The Bookshop on the Shore

by Jenny Colgan

  ‘You mean you stole all of this?’

  ‘Teachers don’t steal! Speaking of which, you know the time is approaching . . .’

  ‘I don’t. Your term times are weird.’

  ‘Okay. Well. It’s half-term. And then that’s the limit of the deal. They need to be back after that.’

  ‘I cannot imagine it,’ said Zoe. ‘I’ve been trying to get them to do a bit of schoolwork but Mary won’t do anything except read and Shackleton won’t do anything except bake.’

  ‘Are you kidding? That’s brilliant!’ said Kirsty. ‘They’ll be miles ahead of all of my kids. Seriously. If Mary’s reading she can catch up everything else. Once you can read, the door is open. Everything else is just colouring in.’

  ‘Mathematics is colouring in?’ said Zoe doubtfully.

  ‘Of course it is! That’s why they use all those funny signs!’

  She frowned.

  ‘Have you heard from CAHMS yet?’

  ‘Well, Ramsay hasn’t mentioned it,’ said Zoe.

  ‘It wouldn’t be this fast,’ said Kirsty. ‘Ach.’

  ‘Or maybe there’s nothing wrong with her and she’s just an early teenager,’ said Zoe.

  Kirsty smiled as old Ben came in.

  ‘Have you no’ got that blue book yet?’

  ‘Yes!’ said Zoe, remembering in triumph. ‘Nina says it is absolutely definitely this history of the Spitfire.’ She picked it up from behind the small desk, where she’d hidden all the history of Nessie books in case the villagers started picking fights with her about it and telling her it wasn’t real.

  Ben looked at the handsome navy-blue volume carefully.

  ‘Aye!’ he said suddenly. ‘It is about spitfires!’

  ‘Brilliant!’ said Zoe. ‘A blue book about spitfires!’

  His face looked sad suddenly.

  ‘I don’t think it’s that one though.’

  ‘Nina says it is.’

  Ben frowned.

  ‘I’d just . . . I’d just need to be sure.’

  And he wobbled off down the steps.

  ‘I don’t know how you do this without starving to death,’ said Kirsty.

  ‘I have my methods,’ said Zoe, looking out into the quiet street. ‘Although, brilliantly selling books to local people doesn’t appear to be one of them.’

  She glanced at her phone again.

  ‘Oh crap. The plane’s landed.’

  ‘Were you hoping it had crashed?’

  ‘Noooo! Well . . . if he was insured . . . nooo. Well. No . . .’

  Kirsty smiled. ‘Tell Ramsay, okay. Tell him to come down and talk to me about school please. We worry about him. I’m glad he’s got you.’

  ‘He hasn’t “got me”,’ said Zoe instantly and without humour

  ‘You know what I mean, you idiot. I’m glad you’re there. Mrs MacGlone is cold company. And those poor sad girls didn’t help him much.’

  ‘Do you think . . . is their mum ever coming back?’

  Kirsty sighed.

  ‘Nobody has a clue, love. Nobody knows.’

  * * *

  If she hadn’t been so nervous, it would have done her heart good to pick up the boys, who came charging out, both dressed up as pirates with, behind them, a rather sorry-looking ‘prisoner’ Zoe identified as Rory.

  ‘Absolutely walk the plank!’ squeaked a small familiar voice. Tara dashed out looking exhausted.

  ‘They have,’ she said gravely, ‘been quite the handful today. You know they encouraged the other children to break the song circle!’

  ‘I thought Hari wasn’t allowed in the song circle,’ said Zoe equably.

  ‘And that one talked all through meditation.’

  ‘Because meditation is absolutely stupid!’

  ‘And I believe they hurt Rory’s feelings.’

  ‘NO, THEY DIDNAE,’ hollered the small prisoner.

  ‘Well!’ said Tara.

  ‘Well,’ said Zoe. ‘See you after the weekend!’

  She put the boys in the car nervously.

  ‘Daddy’s coming,’ she whispered in Hari’s ear. His face lit up.

  ‘Not my daddy but Hari’s daddy?’ said Patrick, who missed nothing. ‘Ooh!’

  Hari was smiling broadly and clapping his hands together. Oh God, thought Zoe. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad. She’d WhatsApped and suggested Jaz meet them in town but he’d said immediately he wanted to see where his son was living, in a slightly pompous imperious tone that didn’t sound remotely like him.

  She drove back quickly, worried that Jaz would get there before her. As it was, she barely had time to get in the house, throw on some more make-up and pull on a black top even though it wasn’t quite warm enough the second you stepped out of direct sunlight. It still looked halfway okay.

  Zoe didn’t realise – although Jaz spotted it as soon as she stepped out of the car, as would have any of her London friends – that actually, she looked a million times better than she had for a long, long time.

  The fresh air and utter lack of pollution had brightened her complexion; the late summer sun had graced her with a couple of freckles on her nose. She fell into bed exhausted every night from her two jobs, and was sleeping better than she had done in years – as was a properly exercised Hari, who no longer woke her, upset and churning in the middle of the night. The sparklingly clean and soft water and the fact that she was no longer dyeing it made her chestnut hair soft and luxuriant, and the good plain food had cleared up her skin.

  But there was something else there too – the stress of day-to-day living, of finding rent, of worrying about the future. It had not gone, of course not. But it had lifted. The fine lines around her eyes and the furrow in her brow had all evened out. She was still skint of course, and still worried about what was to come. But not the way she had been. Not the terrible all-encompassing three a.m. worries about the future. Not the waves of anxiety and panic that used to roll over her when she was least expecting it; the nervousness of standing at the cashpoint machine, waiting to see if it would work. There was nothing to spend money on here anyway.

  She was looking, Jaz thought, as he got out of his tiny red car – there hadn’t been a lot of choice – amazing. Almost as she had when they’d first met. If he had been a rather clearer thinker, he’d have thought that this place was doing her good.

  As it was, he thought she was trying to look hot on purpose for him. Which was kind of true, but not in the way either of them thought.

  ‘Hey!’ She waved at him. ‘Hang on.’

  * * *

  The wind blew her hair to the side as she bent back into the car, heart beating wildly. Jaz looked again at the house. It was absolutely the dog’s nuts. Not as fancy when you got close to it as it looked from far away, obviously, but still, he was going to take a lot of pictures of himself standing in front of it. Cool. As he stared at the house, two small faces poked out of the downstairs window, staring at him oddly. Jaz stared back at them. He wasn’t going to wave. He didn’t give two shits who these posh kids were.

  Zoe was leaning over Hari who was kicking his legs in a desperate effort to free himself from the car seat.

  ‘Daddy,’ she said, and he squirmed and wriggled in delight. It’s worth it, she told herself. To make him happy. It’s worth it. Everything is worth it.

  And, trying to compose her face, she finally released the car seat, and the little boy scrambled past her, turned round and jumped down.

  They watched – Ramsay too, who was upstairs in the library and had heard the cars draw up – the tiny figure of Hari tear across the crunching gravel, with weeds shooting up among it, as Jaz knelt down and opened his arms wide.

  Ramsay noticed the way Zoe pulled her arms into herself, hugged herself, as if trying to hide away; trying to stop her emotions coming to the surface. In the huge driveway, the grass behind, she looked very small down there, vulnerable in a way he hadn’t noticed before.

  ‘HARRRRRRRRRI!’ Jaz picked the little boy up and spun hi
m around, as the child threw his head back in joy.

  ‘Good to see you, bro!’

  You’re not his bro, thought Zoe for the billionth time, but she stayed silent. She started walking towards him. Hari was squirming in Jaz’s arms, and Zoe realised he wanted Patrick to come and meet him. She turned and beckoned the children. Patrick emerged from the car and Shackleton from the house; Mary was having none of it.

  Zoe walked across the gravel.

  ‘Hi, Jaz,’ she said. Ramsay found himself watching to see if they embraced, then wondered why he was doing that (they did not) – then turned away, feeling he was spying, that he was doing something wrong, wondering why he cared and why his mind was leading him places it absolutely could not go.

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘Wow,’ Jaz was saying. He kept taking selfies of himself in the drawing room or posing next to the suit of armour or one of the swords on the wall, and every time he did so Mrs MacGlone would harrumph loudly from the kitchen.

  ‘What’s up with her?’ he said loudly. ‘Is she racist?’

  ‘Jaz,’ said Zoe urgently. ‘This is where I work. Come on, let’s go have a cup of tea – do you want a scone?’

  ‘A scone?’ said Jaz, bursting out laughing. ‘Oh, a scone. Is that what we do now? Eat scones?! You’ve changed, man. A scone.’

  Zoe scowled.

  ‘Do you want one or not?’

  Hari was nodding happily.

  ‘Oh, sure I’ll try a scone,’ said Jaz, as if it were the funniest idea he’d ever heard in his life. Zoe knew his bluster was overcoming how out of place he felt, and she understood it – she’d felt exactly the same when she’d first arrived. She’d always assumed that Scotland was just a slightly windier outcrop of England really. She didn’t realise, had never seen how different it was, to its very bones, in the stones of its walls and the trees and the earth itself.

  Not to mention, neither of them were from houses like this. Nothing like. For them both, the word ‘estate’ had very difference connotations.

  ‘Scones are good,’ she said.

  The kitchen was cheerily warm and cosy, even with Mrs MacGlone fussing over the dishes and keeping her back to them.

  ‘This is Jaz,’ Zoe said as brightly as she could. ‘Hari’s dad. He’s visiting.’

  Mrs MacGlone looked round, her mouth a small line.

  ‘Well,’ she said grudgingly. ‘You didn’t need to tell me he’s Hari’s dad. Two peas in a pod.’

  Hari stuck his head against his father’s beard and they both smiled, and Zoe felt her heart wobble.

  ‘I’ll make tea,’ said Zoe. ‘Mrs MacGlone, I’m here all afternoon . . . I can take over . . .’

  ‘Want to get me out the way, do you?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘You know I don’t gossip.’

  ‘I do know that,’ said Zoe, who could have done with a bit of gossip on the many long evenings, even about people she didn’t know.

  ‘Well then.’

  But she stepped away from the sink and put her coat on.

  Patrick had been following them around and now couldn’t wait a moment longer and stood right in front of Jaz.

  ‘I am absolutely Hari’s best friend,’ he announced.

  ‘Oh. Well. Good,’ said Jaz. ‘Can you teach him to speak?’

  ‘Jaz!’ said Zoe. He knew fine well he wasn’t meant to discuss it.

  ‘I absolutely like Hari how he is,’ said Patrick, and Zoe could have kissed him.

  ‘Come on,’ she said suddenly. ‘I’ll put a film on for you.’

  There was mass cheerfulness at this rare treat. Hari, though, looked miserable, torn between two wonderful things to do: a film, or be with his dad.

  ‘You can watch it too,’ said Zoe. ‘We’ll be right here, okay? Just for a little while, while we talk?’

  Hari nodded and clambered down from Jaz as Zoe went and put the video on. There was a very timeworn video of The Wizard of Oz and an ancient VCR which she sorted out for them; even Shackleton didn’t mind watching The Wizard of Oz.

  Then, finally in the kitchen, they were alone.

  ‘So, who’s this weirdo boss you’re working for then?’

  ‘How much do you know?’ said Zoe.

  ‘Just what Surinder told me. Some posh gigantic weirdo whose wife left him.’

  ‘Um, good afternoon,’ said Ramsay, who’d materialised in the kitchen door, figuring it was rude to leave it any longer and wanting, for some obscure reason, to get it over with. He was carrying a huge pile of books, over which only the top of his head could be seen, towering up to the ceiling.

  Zoe jumped up, puce.

  ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

  Ramsay blinked and looked for somewhere to set the books down, then decided against it and remained standing, stranded in his own kitchen doorway.

  ‘Clearly.’

  Jaz wasn’t in the least perturbed.

  ‘Sorry, man! Nice to meet you. I’m Jazwinder.’

  ‘Ramsay Urquart,’ said Ramsay, putting out his hand. Several books fell down and Zoe ran over and grabbed half of them.

  ‘Nice house,’ said Jaz, looking around. ‘Reckon the missus has fallen on her feet.’

  Ramsay blinked and looked at Zoe, who was still bright red.

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you were . . .’

  ‘We’re not,’ said Zoe fiercely.

  Jaz laughed.

  ‘She loves it really.’

  ‘So, are you staying?’

  ‘Nah,’ said Jaz. ‘Got a room in the city. Early flight home innit.’

  The fact that, once again, Jaz would do something so very casual – book a hotel room rather than stay overnight for free – and still wasn’t giving her any money truly stuck in Zoe’s craw yet again.

  ‘Oh nice,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Staying in a hotel. How lovely.’

  ‘A hotel in Scotland,’ said Jaz. ‘Come on, it’s hardly Ibiza.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Zoe, hating the bitterness in her voice. To stop herself, she went and filled up the tea, automatically handing Ramsay his, who took it without saying thank you. Jaz eyed them both curiously. Ramsay muttered something about going out, grabbed his books again and tripped over his feet on the way up the steps, Jaz sitting watching him go.

  ‘What a lanky drink of water,’ he observed. ‘God. Seriously.’

  ‘Why are you being rude in his house?’ said Zoe, rounding on him. ‘I don’t think there’s any need for it.’

  ‘There’s no need for this,’ said Jaz. ‘God, I come a billion miles to see the lad and all I get is abuse.’

  Zoe took a deep breath.

  ‘It’s good you’ve come to see him. You should take him out in the grounds – it’s lovely out there.’

  ‘I will,’ said Jaz. There was a silence.

  ‘So, you look like you’ve landed on your feet,’ he said again eventually.

  ‘Is that what it looks like?’ said Zoe, torn between the desire to show that she’d been doing all right and not wanting to let him off the hook. ‘Thank God for Surinder.’

  ‘Yeah right.’

  He blinked and looked away.

  ‘Look, right. I wanted to tell you. Just . . . I’ve gone into the firm.’

  He meant his uncle’s textiles firm that Surinder worked for in Birmingham.

  ‘You’re moving to Brum?’

  ‘No. I’m going to run the London export office.’

  ‘Right,’ said Zoe, wondering where this was going. ‘Well, that’s good.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘So . . . I mean. You could come back if you liked.’

  Zoe blinked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Come back to London.’

  He ran his hand inside the collar of his rather ridiculous satin bomber jacket. Zoe screwed up her face.

  ‘I don’t understand. You want me to live with you or what?’

  ‘Oh Christ . .
. I mean. Well. I was kind of thinking you’d find a place and I could give you some cash. Pay maintenance properly.’ His voice dropped. ‘Do it right.’

  He was fiddling with his cup now, staring at the table.

  ‘I know I’ve not . . . I mean. Come on, Zoe, help me out here.’

  Zoe couldn’t have been more surprised.

  ‘But . . . I don’t know what you’re saying. I thought you were touring festivals, being a DJ.’

  ‘I’m saying . . . come back to London. Get your old job back. I’ll take Hari every second weekend or whatever, pick him up from nursery. Live near. Give you money.’

  ‘But you didn’t do any of those things before! When we lived right there!’

  ‘I said to you, I’ve changed. Things have changed.’

  ‘What’s changed them?’

  Jaz shrugged. Zoe took a long drink of tea, her heart sinking, even though, of course, she didn’t want him back, of course not.

  ‘You’ve met someone,’ she said finally.

  He shrugged again.

  ‘Well, we was over, right?’ he said, trying to make it into a joke, although it wasn’t remotely funny.

  ‘You’ve met someone . . . who knows about Hari,’ said Zoe, trying to put it together. The truth struck her like a punch in the guts.

  ‘Oh my God. You’re in love.’

  Jaz looked embarrassed as a schoolboy.

  ‘Weeeeelllll . . .’

  ‘You are, aren’t you?’

  He half smiled.

  ‘She . . . she makes me want to be a better man,’ he said, as if he was trying to be noble in a film. Zoe snorted.

  ‘Well, I might need a bit more to go on than that, if that’s all right.’

  Chapter Twenty-one

  But Jaz was completely serious. Once the floodgates were open, he wanted to talk about this new girl non-stop. Her name was Shanti, she was ravishingly gorgeous, totally amazing, ran her own business and was, Zoe noted with just the hint of an eyeroll, twenty-three years old. He even showed her pictures – she was undoubtedly ravishing: long dark hair, wide green eyes. Zoe felt like his aunt.

  ‘Well, this is great.’