CHAPTER ONE
You can tell a lot about a person from the library books they borrow.
June liked to play a game when things were quiet at work. She’d pick a patron and make up their life story based on the books they read. Today she’d chosen a middle-aged lady who took out two Danielle Steel novels andThe Rough Guide to Iceland. After some consideration, June decided that the woman was trapped in a loveless marriage, perhaps with a boorish, aggressive husband. She was planning to run away to Reykjavík, where she’d fall in love with a rugged, bearded local. But just as she thought she’d found true happiness, her husband would track her down and announce—
“Well, that was a pile of shit.”
June was snapped out of her daydream by Mrs.Bransworth, who was standing in front of the desk waving a book in her face. It was Kazuo Ishiguro’sThe Remains of the Day.
“What a pointless load of rubbish. Masters and servants? Capitalist propaganda more like. I could write better than this.”
Mrs.B came into the library several times a week, wearing an ancient Afghan coat and fingerless gloves, even in the height of summer. She chose her books seemingly at random; one day it would be a manual on plumbing, the next a volume by a Nobel Prize–winning author. But whatever she borrowed, it always had the same outcome.
“I’m thinking of handing my library card back in protest.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs.Bransworth. You can have first pick of the new stock if you like?”
“Probably all crap,” Mrs.B said, and she stormed off toward the Sports shelf, leaving a faint smell of wet goat lingering at the desk.
June finished loading up the ancient returns trolley and began to navigate it around the room. Chalcot Library occupied what had once been the village school, a drafty redbrick building erected in the 1870s. It had been converted into a library eighty years later but had retained many of its original features, including a slate roof that leaked in heavy rain, floorboards that creaked underfoot, and a family of persistent mice who were eating their way through the boxes of archives stored in the loft. The council had last redecorated the library sometime in the nineties, with strip lighting and institutional green carpet. But June still liked to imagine what it must have been like in its earliest incarnation, when grubby-faced children sat in rows of desks where the shelves now stood, learning to write their letters on dusty slates like a scene fromJane Eyre.
As she pushed the trolley toward the front of the room, June saw her boss marching toward her, a copy ofMrs.Dallowaypoking out of her handbag.
“I need to see you in my office. Now.”
Marjorie Spencer was the library manager, a title she wore pinned to her blouse like a war medal. She claimed to only readhighbrow literary novels, but June knew she’d renewedFifty Shades of Greyat least three times.
June followed her boss into the office. It was actually a stock cupboard–cum–staff room, but Marjorie had put in a desk years ago and had even hung a name plaque on the door. There was no space for any other chairs, so June perched on a stack of printer paper.
“This is strictly entre nous, but I’ve just had a call from the council,” Marjorie said, fiddling with the string of pearls around her neck. “They want me to go in on Monday for an urgent meeting. In the boardroom.” She paused to check that June was suitably impressed with this information. “You’ll have to manage on your own while I’m gone.”
“Okay, that’s fine.”
“It’s too short notice to cancel Rhyme Time, so I’ll need you to take it for me too.”
June felt her chest tightening. “Actually, I’m sorry, I forgot, but Alan has a—”
“No buts. Besides, it will be good practice for you—once I retire at Christmas, my replacement may want you to take over the sessions anyway.”
June’s stomach dropped at the thought. “Marjorie, you know I can’t—”
“For goodness’ sake, June, it’s children’s nursery rhymes, notSongs of Praise.”
June opened her mouth to argue, but Marjorie had turned to her computer in a manner that said Do Not Disturb.
June left the office, trying to ignore the tightening in her chest. It was almost five o’clock, so she began the closing-down routine. As she tidied up the abandoned books and newspapers, she picturedall the expectant faces at Rhyme Time, the children and parents watching her impatiently, waiting for her to speak. June let out an involuntary shudder and dropped a pile of newspapers on the floor.
“Do you need a hand, my dear?” Stanley Phelps was sitting in his chair, watching her.
“Thanks, but I’m fine,” she said, picking up the scattered pages. “It’s five o’clock now. I’m afraid it’s time to go home.”
“May I request your assistance first? ‘Organize liaison to prevent this.’ Nine letters, first letteri.”
June thought for a moment, breaking the clue down in her mind like he’d taught her. “Could it be ‘isolation’?”
“Brava!”
Stanley Phelps, who enjoyed historical fiction set in the Second World War, had come to the library almost every day since June started working there ten years ago. He wore a tweed jacket and spoke like a character from a P. G. Wodehouse novel, and she pictured him living in faded grandeur, sleeping in silk pajamas and eating kippers for breakfast. TheTelegraphcrossword was one of his daily rituals.
