‘We have three months’ grace,’ she tells them. ‘I understand if anyone wants to leave before that. I’ll help you all with jobs as much as I can.’ In the six years of doing this job, Lexi has got to know a lot of people in the book world. There are marketing jobs in publishing companies, event planners in all kinds of industries, jobs selling books into bookshops that would suit her most chatty, most enthusiastic staff down to the ground. And, of course, there are other bookshops: several great ones in DC, many others across the region and the country. There is so much talent in this room; Lexi is confident they’ll all be okay. But breaking up this team, this community: it will be so painful, and they all know it, even those who aren’t scared of change, who even find it energising. She tells them all this, miraculously getting through it with only minimal tearing up.
‘What if...’ Natalie puts her hand up, timidly but with a determined look on her face. Lexi nods to encourage her to go on. ‘What if we started a GoFundMe? Would we be able to raise enough money that way to keep going?’
Lexi’s heart sinks, and she can’t tell exactly why. Maybe it’s because she recognises denial, famously the first stage of grief, and it hurts her all over again to be causing her team this pain. Maybe it’s because she can foresee the disappointment for her, for all of them, when it doesn’t work, when they fall short of their goal. And maybe it’s also because when she spoke to her sister on the phone last night, Stephanie couldn’t hide her excitement about Lexi coming home. Maybe because she misses Dairy Milk chocolate, and custard, and the particular smell of British paperbacks. But Lexi takes in Natalie’s hopeful face, and she can’t say no.
‘You can certainly try,’ she says, realising too late her mistake: she’s saidyou. Notwe. She hasn’t included herself in this fight. It’s obvious that she has surrendered herself to this fate. Lexi tries to justify her lack of enthusiasm with what she says next. ‘The challenge with that is to raise enough money to make this work long term. We’re not just talking about a temporary stopgap for a cash flow issue.’
‘So maybe,’ Natalie says, ‘we raise enough to make up for the shortfall for a year. A year is a long time. Anything could happen in that time.’
There are murmurs of appreciation and approval. Lexi does the maths as quickly as she can in her head. They’re talking about tens of thousands of dollars. Even if her heart was still in it, it seems highly improbable they could raise that kind of money in this current economy. Impossible, even.
‘Let’s try for a hundred thousand dollars,’ Natalie continues. ‘I bet we can do it. We tell the Washingtonian and CityCast and the DC blogs and our own social networks. I bet we can do it within a week.’
She’s always been one of the most enthusiastic staff, one of those with slightly crazy ideas that sometimes work out and often don’t.
Lexi looks around to see earnest nodding, murmurs rising this time, in hope this time. The hope lifts her, too, the cresting wave of it.
‘You’re very welcome to try,’ she says.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
More as an act of support than because she thinks it will actually do anything, Lexi asks her friend Sofia to post the GoFundMe link on their virtual church noticeboard. Ten minutes later, a text pings up from Catherine:I donated, and I sent the link to my friend who runs a Capitol Hill Facebook group.Twenty minutes afterthat, the church places a huge order for books for their next Women’s Conference and a whole load of Jesus Storybook Bibles that they give to families with new babies.
A sensation that Lexi recognises as hope starts to bubble up in her gut, but with it: dread. She’d resigned herself to the seemingly inevitable; she’d followed London accounts on Instagram; she’d written the dates of Chloe’s next dance recital in her diary. And she’d started to feel something like relief at the thought of soon being far away from Sam and starting to get over him.
What if this works? What if she can stay? Does she even want to? She concludes that the important thing is that her staff’s jobs will be saved, and that the bookshop will be saved– that she can own it without working there, be a hands-off boss. Surrendering control doesn’t seem like something she could easily do, but there’s a first time for everything. Lexi likes to think that she’s growing as a person.
She hits refresh on the GoFundMe page and sees that the numbers have climbed vertiginously again. This can’t be happening. Can it? Lexi feels slightly ridiculous for not having asked for help in the first place. She reads and rereads the paragraph that Natalie wrote as an introduction to the crowdfunding appeal: it’s a love letter to the shop, to its place in the community, a reminder of what Pemberley Books means not just to her, but to others. It makes Lexi a little tearful.
Mindlessly, she refreshes the page again: another incredible increase. Mostly small amounts from people whose names she recognises: regular customers, friends of friends, local authors.
And $2,000 from one Sam Dickens.
Lexi gasps, her hand on her mouth.
Because she thought he hated her, never wanted to see her again, couldn’t wait till she was on that plane back to London. And she’d assumed he’d be delighted to have the bibliophiles of the Hill all to himself.
She grabs her phone to text him, but she sees he’s got there first.
Call me, he’s written, like he doesn’t know she’s a millennial who will instantly assume someone is dead if texting isn’t sufficient.
I saw your GoFundMe contribution. Thank you. That’s really generous.
You’re very welcome. But I still need you to call me.
Lexi’s heart is racing, and not just at the thought of actually talking on the phone, like that’s still a thing people do in the year of our Lord 2024.
Sam picks up on the first ring, and there’s warmth in his voice that wasn’t there last night.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi.’
So far, Lexi fails to see how this couldn’t have been done by text. But she has to admit it’s nice to hear Sam’s voice, to feel him with her on the other end of the phone. To feel less alone.
‘So listen. I have a proposal for you.’
Her blood turns instantly to ice. She isn’t sure how she feels about proposals being made over the phone while surrounded by mountains of Post-its and a close-up of the graph of doom. She hasn’t even had time for a manicure lately. The photos will be rubbish. ‘Um...’
