Kitabı oxu: «The Little Bookshop of Love Stories»

Chapter 1

It is a truth universally acknowledged that today is the Mondayest Monday ever.

I’ve been fired. Again.

I trudge home through the afternoon drizzle that’s so well timed it’s like it waited for me to leave work. I’d left my umbrella behind and was in such disgrace that I wasn’t bold enough to go back in and get it. My boss was one angry step away from fire spurting out of his ears. I think the sight of me again would’ve tipped him over the edge.

The job had been going well too. I’d been there almost a year, and apart from a few warnings about my clumsiness and the odd wage deduction for breakages, being a waitress at a dog-friendly pub within walking distance of my flat wasn’t too bad.

That was before this afternoon.

A family out for a walk had come in for an afternoon meal, and as I carried the tray of desserts to their table, the little boy dropped his monkey directly into my path. I stumbled over the plastic toy, instantly decapitating it with my shoe, and the tray slipped in my hands, and like a moment from a cartoon where an unseen crowd in the background do a slow-motion gasp of horror, the child’s ice-cream sundae flipped over, doing such an impressive mid-air somersault that if gymnastics judges had been watching, it would’ve scored a perfect ten. The ice-cream bowl was deposited upside down on the head of its chosen victim like some missile-based hat.

As the child burst into screaming tears – unsure if caused by ice cream on head debacle, murdered monkey toy, or a fair mix of both – the ice-cream bowl continued its pursuit for gymnastic glory by cartwheeling from the child’s head to the floor, at which point the family dog leapt from beneath the table and devoured it. As the dad yelled, the mum cried, and the child wailed while ice cream dripped slowly down his neck, the dog clattered the empty metal bowl around the floor, careening into tables, doors, and other diners, dodging any attempt to intercept him with a speed Mo Farah would envy.

When the bowl was eventually wrestled from the dog with only a few teeth marks to show for its adventure, the family were offered their meal on the house and a complimentary voucher, while they bundled their ice-cream-covered child and now somewhat pukey-looking dog into their car to rush it to the vet’s, lest it had consumed an errant chocolate chip lurking in the ice cream. We watched in horror as they squealed a three-point-turn, the mum in the back seat, trying to haul the dog away from licking the ice-cream-covered child. The dog got so annoyed that he barfed in her lap to show his appreciation. This created a domino effect of vomiting as the child then turned to puke out of the window, and the dad hit the brakes, causing the mum to lean forward and throw up all over the front seat.

And all before they’d even left the car park.

The upshot is that I was on my final warning for clumsiness so I lost my job, and I’m now responsible for the cost of the family’s meal, their dry cleaning, car cleaning, the vet’s bills, and the vouchers they took despite swearing they wouldn’t come back even if every other restaurant in the country was situated in a stagnant swamp and run by zombies. I also got to spend my last half an hour of the job shovelling vomit out of the car park.

Really, it could’ve happened to anyone. And at least it gave the other diners some amusement as they ate. I did appreciate the little old woman who patted my arm as I collected my things from behind the bar and said, ‘Your luck has to change sometime.’

I wouldn’t bet on it. Bad luck seems to have been with me my entire life. Everyone has ‘one of those days’ occasionally, but I seem to have them every day. It’s a rare event worth marking on the calendar when something doesn’t go catastrophically wrong.

At least my flatmate’s out. I’m grateful for the small mercies as I let myself into the cramped two-bedroom space I share with a twenty-two-year-old student whose only hobbies seem to be eating my food, sleeping during daylight hours, and humping a string of scantily clad girls who could do so much better. Him not being here to mock me for losing yet another job is the only bit of luck I’m going to have today.

I shrug my damp jacket off and shiver, cold and wet through to my skin from the persistent drizzle that somehow makes you even wetter than heavy rain. I need to go and change, but first – chocolate. I go into the kitchen, open the cupboard that’s supposed to be mine, only to find he’s eaten my last chocolate bar. I was saving that Wispa for an emergency and it’s gone. My fingers curl like claws and I shake them at the ceiling. ‘Argh!’ I shout to myself, grateful for the empty house.

I start belting out ‘Chandelier’ in an attempt to cheer myself up as I open the fridge and peer inside, on the hunt for any morsel of food he hasn’t eaten, thoroughly enjoying the uninhibited singsong despite the fact I have a voice that would make honking geese jealous and can’t hit any of the high notes. It doesn’t stop me trying though.

It doesn’t make any food magically appear in the fridge either.

I’m just hitting the last and highest ‘chandelier’ in the chorus – the one capable of shattering glass chandeliers even when sung by someone who can actually sing – when I close the fridge door and let out a scream of shock, because my flatmate is not out. He’s standing behind the fridge door, laughing silently, with his harem of gorgeous twenty-something women gathered around him looking like they’ve just stepped out of Love Island.

‘Is your mum drunk?’ I overhear one of them say as they walk away sniggering.

I’m not drunk. I’m also not his mum. I’m nowhere near old enough to have birthed that food-stealing Lynx addict. I might have to agree with her on the singing though. And start doing my hair more often.

My hair elastic chooses that moment to snap, pinging the back of my head and causing my wet hair to drop around my shoulders. No doubt I’ve walked home looking like I’ve been lying on my back at the bottom of a bottle of gin too. I should possibly start checking my hair before being seen in public. I sigh and gather it up in one hand, pulling my long hair out from where it’s already got tangled around my shoulders, pick up my bag and coat from where I dumped them and trudge upstairs, thinking about facing the drizzle again to go to the shop and get some food in. And some alcohol. Definitely some alcohol.

I unlock my bedroom door and go in, closing it behind me and wanting nothing more than to collapse on the bed and pretend this day didn’t happen. I dump my stuff and go to flop on the inviting duvet, but I catch my foot on a power lead and trip over, the movement yanking my laptop, which is plugged into it. I yelp and try to catch it as it starts to fall from the bedside table. I leap forward and thank every lucky star in the universe when it lands on the pillow and I manage to get hold of it before it crashes to the floor.

Maybe I was due some luck today after all. My flatmate hammers on the wall from his room next door at the sound of my yelp, telling me to keep it down.

I roll my eyes and set the laptop back on the bedside table, push its lead in right underneath the bed so no one can trip on it and switch it on to make sure it’s not damaged.

I’ve just lost my job, I cannot afford a computer repair bill as well, and I’m going to need it to start job-hunting tomorrow.

I get changed out of my work clothes while it starts up and sigh in relief from across the room in the middle of pulling on my baggy old jogging bottoms when my usual desktop picture of Belle’s library from Beauty and the Beast appears on the screen.

I finally flop down on the bed and reach up to open my Facebook groups and see if anyone’s got any good book recommendations today. Reading about books is the only way to improve this day. I quickly check my emails first and almost laugh at the one with a subject line declaring, ‘You’re the winner!’

More spam, no doubt. Despite having a surname that begins with ‘Win’, I’ve never won anything in my life. That’s why I have to refresh my email screen a few times and rub my eyes to make sure I haven’t already fallen asleep and this is just a dream.

Dear Miss Winstone,

Robert Paige here. We’ve just held the prize draw for the bookshop and I’m delighted to inform you that yours was the ticket that came out of the hat. Congratulations! You have won Once Upon A Page! Please get in touch at your earliest convenience and we’ll arrange a visit so I can officially show you around your new property and agree on a transfer date.

Kind regards,

Robert Paige

PS: I’m really glad it was you, Hallie. I think you’ll be good for this place!

I take my glasses off and clean the lenses with the bottom of my T-shirt but when I put them back on, the email is still there. And another one hasn’t turned up that says, ‘Hah! As if!’ I know Robert Paige quite well. He’s not one for joking around, and it’s the beginning of May so he’s missed April Fool’s Day by a good month.

I let out a squeal and then clamp my hand over my mouth expecting my flatmate to start banging on the wall again, but his music comes on loudly – ‘Let’s Get It On’ by Marvin Gaye, how imaginative – and the headboard starts banging against the wall as one of the two scantily clad girls he was with starts moaning. Have they really got nothing better to do on a Monday afternoon? The light fixture rattles and plaster falls from the ceiling as the banging increases in speed, and I use the opportunity to flop back onto the bed and muffle my scream in the duvet as I roll around in excitement, and clearly overestimate how wide the single bed is, because I roll right off the edge and land on the floor with the duvet wrapped in a knot around me.

Ouch. My still-damp hair has fallen over my face and I pull it back, spitting out blonde strands as I check my computer screen again to make sure it’s not all a dream because that would’ve been certain to wake me up.

The email is still there.

This is actually for real. I’ve actually won a bookshop. And not just any bookshop – my favourite bookshop in the world. Well, of the ones I’ve been to, anyway. And by ‘the world’ I mean the little area of the Cotswolds between where I grew up and where I live now. I haven’t ventured much further than that, except on the pages of books. The world is endlessly big when you have books.

How can this be happening? Owning a bookshop has always been my dream, but people as unlucky as me don’t get dream jobs. I’ve always wanted to work with books, but the opportunities are few and far between around here, and the one time there was a job advertised for a bookshop manager, even though I thought the long three-bus daily commute would’ve been worth it, two of the buses were late on the day of the interview, and by the time I eventually made it, soaked through from the rain and with a broken heel – torn between hobbling in barefoot or limping in one-heeled, they refused to see me because of my poor timekeeping.

I’ve lost every job I’ve ever had anyway. What’s the point in trying to work with something I love? Reading should just be a hobby, and I should pursue a sensible career in … whichever job I manage to keep the longest without getting fired.

I’d bought the ticket on a cold and damp January afternoon on the way back to the bus stop after visiting my mum and sister – always a good excuse to go into Once Upon A Page and have time for a browse.

Robert Paige was behind the counter as always, sitting in his chair crocheting blankets to send to war-ravaged children in Bosnia, an unusual hobby for an eighty-year-old man, which just made him all the more eccentric and engaging, like the time I’d gone in one day and found him with multicoloured streaks of long fake hair attached to his wiry white locks and sparkly rainbow nails because he’d let a child in the shop give him a makeover.

On this particular afternoon four months ago, he dropped a bombshell – he was retiring. He’d been the bookseller at Once Upon A Page for as long as I could remember, from when I was two years old and my mum took me there to buy the latest picture books, to when I was a pre-teen desperate for the newest Judy Blume, to now – when I still spend too much of my paltry wages on books. He was a permanent fixture in that shop – the kind of friendly old face who makes you feel welcome, who knows something about everything, and would always, always be there. I could never imagine seeing someone else behind the counter.

And then he dropped an even bigger bombshell. He wasn’t selling Once Upon A Page – he was giving it away to someone who wanted to take over running it. And to make it fair, in the months leading up to his retirement, he was selling tickets for a prize draw to choose the winner.

At £30 a ticket, and a strict one-per-customer rule, it wasn’t cheap. The amount of books I could’ve bought for that … I couldn’t really afford it, and I thought it was absolutely pointless because the only thing I’ve ever won in my life is head lice from a boy in primary school, but I don’t think that counts. Robert’s excitement about his plan was even more infectious than the head lice, and it was impossible not to get swept away on the daydream of somehow being the winner. How amazing would it be to own a bookshop? To get to live and breathe books every day? To get paid for stroking books, arranging books, talking about books, recommending books, and thrusting books into the hands of unsuspecting strangers?

I read book blogs online and am a member of countless Facebook groups, but to actually get to do it in real life, to step out from behind the computer screen and share my love of books with real people? It would be amazing.

I’d dutifully bought my compulsory-purchase-with-ticket book – a cookbook for Mum because I still live in hope that she might actually follow a recipe one day – and handed over money that really should’ve gone towards the electricity bill, and for a few nights afterwards, I’d gone to sleep dreaming about being a bookseller, about that gorgeous little shop being mine, about me sitting behind that polished mahogany counter, handing out free bookmarks and crocheting blankets for Bosnian children. Well, maybe not the crochet part. Last time I picked up a crochet hook, I got fired from my job at the haberdashery shop for nearly having a customer’s eye out.

And then I never thought about it again. Every time I’ve been in since, Robert’s been sitting there with his crochet hook and yarn, and he hasn’t mentioned another thing about retiring. I thought he must’ve changed his mind. And let’s face it, I would never win, no matter what. Luck is never on my side.

Until now. I haul myself back up off the floor and perch on the edge of the bed, leaning forward for another look at the email, still convinced it can’t be real.

Maybe this is why I’ve never had any luck in my life. Maybe it was all being saved up for this moment. Maybe fate or the universe or whatever powers that be decided I would have the worst luck in the world, just so on this ordinary day in May, I could win a bookshop, and a new chapter of my life could start.

***

Once Upon A Page is in the tiny Cotswolds village of Buntingorden, about forty-five minutes away from the rabbit-hutch-sized box someone’s had the nerve to call a two-bedroom flat that I currently share with an apparently irresistible twenty-something who barely grunts at me if we happen to be forced to pass in the hallway, smells like mouldy cheese, and never apologises for eating my food, even when I scrawl ‘Hallie’ all over the packaging, feeling like a college kid sharing a house for the first time, not the mature, adult woman I supposedly am. Waitressing doesn’t pay well enough to have grown out of flat-shares by now.

I say a cheery goodbye to the driver as I jump off the bus and skip down Buntingorden High Street the next morning. Skip. I’m thirty-five. I’m not sure what’s worse – still living in a flat-share or skipping in public. I’ve been here many times before because my sister lives in the Cotswold Hills just beyond. There’s no traffic through the street, so the bus stop is at the upper end and I walk the rest of the way because it gives me an excuse to go past the bookshop every time I visit her.

The high street looks like it belongs in an award for prettiest high streets in the UK. The honey-coloured stone buildings are tall and the street is narrow as it winds towards the green hills beyond. The cobbled road is smooth under my feet, and the endless fronts of independent shops lined up before me are bright and colourful, with flags bearing logos flapping above their doors, and gingham-patterned bunting in an array of colours criss-crossing overhead all the way along the street. Old-fashioned Victorian streetlamps with modern-day bulbs dot the path, holding up baskets with pretty flowers spilling out. Near the top of the street is the town square, where there’s a Gothic fountain burbling away, surrounded by a hexagon of steps, plenty of benches, and concrete planters full of more flowers with bees buzzing around them. Once Upon A Page is directly opposite this little nature idyll in the middle of the otherwise bustling street.

I stand outside the shop window that displays a selection of books for children and adults, surrounded by garlands of artificial green leaves and spring flowers. Robert’s goldfish is swimming in a bowl at one shaded side. I breathe it all in for a moment. The smell of coffee from the sandwich deli down the street mixes with the mingled floral scent of the hanging baskets and the indescribable mix of fragrances coming from the candle shop next door. There are bowls of water outside every shop for thirsty dogs, and signs on most doors saying ‘dogs welcome’. I’m surprised the street hasn’t been used in a movie yet. It exudes a romantic, welcoming, closed-in feeling, like nothing bad could ever happen here.

Once Upon A Page is attached to the only empty shop on the street and the two buildings are connected by a set of steps leading up to a roof terrace that’s been closed off for as long as I can remember. The boarded-up windows of the shop next door are out of place on this quaint little road and I turn away from them as I go in the warm blue door with a little bell above it that jingles every time it’s opened.

‘Hallie!’ Robert Paige gets to his feet and sets his half-finished crochet blanket on the counter in front of him as he hobbles over to give me a hug and a kiss on both cheeks. ‘Congratulations. I’m so glad it was you. This place can only be run by someone who adores books, and I can’t think of anyone more deserving.’

It still doesn’t seem real. Even as I look around the cosy shop, with its plush grey carpet, miles of wooden shelves full of lovely books, and breathe in the scent of worn leather from the sofa and chairs gathered around a low table in the reading area, and the delicious papery, sweet and musky smell of thousands of books that permeates the air, I still can’t believe it. Working in a bookshop is what I’ve dreamed about my entire life.

‘Now, of course it comes with the flat too, and the roof terrace, but the railings up there need reinforcement before you can open it to the public again …’ Robert is saying.

‘What?’

‘The flat above the shop. It’s a teeny little thing but it’s served me well. I moved in a few years ago when the commute got too much for me. It’s yours now, but you’ll have to give me a couple of weeks to arrange for my belongings to be moved out.’

I squeal so loudly that the three customers who are browsing look up from their books in fright, probably thinking I’m here to test the smoke alarms and have started an early fire drill.

A flat too! I didn’t even know there was a flat above this shop. I hadn’t really thought about it. There’s an upper floor to the shop, and I assumed the second upstairs window you can see from outside was a storage room. But a flat I can actually live in? Alone? Without a twenty-something lad who thinks a vat of Lynx is an appropriate substitution for showering regularly? It’s like all my dreams are coming true at once. I could win the lottery twice and it wouldn’t be this amazing.

A customer goes to the counter with a pile of books, and Robert pats my hand and quickly hobbles back to serve her, and I watch for a moment as he gets into a deep conversation about the books she’s chosen. He seems to know something about each one as he taps the prices into the till and then loads them one by one into a ‘Once Upon A Page’ branded paper bag. No matter how much I love books, I can’t imagine ever being as knowledgeable as he is.

My excitement about taking over this place is tinged with sadness because I’m going to miss him being here. He’s like a grandfather to everyone. A friendly, non-judgemental face, which is a welcome sight on the way home from visiting Nicole, her husband Bobby, and our mum, who lives in an annex in their garden. Robert is a purveyor of books featuring single heroines like me who are happy being single and don’t need a man in their lives and no one thinks any the worse of them for it. Books with heroines whose mothers are always trying to set them up with inappropriate men. Books with heroines whose dating escapades are enough to put anyone off for life. Books about women who can be single and childless in their thirties and still be happy and fulfilled in other ways, no matter how much my mum believes otherwise and is eternally determined to see me married off, like some Jane Austen novel where I’ll be considered a spinster and it’ll bring shame upon the family if all daughters aren’t married before the age of twenty. I’m not sure my mum has realised we don’t live in the 1800s anymore.

I try not to think about the minimum-wage job and crappy flat. I am fulfilled. I’m fulfilled by my overflowing bookshelves and my Kindle, bought through the necessity of not having space for any more books in my tiny room of the flat, and not being willing to leave them in the communal living room where Mr Lynx could get at them. He’d probably use them to swat flies or something else unthinkably awful, if he didn’t try to eat them. He seems to eat everything else that belongs to me.

I let Robert get on with serving as I go for a wander around the shop, feeling a bit like I’m floating above it, dancing on a cloud, going ‘wheeeeeeeeee’. This is really going to be mine. I don’t have to add ‘fired from pub waitressing job’ to my CV and start the demoralising misery of job-hunting again. I can give notice to our landlord. I’m actually going to have my dream job. This is even a step above chocolate taster for Cadbury’s or quality control for McVitie’s.

I let my fingers trail along the spines tucked into every shelf. Old clothbound hardcovers, new paperbacks, and non-fiction coffee-table books on every subject you can imagine. After the open area at the front, with the counter and the reading area, and the tables to display new arrivals and picks of the week, there are endless aisles of wooden shelving that run up and down to the back of the shop. Shelf after shelf of floor-to-ceiling dark-coloured cherry wood with visible knots, each one holding hundreds of books, so crowded that books are piled in front and on top of the spines facing outwards. The highest places are accessed by Beauty and the Beast-style sliding wooden ladders attached to the front of the shelves on runners. I refrain from re-creating the scene where Belle slides along when she returns her book in the opening scene of the old Disney movie. It would not be the first time I’ve wanted to, and also not the first time I’ve given it a try when no one’s looking.

Once Upon A Page is the sort of shop you could easily lose a day in. You can get lost in the rows of tall shelving, picking up anything that looks vaguely interesting, and before you know it, it’s five o’clock and Robert’s ringing the bell for closing time, and you’ve accidentally missed the last bus home, but you emerge with a hotchpotch mix including a book of poetry when you didn’t think you liked poetry, a romance novel, a book about the French Revolution, a classic that you should have read but haven’t, a travel book about a destination you’ll never visit, and a children’s book you remember reading when you were younger.

Upstairs is solely dedicated to the children’s area. Robert has always been a huge supporter of getting children into reading, and while he’s still nattering away with the woman he’s serving, I go up and have a look around. It’s changed since I was last up here. It’s a long, narrow area, with white plastic bookshelves lining the walls, not as tall as the ones downstairs and more spaced out, with room for all manner of picture books to be displayed with their colourful covers facing outwards. There’s a set of tiny chairs and tables, on which are a stack of printed colouring-in pages and a selection of coloured pens and pencils, and at one end of the floor, there’s a polka dot rug with a load of brightly coloured beanbags around it, all in front of a huge Peter Pan mural covering one wall.

I feel the first little flitter of worry about what I’m getting myself into here. I don’t know the first thing about children or children’s books, and I have to remind myself that Robert is an eighty-year-old man and is probably not the target audience either, but he manages, probably because of everything he’s learnt since he started running this shop, and I can do that too. I can learn. To work in a place like this, to own a place like this is all I’ve ever wanted. Any amount of work I have to put in is worth it.

When I go back down the wooden stairs at the right-hand side of the shop, all the customers have gone and Robert is waiting for me. ‘Would you like to see the flat? If you’d rather stay where you are, you can rent it out for a little extra income. There’s access around the back as well as through here.’

I almost laugh at the idea of not living in it as I follow him between shelves and through a little office at the back. It’s sparse for an office, with a desk and chair, a computer that looks like it was technologically outdated in the Eighties, a few filing cabinets along one wall, and a cupboard under the stairs that’s obviously for storage because the door’s open and there are folded tables and display stands spilling out. He points me through a door that leads to a narrow staircase and hands me a bunch of keys on a key ring. ‘Pop up and have a look around so you know what you’re dealing with. I fear it may be smaller than you imagine.’