Page 26 of The Sugar and Spice Bookshop Bakery

She picks up her mobile and glances at the screen. There had been a couple of missed calls over the last day or two, but from a number she didn’t recognise. ‘I didn’t have any missed calls from you.’

‘I changed my number,’ Maddie says. ‘Because of… well, it doesn’t matter. Sorry. I should have let you have the new one, but it’s all been a bit… After we finished uni, Theo and I went to Greece for the summer.’

‘That sounds lovely.’

‘Yeah, it was lovely.’

‘Are you two getting serious?’ Louise hopes it’s okay to ask.

‘Well, I thought so.’ Maddie bites her lip.

So that’s the issue. Boyfriend trouble rather than a row with her father. Maddie will probably stay for a night or two then Theo will ring and apologise and she’ll head back home.

‘He landed a job in London,’ Maddie says. ‘A good job. He’s managed to rent a flat. It’s just a small one, but I thought he’d ask me to move in, so I applied for a job there too, only he hasn’t asked me. He hasn’t even hinted.’

‘So where are you living?’ Louise says, though she has a feeling she already knows the answer.

‘Well,’ Maddie says slowly. ‘I went back to Dad’s. But… you know what he’s like. It was kind of lonely, living there.’

Louise nodded. She knew this only too well. ‘Would you like to stay here?’

‘Can I? Just for a while. Until I know if I’ve got the job in London. It’s my dream job, Lou. Marketing for a new art gallery.’

‘Where will you live if you get it?’

‘I’m hoping Theo will come round. That he’ll miss me now I’m gone, and ask me to move in after all.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’

Maddie shrugs. ‘I dunno. I’ll find a room in a shared house, I suppose. Or stay at Dad’s and commute, but it’s rather a long way and season tickets aren’t cheap. And the pay won’t be great. At least not initially. But I don’t even know if I’ve got an interview yet.’

‘And if you don’t get the job?’

‘Then it’s time for plan B.’

‘Which is…?’

‘I dunno. I haven’t got a plan B.’

Their eyes meet. Maddie looks anxious.

‘It’s a bummer, isn’t it?’ Louise says. ‘Not having a plan B.’

‘You haven’t got one either?’

‘Well, I do. Kind of,’ Louise says. ‘B for bookshop.’

‘You want to run a bookshop?’ Maddie practically squeals with excitement.

‘I’ve always wanted to run a bookshop. As you know, books are the love of my life.’

At least they are, she thinks, in the absence of a handsome man who’ll sweep her off her feet. Real-life men don’t, in Louise’s experience anyway, seem to do much sweeping. Or at least, they don’t tend to sweep women like her. There’d been that moment, earlier today, with Jack, when Louise had thought that maybe… But then… but then Maddie had appeared and who was she kidding? He was just being friendly. That was all.

‘Are you thinking of starting a bookshop? Or buying an existing one?’ Maddie is asking now.

‘I was thinking of turning the bakery downstairs into a bookshop.’

‘What about your job?’