The illustrated cover showing a little girl surrounded by books is so familiar and she runs a hand over it, trying to imagine opening it and beginning to read. But as she does, she thinks about all the times she has tried reading since Joe’s diagnosis, the words jumbling and her attention never making it beyond a few sentences. Since Joe’s death she’s lost the ability to escape into a book. The stories she used to love all seem so … pointless now.
‘Oh, Joe,’ she says out loud, her eyes flicking to the blue ceramic urn that rests on one of the bookshelves. It’s a deep shade of indigo, dappled with flecks of a paler blue that reminded Tilly of Joe’s eyes when she chose it. The silence is so full of his absence that for a moment she almost expects to hear his voice. The room seems to grow darker, grief shrouding her like a cloak. She waits for a beat longer and then folds the letter and tucks it carefully back into the book.
‘I love you for this idea. In the past, a year of books would have been my dream gift. But it’s just not who I am any more.’
She places her copy ofMatildafirmly back on the coffee table where it will remain for weeks, unread.
Book Lane Recommends
Books to make you hungry
Chocolatby Joanne Harris
The Kamogawa Food Detectivesby Hisashi Kashiwai
One More Croissant for the Roadby Felicity Cloake
A Thousand Feastsby Nigel Slater
4
The man in the green anorak is growing increasingly red in the face.
‘You know the book,’ he says to Alfie, gesturing in the air with one hand. ‘It was in this weekend’sSunday Times. You know. Blue cover.’
Alfie tries his best to remain calm and not to tell the customer that the book having a blue cover doesn’t exactly narrow things down.
‘You know. Written by that posh bloke on the telly,’ the man adds.
Which doesn’t especially help either.
‘Just give me a moment, sir, and I’ll see what I can do.’
As Alfie turns to the computer he tries to focus on what he is doing and not let his attention wander to the door, looking out for a flash of ginger hair. It’s the first of February and Matilda Nightingale’s next book is waiting on the shelf. Every time the doorbell jangles today he has found himself looking up, wondering if it might be her. But she hasn’t stepped inside the shop since that day back in January.
The fingers of one hand dart across the keyboard, then he flicks through the weekend papers and a copy of theLondon Review of Books, which he keeps on his desk for moments like this. Five minutes later, the customer leaves with a copy of a recently published historical biography under his arm, Alfie having just managed to stop himself from pointing outthat the book was actually featured in theTelegraph, not theSunday Times.
For the rest of the day he unloads books, rearranges shelves and deals with online orders and emails from publishers. But the customer in the tweed coat with the colourful buttons, and with the bright orange hair, never appears.
‘Sorry I’m late, I had some invoices to finish dealing with,’ he says later that evening as he unclips his bicycle helmet, his hair springing up in defiance of having been constrained for the fifteen-minute ride.
‘You work too hard,’ says the five-foot-one woman in the doorway, dressed in jeans, slippers and an orange jumper, greying hair in a messy bun. ‘Just like your father,’ she adds as she reaches up and he stoops down so he can kiss her on the cheek.
‘Hi, Mum.’
Alfie can distinctly remember the moment he surpassed his mother in height and how disorientating it had felt. As a child, she’d always seemed so reassuringly big to him: the place to run to when he came off his bike and grazed his knees, or if his older sister, Tash, hid one of his favourite rocks to annoy him, or later teased him for having a rock collection at all. But before he knew it he had grown gangly limbs and people kept telling him how much he looked like his father. And then one day he was leaning down to hug his mother rather than the other way around and it felt like he was no longer allowed to be a little boy, even though sometimes he still very much felt like one on the inside.
As she holds on, Alfie rests his chin on the top of her head, catching her familiar Nivea face cream and Imperial Leather soap smell. The smell of home.
‘So, what needs doing, then?’ he asks, heading straight for the cupboard in the hall, reaching for the toolbox.
‘Just a few pictures that I picked up at a flea market this week. I want to hang them before Andrew gets back from his work trip.’
‘So he has no choice if he hates them?’ Alfie teases, following his mother into a living room filled with knick-knacks.
‘You know Andrew doesn’t care about things like that,’ she says, waving a hand as Alfie gets the drill ready.
She’s right. While Andrew might pretend to grumble occasionally about their flat resembling a second-hand shop, thanks to Emylia’s car boot sale addiction, in reality his mother could fill the place to the ceiling or paint it neon pink and Alfie’s stepfather wouldn’t care, as long as Emylia was there when he came home.
