‘Nonsense! Why would anyone be afraid of me?’
I bite my lip, building myself up to calling him. What’s the worst that could happen, really? If he’s offish with me – well, at least I’ll have tried. Aware that Rupert never answers his mobile, I call the shop number. ‘Hello, Rupert Featherstone Fine Art Books?’
‘Hello?’ I say hesitantly, unable to place the male voice.
‘Can I help you?’ the man asks pleasantly.
‘I, um, wondered if Rupert’s there today?’
‘He’s off at the moment. If there’s anything—’ He trails off. ‘Is this Josie?’
‘It is, yes.’
The man chuckles. ‘Ahh. I was hoping you’d call. It’s Charles.’
‘Oh, Charles, I’m sorry! I didn’t recognise?—’
‘That was my posh phone voice,’ he admits.
I laugh obligingly, trying to reconcile the fact that Rupert has replaced me already with his old boarding-school friend. That’s up to him, I tell myself. But is Charles really up to running the online order system, created by me?
‘Is Rupert away?’ I ask.
‘Umm… not exactly. He’s just taking a bit of… time out, I think you’d call it.’
‘Time out?’ I ask incredulously. Rupert rarely takes so much as a day off. I’ve wondered sometimes if this is because he gets lonely in his Notting Hill flat, and that really, the shop is his home.
Charles clears his throat. ‘He’s been a bit down actually, Josie. Realised he’d said some things he shouldn’t?—’
I blink in amazement. ‘To me, you mean?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘You know about that?’
‘I do,’ he murmurs. ‘But now you’re back from your trip, if you did feel like dropping by…’
‘I’m just not sure how he’ll be with me,’ I admit. But perhaps I could take a trip to town at some point, and have a browse around the big Waterstones? Maybe a wander through the streets of that rarified corner of London that I’ve grown to know so well? I mean, Rupert doesn’t own it.
‘See how you feel,’ Charles adds kindly. ‘I think he’ll be in tomorrow and, well, if you’re in the area?—’
‘I might be,’ I say.
He coughs dryly and I hear the shop door ding. ‘The thing is?—’
‘What is it, Charles?’
‘We have a new printer.’
‘What? Oh my God.’
‘And neither of us can work it,’ he says.
36
SHANE
Shane is grateful to Fletch for manning the shop while he was away. However, certain aspects have slipped in his absence: emails, accounts stuff, chasing up an order for saxophone reeds that was expected while he was away. Buzzing with caffeine, he works steadily all morning, pausing to re-read the message thread with Elaine last night.
