Unknown:Got your number from Max. Hope that’s okay. I’m at the Covent Garden store today as I have a couple of new members of staff to interview but the coffee’s hot and I have a whole new delivery of pretty hardbacks. Owen.
Unknown:I have a pen drive with my accounts on too to give you.
Unknown:If you do come over, my mother is in the store today and she will interrogate you and try to realign your chakras. I’ll try to stop her but she doesn’t listen to me.
Unknown:Hope you slept well. I’ll stop messaging you now because you probably think I’m a creeper. It’s Owen by the way.
I read the messages again, knowing I was smiling. I debated responding but then decided turning up would be better, so I stayed silent, instead posting a couple of photos of my now tidy home and the bookcase to Instagram. I had a feeling Owen would be checking my updates.
* * *
As a small girl I got lost in a bookstore. My mother nicknamed me Alice once she found me as I’d been tucked in the children’s section with an illustrated copy ofAlice in Wonderland. I was completely unaware I was ‘missing’ and that my mother had the shop shut down and everybody looking for me. She’d been relieved and furious at the same time and I’d looked up at her with wide eyes and responded by telling her I’d fallen down the rabbit hole. This had made her laugh, although there were tears at the same time which had worried me.
The bookstore in Covent Garden with its street entertainers outside reminded me of that day. Inside was a maze of aisles and comfy Chesterfield sofas and tables, which I realised were part of the Cases brand. There was a small café and an area filled with seating that had been cleared for a book signing later in the day. The signs outside told me that it was a crime writer, one I had read previously and if I was still here later on, I’d listen in.
I found coffee first, paying my usual homage to the god of all things caffeine and grabbed a pastry, which were becoming a second addiction and would mean I had to go train with my brothers at some point. Then I found a nook down an aisle where the modern classics were and discovered an E. M. Forster I hadn’t read. I slipped my shoes off and curled up, feeling like the little girl I’d been when I dropped down that rabbit hole years before. I took a quick selfie and messaged it to Owen, no comment, just the photo.
And then I lost myself studying Giotto inA Room With a View.
Chapter Six
Owen
My mother sawthe photo on Instagram before me because she’d managed to uncover who Payton was and where she could stalk her. Her time as a nomad had ceased once I graduated and she’d discovered the internet as a travelling medium. Social media was her wagon.
“Owen, I think Payton’s in the store,” she said, elbows deep in a box of books in the storeroom. “She’s just posted a new picture. Why don’t you go say hello?”
I paused and studied my mother, her hair long but tidy without the beads and plaits of my childhood. “Because she’ll think I’m stalking her.”
“But you need to pass the accounts on to her and then all this business with you and Dave can come to an end,” my mother said, admiring a new edition ofThe Secret Garden. “And we can all move on.”
I shook my head. “I don’t need to move on from anything. I’m perfectly happy with him earning his cut each month and lending his business advice every so often. I’m not the reason he wants out, Dot.” I knew calling her by her name instead of Mum would irritate her.
“You should understand, Owen. When you and Amber split you wanted to cut all ties and move on. You wouldn’t even tolerate the idea of having one of the bands here if there was a chance she’d be supporting. Sometimes we need to wash ourselves clean of someone…”
I exhaled deeply. “It’s okay, Dot, you can stop now. For the record, I avoided Amber for two months. We’re now friends and I realise that being divorced and friends doesn’t really go together but we managed. You and Dave—I have no idea what’s happened. Amber slept with someone else; as far as I’m aware, Dave hasn’t even looked at another woman, so unless you’ve looked at another man?”
She shook her head. “That’s not my scene. You know that.”
I did. She and my father had been in a fairly long relationship before I’d been born although they hadn’t lived together. He’d taken up a job opportunity in Germany and they’d agreed to split before she found out she was pregnant with me. I’d had two parents who’d loved me and strong values built even though they weren’t together. You didn’t play with people’s feelings.
“Fair enough. I still don’t get why you ended it with Dave.”
She sighed and shook her head and I knew I wasn’t getting any more from her. I’d almost given up in the last few days; she’d been reticent to say anything about him, other than passing comment on the amount he’d asked for to buy him out. My take was that he didn’t want to be bought out; he wanted another chance with Dot because since I first met him when I was fifteen, he’d only had eyes for her. “Go take your lawyer a coffee. I believe it’s a soya latte.”
I eyed her and decided to take a walk around the store, checking stock and staffing levels and that everything had been set up for the author night. If I happened to see Payton on the way, then that would be a bonus. We could catch up and I could give her the accounts documents. I’d already been into the Callaghan Green offices to sign the contract for them to represent me.
There were a couple of understocked shelves and displays that needed addressing, but other than that my staff were on top of things, so I browsed behind bookcases, ignoring the continual chirp of my phone as emails came in. I broke deals with publishers, as all bookstores did and made negotiations over volume. When I’d first started I had very little wriggle room: now was a different matter as I’d made a name for my stores. We were influencers and trendsetters and as much as I’d berated Payton for using Instagram, I had a social media mogul who knew what he was doing and how to set trends for people’s reading. That side, that business side, was all about manipulation and I understood that, as much as it differed from how I was personally. I’d learned to keep the two things separate.
A blonde head was bowed over a book in one of the modern authors aisles, her legs curled up under her, hands caressing the book as if it was made of some precious metal. I stopped and watched, not quite understanding the montage. She was petite and slight and so large with her personality that she eclipsed whatever else was happening around her, even when she was nose deep in a book.
“Hey,” I said as Payton looked up, probably aware that eyes were watching her. “How’s your book?”
She put it face down on the arm of her chair and looked at me with glazed eyes, clearly wrapped up in the story. “Good. I can’t believe I haven’t read it before. I will pay for this one, I promise.” She smiled, looking sated—an expression I associate more with a woman who’d just orgasmed than one who’d been reading.
“You can have any book you want,” I said. “Right now though, you look like you could do with coffee.”
She stretched languidly, like a cat, legs and arms uncoordinated. “I told Seph I was going to spend the week being a tourist: it might end up being a tourist of your bookstores.”
