‘It’s notmyfault you don’tunderstand.’
I paused outside the kitchen, the sound of my sister’s voice cutting through the morning air like a cheese grater. Whatever she and Mum were arguing about, it was too early for it and I did not want to be dragged in the middle. But my desperate need to caffeinate was stronger than my instinct for self-preservation, so I quietly opened the door, keeping my head down as I crept inside.
‘Are you genuinely trying to tell me I don’t understand a book?’ my mother said, ignoring me as I skulked across the room. ‘Charlotte, sweetheart, you do realise my entire career is based on my understanding of books?’
My sister, all five foot two of her, sat on a stool at the kitchen table, spine straight, eyes bright and hair an interesting shade of peach. The only way to describe Charlotte was adorable, with her button nose and impossibly long eyelashes, but she didn’t look adorable right now. She looked thoroughly pissed off.
‘Sophie, can you back me up?’ Mum asked as Idumped a third teaspoonful of sugar into my mug. ‘Your sister seems to think I’m an imbecile with no taste.’
‘Mum’s not an imbecile,’ I replied robotically. ‘And Reese Witherspoon once told her she had excellent taste.’
‘All right, no need to name-drop,’ she said as though she didn’t bring it up at every possible opportunity. ‘But I do think thirty-five years of experience ought to count for something. I’m only trying to help you.’
I took my first sip of coffee and waited for it to work its magic.
‘You’re not trying to help,’ my sister replied. ‘You’re trying to tell me which books I should be stocking in Charlotte’s Bookshop.’
‘Is that the name or have you started referring to yourself in the third person?’ I asked, immediately regretting the decision to open my mouth.
She hit me with a glare that woke me up faster than any cup of coffee ever could.
‘Yes, it’s the name, and it’s perfect. Clear, concise, easy for social media, it’ll look great on merch and it centres everything around me.’
‘Naturally.’
‘Which works for the PR angle,’ Charlotte finished, glowering at me from her stool.
‘I don’t have a problem with the name,’ Mum said in her most cajoling tone. ‘All I’m asking is that you reconsider your purchasing strategy. It’s all well and good buying things that are trendy now but what happens six months from now when you’re stuck with a stockroom full of flash-in-the-pan nonsense you can’t shift?’
‘I send it back to the publisher?’ Charlotte’s smoothforehead wrinkled momentarily as she gave Mum a look of complete disgust. ‘I know how returns work.’
Mum slid off her own stool and stalked across the kitchen, refilling her own coffee, and I stole her seat, observing their back and forth. Aside from the conservatory-window-dirt-bike incident, me and William had been the best-behaved children on the planet, at least as far as I could remember. I would never have spoken to my mum that way when I was eighteen, I wouldn’t even speak to her that way now, and I was equal parts horrified and deeply impressed.
‘It’s not as easy as simply returning the books,’ Mum explained, stirring one half-spoonful of raw sugar into her coffee. ‘You’ve got to think about cashflow. Publishers don’t refund you immediately, the money doesn’t appear back in your bank account overnight, and your stockroom is tiny. You don’t have space to hold that many returns.’
I peered into Charlotte’s mug and saw her coffee was black and strong. God help us all, the last thing she needed was more energy.
‘But there isn’t going tobeany extra stock because I’m going to selleverything,’ she insisted.
‘And how are you going to do that?’ I asked.
She didn’t miss a beat. ‘By getting all my friends on BookTok and Bookstagram to promote me, and I’ll be holding virtual and IRL events with loads of authors.’
‘I’m not trying to be an arsehole but lots of other bookshops do that,’ I said as gently as I could. There were an awful lot of weapons within arm’s reach.
‘But they don’t have my secret weapon,’ she replied, her tone victorious.
‘Which is?’
‘I’m going to reveal the identity of Este Cox.’
Spitting my own coffee across the kitchen table was probably a bit dramatic but I couldn’t exactly take it back once I’d done it. Silently, my mother handed me a wad of paper towels to clean up my mess.
‘Well said,’ she commented as I dabbed at the mess on the old wooden tabletop. ‘My thoughts exactly.’
‘How can you reveal the identity of Este Cox?’ I asked with only mild hysteria in my voice. ‘No one knows who she is. She doesn’t have social media, she hasn’t done any interviews.’
‘Please, I’m eighteen, me and my friends can find out anything on the internet if we really put our minds to it,’ Charlotte scoffed. It was a terrifying and believable thought.
