Monty didn’t seem to mind. ‘So, Radia was telling me out there that she once ate poisonous Japanese blowfish, in Tokyo.’ He lifted two handfuls of books and peered at their spines. ‘I’m afraid my Atlantic cod can’t compete with that.’
‘That’s right,fugu! That kid remembers everything she ever ate. It wasn’t so much delicious as it was… an interesting experience.’
‘You were there to work?’
‘Yep, installing…’ She stopped herself. ‘A really boring, specific bit of tech at the stock exchange.’
‘Woah, really? That’s not boring at all.’
‘It’s not?’ Joy didn’t believe him.
‘And they let Radia go to work with you at the stock exchange?’
‘Oh, no, she was in a crèche during the day.’
‘No wonder she knows so much about international food.’
And crèches, thought Joy, guiltily. She knows loads about foreign crèches and childminders and room service. Yet, Monty was looking at her like he was somehow impressed, like she wasn’t the world’s least attentive mother.
‘You must be about the smartest person I’ve ever met,’ Monty was saying. Joy batted the words away like they were angry wasps.
‘God, no!’
She wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint the moment when compliments had become impossible to receive, painful to hear. It was one of the many things Patti pointed out that had changed about her, around about the time of the big family bust-up when Joy was realising with dawning horror that she was pregnant, and everyone around her was suddenly finding fault and picking at her.
‘Where’d you learn it all?’ Monty asked.
‘Oh, you know, uni, and then a bunch of training afterwards.’
All of that was true, but she neglected to mention how it had always come easily to her. How, if a piece of hardware or software had been well designed she could often intuitively find her way around it, and if it wasn’t all that instinctual then the ideas for modifications just presented themselves to her.
She’d learned coding in her bedroom as a teenager from books and online tutorials, and it had all felt absolutely like herself, like the thing sheshouldbe doing. She’d discovered her talents young and it had made her so happy. She was part of a worldwide network of people just like her, in it for the love of innovation and trying to see further than before. Nowadays, though, it was just work and a way of keeping Radia safe. She’d turned herself into a Jack of all Tech so she could live an untethered existence. All of that early passion was gone.
‘Can you keep handing me the A’s?’ she asked him. ‘We should sort them on the shelves, save our backs.’
‘Right you are,’ Monty said, squinting at the spines, and they worked away steadily, muttering under their breath loud enough for the other to hear.
‘Aaron, Abbott, Abrahams.’
‘There’s a Douglas Adams here, stick him on the next shelf along. We’ll get to him in a sec.’
‘Pass me that Achebe, thanks.’
Making decent progress, they were soon at the Al’s when Jude arrived wearing a white summer sundress and a glowy tan that just screamed ‘bride-to-be’.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said from the doormat. ‘Minty was talking at me and the caterer about the canapés.’
‘Talkingatyou?’ Izaak echoed, making Leonid and Jude smile slyly until they remembered Jowan was in the poetry section, although he was too familiar with Minty’s organisational zeal to be offended. He was also loyal and wouldn’t join in with making fun of her, especially if she wasn’t there to defend herself.
Jude came closer and introduced herself to Joy, waved with a cheery ‘hiya’ to Radia, and then drew from her tote bag a couple of bottles of chilled rosé. ‘Shall we?’ she asked Joy. ‘It is a party, after all.’
Leonid was quickly on his way to scour the café for suitable cups and Jude called after him that it was only a screw top so not to bother with the bottle opener.
Joy was only a little taken aback by how everyone simply made themselves at home in the bookshop, rummaging in the kitchen, striding in and out like it was their own. She supposed it did belong to them, to the community, and not her. She was only the temp, after all.
‘After the day I’ve had, I could do with a drink,’ Jude confided in a low voice near Joy’s side, which sparked a little thrill of closeness within her that she wasn’t used to. How long had it been since she’d been offered a glass of wine at a party by a woman her own age? She couldn’t remember.
‘Wedding fever?’ Joy asked.
