Page 20

‘Nowhere of interest to you.’ She didn’t need him knowing her whereabouts. ‘Happy digging.’

Noémi flipped open her paperback and began to pace.

‘You know, you’d see a lot more of life if you didn’t have your nose in a book,’ Shay called after her.

Outrageous. Didn’t he know the story was about to get to the exciting bit where everything went wrong – even though you know it will end happily? Though she wasn’t going to rise to it. It wasn’t his fault if he was ill-informed.

‘Some would say it’s dangerous. You might injure yourself if you don’t look where you’re going. Or end up completely off track.’

She was dangerous? Said the man with the zip wire. At least that dreadful thing was gone today.

‘You might see more if you weren’t focused on the stats from your fitness watch,’ Noémi quipped back.

She was pleased to note he didn’t respond.

Noémi kept her eyes trained on her book until she was out of sight. Well, apart from one quick check over her shoulder, because you couldn’t be too careful around a man with a shovel. He was busy doing stretches, as though Hazel View Avenue was his own personal gym. She whipped her head around quickly when he caught her looking.

When she was around the corner, she closed her book and tucked it safely inside her bag. Not that she was paying heed to his life advice. More that he’d put her off her reading stride – which would not count in his favour.

Noémi paced along one of the paths that snaked upwards towards the main part of the village, noticing her surroundings for the first time in a while. The hazel trees, which gave the village its name, were bare and sleeping now it was winter. In the late winter months, they’d begin to grow their long yellow catkins, and through spring and summer their leaves would be bright green, concertina-shaped, and a little hairy.

By autumn there would be nuts. Noémi had loved to roast and caramelize them to make her own praline in her days of baking cookies. She’d created different flavours through the seasons, but anything involving chocolate had always been her favourite. And adding the village’s own hazelnuts had felt like an extra sprinkling of magic. But that had been then. At least now there were more nuts for the wildlife, which was surely a positive. The ground around the tree trunks was speckled with empty nut shells, like the leftovers of some secret squirrel feast.

She laughed to herself, surprised she’d even spotted them. When she was younger, she’d loved to feed the squirrels, which were often tame enough to come and climb up your sleeve. These days she was often too busy reading when she came this way.

Noémi raised a friendly hand to Delilah Day, the landlady of The Tipsy Squirrel, as she passed it. The pub was like a large version of a chocolate-box cottage, with its creamy walls and its roof thatched from wheat and hazel. It was presumably named after the fluffy-tailed creatures who enjoyed the hill’s hazelnuts – though she’d thankfully never seen one tipsy. Delilah was out sweeping leaves, her dyed black hair with grey roots in rollers, slim frame wrapped in the silk dressing gown that she called a smoking jacket, even though she mostly vaped from a stick that whiffed of piña colada.

‘All right, love? Mum day, is it? Pass on my wishes.’ Delilah’s voice was deep, but so was her heart. Everybody loved her, and no one would challenge her in a fight. There had been a Mr Day once, though he’d disappeared several years back and if anyone dared ask about him, they got a mouthful.

Noémi thanked her and shouted across a quick mention of the planning meeting for their new book club, which she’d arranged for that Saturday morning.

‘Feel free to tell your regulars,’ Noémi added, hopefully.

Delilah looked a bit doubtful as to whether her pub-goers liked hanging out in bookshops, but to be fair, Noémi wasn’t big on spending time in the pub – unless she could take her book and a pair of earplugs.

‘I’ll do my best,’ Delilah promised.

There was a large green van with flower stickers parked near the trees in the pub’s carpark. Noémi hadn’t seen it before, though Delilah sometimes accepted in lost drifters or people passing through, so she didn’t stop to question it.

Noémi walked on, past a smattering of old stone houses, before landing in Spring Square.

She noticed with a twinge of curiosity that it looked lovely today, with its abundance of festive lights – in contrast to the sparse selection in their own shopping street. Each shop doorway around the square was decorated with matching holly wreaths and pots of poinsettia bringing extra pops of colour. Even the central fountain had been festooned with leafy garlands.

And what was more, the square was bustling. Locals chatted in groups, shoppers weaved around with shopping bags, a man with a van was cooking up chestnuts in a way that smelt divine. Not that Noémi wanted their little avenue down the hill to start getting all matchy-matchy. It was great that they were quirky and unique. But maybe they could spruce themselves up to avoid being quite so ‘dog’s armpit’, as Crochet Catherine had said. They needed more bustle – and not from a certain person and his zip wiring.

Noémi gave Texan Jim a wave, noticing him outside the deli, having a tug-of-war with his favourite pet, Goatrude. The goat, in one of her usual knitted coats, was trying to drag Jim inside – so she left them to it. Living up at the manor house, Jim liked to dress in the style of an English country gent with his earthy-toned tweeds and flat cap, other than his pointy brown cowboy boots that Noémi was always envious of.

Checking her watch, she moved swiftly onwards to Happy Hedges care home. Perhaps it had made a change to walk with open eyes for once – even if she did feel equally as lost as she had before.

Chapter 12

‘Oh, I don’t know, Maman. Do you ever feel like you don’t know any of the answers, and that whatever you try, you’re probably going to make a right pig’s bum of it?’

Noémi held her mum’s hand across the sofa’s armrest. They were sitting in the living room of the care home, which smelt a bit like cold custard mixed with her mum’s powdery floral scent. Though Élisabeth was still very much alive and geographically close, Noémi missed her. Her mum didn’t always remember her when she visited – though she would sometimes pretend to. Noémi took a steadying breath. Love, in all its forms, could be heartbreaking.

The room had large windows that looked out across the grounds and down over the back of Bloom Hill, which was shrouded in fog. A Christmas tree flashed multicoloured lights in the corner, its baubles in disarray where too many residents had been let loose on it.

‘Yes, yes,’ Élisabeth replied cheerfully, like she often did these days. She looked as well put together as ever, her straight grey hair neatly pinned back, her slim frame dressed in one of her many pure wool skirt suits, though it was now too big, finished off with a pair of cosy bootee slippers. Her mother was well-cared for in the home, and trying to afford to keep her here, where she was comfortable and things felt familiar, meant everything to Noémi. Another reason she had to make their little bookshop prosper.