‘You’re involved?’
Monty gulped. ‘Not anymore. Listen, don’t worry. I’m in her book too, if that makes you feel any better? Probably one of the only locals left who isn’t paired up already, except for some of the older folks…’
Joy raised her brows and stared, waiting for Monty to catch on to the ramifications of what he was saying. Monty was a little older than Joy, going by the silvery strands amongst his thick brown curls and the softest weathered lines around his temples, but they were both alone in Clove Lore, and both in the betting book. Monty, however, didn’t seem to grasp what this might mean for them.
‘You’ll like her once you get to know her, honestly.’
Joy looked up at him, unmoved.
‘So, listen.’ Monty held his palms together, forcing a change of topic. ‘What do you say? A book-shelving party? Tomorrow at five? You can have a kind of open house for helpers?’
‘Uh… no, I don’t think…’
‘It’s a community bookshop. We help everyone who comes to stay. What do you say? It’ll be nice, and you can meet all the volunteers in one go, get it over with.’
Joy glanced around the shop once more. She couldn’t deny it was a mess. Maybe if they got things straight quickly she could take a few days off at the end of the fortnight, let Radia have the proper summer holiday she deserved? She didn’t often get jobs finished early. Then again, she’d never had the offer of help.
Monty was observing her closely and already smiling.
‘OK,’ Joy said, with a sigh. ‘But only for a few hours. Just to get these books off the floor.’
‘No problem,’ Monty said it as though all those locals descending on Joy’s territory was set to be the simplest thing in the world. ‘I’ll text everyone.’
‘Except the ice-cream lady.’
‘Can’t guarantee she won’t get wind of it and show up.’
Joy gritted her teeth, but Radia was back from the kitchen with a brimming glass of milk.
‘Oh, right, my milk, of course. Thank you very much.’ Monty rescued the glass from her before shrugging at Joy who didn’t know what to say or do. He downed the whole thing in a few long gulps.
‘Woah!’ Radia was extremely impressed and ran off to the kitchen to see if she could do the same thing, while Joy was left standing on the shop doormat, blinking wordlessly at the sight of Montague Bickleigh with his head thrown back, his throat working, brown curls tumbling, and the slow smile stretching across his lips as he lowered the glass, sweeping his mouth with the back of his hand.
Joy took the glass. ‘Uh… right. Well done,’ she said, in an inane way that she’d fret about for the rest of the night.
Then Monty was gone, leaving Joy wondering at the strange effects the sight of him pounding that glass of milk had had on her insides. Whatever her traitorous nervous system was up to, she wasn’t going to be moved. This was just a glitch in her system. Like that time she was doing an intranet upgrade across those German university campuses and everyone’s printers simultaneously disappeared off the network. It had been unexpected and inconvenient but, dammit, she’d put her mind to it and sorted it out all by herself, hadn’t she? This was the same thing. A reboot was all that was needed and the next time she saw him she’d be back to processing as normal. Still, she had to admit, the quicker this posting was over and their bags were packed, the better for all of them.
‘And Mu-um?’ Radia called from the café, making Joy shake herself awake. ‘There’s a big lot of milk on the floor.’
‘OK, coming!’
Joy shut and bolted the shop door and turned for the café, but not before pressing the cool glass to her forehead and blowing out a sharp breath.
‘Two weeks,’ she told herself, ‘and we’ll be safely out of Clove Lore.’
Chapter Nine
The next morning, Radia had insisted her mum open up the shop door and let her and Charley fox play outside on the steps. She must have run around the courtyard palm tree a hundred times, making up games and singing. She had always been good at entertaining herself.
All day long, holidaymakers had been wandering into the square and asking whether or not the bookshop was still closed. Radia had deflected most of them before they made it to the steps and interrupted her mum’s work. Joy didn’t know it but she’d told them all to come back tomorrow when the books would be on the shelves and the shop would absolutelydefinitelybe open for business.
Joy had been enjoying working on her own, getting every item of stock logged on her system and the whole thing running smoothly, after a few tweaks to the coding. She’d even ordered a book of best-man speeches and wedding etiquette direct from the supplier in the Midlands.
All she had to do was get through the shelving party in an hour, trying not to get too alarmed at the word ‘party’ (it wasn’t, it was just work) and keep a lid on the self-conscious, rattled feeling within her that Monty had set off the day before. For now there was the quiet of the afternoon, and she had Radia to supervise, so she stepped out onto the little square to join her daughter and Charley fox in their tea party, where Radia was pouring water from a silver pot taken from the café.
Sitting in the sun, eating invisible strawberry tarts (Charley’s favourite), Joy lifted her eyes to the sky where the gulls circled and swooped and she inhaled the peace of the seaside afternoon while it was set to last.
Everywhere around Clove Lore were the signs of renewal after the winter floods. The blackbirds sang in the shade of the camellia grove up on the estate; pink scabious and blue lobelia grew once more in the crevices of every dry-stone wall; children gripped their grown-ups’ hands as they gingerly made their way Down-along in wetsuits and armbands, everyone overloaded with bodyboards, beach tents and picnics.
