The Bookshop on the Shore

by Jenny Colgan

  ‘You don’t mind, do you, Zo?’ he said, slightly apologetically. ‘Only, I mean. You and me. That’s ancient history, yeah?’

  Ancient history was sitting next door hiding behind Shackleton whenever the Wicked Witch of the East showed up, but Zoe didn’t say that.

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you’re happy.’

  ‘I mean, we started talking about, like, everything. We watched the sun come up in Goa, and she’s just so spiritual, you know?’

  Zoe thought there was a strong connection between people who were spiritual and people who had never had to forage underneath the sofa cushions to find enough coins to feed the meter key, but managed not to say so.

  ‘And she just made me see everything differently – about how it’s a privilege to have a child, and how I had to show him how to be a man and how a real man takes care of his family.’

  Zoe’s bit her lips together tightly and thought of their son, her pride and joy, and doing what was best for him.

  ‘Well then,’ she said, keeping the sarcasm out of her voice, or at least, making a good stab at it. ‘I’ll look forward to meeting her.’

  ‘You’ll love her,’ said Jaz again. ‘Everyone does.’

  Zoe wondered if he’d ever spoken about her with such enthusiasm. She knew he hadn’t.

  ‘Okay,’ said Zoe. ‘But actually . . .’

  She looked around. The fire was crackling in the grate. She could hear a faint giggle from next door, which probably meant the Cowardly Lion had just appeared. She ought to be getting on with supper.

  ‘I mean, it’s not all bad here,’ she said, grabbing the chopping board and an onion.

  Jaz looked around. ‘Are you kidding me? We’re, like, a billion miles from . . . well. Everything. I mean, you might as well be dead.’

  He stood up.

  ‘And I thought the house looked posh, but look at it.’

  He pointed to another overlooked spider’s web in the pantry entrance. ‘It’s falling apart, isn’t it? Look at that oven! And it’s freezing in here. I mean it looks posh, but really it’s shit.’

  ‘I don’t think so. It’s actually really beautiful.’

  ‘Come off it. And those spooky kids, Christ. And that old tall geezer, I reckon he’s got the hots for you.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Zoe. ‘I’m the au pair!’

  ‘Yeah, blokes always shag the nanny, well known fact,’ said Jaz. ‘And he’s gross. Killed his first wife, having a go for the younger one. Textbook.’

  ‘Shut up!’ said Zoe with far more vehemence than the stupid comment deserved.

  ‘Ooh, all right,’ said Jaz, putting his hands up. ‘Touchy! Come on, don’t be daft. Come back to London. I’ll find you a place near us. Help with the rent. Pick up Hari. Come on, it’ll be good. Back with your mates, where you belong. Get your mum back over. Not in the middle of nowhere and not where it’s absolutely blinking freezing. You’ve had your fun; you’ve made your point. Come home.’

  Zoe chopped onions to stop herself having to answer straightaway. She didn’t even know what she thought.

  ‘Hari’s happy up here,’ she said.

  ‘Well, he still ain’t talking, is he? So he’s obviously not that happy.’

  ‘That will happen in its own time.’

  ‘Yeah, at home, in London, near some real doctors. And some kids that look like him,’ he added pointedly.

  ‘There’s loads of kids that look like him,’ said Zoe stoically. Loads was overstating it, but he wasn’t the only mixed-race kid in nursery by a long shot, so Jaz could stick that in his pipe and smoke it.

  ‘And anyway, I can’t,’ said Zoe. ‘The book van owner is in hospital. I’m her cover. I’ll have to stay.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Jaz. ‘That’ll give me time to get sorted. Shanti’s got a nice place in Wembley. So I might move in with her, find you a place nearby.’ Zoe still looked worried. ‘I’m . . . Can’t you see what I’m offering? For Christ’s sake, Zo. I’ve come all this way. To do the right thing.’ He ate his scone moodily. ‘I thought you’d be biting my hand off.’

  ‘I . . . yes, I know. I mean. It’s very generous.’

  ‘I just want to—’

  ‘—do the right thing, yeah, I get it. Better late than never.’

  She smiled weakly.

  ‘Well, you have to come back sometime.’

  Zoe nodded rather bleakly. A silence fell.

  Hari’s little curly head poked around the door, and he beamed with happiness to see both his parents there. It was as if he was checking they were both real.

  ‘Hey, bro!’ said Jaz, standing up. ‘Come show me around, yeah?’

  ‘I can absolutely come too,’ said Patrick, his head appearing above Hari’s.

  ‘No, Patrick, I need you to help me with supper,’ said Zoe in a tone that brooked no argument. The child looked hurt. Jaz ignored him and put his hand out to his son. Hari took it as if he were meeting Santa Claus. The look on his face was rapturous.

  ‘Thing is,’ said Jaz, as they turned to go out into the garden, where the wind was blowing the leaves into spirals. He lowered his voice. ‘Also, you can’t. You can’t take a man’s child out of the country. You know that, Zo. It’s not legal.’

  ‘We’re not out of the country!’

  ‘What, this is England?’

  He snorted and pointed at the loch, shadowy and forbidding-looking.

  ‘No,’ said Zoe. ‘But it’s part of Great Britain.’

  Jaz looked around and raised his shoulders.

  ‘Neh,’ he said. And even if he didn’t mean to sound threatening, he did, somehow.

  He led Hari out, bouncing with glee, staring up at his father, the hero, and Zoe watched them in the slow fading light, running through the leaves, Jaz spinning the little boy around, both of them so similar, even in the way they walked.

  It should have been a touching scene; a reunion.

  Instead, it filled Zoe with fear, something akin to panic. Patrick came towards her.

  ‘You’re shaking, Nanny Seven.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Did you see the monster?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Zoe.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  When Jaz and Shanti came in, worn out and cold from the frosty evening, they were out of breath and cheerful (Patrick was sulking manfully, doing a jigsaw puzzle by himself in the corner). Zoe was making bets with herself as to how long he could actually keep silent. Shackleton was watching her as she pan-fried chunks of local beef until they were brown, then poured them into an ancient cassoulet pot with red wine, cloudberries, stock, wild mushrooms and rosemary, letting it slowly melt down together. The smell on a chill autumn’s evening was absolutely heavenly.

  Jaz stood in the door frame.

  ‘You want to eat?’ said Zoe. Jaz shook his head. ‘Neh,’ he said. ‘It smells weird. I’ll grab something in Inverness . . . They must have a KFC, right?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Hari looked up at his dad.

  ‘Look, bro. I’m going now. But you’ll be back soon, okay? And then I’ll see you all the time, all right?’

  ‘Jaz,’ said Zoe. ‘I have a job here. I can’t just walk away from it.’

  Patrick’s ears were pricking up.

  ‘I’m here. You left.’

  ‘I didn’t leave here,’ said Jaz. ‘I went travelling. And now I’m back. In London. And you left.’

  ‘Before we starved to death!’ said Zoe. Jaz rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t be dramatic,’ he said. ‘You’ll upset Hari.’

  ‘What happened to you being a changed man?’ Zoe couldn’t help herself asking.

  ‘I’m here, telling you to come back to London with me where I’m going to find you a place to live and look after my son,’ said Jaz. ‘And somehow I’m the bad guy.’

  There wasn’t much more to say after that. He left, going into the darkening garden, then starting up the ridiculous tiny red car. Hari stood at the window in the kitchen d
oor, staring at the car until it disappeared from sight.

  * * *

  ‘I don’t like him,’ whispered Patrick to Zoe, who couldn’t help smiling even as she said, ‘Don’t be silly – that’s Hari’s dad.’

  ‘Yes, and now Hari is absolutely sad,’ said Patrick, with which Zoe truly couldn’t argue.

  Supper was delicious, but Zoe could barely touch a thing. Hari just stared longingly out of the window and occasionally let out a sigh. Mary was in one of her picky moods. Only Shackleton ate with appetite and evident pleasure. Zoe cleared up mechanically, making the children rinse their plates, and put an overtired Hari to bed as soon as she was able, finding it very difficult to read from Up on the Rooftops, with its London settings and London landmarks and Patrick constantly asking if that’s where Hari was going and where did they live and could they climb up on the roofs and how he would climb up on every roof in London when he came to visit him.

  * * *

  The house felt so empty when everyone had gone to bed. Normally Zoe fell straight asleep five minutes after the children, her life was so full now, but tonight she couldn’t. She padded around the kitchen, made tea that she let get cold, considered texting a friend. But what would they say? Her London friends would just say, ‘Great! See you soon!’ Finally Jaz was facing up to his responsibilities; finally he was coming home. Her mum would be pleased because her girl would be in London, among her own sort, back where she belonged, none of this running off to Scotland nonsense. She could call Kirsty, she supposed, but she didn’t even know Jaz.

  She felt so alone. Upstairs was a little boy she would protect with her life. But what was the best way to protect him? Here, with companions, and wide open spaces? The difference in him, his outlook, how much he smiled, how much he was learning, the trees he climbed . . . to go back to a little studio in the city. Not that there was anything wrong with the city but . . .

  The thought of commuting to work, squeezing into an overcrowded tube or bus, waiting for hours, crushed up against everyone else, being an hour away from home . . . compared to now, her daily meander through the great hills, where she could see the whole glory of nature spread out below her, changing every single day, often it seemed simply for her benefit. Changing the smell of hot dirty trains for the bonfire breezes of the west way, the clacking of rats on the tube tracks for the majestic soar of an eagle over the hills, the funny wobble of a partridge out for a stroll, or the wild geese on the water, or the heron, or the seals, sunning themselves on the rocks.

  Another cup of tea went cold and she put the kettle on again. Did Jaz have a case about her moving? She knew you couldn’t take a child out of the country, but Scotland was the same country. Well, for now. She knew though that even if she could legally move here with Hari, deep down she was indeed taking him far away from his dad, and that a court might see things very differently, if it came to that.

  The thought of court clasped at her heart. To go from being terrified of Jaz never returning to see Hari to suddenly being scared of having to go see him all the time . . .

  Oh God. What a mess. What a mess. What if she had to drag Hari into court? The very idea of it made her shiver. What about if he had to stand there? What if they had to make him talk to a judge and he wouldn’t answer? Would they blame her? Would they take him away?

  She was terrifying herself now, her thoughts spiralling out of control. What if they thought she was unfit? What if Jaz’s new girlfriend was amazing, and Hari loved her and liked being back in London and . . .

  She dropped her head onto her arms on the table so she could – as she always had to, sharing a room with Hari – cry without making a sound, even though nobody could have heard her in the vast stillness of the great house, only the ticking of the grandfather clock Patrick had started winding every day (it was one of his jobs; if they all had to have chores, Zoe had tried to make at least some of them fun, and he took it very seriously), even as the kettle on the stove started to whistle.

  * * *

  And that is how Ramsay found her, half an hour later, as the fire burned low and he was letting himself in the back door; on the brink of sobbing herself to sleep.

  He started when he saw her – it looked like she’d passed out – and she jerked awake in that way you do when you’re falling asleep and feel like you’ve missed a stair, and for a moment wasn’t at all sure where she was, then scrubbed at her tear-sodden face, but in that moment she had looked to Ramsay, who until this moment had thought of her as incredibly capable and positive, and had been bowled over by her plucky attempts with his tricky children, at how she let nothing stand in her way, in how she had literally let the light in. He wouldn’t have admitted it in a million years, given she was well over a foot shorter than him, but he found her intimidating and so capable. So used to dealing with very little; unfazed by the noise and fuss around her. There was something indomitable about her.

  And now she was completely undone and he felt a rush of tenderness towards her, like a bird with a broken wing. He put down the heavy box he was carrying and rushed over. His first instinct was to scoop her up in his arms; she realised, looking up with a shock, that her first desire was for him to do that. He stopped.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Zoe blinked, then her face flamed. She jumped up and ran to wash her face, trying to cool herself down. What must he think of her?

  ‘Sorry . . . yes, just . . . must have drifted off . . .’

  She rubbed furiously at the mascara which was running under her eyes. Ramsay stood there, his large hands waving around rather nervously.

  ‘Are you absolutely sure you’re all right?’

  It was the concern in his voice that very nearly set her off again. She stayed at the sink, not quite trusting herself to turn around.

  ‘Um,’ she said, testing her voice. A definite wobble. She swallowed hard.

  ‘It was just . . . it’s always tricky . . .’

  ‘Seeing Hari’s dad?’

  Zoe nodded.

  ‘Well,’ she said boldly. ‘You know.’

  She still hadn’t turned around and therefore didn’t see Ramsay’s grimace.

  ‘Mmm,’ he said non-committally. ‘Well, it’s nice he’s coming to visit your lad.’

  ‘Oh, it’s a bit worse than that,’ said Zoe, finally turning round. Then she saw the box.

  ‘What’s that?’ she said suspiciously, still scrubbing at her face. Ramsay’s lips twitched.

  ‘I was . . . I was going to keep it as a surprise,’ he said. Zoe walked forwards.

  ‘Is that what I think it is?’ Her voice was surprised, even as she’d thought the day didn’t have much more to throw at her.

  ‘I was going to set it up for you tomorrow . . .’

  ‘But how . . . why?!’

  ‘I’ve . . . well . . .’

  He rubbed his face awkwardly.

  ‘Ever since you started . . . you know. Clearing out the library a bit. It’s . . . well . . .’ He coughed. ‘Given me a bit of inspiration really. I’ve been working on selling a lot more.’

  Zoe moved towards the precious shining vision: a new coffee machine.

  ‘Ooh, I love it!’

  ‘It has . . . pods?’ His brow furrowed. ‘I didn’t really understand what they were trying to get me to do.’

  ‘I know!’ said Zoe, jumping up. Her ability to retain her equilibrium surprised him. She knew how to perk herself up; not, he realised, for the first time. She wasn’t a wounded bird at all. She had resilience.

  She was plugging in the machine, exclaiming with delight when she saw it came with two dinky cups and a milk frother, and he watched her as the extraordinary device warmed up.

  ‘Any decaff?’ she said, checking the clock. It was late. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter. I won’t sleep anyhow.’

  She served them both up perfect tiny macchiatos with a little squiggle on the top.

  ‘Look at that!’ she said. ‘Isn’t that better?’

&n
bsp; In his huge hands, the tiny cup looked hilarious, like a giant’s plaything. He couldn’t get his finger through the hole in the handle to lift it.

  Zoe realised she had drifted off looking at his enormous hands, was wondering what they would feel like on her body, wondering . . .

  ‘I know,’ Ramsay was saying. ‘You never quite sleep the same again once the children are born, do you?’

  She flushed and came back to herself, realising he was asking her a question.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘And when you’re on your own . . .’

  ‘Well, quite . . .’

  They both sat down at the table.

  ‘What happened with you and your wife?’ she found herself asking.

  ‘Married too young,’ said Ramsay quickly, as if by rote.

  ‘Me too,’ said Zoe. ‘Well, not married. But.’

  Ramsay took a sip of his coffee and grimaced.

  ‘Don’t tell me you don’t like that?’

  ‘It’s . . . different.’

  ‘Yes because it’s actually coffee. It’s how coffee is meant to taste.’

  ‘Well, what have I been drinking then?’

  ‘Brown water.’

  ‘I like brown water.’

  ‘Well, hooray for you.’

  They smiled.

  ‘I don’t think you are ever young again,’ mused Ramsay, setting his ridiculously tiny cup back on the table and looking at it. ‘Not properly. After children. Do you?’

  ‘Not in the same way,’ said Zoe. Outside, an owl hooted, but otherwise everything was very still.

  ‘Not in the same way you can do anything, go anywhere. I remember the first time I realised it would be a catastrophe if I died. Not for me, but for him, you know.’

  Ramsay nodded fervently.

  ‘What . . . what you wouldn’t do for them.’

  It was so quiet and still. A certain magic seemed to have settled over the kitchen: the glowing lamps, the waning fire in the stove, that liminal line between sleep and wakefulness in the lowest part of the night, when anything seems possible.

  Zoe was torn between wanting to ask Ramsay everything about the children’s mother, everything she needed to know, and an absurd desire to take that hand and boldly place it on her. She realised he was left-handed. No ring. Oh God, why couldn’t she take her eyes off it? It was a beautiful hand: slender but strong, a thin covering of pale hair that vanished in a line up his wrist band. The nails were broad and square, cut short, the fingers ridiculously long. They looked like the hands of a pianist. She had to take her eyes off them. Or go to bed before she did something absolutely ridiculous that would get her fired, something that would be fuelled solely by sadness and caffeine, and the fact that her boss was the only person in a very long time who had shown her a tiny bit of kindness.