The Bookshop on the Shore

by Jenny Colgan

  Zoe was so cross heading out that she didn’t notice the clouds damping high over the mountaintops. As a Londoner, she was used to the weather being mild variations of the day before; there weren’t dramatic changes normally. She didn’t even check the weather forecast. Now, however, as she tuned in the radio – it was definitely helping her understand the local accent so she tried to keep it on all the time, plus Hari liked the music – she heard them talk about storm warnings and power lines and to take care, but she was only half listening. Instead she was lost in her head, cursing herself for being such an idiot. Thinking she might be able to make a difference.

  Mrs MacGlone knew exactly what Zoe should be doing: keeping her head down, being grateful for the roof and the food and the money until she left the children again as they had been before, in their too-small clothes and all-toast diet, utterly cut off and isolated from the world.

  But she was wrong. Why didn’t he see? She was thinking about Ramsay, furiously, as she drove on. What was it with fathers? Hari barely knew his. But Ramsay was there, with three traumatised children who desperately needed him. How could he be so thoughtless? Was it because he was posh? Or some kind of crazed sociopath, something his ex had found out, to her cost?

  Well, maybe she couldn’t change things, she thought, just as Mrs MacGlone had said. But she wouldn’t stand by and do nothing. Someone had to look out for children. Even horrible ones. Although she had unavoidably developed something of a soft spot for Patrick. Anyone who was nice to her child was guaranteed her eternal fealty.

  She glanced at Hari in the back.

  ‘Okay!’ she said in her jolliest voice. ‘Nursery today!!!’

  Hari gave her a level and entirely disgusted look.

  ‘Aha!’ Tara had exclaimed when they showed up again. ‘Excellent, Hari! We were just about to sing a song about how much we value ourselves. You like to sing, don’t you?’

  ‘Actually . . .’ Zoe had started.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Tara had said as Hari’s face started to crumple. ‘Not to worry! We’ll put you at the back, just outside the circle and you can clap!’

  ‘I’ll only be a couple of hours,’ said Zoe desperately. ‘It’s just a little bit, Hari. Just a little bit. You can play outside.’

  And she did it: she somehow managed to harden her heart again and turn around and walk away from her little boy. It’s for him, she told herself. It did not help her believe it.

  In tears, she picked up the book bus, noticing the high grass in the fields bending right over, but thought little of it, even as the reeds were flat on the ground. All the cows and sheep in the field were sitting down, but that meant absolutely nothing to Zoe. She hoovered, straightened up and, with slightly more practised abilities, carefully drove in a large circle around the central point of the unmoveable chicken and trundled off down the hill.

  Lennox had been outside making sure his haybales were carefully strapped down when he saw her and charged out of the barn, waving his arms uselessly behind the disappearing van. The forecast was appalling, and certainly there was no place for taking out high-sided vehicles. He didn’t know what she was thinking; Nina wouldn’t have gone out today in a million years. In fact, maybe best not mention Zoe had taken the van out in an amber warning. If she pootled down to the village then came back he could probably just about paper it over. He tried Zoe’s number. Nothing, of course. There were plenty of mobile black spots on this road, and the heaviness of the incoming clouds didn’t help either.

  * * *

  In fact, Zoe had decided to go further afield that day. She had, she felt, rather exhausted the curiosity of the people of Kirrinfief once they found out a) that Nina was grand; no better nor worse, b) dropped off some knitting for her – this was, Zoe surmised, going to be the woolliest baby of all time – and c) they weren’t quite sure what kind of book they were in the mood for; they’d just wait for Nina to tell them, thanks. She always knew.

  Running a bookshop sounded so civilised, so simple. Not just looking blankly at a nice old woman who had asked her very loudly and repeatedly to give her something she definitely hadn’t read but would like, and every time Zoe suggested something, would shake her head and say, no, not that type of thing at all.

  Nina had left her some notes about little villages around and where she could park from time to time, generally on Tuesdays and Thursdays to match the farmer’s markets. She’d also left a map, as trying to get your phone 4G to work in the Highlands was a thankless task at the best of times, and Zoe was trying to drive and work out the route at the same time.

  There wasn’t any thunder – it wasn’t that type of storm – but there was suddenly rain – crashing, drenching rain, hurling itself against the windscreen – and when you looked outside, you could see the trees bending over, pushing their leaves towards the ground. Zoe blinked.

  Should she be worried? Everyone said it was bad weather up here; that was practically the first thing anyone ever said about Scotland. You just expected it to be this bad, didn’t you? Probably everyone just got on with it and didn’t bat an eyelid. The van skidded a little bit here and there on the road and she pulled the big wheel back towards the central line, her heart going in her chest a little.

  She’d got, she realised, much more conscious of her own worth since Hari had been born. Before – and many of her friends could still do this – she could be almost careless of her own life. Drive too fast, stay up too late, do slightly crazy things, be reckless. Because it was just you.

  Now it wasn’t just her, and that was the biggest change of all. Suddenly it was vitally important that she didn’t crash the car, or vanish, or do silly things when she’d had a little too much to drink, or anything like that. The idea of leaving a small child motherless, no matter what she was like, or how she was doing as a mother, was just too dreadful to bear. She could easily make herself cry just by imagining the circumstances in which someone would have to explain it to the lad; how his little face would screw up in confusion; how the police officer explaining it would be doing their best to be kind . . . How awful must the situation of the Urquart children’s mother have been? What could possibly have broken her enough that she could leave her children? What – or who?

  At any rate, she slowed right down on the road, checking her mirrors conscientiously and doing everything absolutely right, which would have been fine had not slowing down on that bend right there – just as she came to the strait along the lochside, with the turn-off to the visitor centre – meant that she was precisely placed for a charging coach, pulling out and getting caught in a crosswind because frankly it was travelling rather too fast, to immediately start barrelling down the road in her lane, and to miss her, as she smashed into an overhanging branch, bringing it straight down through her window.

  Chapter Thirty

  The noise was unbelievable. Suddenly, as soon as the window smashed, with ear-crashing volume, the crazed howling of the wind outside the van, like a malevolent dark rising force, smashed into her.

  Zoe gasped, her mouth pulling backwards to scream as the branch bounced straight off her window; it tumbled underneath the van’s wheels and a sharp smell of asbestos from the brakes hit her as the tyres stalled and the huge great edifice started to turn in on itself, onto the other side of the road, where the large coach from the lochside continued to barrel towards her.

  Zoe held up her arms to the side, desperately reaching for her baby, then realising he wasn’t there.

  In the split-second that elongated endlessly, she thought that this couldn’t possibly be it, and of Hari and Hari’s face, and somehow, before hysteria and blackness overcame her, she managed to lift her foot off the brake and put both hands on the wheel, pulling them furiously one over the other until the terrible trajectory of the vehicle righted itself and in fact, with an instinct somewhere deep inside her, she did exactly the right thing by pulling the steering wheel hard to the left and slamming her foot on the accelerator. The van shot forwards, smashing t
hrough the wood on the ground, puncturing both front tyres, but moving, nonetheless, on the left side of the road, where she desperately tried to control the motion of the five-ton vehicle, and saw the left turning for the visitor centre up ahead.

  Praying there was nothing else coming, she screamed past the coach, broken glass all over her hair and her clothes, oblivious to the cuts and bruises on her face, and shot the van round into the access road, finally putting on the brakes and bringing it to a halt, Meanwhile the coach driver ran the entire coach off the road and into a ditch with a sickening thumping noise.

  * * *

  Zoe sat in the vehicle, the engine of which was ticking and clucking and very unhappy as it cooled down. She stared straight ahead, even as the wind blew right into her face, trembling and not realising what was trickling down her face and onto her T-shirt: blood.

  After a few moments – which felt like hours – of total silence, the people at the visitor centre came charging up, yelling and concerned, along with lots of tourists in many different languages. Zoe still didn’t move; just sat there, stock-still, staring into space.

  ‘Are you all right?’ The voice was low and gruff and penetrated Zoe’s frozen state.

  ‘Hey! Listen to me!’ it said, slightly starker and rather more cross. ‘Listen to me. You have to listen to me. You need to get out of the van.’

  Zoe lifted her hands and looked at them dispassionately as if they weren’t hers.

  ‘Blood,’ she said.

  ‘Your windscreen blew in,’ said the voice. ‘You have to get down so we can see you’re all right.’

  Zoe could hear the voice and understood what it was saying, but it didn’t seem to have any relevance to her. She didn’t feel the need to do anything. She had her seatbelt on. Maybe she’d just stay there.

  The next second – or minute, or hour, she had no way of knowing – strong arms were lifting her out of the cab and holding her up on the ground. Glass spiralled down onto the stones of the car park. The wind was absolutely howling through the bending, swishing trees.

  ‘Come on, get her inside before something falls on us,’ said a voice.

  ‘The books!’ gasped Zoe, suddenly panicking. Everything was back there. ‘What about the books! What if the van blows up! Someone save the books!’

  The same low voice she’d heard before laughed.

  ‘Well, I don’t think that old rust bucket would have it in her to blow up. But trust me, if it doesn’t – which it won’t – there’s no way I’d risk having someone inside saving some bloody books when it happened.’

  And a set of hands half pushed, half carried her into the large building ahead; there was obviously a hotel of sorts next to the visitor centre. The nice-looking receptionist Zoe had met once before, Agnieszka, who didn’t serve coffee in the mornings, was standing beside the large open fire and had her hands at her mouth when she saw her, then immediately summoned someone from a back room who came charging out with a large roll of multi-purpose blue paper.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘But would you mind terribly standing on that?’

  Zoe didn’t mind anything; she couldn’t see or think straight.

  ‘And first aid kit!’ the receptionist trilled. ‘Oh, my poor dear, are you all right?’

  Zoe didn’t have a clue, and let Agnieszka lead her over in to the bathroom.

  ‘There there,’ she said, as Zoe stared at a bleeding face she didn’t recognise, then glanced at her blood-spattered hands. She was trembling.

  ‘You had a little accident,’ said Agnieszka, sizing her up expertly. ‘But I think – I think – you’re going to be all right. Does anything hurt?’

  Zoe looked herself up and down in the mirror again, swallowed hard. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said the woman and disappeared, reappearing with some brown liquid in a small glass.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘Drink this.’

  Zoe did as she was told, then spluttered and coughed.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ said Agnieszka nodding her head approvingly. ‘That’ll get you.’

  Tears sprang to Zoe’s eyes.

  ‘It’s blended,’ said Agnieszka mysteriously.

  Whatever it was, gradually Zoe felt herself coming back together.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said, swaying a little. ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘I know.’ said the woman. ‘It’s absolutely wild out there. Thank God you’re all right.’

  Zoe started washing her arms.

  ‘You are all right?’ said the woman anxiously.

  ‘I think so,’ said Zoe, still shakily. ‘Oh God . . . a tree. A tree attacked me. Oh God. I need to . . . I need to contact Hari. No. No I don’t. Nobody tell him anything. Oh God. Oh God. I leave him for one day and nearly get killed. One day.’

  ‘Is there someone you want me to call?’ asked the nice lady.

  Zoe stared at herself in the mirror, and a tear trickled down her face. She realised, horribly, that there really wasn’t anyone that needed calling. Her mum would fret and was too far away. Jaz wouldn’t care. Nina would only worry about her precious van. She suddenly felt very upset and very alone. She splashed water on her face, started washing away the blood.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said eventually. ‘I’m absolutely fine.’

  ‘You don’t look fine,’ said Agnieszka. ‘You’re white as a sheet. Come through and have another whisky. Although I’ll probably have to charge you for this one.’

  Zoe walked back into the lobby which was now full of similarly shell-shocked if not quite as scratched and banged-up tourists, bustling round the bar and asking in heavily accented English for whisky and tea. The woman smiled at her apologetically, pointed her towards an empty sofa, and slipped behind the bar. Zoe wobbled towards it. A tall man came up to her.

  ‘You okay?’

  Zoe blinked at him.

  ‘I . . . I brought you in a second ago?’

  He swam in and out of focus a little bit. Broad. Solid-looking. Dark curly hair. Large jumper.

  He put out a hand.

  ‘Murdo. Hi there. Are you okay? You looked a bit shocked.’

  ‘I’m . . . I’m fine,’ said Zoe, looking round at all the people and the noise and the friendly smiles of all these strangers, and she passed out on the carpet before she could take another step.

  * * *

  Dr Joan was holding up a rather large shard of glass to the light, but Zoe had not the faintest idea where she was.

  ‘Look at this!’ sniffed Joan. ‘This is like when I took an entire spool of barbed wire out of a horse’s stomach.’

  ‘What, for fun?’ someone else was saying and Joan was pointedly not answering them.

  Zoe blinked and glanced at her arm.

  ‘Ouch!’ she said.

  ‘Yes rather,’ said Joan. ‘Unfortunately you were unconscious so I couldn’t ask your consent for an anaesthetic. But I just took it out anyway.’

  ‘Owww,’ said Zoe as the pain flooded her. ‘I feel very strongly that this wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘Yes, Nina’s always had trouble driving that van,’ said someone else sagely.

  ‘I wasn’t having trouble!’ said Zoe, suddenly feeling very alert. ‘The coach was having trouble! It was driving straight at me.’

  ‘It’s a very big van for a very wee lassie,’ said someone else. Zoe turned round.

  ‘I swerved to stop the coach crash!’ she said. ‘Everyone should be telling me how brave I was and how I saved everyone in the coach by not crashing into it.’

  People’s heads turned to a short chubby man wearing a clip-on tie and a short-sleeved shirt with tinted bifocals – clearly the coach driver. He lifted his hands up.

  ‘Bad stormy day for everyone, aye?’ he said. ‘Och, wee lassie, I’m glad you didn’t do yourself a mischief.’

  ‘You nearly did me a mischief!’ said Zoe loudly, furious.

  The landlady hushed her. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘You’ve had a shock.’

  �
�I’ve had two!’ said Zoe. ‘First I had to crash my van and now the bus driver is telling big fat lies about it!’

  ‘I’m just glad you’re no’ hurt,’ muttered the coach driver. ‘When you crashed your van.’

  ‘I am hurt,’ said Zoe, brandishing her arm.

  ‘You know,’ went on the coach driver. Someone had brought him a snifter of whisky as well and he appeared to be turning into quite the hero of the hour. ‘The last girl with that van – you see it everywhere, it’s a menace –’ To be strictly fair to the coach driver, sometimes it was a menace. ‘– the last girl nearly got run down on the level crossing.’

  He smiled benevolently at Zoe. ‘I’m so glad I managed not to hit you.’

  ‘Yeah, well done,’ said a couple of bystanders.

  ‘It’s hard for yon English,’ said a voice. ‘They don’t know the roads, do they?’

  There was a mutter of general agreement at this, that English people could not in fact possibly know the roads. Zoe would have contemplated threatening to sue, except it seemed increasingly likely that the coach driver would find 250 people who thought they were all genuine eye witnesses and would testify on his behalf. She glanced at her sore arm.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ she said. ‘I just want to go home.’

  ‘Good,’ said the man called Murdo. ‘Looks like you’re thinking more clearly already.’

  ‘I am,’ said Zoe frowning at the small coach driver, who was now being comforted and clapped by his passengers like some kind of hero. ‘I am thinking this is all nonsense.’

  The van was a mess, books everywhere, the windscreen completely gone. Someone had already kindly removed the broken glass though. But what now?

  Well, the best thing to do was to call someone. But Nina was in hospital and the last thing she could do was have a shock. There was nobody at the big house she could call – what would Mrs MacGlone do, after all? She sighed, and stared at her phone.

  Behind her was the man who’d helped, heading towards what appeared to be a boat on the shore.

  ‘You all right?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ said Zoe, trembling.