Page 93 of The Sugar and Spice Bookshop Bakery

‘Well, I’m glad someone found it entertaining,’ Louise says. She certainly hadn’t. She doesn’t like to think that there’s someone lurking round Applethwaite with a grudge against her.

Then Anna leaves, saying her mother’s babysitting and won’t want to be up too late, and Elizabeth too, claiming she’s tired – even though a second ago, she’d been wanting a nightcap – and Maddie’s phone rings and she races off upstairs to take it. Louise stands alone in the empty shop.

The mugs and glasses sit abandoned on tables, littered with crumbs from Anna’s canapés. Louise sweeps the crumbs into her hand. When she opens the bin, she sees the stuffed dog inside with its grotesque red-painted stomach.

Tomorrow, Maddie will be leaving. Jack will be going soon too. And someone out there hates her enough to have sent her that horrible stuffed toy dog.

Thirty-One

Louise pops four slices of bread in the toaster as she always does. A large pot of tea sits brewing on the worktop. The flat is quiet, as it always is in those last few moments before Maddie emerges from her room.

Louise runs through the events of the previous evening in her head. Her mother’s very obvious attempts to impress Richard. Cringe.

Where is Maddie? Normally she comes racing out of her room when she hears the toast pop up.

Louise butters the toast, spreads a thin layer of marmalade, just how Maddie likes it. Then, when there’s still no sign of her stepdaughter, she takes the plate and knocks tentatively on her bedroom door. ‘Maddie?’

No reply. She knocks again, a little louder this time.

Again, nothing.

She opens the door a crack, peering in, wondering if Maddie is asleep, hungover perhaps. How many mugs of fizz did she drink?

The room is empty.

The curtains are open.

The bed is stripped.

There is no sign of Maddie, or her stuff.

Louise reverses out of the room, closing the door behind her. Maddie has gone. She never did like goodbyes.

She picks up a piece of her own toast – without marmalade – and raises it to her lips then pauses.

She doesn’t feel like eating.

Doesn’t feel like doing anything.

She looks at Maddie’s plate of toast and marmalade, and hopes for a moment that the door will burst open, and Maddie will appear, saying, ‘Just taking my bags downstairs, ready for the taxi.’

But, of course, the door doesn’t open. Maddie is long gone.

Louise takes both plates of toast and goes over to the bin. The lid flips up obligingly when she presses her foot on the pedal. She tilts the plates, allowing the toast to slide in, then shudders, remembering what’s lurking downstairs inside the bakery’s bin: that stuffed toy dog, its fake fur stained with bright crimson paint. Hideous.

Books weren’t meant to cause all this aggro.

Well, maybe some books were. Some books were intended to provoke discussion and change the way people see the world, but not Sheila’s books. They were first and foremost entertainment, intended to bring pleasure. Instead, this last one seems to have done the complete opposite and it’s all Louise’s fault.

She pushes the bin lid shut, but remains rooted to the spot.

She remembers the moment that she realised that she’d sent the wrong manuscript, that email from Sheila a day after she received her author copies.

I’m delighted you decided to go with the original version after all. I know it’s a risk…

She remembers rereading it. The original version? What was Sheila on about?

And she remembers the sinking feeling as she grabbed her copy of the book, flipping frantically to the final chapters, scanning for the scene where Thor was meant to survive.