Jowan began explaining that it wasn’t something he’d recommend for fun, and Joy slipped away.
‘I’ll make us some breakfast,’ she said, but they were busy chatting.
By the time they were all eating jammy toast and draining their mugs, sitting by the shop’s unlit fireplace surrounded by books, Joy had recovered herself enough to remember to ask Jowan if he’d had some special reason to come to the shop that morning.
‘Ah, yes, I did. Let’s see.’ Jowan was on his feet and moving to the door where he’d abandoned a big rectangular parcel wrapped in white paper when he’d discovered Joy scared witless.
‘Thought I’d bring this down, get it out the way before all the wedding’s eve hoo-hah kicks off tomorrow. Do you want to unwrap it, Radia?’ he asked.
Radia delightedly tore at the paper. ‘Is it a present?’
‘It’s a present from me to Borrow-A-Bookshop,’ he said, just as the little girl revealed a picture frame, the kind with lots of little spaces for photos.
‘I jus’ picked it up from the framer. Might look nice behind the counter.’
Radia took the cumbersome thing to her mum and all three tipped their heads over it. Ten framed colour pictures, mostly of beaming bookselling-holidaymakers that Joy didn’t know, and in the bottom right corner was the photo from the shelving party.
Joy tried not to look at it, but for a second all she could see was Monty and the easy way he stood with his hands shoved into his pockets. He looked gentle and uncomplicated and happy. The image took her right back to how he’d appeared the first time she saw him on the harbour wall, when he’d helped them with the crabbing rod and she’d had the protection of The Joy and Radia Bubble of isolation. Things had been simpler then, though not necessarily happier.
No matter how she tried to resist, her eyes dragged themselves back to him. Just by looking at it she could feel the softness of that shirt, and the softness of his brown eyes and brown curls. How could so much softness hurt like this?
She was glad when Jowan pointed to the image in the centre of the frame, all washed-out colours and blurred the way only old film could be. It was of a couple in their forties, standing on the steps of the bookshop, grinning at the camera.
‘That’s my Isolda,’ said Jowan.
The woman wore an ankle-length dress in flowy florals, her long hair whipping up in the breeze. Jowan beside her was in a sky-blue suit and brown paisley tie that definitely didn’t match. It was plain for anyone to see, even after all this time and in a faded photograph, that the couple had been made for one another.
‘She’s beautiful,’ Joy told him.
He only smiled.
‘What are those?’ Radia asked, pointing at the blurry objects hanging from Isolda’s hands. Jowan peered closer.
‘’orse shoes, maybe a chimney sweep or two.’
‘Huh?’ Radia was no more enlightened.
‘Wedding gifts. For luck? We were just about to leave for our honeymoon.’
‘You got married here?’ Joy looked around the shop as if the echoes of a wedding party could still be detected.
‘We did. Didn’t bother with a vicar or paperwork, mind. Just us saying we’d love each other for good, and all our friends tipsy on homemade wine.’
Jowan sniffed away a wistful laugh and told her that back then they’d been considered the village’s ‘resident hippies’.
He shrugged and smiled, marvelling at his old life, as though Isolda had been a beautiful dream of twenty years’ duration, magical and unreal.
‘We stood in that doorway there and made our vows, and after that, well, I’m not sure anyone remembers. T’was quite a party.’
‘And what’s that?’ Radia had already moved on to another picture. A dismal scene. The shop in disarray, the floor hidden under sludge.
‘That? Well, that was the best day of my life.Jointbest day.’
Even Joy was surprised. ‘The shop flooding?’
‘’Bout an hour later, I was engaged to my Mint.’
‘Ah, right. Makes sense,’ Joy said, and somehow she couldn’t lift her eyes from the pictures in their mounts again.
