‘Hello, Minty darling.’ They kiss on both cheeks. ‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t forget. Seven o’clock. Have you sorted your outfit?’
‘No.’ Francis sighs. ‘I shall ponder it the moment you leave. Have you decided on yours?’ She is currently wearing jodhpurs, riding boots and a waisted puffer vest, so he assumes she will be improving on that.
‘Absolutely. Vintage Chanel. No time for shopping.’
‘Lovely. Coffee?’ Francis gestures towards the kitchen.
‘Notime. Meeting with Timothy. Need to change the cafe menu. It needs seriouszhooshing, don’t you agree?’
Francis frowns, wonders vaguely if the horses are as alarmed as he is by the dreadful chartreuse tones of Araminta’s puffer vest. It does something terrible to her complexion. ‘You do a terrific job,’ he says, wondering what’s wrong with Timothy’s cafe menu, ‘and I should be more supportive. I shall have lunch there for my birthday.’ He looks at his watch. ‘In an hour.’
‘By yourself?’ She frowns.
‘Join me?’
‘Can’t, darling. Party to organise.’ She squeezes his arm. ‘Don’t be late!’ She buzzes out the door.
He follows her bustling form through the window as she heads to one of her many and varied onsite meetings. He’s luckyto have Araminta but, still, his shoulders droop as he thinks of tonight’s party. He mentally flicks through his wardrobe for an outfit. The green silk Alexander McQueen, perhaps. An Etro scarf? And the Louboutin loafers in metallic gold might work. He has the afternoon to decide. He switches on the kettle and selects his favourite teacup and saucer. Perhaps that lovely Cartier brooch to finish the look. If one is going to brave the battlefields, one prefers to be in full uniform.
7
RODDY
NOW, NSW SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS, AUSTRALIA
‘What are you reading?’ asks Roddy.
Lottie jumps as she closes the book. ‘There you are! Finally.’
He has been watching her through the glass door of the shop before opening it. Her guilty look makes him smile.
‘Oscar Wilde. He matches my dark mood,’ she says.
The book cover is of faded blue cloth and is blank on the front. ‘I thought Wilde was witty and hilarious.’ He picks it up and turns to the spine:De Profundis.
‘He wrote it when he was imprisoned for gross indecency,’ Lottie says. ‘No doubt that put a bit of a downer on things.’
Roddy is too tired and sad about Phyllida to muster the youthful indignance he would have once expressed over such matters. Age—or perhaps the ever-growing sense of invisibility in being a single, childless, middle-aged man with a dodgyhip—has wearied him. He’d hit ‘fabulous fifty’ recently and it felt, well, less than fabulous.
He opens the book to the first page and reads:Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return.
‘Gee, uplifting stuff,’ he says. ‘I expect the mood of your suffering today is pretty clear. Not sure why you want to make it worse by reading that.’ He closes the foxed and yellowing pages. ‘Any more news on Phyllida?’
She shakes her head.
‘Sorry I didn’t come in earlier. Mary didn’t get on to me until a couple of hours ago.’ He puts the book down. ‘What was Phyllida thinking? I mean’—he hesitates, turns towards the door to check no one is about to enter—‘is she sick, do you think? Is there something she wanted to get ahead of?’
Lottie pushes an envelope across the counter towards him. ‘She left me this letter.’
Roddy hesitates before taking it. He looks around at the bookshelves, the framed sepia photographs taken a century ago of the village, when the roads were still dirt and horses pulled carts past picket-fenced huts. On another wall hangs a simple oak-framed antique map—an eighteenth-century reproduction, Phyllida had once explained, of a Celtic world cartograph. Hibernia, Alba and Cymru (Ireland, Scotland and Wales) are delineated as rugged mountains and vales. Celtic crosses, standing stones and indefinable symbols are dotted across the map. A raven in flight is depicted in the top right corner. The mystical way Phyllida spoke of those ancient worlds had always made them come alive.
There are thoughtful touches of Phyllida everywhere in the shop. He squeezes Lottie’s hand then removes the letter from the envelope. He reads, intrigued as Phyllida’s spidery handwriting jumps off the page with the joy of her heart. Still, the silent, beautiful bookshop feels cold and dark in her absence. He finishes and looks up at Lottie’s expectant face. ‘Right. So, she has cancer, you think? She mentions finding a lump.’
‘Yeah, but it doesn’t sound like it was the deciding factor.’
Roddy looks at the letter again. ‘Well, eventually it looks like you’re set to inherit the bookshop, her investments and a mystery about a potential relative called Francis?’
