‘Very impressive,’ said Mr Sturluson, his hands behind his back, eyes alight.
‘There’s even space above us to keep extra stock,’ Magnús added, pointing to the loft door over their heads. Alex slipped under his arm before he brought it back down around her and pressed a proud kiss to her cheek.
They’d only taken possession of the keys that morning, though this wasn’t their first time inside the little shop right in the centre of Laugavegur, Reykjavík’s main street and shopping district. The family made their way back down the stairs into the empty shop.
Magnús and Alex had cooked up the plan weeks ago, when it dawned on them it was time to leave Clove Lore. They’d done all they could there.
Magnús had helped Alex oversee the sale of her house during the spring and there’d been a tussle over insurance money on the boat, but it had all come good in the end. Alex had wanted to buy the Laugavegur property outright as soon as they found it online, but Magnús had sensibly insisted they fly out to see it and Alex had been introduced to so many Sturlusons her head had swum with hard-to-pronounce names.
She’d been happy though, staying in Magnús’s old bedroom, trying all the lovely food, and riding the red tourist bus all over Reykjavík while Magnús commentated on the sights.
It hadn’t felt at all like home to Alex. It felt better; like an adventure. Like a new life entirely opening up to her beneath a summer sky where the sun barely dipped below the horizon in August. She couldn’t wait to see what this place would be like in the winter either.
Now that they had a new flat on the street opposite their business venture, where there was always some member of Magnús’s family calling in on their way past, Alex was feeling for the first time in her life the warm, grown-up assurance of standing on her own two feet, and it was wonderful – even if there were no guarantees that it was all going to work out in the long run. It didn’t matter; the trying was what was important.
‘Ah, the sign painter’s here!’ Magnús called. He bounded over the painted floorboards to the door. ‘Klara! Come in!’
Magnús’s parents glanced at each other, still amazed at the transformation in their son. He’d arrived from the airport like this that first day when they wanted to look at shop properties, so alive and enthusiastic, like they’d never seen him before.
They knew Alex was partly responsible, but there had been healing too. He wasn’t ashamed or troubled any more. Here was their boy starting from scratch, having learned that he couldn’t live his life live afraid of failing, at last understanding that there was nothing that couldn’t be rebuilt in time with effort and courage.
‘You’ve got the ideas we sent you?’ he asked, and the artist put down her bag of paints and brushes and reached for her mock-up.
‘Something like this?Já?’ she asked, smoothing the paper across her lifted knee to show everyone.
‘Dagalien Books, Bed and Breakfast?’ Magnús’s mother read aloud.
‘Dagalien?What is that?’ Magnús’s father asked, and the owners of Iceland’s first live-in bookshop for vacationers grinned back.
‘Do you like it?’ the painter asked.
‘Very much!’ Magnús told her and they all piled outside into the fresh, clean Icelandic summer air to watch her set up her ladders and get to work.
The sight of the new owners outside their shop attracted a good crowd of well-wishers, and Magnús had introduced Alex to scores of old friends all that afternoon.
There was still plenty of work to do, but they’d done it all before in Clove Lore, leaving for Magnús’s home town only when they were satisfied with every aspect of the renovation and when Jowan and Minty had declared the place even better than before.
They’d even taken care to arrange the table display by the door with their choice of books ready for the next set of bookshop holidaymakers. They had selected books with ‘flood’ in their titles by Atwood and Rankin, and there was even a Noah’s Ark picture book. The new booksellers couldn’t fail to understand the significance of those, but some others would be a little harder to decipher, including a new paperback of theVinland Sagas, translated into English, nestling beside an old, well-thumbed copy ofMermaid Myths of Devon and Cornwall. There were clean, second-hand copies ofTreasure Island, andPride and Prejudice, and lastly, a special copy of Mary Norton’sThe Borrowers.
When they’d finished setting them out, they’d handed Jowan his keys and cried all the way to the visitor centre car park where Tony was waiting with his Uber and effusive hugs. He’d even insisted on taking a selfie with them both when they’d arrived at the airport.
It all seemed like a lovely, slightly crazy dream now, looking back at their six months spent rescuing the Borrow-A-Bookshop, as well as rescuing themselves at the same time.
‘So, what is it?’ Jón asked when he dropped by to cover the story for the local paper where he worked, and Magnús and Alex excitedly filled him in on their business plan.
‘People from anywhere in the world can come and work here?’ Jón asked. ‘Just like the English place you went to?’
‘Exactly,’ Magnús told him. ‘Only we’ll work here too. We’ll oversee the whole thing and help sell the books and make the coffees and Cornish pasties and crispy cakes, that kind of thing.’
‘And there’ll be sofas in the windows so shoppers can sit and eat and read,’ Alex told Jón, watching him take down pencil notes in Icelandic.
‘But you’re gonna work yourself to death again?’ Jón asked, letting the pencil stop on the page.
‘Nei!Now we’ll have the holidaymaker booksellers to help. Alex and I will leave after the lunch rush and do our own thing.’
‘And we’ve got trips planned all over Iceland!’ Alex didn’t feel the need to tell him that there was also the matter of her bereavement therapy, now taking place weekly online, alongside her Icelandic lessons, which were proving very slow going but she wanted to be able to talk to the locals in their own language, if they ever let her. She’d found that as soon as anyone realised where she was from they switched to perfect English, and that made her feel utterly inadequate and desperate for her next lesson. Speaking the language certainly helped with her cooking lessons at the culinary school too, and she was learning Icelandic recipes to add to her repertoire of Cornish café classics. She had her own life here in Reykjavík and that would take her away from the bookshop holiday business sometimes, and that was exactly how she and Magnús wanted it.
‘Já!We won’t be hereallthe time,’ Magnús promised his brother.
