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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.’
‘It could be a toad’s armpit and it would still be better than where I’m living now.’
He hovers in the office doorway to keep an eye on the shop while I go up and let myself in the cream door at the top. The flat inside is an odd shape, long but narrow, warring for space with the children’s area on the other side of the dividing wall. The front door leads to a small kitchen and living area in one. A door divides that from a bedroom that is barely big enough for the single bed and wardrobe it currently holds, and squeezed in at one side is a bathroom.
The bedroom window looks out on the high street, and I rest my elbows on the sill and pull the net curtains aside. The fountain burbles away in the town square opposite, and I watch a young boy hopping up and down the steps while his mother talks into her phone. I remember sitting there reading on my way back from the library when I was young and so eager to get started on the books I’d taken out that I couldn’t even wait as far as getting home.
The sun is shining down, making the water glint with the reflection as the noise of the street filters up, muffled by the thick triple-glazed window. Back across the flat, there’s another window that overlooks the green bank of the river that flows past Buntingorden, and a back door that leads down a fire escape and out into a tiny patch of unmaintained garden and then onto the river footpath.
It might be small, but it’s amazing. It’s so much better than where I’m living now, and I’m still convinced I’m going to wake up in a minute because how can this be real? The unluckiest person in the Cotswolds has somehow won a bookshop and a flat, all in one day. My usual types of days are the ones where you lose your job, flood your flat, and walk in on your boyfriend snogging someone else all in the same afternoon. I’ve had more than one day like that. More than one boyfriend like that too.
When I’m done, Robert is still standing in the office doorway and looking like he’s been on his feet for too long. From the bottom, he directs me around the flat’s kitchen to make two cups of tea, and when I take them downstairs, he’s sitting on one of the leather sofas in the reading area. It’s almost in the centre of the shop, down a bit from the counter and surrounded on three sides by bookshelves. You often see students sitting there to study and people poring over books and furiously scribbling notes.
Robert spreads paperwork across the table in front of him as I put the two mugs down and one wobbles in my hand, nearly spilling its contents right across the important-looking documents. I breathe a sigh of relief once the mugs are safely out of my hands. That would not have been a good start to this adventure.
‘This isn’t just a big joke, is it?’ I ask as he lifts his tea with a shaky hand and sips it.
He laughs. ‘I’m not a joker, Hallie. You’ve been coming in here long enough to know that. The shop and flat above it are yours. It comes with only one condition – that when you are done with this place, whether it’s in two months’ time if you decide bookselling is not for you, two years when you meet a nice young man and want to settle elsewhere, or in many decades when you’ve given this shop all you have to give, you will find someone to pass it on to.
‘Once Upon A Page must never be sold. Its legacy is in the love for it. That is why it’s thrived for so long. Ownership is passed from one person to the next, like I’m passing it on to you now. I took over forty years ago from a very dear friend of mine. He had taken over from his father, who had run it for a number of decades, and I believe it had been passed to him from a distant cousin. The chain goes all the way back until it was founded in the 1870s. Each owner has taken over only because they love books and want to share that.
‘There have been hard times, but the shop has always survived. From hardship comes greater strength. The roof terrace was the result of a bomb during the war, and the innovative owner at the time chose to make the best of a bad situation rather than give in to despair. He took out the rest of the fallen roof, reinforced the floor, and built a set of steps up to it.
‘Once Upon A Page’s legacy is in the love of the written word, and you must agree to that condition before we sign any of this paperwork. This is not a property to “flip” or sell to the highest bidder – and believe me, there are high bidders who are desperate to get their hands on it – but when you decide to give it up, you must do as I have done and give it away freely. It doesn’t matter who you choose; it can be a family member, a friend, a customer, or a stranger, as long as you know they will love it as much as you do, and will agree to being part of the same legacy – to give it away when their time is done.’
I nod. This is a dream job – the last thing I want to do is sell it. And it’s unthinkable to talk about giving it up already. I can’t imagine ever wanting to give it up. This is a gift, something that will change my life, certainly not something to make a quick profit from. ‘How did you know everyone who entered the prize draw would be genuine?’
‘I didn’t. I just had to trust my instincts. I carefully observed who I offered tickets to. When money-grabbers came in enquiring because they’d heard it was up for grabs on some mysterious grapevine, I sent them packing. I firmly believe this shop is special, and that it has a little hand in its ownership. I didn’t think it would steer me wrong.’
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‘You don’t have family to leave it to?’ I ask gently. I’ve never asked him about his family before.
‘I’m alone in the world, although I believe that anyone who loves books is never truly alone, and that’s always been enough for me. I would’ve loved a family, but it was never meant to be. I lost the love of my life years ago, but don’t you worry about me. I have many good friends all over the country and all across the world, both real and fictional. My head is alive with a million characters who have stayed with me over the years, and now it’s time for me to fulfil my final two dreams – to let Once Upon A Page live on with someone who loves it like I do, and to retire to the beach in Cornwall. I’ve wangled myself a flat at an assisted living facility on the southern coast, mere steps from the door to the sand. It’s all I’ve ever wanted for my autumn years.’
His words make me tear up, and I pick up my tea and turn away for a moment to compose myself under the guise of taking a sip. Pure joy gives way to a little nudge of fear. What if I let him down? Beyond a few Saturday shifts in the now-closed local library when I was sixteen, I don’t know anything about bookselling, and even less about owning a business. Is passion for reading really enough? It feels like it is at the moment, but I can’t begin to imagine how much learning I’ve got ahead of me.
Like he can read my mind, he pats my shoulder with an age-spotted hand. ‘I was in engineering when I took over. I’d never even considered working in retail. I learnt as I went, and it wasn’t always a smooth curve, but the rewards are worth it. Seeing customers happy when they finally come across a book they’ve been searching for. People asking for recommendations and then coming back to tell you how much they’ve enjoyed something you’ve recommended. Seeing children’s faces light up as they get lost in the magic of a story. It’s not always easy – the hours can be long, the constant carrying and stacking of books is physically hard work, and you’ll often have slow weeks when you feel guilty for taking even minimum wage for yourself. But this shop has stood here for a century and a half. I can’t imagine a world without it. I’ve always found it worth any hardship that has come my way.’
The Little Bookshop of Love Stories Page 2