June’s mum had run the stall for fifteen years, making it one ofthe most successful at the fete. June used to join her every year, eating sweets and listening to her mum chatting to customers. As the librarian, Beverley Jones had been known to everyone in the village, and there had always been a stream of people stopping at the stall to say hi or have a gossip.
“You’re like a celebrity,” June once said to her mum, having watched in awe as she’d talked to an elderly lady for five minutes, remembering the names of every one of her grandchildren.
“Don’t be daft,” Beverley had said. “Although some days my job feels more like I’m a social worker than a librarian.”
Even when Beverley was sick with cancer, nausea and vomiting from another round of chemo racking her body, she’d still insisted on running the stall.
“Who’ll find all those sad things a new life if I don’t?” she’d declared as June pushed her wheelchair across the bumpy playing field. Beverley had been too weak to do much more than sit behind the table that year, but almost every person at the fete had come over to say hello, to give her a hug and wish her well.
Three months later, her mum had passed away.
June hadn’t been back to the fete since.
Tears started to blur her vision, and she turned and pushed her way back against the flow of people toward the exit, panic rising in her chest. She should never have come. June pictured the familiar comforts of home—her mum’s possessions, Alan Bennett, and her books—and increased her pace.
As she was passing the face-painting table, she heard a voice behind her.
“June!”
For a split second she wondered if she could pretend she hadn’t heard and make a run for it, but then June felt a hand on her shoulderand turned around to see Stanley Phelps, dressed in his tweed suit and tie.
“How lovely to see you, my dear.” He was smiling at her, but his expression turned to concern when he saw her tearstained cheeks. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, thanks,” June said, wiping her face. The last thing she wanted was a library visitor taking pity on her.
“Well, I’m very glad to have bumped into you. Did you catch the Morris dancers? And have you been into the competition tent yet?”
“No, sorry.”
“Oh, you must go in. The standard is particularly high this year. There’s a miniature version of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon made entirely from root vegetables. Why don’t I show you now?”
“I was actually just heading home.”
“But the Victoria sponge judging is in fifteen minutes and you don’t want to miss that. Last year the woman in second place was so angry she threw her cake at Marjorie Spencer’s head.”
“Thanks, but I—”
June was interrupted by a commotion to her right, and she and Stanley turned to see Mrs.Bransworth, wearing a homemade sandwich board daubed with the wordsprotect chalcot high streetandlocal businesses, not big chains.
“Our village is being destroyed,” Mrs.B bellowed, causing a nearby child to drop her ice cream in surprise. “We’ve lost our butcher’s, our greengrocer’s, and now the bakery is being threatened too.”
“She’s been marching round like this for the past hour, yelling at anyone who’ll listen,” Stanley whispered to June. “And anyone who won’t listen, for that matter.”
“The council are putting up rents and selling off our greenbeltland to those bloody property developers. We need to tell them we don’t want bookies and estate agents in our village—we want local businesses that serve the community.”
“Keep it down, love; some of us are trying to have fun,” shouted a man.
Mrs.B stopped and unleashed a torrent of abuse at him.
Stanley moved toward them. “Come on, June, we’d better step in before she starts a fight.”
June froze, feeling trapped. There was no way she could help; she was far too shy to make either of them listen to her, and the one time she’d tried to break up a fight at the library, she’d ended up making the situation worse. She glanced at Stanley, standing between the gesticulating man and a red-faced Mrs.B, and then turned and hurried towardhome.
CHAPTER FOUR
On Monday morning, June unlocked the door a little before nine o’clock and stepped into the welcoming silence of the library. This was one of her favorite parts of the day, before Marjorie and the patrons turned up, when it was just her and seven thousand books for company. She liked to walk around the room, breathing in the heavy, still air, and sometimes when she closed her eyes, June imagined she could hear the books whispering their stories to one another.
One of her earliest memories was of visiting Chalcot Library when she was four, shortly after her mum started working there. The building had felt huge and imposing as June walked in under the clock tower, books everywhere she looked, the lending desk so tall she could barely see over it. Her mum had given her a library card, and June could still remember her delight as she was told that she could take home twelve books and swap them whenever she wanted new ones. Once she started school, June and Gayle wouldspend most afternoons together in the Children’s Room, playing and reading. And later, as a teenager, June would come alone to do her homework and chat to her mum, the library a haven of calm after the crowded, noisy classrooms of high school.
