“Hang on, is that why I managed to summon Darcy fromPride and Prejudicethen, because I had a problem I needed his help with?” I asked.
“I assume so,” Nick said. “Did you mentally ask for Darcy’s help with anything when you were reading the book?”
I frowned, trying to recall exactly what I’d been thinking about on the bus, but all I could remember was being a bit tipsy and angry at the men of London for being so useless. I shook my head.
“Sorry, I interrupted you explaining how the magic worked.”
“OK, so say you were having problems with an overbearing boss at work,” Nick said. “Ava or my granny might summon Atticus Finch to help you get better at arguing your case. Or maybe you were fighting lots with your siblings, so they’d read out one of the March sisters fromLittle Womento help you navigate family dynamics. That sort of thing.”
“That’s very cool!” I said.
“Wait, it gets even cooler,” Nick continued. “Ava and my granny only used to read out characters from romance novels if the person whocame in had a problem related specifically to their love life. But my mum knew that romance novels are about much more than a woman simply falling in love and living happily ever after. She used to say that a good romance story worked not because the main character falls in love with another person, but because they fall in love with themselves. And so she found that by reading out a person’s book boyfriend, she could help them with so much more than just a broken heart. She used romance novels to help empower women in every area of their lives.”
Nick’s eyes shone with enthusiasm as he spoke. Was this really the same scowling man who’d called romance novel’s “toxic” just a few days ago?
“After Darcy arrived, I went online to try and work out what was going on,” I said. “I read an interview with your mum about this bookshop, and in it she talked so passionately about her job. This must have been what she was talking about.”
“What interview?” Nick asked.
I pulled my phone out and searched until I found Lilyloveslondon’s blog. I showed Nick the line I was thinking of.But most of all, I love knowing that what I do genuinely helps people. I might not be a teacher or a doctor, but like Ava, I believe in the power of books to heal a broken heart, give guidance when someone’s feeling lost, or boost a person’s confidence when they need it most.
For a moment Nick didn’t say anything, and I saw him blink back tears. “I’ve never seen this before. Thank you for showing it to me.”
“Your mum must have been referring to reading characters out of romance books, right?”
He nodded. “And she really did help people. As a kid, I used to sit behind the counter doing my homework after school, and I’d see these unhappy, stressed-looking women come into the shop, stuck in a badrelationship or miserable at work or struggling to connect with their kid, whatever it was. And I’d see this glint in my mum’s eye as she’d ask them who their favorite book boyfriend was, and then she’d take them into the back office, and these women would emerge an hour or two later with bright eyes and huge grins on their faces, knowing their own worth and ready to face whatever shit life threw at them.”
“Your mum sounds fantastic,” I said. “I wish I’d got to meet her.”
“I’d have liked that too.”
There was something about Nick’s tone as he said this that made me look up, and I saw he was staring down at me, his dazzling blue eyes fixed on my face. I quickly looked away, and we traveled on in silence.
“Can I ask you something else?” I said after a few minutes.
“Sure.”
“Why do you hate romance novels so much when you saw your mum use them in such a positive way?”
Nick didn’t reply straightaway, his brow furrowed. “My feelings about romance books are complicated,” he said eventually. “As you say, I saw firsthand the power they could have, but I’ve also seen the damage they can cause. Believe me, romance novels can destroy people’s lives.”
I wrinkled my nose. “But how? Whose life did they destroy?”
I watched him chew his lip, deep in thought. Then Nick looked down at me again, and I saw so much pain in his eyes that for a moment I was tempted to throw my arms around him and give the poor man a hug.
“It was your life, wasn’t it?”
He didn’t say anything, and I felt my heart ache. Clearly, something really bad had happened to make him hate romance books so much. Was it something to do with the death of his mum? Or maybe it was connected to the pretty redhead I’d seen in the photo in his office?Whatever it was, things were obviously much more complicated than him just hating romance novels, as I’d originally believed.
“Can I ask what happened?” I said.
Nick looked away from me again, and I thought he was going to ignore the question, but then he sighed.
“There’s something else I haven’t told you, Zoe. When I was—”
“This station is Euston,” the electronic announcement blared into the train, cutting Nick off. “Change here for trains to—”
“Shit, this is me!” he said. “I have to go.”
