For a second I don’t compute. ‘Elliot? He’s in the café.’
‘I’ll take his through,’ Fabian says jovially – I’m starting to hear a South African accent – and off he goes, taking little Barney in his wake.
‘The Burntislands? You’re the couple who met here at the shop aren’t you?’ I say, thinking of Mrs Crocombe and how this couple’s chance meeting had fuelled the old matchmaker’s desire to fill her village with families just like Monica’s.
‘That’s right! You already know about us?’
‘Izaak told me. You were single when you came to the bookshop?’
‘That’s right. Fabian was on a gap year after his business Masters and I was just finishing my teacher training. I’m a part-time classroom assistant at the local school now and I bake my own pasties to sell up at the visitors’ centre. Fabian works from home. He’s in securities trading.’
‘Wow,’ I say, not really sure what that means, and still feeling all kinds of unwelcome emotions. I think one of them is jealousy and that’s really not like me, so I tamp it down.
‘I hear you’re in a similar situation?’ Monica’s unstrapping the baby from his carrier and placing him on the floor. It turns out he can toddle and off he wobbles across the shop, smiling and gurgling to himself.
Monica doesn’t see how panicked I am, but, luckily, she drops the subject when her son distracts her. ‘Aww, look, ’bastian’s heading straight for Aldous. They really love each other, those two.’
Aldous is of course asleep on his bundle of fresh towels on the windowsill. I’d given him a chair to make the climb easier and the baby is already clambering up onto the seat, reaching for the dog.
I launch into the story of Aldous’s surgery and how he’s still recovering and Monica hastily rescues the poor mutt from any unwanted toddler attention. By the time the excitement is over, her husband’s come back. Giving her a kiss, he stands with an arm thrown casually around her shoulders. I watch Monica lean her head onto his forearm and think how they really do look right together.
‘What a lovely family you’ve got,’ I remark as I ring up the copy ofGuess How Much I Love Youthat little Barney’s picked out. You know, the one with the hares who love each other to the moon and back?
‘Thanks, we think so,’ Monica chirrups and they get ready to leave.
‘Thanks for bringing lunch,’ I call out, indicating the pasty bag. Monica leaves me her number and tells me to call her any time.
I hear them in the square talking in low voices about me – or rather about me and Elliot – and I watch them turn Up-along, presumably going back to their idyllic family home on the headland.
I stand for a long time by the door comparing myself to Monica, so happy and centred with her adoring husband. The bookshop has housed all kinds of love stories over the years. Monica and Fabian, Jowan and Isolda, me and Elliot. I sigh. One of those couples is very much not like the others.
I get on with some shelf tidying and eventually Elliot emerges from the café, having closed up for the day. He hands me the day’s takings in a banking bag, eyeing me cautiously.
He’s eaten his pasty, I can see a few tell-tale crumbs on his black shirt. I don’t know what to say to him, but my mind turns traitor yet again and for a fraction of a second I picture Elliot with a baby carrier strapped across his chest and the sweet curve of a baby’s head resting on his shoulder, with dark fluffy hair like a chick in a nest and chubby little fingers clasping at a strand of Elliot’s long hair. I really hate my imagination sometimes.
‘Do you want me to help out in here?’ he says, peering at me so intently I look away.
‘I don’t want anything. I’m fine on my own.’
It hurts to say the words, and it hurts to see him flinching at them, but he backs away awkwardly, nodding again, accepting this is how things are, how he made them.
He’s just left, out on another run, I’m guessing.
I’m not going to close the shop tonight, not until late. If curious locals drop by wondering what’s going on, I’ll tell them I’m trialling late night Sunday opening for holidaymakers out for a stroll after dinner. There’s nothing in the guest book about having to close before a certain time.
And so I sit in my shop all evening. I eat the Burntislands’ pasty (it’s delicious and definitely tastes homemade) and I do what I came here to do. I’m a bookseller by the sea, I tell myself. I’m having a really great adventure. I sell a Jenny Colgan hardback and a copy of the first Jack Reacher book, which brings in another tenner.
Elliot doesn’t come back to the shop until after dark, and I don’t ask him where he’s been and he doesn’t tell me.
I readPersuasionin bed – my faithful copy brought from home – and I tell myself that at least I know now what to expect from the coming days.
It hurts. Not like the humiliation Mack brought me; this is a different kind of pain I’ve never felt before, something right in my chest like heartburn, but so much worse. There’s the feeling of having a hangover too, except it wasn’t booze I over-indulged in, it was the lovely warmth of Elliot’s smile, and his hands, and his words. They’ve left me dazed and groggy and sick, in that desperate morning-after space where you wonder if there’s nothing else for it but another sip to take the edge off. But there’s no more where that came from. So I’ll lie in my little bed and tell myself I’m lucky to be here and maybe he’ll be out of my bloodstream by tomorrow. I’ll try to sleep him off.
Chapter Twenty-One
What kind of business hours are you keeping, Jude? This is no way to run a bookshop.
I squint at my phone, eyes blurry from a long restless night and a lot of pages turned waiting for Anne Elliot’s happy ever after to soothe me. I don’t understand Daniel’s message until I see the time and realise it’s just after nine. I’ve slept in and haven’t baked a thing this morning. I’m pulling on underwear before it hits me.
