … I really do.’

She’d never know now, she thought. For all of her life it had just been the two of them and now her father had gone, with all his stories and his secrets.

Two

1982

The book shop was in Little Clarendon Street. Away from the hurly-burly of Oxford town centre and just off St Giles, it was bedded in amongst a sprinkling of fashionable dress shops and cafés. As well as the latest fiction and coffee-table books, it sold art supplies and had an air of frivolity rather than the academic ambience of Blackwell’s or one of the more cerebral book shops in town. It was the sort of book shop that stole time: people had been known to miss meetings and trains, lost amongst the shelves.

Julius Nightingale had started working there to supplement his student grant since he’d first come up to Oxford, just over four years ago. And now he’d completed his Masters, he didn’t want to leave Oxford or the shop. He didn’t want to leave academia either, really, but he knew he had to get on with life, that his wasn’t the sort of background that could sustain a life of learning. What he was going to do he had no idea as yet.

He’d decided to spend the summer after his MA scraping some money together, working at the shop full-time. Then maybe squeeze in some travel before embarking upon the gruelling collation of a CV, job applications and interviews. Apart from a brilliant first, there was nothing much to mark him out, he thought. He’d directed a few plays, but who hadn’t? He’d edited a poetry magazine, but again – hardly unique. He liked live music, wine, pretty girls – there was nothing out of the ordinary about him, except the fact that most people seemed to like him. As a West London boy with a posh but penniless single mother, he’d gone to a huge inner city comprehensive. He was streetwise but well mannered and so mixed easily with both the toffs and the grammar school types who had less confidence than their public school peers.

It was the last weekend in August, and he was thinking about going up to his mother’s and heading for the Notting Hill Carnival. He’d been going since he was small and he loved the atmosphere, the pounding bass, the pervasive scent of dope, the sense that anything could happen. He was about to close up when the door open and a girl whirlwinded in. She had a tangle of hair, bright red – it couldn’t be natural; it was the colour of a pillar box – and china-white skin, even whiter against the black lace of her dress. She looked, he thought, like a star, one of those singers who paraded around as if they’d been in the dressing-up box and had put everything on.

‘I need a book,’ she told him, and he was surprised at her accent. American. Americans, in his experience, came in clutching guidebooks and cameras, not looking as if they’d walked out of a nightclub.

‘Well, you’ve come to the right place, then,’ he replied, hoping his tone sounded teasing, not tart.

She looked at him, then held her finger and thumb apart about two inches. ‘It needs to be at least this big. It has to last me the plane journey home. Ten hours. And I read very fast.’

‘OK.’ Julius liked a brief. ‘Well, my first suggestion would be
Anna Karenina
.’

She smiled, showing perfect white teeth.

‘“All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”’

He nodded.

‘OK. What about
Ulysses
? James Joyce? That would keep you quiet.’

She struck a theatrical pose. ‘“Yes I said yes I will yes.”’

She was quoting Molly Bloom, the hero’s promiscuous wife, and for a moment Julius imagined she was just how Molly had looked, before reminding himself Molly was a work of fiction. He was impressed. He didn’t know many people who could quote Joyce. He refused to be intimidated by her apparently universal knowledge of literature. He would scale his recommendation down to something more populist, but a book he had long admired.

‘
The World According to Garp
?’

She beamed at him. She had an impossibly big dimple in her right cheek.

‘Good answer. I love John Irving. But I prefer
The Hotel New Hampshire
to
Garp
.’

Julius grinned. It was a long time since he had met someone as widely read as this girl. He knew well-read people, of course: Oxford was brimming with them. But they tended to be intellectual snobs. This girl was a challenge, though.

‘How about
Middlemarch
?’

She opened her mouth to respond, and he could see immediately he’d hit upon something she hadn’t read. She had the grace to laugh.

‘Perfect,’ she announced. ‘Do you have a copy?’

‘Of course.’ He led her over to the bookshelf and pulled out an orange Penguin classic.

They stood there for a moment, Julius holding the book, the girl looking at him.

‘What’s your favourite book?’ she asked.

He was flummoxed. Both by the question and the fact she had asked it. He turned it over in his mind. He was about to answer when she held up a finger.

‘You can only have one answer.’

‘But it’s like asking which is your favourite child!’

‘You have to answer.’

He could see she was going to stand her ground. He had his answer –
1984
, small but perfectly crafted, never failed to chill and thrill him – but he wasn’t going to give in to her that easily.

‘I’ll tell you,’ he said, not sure where his boldness had come from. ‘If you come out for a drink with me.’

She crossed her arms and tilted her head to one side. ‘I don’t know that I’m that interested.’ But her smile belied her statement.

‘You should be,’ he answered, and walked away from her over to the till, hoping she would follow. She was capricious. She wanted a tussle and for him not to give up. He was determined to give her a run for her money.

She did follow. He rang up the book and she handed over a pound note.

‘There’s a band on tonight,’ he told her. ‘It’ll be rough cider and grubby punks, but I can’t think of a better way for an American girl to spend her last night in England.’

He slid the book into its bag and handed it to her. She was gazing at him in something close to disbelief, with a hint of fascination.

Julius had always been quietly confident with girls. He respected them. He liked them for their minds rather than their looks, and somehow this made him magnetic. He was thoughtful, yet a little enigmatic. He was very different from the rather cocky public school types at Oxford. He dressed a little differently too – a romantic bohemian, in velvet jackets and scarves, his hair lightly bleached. And he was pretty – cheekbones and wide eyes, which he occasionally highlighted with eyeliner. Growing up in London had given him the courage to do this without fear of derision from those who didn’t understand the fashion of the times.

‘Why the hell not?’ she said finally.

‘I’ll be there from eight,’ he told her.

It was twenty past eight by the time he got to the pub. She was nowhere to be seen. He couldn’t be sure whether she was late too or had been and gone. Or simply wasn’t going to turn up at all. He wasn’t going to let it worry him. If it was meant to be …

He ordered a pint of murky cider from the bar, tasting its musty appleness, then made his way out to find a bench in the last of the sunshine. It was a popular but fairly rough pub he loved for its unpretentiousness. And it always had good bands on. There was a sense of festiveness and expectation in the air, a final farewell from the sun in this last week of summer. Julius felt a change coming. Whether it would be to do with the girl with the red hair, he couldn’t be certain, but he had a feeling it might.

At nine, he felt a sharp tap on his shoulder. He turned, and she was there.

‘I wasn’t going to come,’ she told him. ‘Because I didn’t want to fall in love with you and then have to get on a plane tomorrow.’

‘Falling in love is optional.’

‘Not always.’ She looked serious.

‘Well, let’s see what we can do to avoid it.’ He stood up and picked up his empty pint glass. ‘Have you tried scrumpy yet?’

‘No.’ She looked doubtful.

He bought her half a pint, because grown men had been known to weep after just two pints of this particular brew. They watched the band, a crazy gypsy-punk outfit that sang songs of heartbreak and harvest moons. He bought her another half and watched her smile get lazier and her eyes half close. He wanted nothing more than to tangle his fingers in her pre-Raphaelite curls.

‘Where are you staying tonight?’ he asked, as the band started packing up and tipsy revellers began to make their way out of the pub into the warm night.

She put her arms around his neck and pushed her body hard against his. ‘With you,’ she whispered, and her mouth on his tasted of the last apples of summer.

Later, as they lay holding each other in the remains of the night’s heat, she murmured, ‘You never told me.’

‘What?’

‘Your favourite book.’

‘
1984
.’

She considered his answer, gave a nod of approval, closed her eyes and fell asleep.

He woke the next morning, pinioned by her lily-white arm. He wondered what time her flight was, how she was getting to the airport, whether she had packed – they hadn’t discussed practicalities the night before. He didn’t want to wake her because he felt safe with her so close. He’d never experienced such a feeling before. A feeling of utter completeness. It made so many of the books he had read start to make perfect sense. He had thought he understood them, on an intellectual level, but now he had a deeper comprehension. He could barely breathe with the awe of it.

If he stayed very still and very quiet, perhaps she wouldn’t wake. Perhaps she would miss her flight. Perhaps he could have another magical twenty-four hours with her.

But Julius was responsible at heart. He didn’t have it in him to be so reckless. So he picked up a tress of her hair and tickled her cheek until she stirred.

‘Hey,’ he whispered. ‘You have to go home today.’

‘I don’t want to go,’ Rebecca murmured into his shoulder.

He trailed a hand across her warm, bare skin. ‘You can come back.’

He touched each of her freckles, one by one. There were hundreds. Thousands. He would never have time to touch them all before she left.

‘What time is your flight? How are you getting to the airport?’

She didn’t reply. She picked up his arm and looked at the watch on his wrist.

‘My flight’s at one.’

He sat up in alarm. It was gone ten. ‘Shit. You need to get up. You’ll never make it. I can drive you, but I don’t think you’ll get there in time.’

He was grabbing for his clothes, pulling them on. She didn’t move.

‘I’m not going.’

He was doing up his jeans. He stared at her.

‘What?’

‘I made up my mind. Last night.’ She sat up, and her hair tumbled everywhere. ‘I want to stay here. With you.’

Julius laughed. ‘You can’t.’ He felt slight panic.

She looked up at him from the middle of the bed, wide-eyed.

‘You don’t feel the same as me? As if you’ve met the love of your life?’

‘Well, yes, but …’ It had been an incredible night, he had to admit that. And he was smitten, if that was the right word. But Julius was sensible enough to realise you didn’t make momentous decisions off the back of a one-night stand.

Rebecca, it seemed, thought differently.

‘It makes perfect sense. I want to major in English. I want to do it in the best place in the world. Which is here in Oxford, right?’

‘Well, yes. I suppose so. Or Cambridge.’

‘I’m smart enough. I know I am. If I can get into Brown, I can get into Oxford.’

Julius laughed again. Not at her, but at her confidence. The girls he knew were never as brazen about their abilities. They were brought up to be modest and self-effacing. Rebecca wore her brilliance with pride.

She crossed her arms. ‘Don’t laugh at me.’

‘I’m not. I just think you’re being a bit rash.’ That was an understatement.

‘I’m not getting on that plane.’

Julius gulped. She was serious. Besides, there was no way she was going to get her plane now. And as far as he knew, she had nowhere else to go.

‘What are your parents going to say?’

‘How can they argue?’

‘Easily, I’d have thought. Aren’t you supposed to be going to college?’

‘Yes. But you know what? It never felt right. I was just going because that’s what I was expected to do. But this feels right. I can
feel
it here.’

She pressed a fist to her heart. Julius looked at her warily, not sure if she was serious. He knew plenty of fanciful girls but they usually had a limit to their capriciousness. He felt anxious: clever, wilful and rich was a deadly combination, and he was pretty sure Rebecca was all of those. He’d got enough insight into her life to know it was very privileged.

Which was why she felt entitled to the ultimate privilege.

‘It’s what I deserve.’ She scrambled out of bed. ‘I’m going to get a job. Right here. In Oxford. And I’m going to sit the entrance exam and get a place to study here next year.’

She looked a little crazed. He wasn’t sure how to handle her. She was alien to him. The usual arguments weren’t going to work. He decided to pretend he thought she was joking.

‘It’s the scrumpy,’ said Julius. ‘It does that to you.’

‘You think I’m kidding, right?’

Julius scratched his head. ‘I’m not sure you’ve thought it through.’

‘Sure I have. I mean, what’s the problem? Why not? Seriously, tell me why not. It’s not like I’m running off with the lead singer of a rock band. I want to go to the best university in the world. Surely that’s a good thing?’

She was one of those infuriating people who made the craziest of ideas seem utterly plausible.

‘Look, let me drive you to the airport. You can change your ticket, go home and talk to your parents. If they agree, you can come back.’

‘Am I freaking you out?’

‘Well, yes, actually. A bit.’

She came over and put her arms around his neck. He breathed her in, his heart pounding. He felt weightless from lack of sleep and too much of her. He felt electrified, but he also felt responsible, because he knew his reaction would dictate what happened next: their future. He should take control; slow things down a bit.