Without Debbie, Lexi will be on the shop floor today, jumping in to help Tessa at the till when it gets busy, and otherwise wandering around offering help to browsing customers, taking special orders, and straightening out the books on the display table, which inevitably become a little skew-whiff as the day goes on. Lexi loves being on the shop floor– another reason to hire a manager. It’s not just about having the breathing room for time off and visits to London to hang out with her sister and family, Chloe and Peter at their almost unbearably cute ages of six and four. She also, when she’s here, doesn’t want to be squirrelled away in her office. She wants to be out where the people are, where the book action is.
So she’s thankful for the excuse to do that today, and she’s glad to be working with Tessa, the only other British bookseller at Pemberley Books. Lexi loves having her around to commiserate about cultural miscommunication, the lack of decent tea, and craving mince pies at Christmastime.Is it just me, they sometimes say to each other,or...? Or is it weird that they rake away leaves as soon as they fall in autumn, depriving us of the pleasure of stepping in big crunchy piles of them? Or is it impossible to get used to dates being written backwards? Or is it funny when Americans suddenly care about actual football because they’re doing well in the World Cup?
It’s Tuesday, Book Release Day, so Lexi fetches the pre-orders from the storeroom downstairs– a couple of armfuls of them. There’s a special place in her heart for customers who pre-order: who take heed of their favourite authors when they tell them that they’re genuinely helpful for building buzz, or who are nerdy enough to want the signed book or the bookmark or the occasional mug that rewards a pre-order. She’s just arranging the books on the pick-up shelf when Shelley, one of her favourite customers, pushes open the door.
‘I’ve got your pre-order of the new Tia Williams,’ Lexi tells her. She anticipates excitement. It seems as if every Instagram account, every roundup for February reads, and every book podcast she listens to has been raving about this book. Lexi lovedSeven Days in June, her previous book, so she’s excited too, even if she isn’t quite sure when she’ll get a chance to read it.
‘Oh,’ Shelley says, shuffling from foot to foot. ‘Thanks. That’s great.’ But there’s something forced in thethanks.
‘Did you not want it anymore?’
‘Oh, no, I do. I can gift it to my friend for her birthday. She’ll love it!’ Again with the forced enthusiasm, the forced exclamation mark in her voice.
Lexi isn’t sure she wants to delve. But, unusually, she does. ‘Do you already have it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘But it just came out this morning.’
‘I was really desperate to read it. Great Expectations had it out early. I’m sorry. I’ll still buy this copy,’ she adds quickly.
‘Okay.’ Lexi scans the book before Shelley changes her mind, puts it in a bag, and hands it over. ‘He shouldn’t have had it on the shelves before publication day. But that’s not your problem.’ She’s trying to keep smiling, to not communicate the seething anger she feels. The battle between Sam and her isn’t her customers’ fault, and they aren’t going to keep coming if they feel scolded. But her fists clench by her sides despite herself. Shelley shuffles away, down into the lower floor to browse her favourite genres and hide her mortification.
‘I can’t believe it happened again,’ Tessa says.
‘Again?’
‘Oh yeah. This isn’t the first time.’
If Sam has been paying any attention to Pemberley’s social media– and Lexi knows that he does– he will have noticed that this is a book that her staff and customers are excited about. That they are, in fact, putting on an event for the author to come and speak and sign books. This was no accident. This was an act of war.
Chapter Five
You might be forgiven for thinking that the last thing a bookshop owner wants to do on an evening off is hang out in another bookshop. But that’s if you don’t take into consideration that people go into bookselling because they are insufferable bookish nerds, and there’s nowhere they’d rather be than in a bookshop, any bookshop, at all times.
Besides, it’s Galentine’s Day– the annual American celebration of friendship– and coming to Kramers was Erin’s idea. Lexi wasn’t going to argue: it’s not only a bookshop, it’s a restaurant too, so what’s not to love?
‘Cheers,’ Erin says, raising her glass of Malbec to clink with Lexi’s. ‘Here’s to... how many years of friendship?’
‘Too many to count,’ Lexi replies, but she’s already adding them up in her head. Erin’s dad was seconded to London when she was eight, and for a couple of years she and Lexi were in class together, dressed in the same dark grey skirts and V-neck burgundy jumpers, their striped ties neatly around their necks. They played their violins next to each other in the school orchestra and browsed through the library shelves together and kicked a football around at weekends. And then Erin went back to America, and for the rest of her school life Lexi never found another friend quite like her.
‘We were eight, and now we’re thirty-two,’ Erin helpfully supplies. ‘So twenty-four?’
‘I feel old.’
‘Weareold, that’s why.’
But being old also means having lots of shared memories. It’s six years now since Lexi moved to DC and bumped into Erin in the wine aisle of the Trader Joe’s on 14th Street. Six years of karaoke nights and trivia nights and brunching around DC. Six years of arguing about the relative merits of new books versus the classics. Six years of Thanksgivings with Erin’s big noisy family, arguing over the pros and cons of different types of cranberry sauce and eating so much sweet potato casserole she thought she might explode. (Lexi had been highly sceptical of eating a dish topped with marshmallows as part of the main course, but she’s long since rescinded that scepticism. Faced with that level of deliciousness, she really had no choice.)
‘This place is genius,’ Erin says, raising her glass of Malbec, the two of them having already polished off a bottle with their dinner. ‘I could live here. Sleep over there, under that table. I mean, books and food. What more do you need?’
‘Literally nothing,’ Lexi agrees, as they get up and head to browse the shelves.
They start at one edge of the bookshop, making their way gradually through the shop, picking up books and handing them to each other.
‘Here,’ Lexi says, passing the latest Katherine Center to Erin. ‘Read this. Then read all of her books. I love her.’
‘But wouldn’t you prefer I bought her books at your shop?’
