Chapter One
A summer-warmed breeze blew Down-along, making the sails on the little girl’s paper windmill spin fast upon their pin.
‘Careful, Rads!’ her mum warned. ‘Nobody said anything about it being this steep.’
Accustomed to her mum worrying that she was inches away from a tragic accident at any given moment, Radia made an exaggerated show of shuffling extra carefully down the cobbled slope, dragging a tattered toy fox at her feet.
Happy tourists tramped past them, gripping onto gate posts and garden railings for dear life and exclaiming to one another that it was set to be another scorcher today. Some trundled cases, heading for the Siren’s Tail and a few nights’ dinner, bed and breakfast by the Atlantic. Others carried crabbing nets and buckets, looking forward to dropping bait over the sea wall all afternoon.
‘Can we get an ice cream, Mum? Please!’ the child asked in an urgent tone, having spotted the bright flag of Mrs Crocombe’s Ice Cream Cottage lifting gently against the blue sky.
There was a decent queue outside. That meant the ice cream must be good. But her mother was looking at the GPS on her phone and turning this way and that.
‘Let me concentrate, it must be here somewhere,’ she replied, pushing up black-rimmed specs that had slipped in the heat.
‘There’s only up or down,’ the girl reminded her. ‘I’m looking for it withmy actual eyes,’ she said, pointedly, glancing at her mum’s phone, which hadn’t helped them one bit all the way here.
Joyce Foley (Joy for short) had joked with her daughter in the back of the taxi that the Google Maps photography robot must have driven right into the sea somewhere south of Minehead because this little bit of Devon didn’t seem to be charted on her device. Overhearing, the driver had raised an eyebrow in the rear-view mirror and muttered something about ‘Londongrockels’, which only the little girl thought was funny. She’d told him, ‘We aren’t really from London. We aren’t from anywhere at all.’ Joy had stayed very quiet at that.
‘Is this it?’ asked Radia, plainly, pointing to a turning off the slope, between two dazzlingly white, freshly painted cottages.
‘Hah! I suppose it must be.’
The sounds of drilling and hammering resounded within the buildings on either side as they passed between them. Evidently the work of restoring Clove Lore continued even eight months after the infamous flood.
Joy dragged the case along behind them and Radia, used to carrying her life on her back, stoically shouldered her furry, bear-face rucksack, which was so stuffed to bursting with her treasures its zip had broken on the journey here.
They made their way through the passage, past the old sleds leaning against the recently repointed masonry.
Entering a peaceful little square, Radia stumbled on the cobbles, which were freshly laid out in swirling patterns like a mermaid’s scales set in sandy-coloured concrete.
The smell of paint, which was strong throughout the whole village, was especially potent here. It mixed with the rising scents of cut grass, sweltering seaweed and something good cooking way down at the pub on the harbour wall.
Joy stopped in her tracks to take in the squat little bookshop, from its stone steps to its conical roof, squint like a wizard’s hat. ‘Well, this really is different,’ she said under her breath.
‘Bookshop! Bookshop!’ Radia cried, running around the palm tree in the centre of the square, the cracks in its big terracotta planter visibly repaired with silvery mortar.
She dodged in and out of the new sky-blue metal tables and chairs (which matched the sky-blue shop door perfectly), set out in little clusters all over the cobbles as though the owners meant this to be an outdoor café or some kind of meeting place.
Criss-crossing the square overhead were strung white bulbs. Even higher above circled the gulls, watching the latest arrivals in Clove Lore and laughing on the wing.
Joy tried not to think too much about how lovely it would be to sit there on a late summer evening drinking cold wine. She’d be far too busy for that.
‘Mind the paint, I think the door’s wet,’ she told Radia, as she found the key in the jacket of her grey blazer, which she wore over a paler grey linen jumpsuit.
‘One of the first things we’ll do is install the code lock; do away with the need for keys. Far safer,’ she said, as she pushed open the door.
The little girl shoved past her mum to get inside first.
‘Woah!’ Her windmill was immediately discarded on the wonky floorboards, shiny with new varnish.
Checking that the door was securely latched behind them, Joy cast her eyes around the bookshop. Empty shelves stood like sentries along the walls, interspersed here and there with brightly coloured vintage armchairs and little reading nooks. Dotted about were old vases filled with dried summer flowers in faded pastels. At the head of each shelf stack was a sign with words painted in curling gold script.
‘Bi-ol-o-gee, gen-rul fiction…children’s books!’ Radia squealed in delight at discovering what would soon be the children’s corner, below the spiral staircase of gleaming black iron – also freshly painted, her mum guessed from its glossy sheen.
Throwing herself across two patchwork beanbags, Radia shrieked, kicking happily. Then she lifted the lid off one of the many cardboard crates shoved under the stairs – matching the others piled all around the shop – and found to her glee that it was filled to the very top with picture books and board books and chapter books, all bright and inviting. Sitting up, she grabbed for one.
‘Gently. They’re not for us. They’re for customers.’
