‘Aren’t you tired? Breakfast and dinner shiftsanda stag weekend in between?’
She poured the wine and pulled up the seat opposite Monty and facing the open bookshop door. From here she could see all the way through to Radia’s darkened bedroom.
Monty waved the suggestion away, even if his eyes had a tired softness about them. ‘Cheers,’ he said, lifting his glass to Joy’s.
She had to look away as she drank. Monty’s eyes stayed gently fixed upon her and it was all too much after her long evening of being around people, all of whom, she felt sure, had suspected her secret: she really liked this guy.
‘So… what is this?’ she asked, a sweep of her hand gesturing to the courtyard.
‘I think Jowan intended it to be an outside meeting place, an extension of the café maybe, somewhere to read and eat?’
‘A meeting place?Hmm.’ Joy supposed she could allow café customers to sit outside if she kept the shop door propped open. She could even set out a little display of books here to draw in more passers-by.
It struck her that she was thinking more about bookselling than putting the finishing touches to the security and camera systems or to helping Minty with her wedding websites problem.
Monty watched her but didn’t pry into her thoughts. He seemed contented enough just to see her looking happy. He drank again and rested his head on his hand, a hazy smile fixed on his lips.
Joy inhaled the cool quiet of the evening. The way the light fell against the whitewashed walls of the cottage backs put her in mind of the little yard outside her own flat, with its white render over London red brick. When she’d moved in there were only bins in the yard out the back. She’d planted herbs in pots, scrubbed the flagstones and hung a hammock. Gaz and her co-workers would come and drink beers there after work, and they’d make pizza and look at the stars through the light pollution. Again, her safe little space back home seemed to be calling to her, reminding her of all the good times she’d had there, times she could have again, if she was brave enough.
Her eyes settled on the palm tree in its big terracotta planter with its cracks visibly repaired with silvery mortar. She supposed it must have been a result of the flood damage.
‘I like how you can see the repair,’ she told Monty, absently, and he followed her eye line to the pot. ‘All the cracks are filled in but they’re still there too, not covered up. It reminds me ofkintsugi. I took Rads to an exhibition about it in Nagasaki. There were all these ancient dishes and cups, all the broken bits filled with gold, fixing them back together.’
‘Kin…?’ Monty prompted.
‘Kintsugi.’
Monty soundlessly mouthed the word before saying, ‘I like that idea; repairing things so the damage can still be seen? So the cracks are part of its story.’
‘Exactly,’ said Joy. ‘And it makes you think of the person who made it, and how it might have got smashed in the first place.’
‘And the hands that put it back together?’ said Monty, thoughtfully. ‘It was Magnús and Alex’s handiwork, actually. The ones that vacated the shop before you?’
‘Right. Well now Alex and Magnús are part of its story.’
Joy wanted to talk more. She strongly wanted to tell Monty about the scar across her abdomen from where the surgeon had pulled Radia, or the vaccination mark on her arm from her BCG, the completely failed piercings that had never healed on her earlobes because it wasn’t a good idea to trust a teenager with a pink plastic piercing gun in a shopping mall when you’re fourteen. It was enough just to think these things herself, and so she smiled, and although she didn’t know it, her eyes sparkled under the bulb lights.
A heavy kind of silence settled around the pair now.
‘Listen,’ Monty said eventually. ‘I’m sorry about all the school stuff tonight. I could’ve warned you that Edie Crocombe and her TA would be at the hen do.’
Joy swept a dismissive hand. ‘Radia would have reacted just the same, even if I’d had warning.’
‘She’ll not let that go now, will she?’
‘No, but that’s nothing new. She wants a normal life.’
Monty’s brow crumpled a little. ‘She has a normal life.’
‘Hmm, maybe,’ Joy said, reluctant to dig deeper but the wine wanted her to keep talking. ‘I can’t help feeling guilty about all the things she’s missing out on.’
Here it came, the same old stuff she thought every night. Would it help lessen the guilt if she told a sympathetic listener? The way Monty was watching her with quiet interest told her to try.
‘She misses her auntie, and the flat, and…’ Joy faltered. ‘And my parents. She’d love a granny to spoil her.’ Shifting in her seat she pushed her hair behind her ears and took a deep breath. ‘She could have gone to school last September, you know? I deferred her place. She’s missed so much.’ Joy stubbornly refused to give in to the tears welling.
‘Or, there’s another way of looking at it,’ Monty tried, ever so tentatively.
‘Tell me.’
