Joy held her breath so that she could listen all the better for the sounds downstairs.
A shoulder thumped against the shop door.Bang!More muttering, angrier now.
This was it. Red alert. The moment she’d known was coming.
Tiptoeing, she snatched up her phone and dialled the emergency services, her thumb hovering over the green call button.
She couldn’t see the door from the top of the spiral steps but crouching halfway down she clearly made out the shadow behind the brown paper. Tall, male, agitated.
The muttering had turned into louder grumbling. The shadow fumbled at the lock, trying a key then their shoulder alternately.
Each bump at the doorframe made her heart palpitate wildly, jumping in her chest like it knew these were her last moments.
Out of habit, her brain landed upon her mantra, but it didn’t work.
Over and over as she made her way to the door, she heard it whisper,Sean’s here. He knows where we are. He wants us. It’s over.
‘Joy?’
The sound of her name made her entire nervous system seize up, had her doubled over, dropping the phone, her hands pressing her knees for support, utterly winded. That voice…
‘Joy? Are you in there?’
It wasn’t Sean. It was a gravelly, piratey West Country accent. She gasped, standing straight once more, hauling breath into her lungs.
A scratch low against the doorframe told her Aldous was here too. A whine confirmed it. Joy hurried over the last few steps and unlatched the door.
‘Good grief, lass. You’re ill!’ Jowan said, the second he saw her.
‘No, no, I’m fine,’ she tried to tell him, but it was no use. She couldn’t control her breathing.
Jowan led her to an armchair. ‘I’ll get you a glass of water. Where’s the little ’un? Is she sick too?’
All Joy could focus on was the wide-open door. ‘Close it,’ she told him. ‘Close it, quick.’
Jowan did as instructed and Joy clamped her shaking hands over her mouth to keep the sobs in, as tears streamed down her face.
What followed was a long round of mutual apologising. Joy, embarrassed and weeping, couldn’t stop saying sorry for hiding away the last few days, since the morning after Jude’s hen party; for not letting Jowan know she’d fulfilled her contract and was ready to leave.
Jowan was full of remorse for getting flustered at the door. He hadn’t understood the new electronic security system meant the old lock was now redundant.
He hadn’t meant to terrify her and couldn’t fully understand why she’d reacted like she had, and Joy didn’t want to explain.
‘I woke up groggy and disorientated, that’s all,’ she told him, shrugging it away, unconvincingly, and putting her specs back on over red eyes.
As they exchanged apologies, Aldous had determinedly hobbled up the spiral stairs and shoved his way into the bedroom to sniff out the sleeping Radia, who he woke by leaping onto her, his skinny tail whipping loudly against the bed.
They heard the delighted squeal from down in the bookshop and Jowan called his wayward Bedlington downstairs again. Radia followed, wide awake in the way only five-year-olds can be seconds after a long, stuffy sleep.
She greeted Jowan with a big hug which turned him all abashed and delighted.
‘Radia Pearl, my favourite little pirate!’ He pulled her up onto his knee.
Before, Joy would have felt strange about that kind of closeness but, she was surprised to find, so many of her old reservations were gone. She knew not everyone was a threat. Jowan was nothing but kindness.
Radia was examining the pearl-drop earring at his grizzly jaw, then, finding he wasn’t complaining about that, she decided to grill him about the anchor tattoo on the back of his hand for the second time, asking the same questions she had at the shelving party.
‘Didn’t it hurt, the needles?’ she wanted to know.
