Humming the last song she’d listened to on the way to the shop– something by Ed Sheeran– Lexi turns to her desk. First mistake: she’s in such a hurry to get to work that she doesn’t make tea first. The first rule of office work is to always make tea before you start.
In an attempt to salvage a modicum of work-life balance, Lexi doesn’t have her work email on her phone. She doesn’t want her thumb to absent-mindedly go there when she’s at karaoke or scrolling through her sister’s messages for the latest pictures of Chloe and Peter. She only wants to work when she chooses to work, which, admittedly,ismost of the time.
Today, she wanted to be at the shop as soon as she could. She could hear her email calling her. She was thinking there might be Google Alerts leading her to rave reviews of Tipsy Browsing or messages from journalists requesting an interview or a quote for their latest article on the resurgence of independent bookshops, a favourite topic of lifestyle sections during slow news weeks. In her giddiness, she’d even imagined a request to speak on local TV about great business ideas.
But, instead, while those emails may well be sitting there in Lexi’s inbox, her eye is drawn immediately to a subject line markedRent. The brakes slam on her good mood. The wobbly-leg feeling she’s learned to recognise as adrenaline-fuelled fight-or-flight surfaces.It could be good news, she tries to tell herself. Free rent for a year! Special offer if you sign a long-term lease! A reward for being the Best Tenants Ever, always paying on time no matter what global catastrophe comes their way.
Of course, that’s not what it is.
In the history of the world, when has an email with the subject linerentever been good news?
Certainly not today.
Lexi swallows hard as she scans down the message.I’m sure you understand... increased cost of living... we wish we didn’t have to...She slams her laptop shut and rests her head on the desk. Beside her, Pippin purrs, absolutely oblivious about his imminent ejection from the office.
Because this is it.
Lexi poured her last ounce of energy and enthusiasm into Tipsy Browsing. She’s got nothing left. Jane-Austen-themed tote bags won’t save the shop from a massive rent increase. Three per cent– sure. But that pesky zero after the 3 won’t disappear no matter how hard she looks at it. The graph of doom, which once upon a time was a graph of delight, used to predict they’d be able to weather a storm like this. They’d been on track for a forty per cent increase in turnover when they signed the lease. But not anymore. Friday night now seems like it was the last hurrah, a closing-down extravaganza rather than the ushering in of a new era.
She thinks of her staff, newly relieved, newly happy, newly energised; she thinks about telling them that all their hard work ended up being for nothing. Breaking bad news is by far the worst thing about being a boss, especially when it’s undeserved bad news. Lexi feels so lonely in this moment, carrying the weight of all of it on her own two shoulders. The weight of those rucksacks full of hardbacks now rests on her.
Lexi closes her eyes, thinking of what a relief it would be to have a business partner or a manager put a hand on her shoulder and gently ask,Would you like me to tell them?By rights, Sam should have that honour. Or her accountant. Or her landlord. Anybody but Lexi.
This feels like too much, after they’ve all worked so hard, after they’ve achieved the results they wanted and even beyond, to somehow still have failed. Lexi would like a trapdoor. She’d like to disappear. She’d give absolutely anything not to have to deal with this.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Lexi calls her accountant and uses the classic ‘want the good news or the bad news?’ tactic, but he asks for the bad news first, so she never gets to tell him about how well the first, and likely now last, Tipsy Browsing Friday went. Then she calls the landlord, determined to be strong and business-like and convincing, but, of course, that doesn’t work; of course, it only takes three minutes before she’s full-on sobbing down the phone at him.
Because she’s been so determined not to cry, she hadn’t thought to grab her tissues from the staffroom, so she’s reduced to wiping snot from her face with the sleeve of her cardigan: not exactly the image of the hard-ass businesswoman she intended to project– thank goodness it’s not a Zoom call– and that she’s sure her grandmother would have projected at such a moment. But maybe it’s not all bad, because the landlord’s voice softens. As landlords go, he’s actually pretty decent; he likes that one of his buildings houses a bookshop: not overly lucrative, even in the glory days, but so wholesome. It makes him look good, possibly even makes him feel good. Lexi can imagine him at dinner parties among the Capitol Hill set, casually dropping in his contribution to the literary world. And it’s not all talk, either: he’s always offered very generous rates, which is how the bookshop has been able to survive this long.
For a long time, she waited for the other shoe to drop. She was certain that when it was time to sign a new lease in 2022, he’d hike the price, as everyone else seemed to be doing around then. Instead, he told her he knew it had been a rough couple of years and he wasn’t going to do that. His kindness made Lexi feel what she now realises was a deceptive level of security. And even though she’d circled in red the date of the next lease renewal and seen it coming towards her, it just didn’tfeellike it had been two years. She wasn’t ready for this negotiation. But capitalism, as she well knows, doesn’t wait for you to be ready.
‘I’m sorry,’ the landlord says, and, in his defence, he really sounds like he means it. ‘I wish I didn’t have to. But it’s that, or sell up. And if I sell, well...’ He pauses, maybe waiting for Lexi to fill in the gap herself, but she’s too busy wiping her nose on her increasingly soggy sleeve. ‘That could be even worse for you.’
A tiny part of her wants to be mean and say, ‘I’m willing to take my chances on that.’ But he sounds genuinely stricken, and after all, in some ways, they’re both victims of the same system.
‘Look,’ he says, when the silence has stretched out past the point of discomfort. ‘I can give you another three months, if that would help. But it’s the best I can do.’
‘I appreciate that.’ Lexi holds in a hiccup, her voice wet and snotty. And she really does appreciate it: it takes the pressure off for now; it means she doesn’t have to burst her staff’s bubble right this very second. That’s not nothing: they deserve this moment. They’ve more than earned it. But in three months, she’ll be right back here. Tipsy Browsing is enough to reverse the graph of doom, but it’s not enough to increase turnover, let alone profit, by thirty per cent.
The bookshop’s landlord owns all the small businesses in their little section of Capitol Hill, and it’s not as if the toy shop or the frame shop or the shoe repair shop can afford the increase in rent either. No wonder the landlord sounded miserable. They’ll all be out of business soon, and this little cluster of shops will either become a ghost town or a whole load of banks and mid-range chain restaurants. And honestly, Lexi isn’t sure which one of those is worse for the heart of the community, never mind its aesthetic.
She looks up at the wall, at theNevertheless She Persistedcross-stitch that Erin made for her unironically when she officially took over the shop.
‘There are going to be some tough times,’ she’d said, ‘and when there are, I want you to remember that you’re strong. You’ve got this, okay?’
Lexi has done what Erin and her cross-stitch have told her to: she has spent six years persisting in the face of sometimes unimaginable difficulty.
But she’s out.
Of energy.
Of ideas.
Of creative mathematical solutions.
She’ll take the three months, and take them gladly. It will give her time to wind things down, sell her stock at half price, help her staff find other jobs. It’ll give her time to pack up her stuff and get ready to move back to London.
