by Anna James
PHILOMEL BOOKS
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York
First published in the United States of America by Philomel Books,
an imprint of Penguin Random House, LLC, 2019.
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2018.
Text copyright © 2018 by Anna James.
Illustrations copyright © 2018 by Paola Escobar.
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Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
Ebook ISBN 9781984837134 Q
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For my sister Hester,
who is made of the same stories as me
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
1: The View from the Gate of a Fairground
2: No One Has Proper Adventures in Real Life
3: Other People’s Memories
4: Somewhere Adventures Live
5: Magic, Mischief, Nonsense
6: Trouble Always Starts When You Are Out of Proportion with Whom You Are Talking To
7: Imaginary Friends
8: A Bit of Nonsense Never Hurt Anyone
9: Read Outside Your Comfort Zone
10: Fictional by Definition
11: Try to Make a Little More Space for the Impossible to Happen
12: An Active Imagination
13: The Story Is the Thing
14: An Excellent Plot Twist
15: It Just Felt Like the Right Book
16: Welcome to the Underlibrary
17: Legere Est Peregrinari
18: Some Books Are Far Safer Than Others
19: Getting Lost in a Good Book
20: The Absolute Safest Books You Can Travel Into
21: Time Works Differently in Books
22: An Incredibly Bad Idea
23: This Is Why You Should Always Follow the Rules
24: Everything Has Tilted on Its Axis
25: More Than Neat Plot Devices
26: The Last Page
27: The Ordinances of Bookwandering
28: Stories Are for Reading
29: Book Magic Is the Only Sort We Have
30: Fairy Tales
31: Curiosity Creates the Very Best Adventures
32: You Can Walk Off the End of Any Story
33: A Whole Extra Character
34: The Wrong Place at the Right Time
35: A Bookshop Is Like a Map of the World
36: Be Brave and Be Kind
37: Readers Are So Messy
38: Some Books Are Loved and Some Are Forgotten
39: How the Story Had to End
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
1
The View from the Gate of a Fairground
Matilda Pages pushed open the door of Pages & Co. and breathed in deeply, taking in the familiar scent of just-blown-out candles, dark chocolate, and, of course, books. For a second she forgot that she was splattered with muddy water and simply relished the week’s holiday that stretched out in front of her like the view from the gate of a fairground. But the bubble of calm popped as the damp seeped through her tights, making her shiver, and she marched through the door connecting the bookshop to the narrow house she lived in with her grandparents. She let the door crash behind her, tossed her school bag on the table—accidentally sending a pile of potatoes flying—and flopped dramatically into a chair.
She paused, waiting for her grandmother to react, and when Grandma finally turned, Tilly flung her head theatrically onto her arms on the table.
“Happy half-term, Tilly,” Grandma said, looking around in confusion. “What on earth is the matter? And why are you taking it out on the potatoes?”
Tilly’s cheeks, usually fair with a smattering of freckles, blushed a deep raspberry as she sheepishly started picking up the potatoes.
“And you’re soaking—it’s not still raining, is it?” Grandma said, peering out of the kitchen window. She gave her granddaughter’s head an affectionate rub as Tilly kneeled to rescue a stray potato that had rolled into the cat basket. Tilly sighed and leaned against Grandma’s legs.
“Grace went through a puddle on her bike and it splashed all over me.”
“Surely she didn’t do it on purpose?” Grandma asked gently.
Tilly harrumphed in disagreement.
“Aren’t you two as thick as thieves?” Grandma said.
“That was before, when we were just little. She has new friends now,” Tilly said. “She got onto the netball team, and only wants to be with those girls now. She sits with Ammara and Poppy every day.”
“Have I met Ammara and Poppy?” Grandma asked.
“No, they went to St. Enid’s, and they stick together all the time.”
“Well, why don’t you invite some of them round during the holiday?” Grandma suggested. “Get to know each other?”
“I don’t think they’d come,” Tilly said uncertainly. “They’re always whispering and giggling about something when I try to talk to them.”
“They might surprise you. You don’t know if you don’t ask,” Grandma said. “Be brave, Matilda. Be brave, be—”
“Be brave, be curious, be kind,” Tilly interrupted. “I know.”
“It’s what we always used to tell your mum growing up,” Grandma said.
“I just think being brave comes more naturally to some people than others,” Tilly said.
“Often it’s the things that don’t come naturally to us that are the most important,” Grandma said. “Now, why don’t you take off that wet uniform and have a shower? I’ll make you a hot chocolate to celebrate the start of the holidays.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later Tilly was clean and dry, her dark brown curls considerably less damp, wearing her own clothes, carrying two mugs of hot chocolate covered in whipped cream, one for her and one for her grandad. She pushed the kitchen door open with her back and reversed into the bookshop. Pages & Co. was Tilly’s favorite place in the world. From outside, on the busy north London high street, it looked like an entirely normal bookshop, but once inside it didn’t quite make sense how everything fit inside its ordinary walls.
The shop was made up of five floors of corners and cubbyholes, sofas and squashy armchairs, and a labyrinth of bookshelves heading off in different directions. A spiral staircase danced up one wall, and painted wooden ladders stretched up into difficult-to-reach corners. Tall arched windows made it feel a little like a churc
h when the light spilled in and dust motes danced in the air. When it was good weather the sun pooled on the floor and the bookshop cat—named Alice for her curious nature—could often be found dozing in the warmest spots. During the summer the big fireplace behind the till was filled to bursting with fresh flowers, but as it was October a fire was roaring there.
Tilly had never been very far outside London, but she felt like a seasoned traveler within the pages of books: she had raced across the rooftops of Paris, learned to ride a broomstick, and seen the northern lights from the deck of a ship. She had explored wonderlands and secret gardens with girls curious and contrary. She found books that led to long debates with Grandad over crumpets dripping with butter, and discovered stories that she read again and again until they shone far more brightly than the endless tests at school. She found friendships that seemed free of the complicated social rules at school. Tilly sometimes felt like there had been a lesson where friendship had been explained, but she’d been out sick and had never quite been able to catch up.
Grandad was behind the till, sorting through books that customers had ordered, matching receipts to titles and stacking them neatly, ready for collection. Tilly deposited the second mug of hot chocolate on the till, managing to avoid spilling most of it.
“Happy holidays, Tilly!” he said, clinking mugs with her. Grandad drank deeply and pretended, as he always did, that he didn’t know he had whipped cream on his top lip. “Got much homework?”
“I have to read a book I’ve never read before,” Tilly said, straight-faced.
“Goodness, sweetheart,” Grandad said with a grin. “You’d better crack on with that immediately, if you even have a hope of finishing in a week.”
Tilly giggled as she stuck a finger in her whipped cream, thinking of the pile of five books she had stacked next to her bed for her holiday reading.
“Ms. Webber did say that after the holidays we’d be starting a project about our favorite characters from books, and that if we wanted to get a head start on that we should think about who ours were. Who would you pick?”
“What a question,” Grandad said, licking the cream from his lip. “I must admit my gut instinct is pulling me toward Sherlock Holmes, but I’ll have to have a proper think and get back to you with my official answer. Now, other than your particularly arduous workload, what else do you have planned for the week? Is Grace coming over?”
“I don’t know why you and Grandma keep asking me about Grace,” Tilly said.
“Do we?” Grandad said, surprised. “Well, I thought she was your best friend?”
“I don’t have a best friend,” Tilly said firmly. “I’ve realized there isn’t anyone who’s best-friend material at school.”
“And what exactly makes someone best-friend material?” Grandad asked.
“Someone who sticks by you; someone who never gets bored of talking to you. Someone who’s adventurous, and clever, and brave, and funny . . .” Tilly said, checking her criteria off on her fingers. “Someone like Anne Shirley or Alice from Wonderland—those are my favorite characters, incidentally.” With very few exceptions Tilly found that she much preferred the company of characters in her books to most of the people she knew in real life.
“I’m not sure best friends are a one-size-fits-all sort of situation, Tilly,” Grandad said carefully. “Sometimes a person who becomes a friend is the least likely person you’d expect. Friends should bring out the best in you, not be the same as you. I’m sure you’re someone’s perfect fit.”
Tilly tried to imagine herself as the perfect fit for a potential best friend. But when she thought about herself too directly she felt sort of fuzzy round the edges, like a photograph that was blurred, and when she compared herself to the characters she met in books their ink and paper felt more real than her bones and skin.
“And, for now, you’ve always got me,” Grandad continued. “If you’re in the market for an elderly best friend with whiskers and a bookshop.”
“Exactly,” Tilly said, trying to erase all thoughts of hypothetical best friends from her mind. “I don’t need anyone who doesn’t live in Pages & Co.”
2
No One Has Proper Adventures in Real Life
The next morning Tilly woke up to the sound of rain and falling autumn leaves on her sloped skylight window. Rain meant quiet days in the shop as people stayed inside with only the odd group of bedraggled readers drying out in the café area, waiting for gaps in the downpour. She relished the school holidays with the familiar rhythms and rituals of the bookshop, and she savored every moment of her first-day-of-the-holidays routine: a chapter of a new book in bed while everything was quiet, getting dressed in anything that wasn’t a school uniform, a lazy breakfast of one of Grandad’s perfectly boiled eggs with toast soldiers.
“So, what’s the plan for today?” Grandma asked, handing Tilly a mug of milky tea.
“Reading, mainly,” Tilly said.
“Do you want to wander down to the woods with me later?” Grandad suggested. “Or I need to pop in to the florist’s and confirm all the flowers for the Wonderland party on Wednesday night—I could do with your eye for color. We’ve created a monster with this party, I sometimes think. Every year the customers and publishing folk seem to expect a more extravagant theme.”
Tilly shrugged.
“Do you ever wish,” she said, ignoring Grandad’s question and turning to her grandparents with a serious look on her face, “that you had a relatively good friend in mortal peril that you could go and rescue?”
“I can’t say that’s something I spend much time thinking about,” Grandma said, exchanging a look with Grandad across the table.
Tilly sighed. “I just wish there was something more exciting to do than go to the florist’s,” she said. “No one has proper adventures in real life.”
“If I didn’t want to get myself into hot water, I would say that someone who can’t find adventure in the woods is lacking in imagination,” Grandad said.
“You know what I mean.”
“I do, my dear, but it never hurts to keep a weather eye open for adventures, even small ones.”
“But for now,” Grandma said, “why don’t you stick with an adventure in a book, and if the rain ever stops, we can head out for a wander later.”
* * *
Tilly opened the door into the bookshop and went to find Jack, who looked after the snug café area that took up a corner of the ground floor. When she reached the mismatched collection of chairs and tables he was nowhere to be found, so she went to see if there were any cakes she could sample, but, just as she reached out for a gooey-looking chocolate brownie, Jack’s head popped over the counter.
“Aha! Caught red-handed!” he said.
“I was just looking,” Tilly said sheepishly, before registering the wide smile on his face. “Why do you have honey on your forehead?” she asked.
“I’m experimenting with pop cakes,” he said, holding up an ice-cube tray filled with sticky honey. “Remember in the Faraway Tree books by Enid Blyton? They eat those cakes that explode with honey when you bite into them? I’m going to freeze the honey so I can bake it in the middle of cupcakes. At least that’s the plan—the honey is proving a little, well, uncooperative.”
Jack, who was nineteen and saving up to go to pastry school in Paris, took his role as a bookshop baker very seriously and was always trying to re-create cakes and bakes from books. Tilly was under strict instructions to tell him whenever she came across a particularly tasty-sounding dish in a book she was reading. She had a suspicion he was using some of the new cookbooks for inspiration as well, as every once in a while she’d had to wipe off a smear of icing from a spine sticking out from a shelf, as though it had been put back in a hurry.
“Do you want some hot chocolate?” Jack offered as he manhandled the ice-cube tray into the tiny freezer section of the café fr
idge. “I’ll bring it up.”
Tilly nodded and grinned and then headed to her favorite reading corner on the first floor. Ten minutes later Jack sat down next to her, carefully holding a tray with two steaming mugs—and two brownies—on it. “If your grandparents notice me giving you brownies so soon after breakfast, just claim it’s a very important baking experiment for the party, okay?”
He nudged her arm. “What are you reading?”
Tilly showed him the book cover, which was blue and glittery.
“I’ve just started. It’s about mermaids and pirates and the ocean. It’s probably not your kind of thing.”
“Well, actually, Miss Tilly, I’ll have you know I have quite a penchant for books about pirates and the ocean,” he said. “But I like all sorts, really. I can’t resist books set in space, especially if they’ve got something weird going on, or a really good twist. And, if there’s some kind of intelligent robot, even better. Especially if it turns out to be evil. I know I should know this by now, but what are your favorites?”
“My two favorite books are Anne of Green Gables and Alice in Wonderland,” Tilly replied with a great deal of certainty. “Anne and Alice are my favorite characters.”
“Why do you like them so much then?”
She paused. “For lots of reasons, but I like them best because they seem real even when I’m not reading about them.”
“What do you mean by real?” Jack asked.
Tilly contemplated the question.
“Like, sometimes when I don’t know what to do I think about what Anne would do, or I find myself wanting to tell Alice about something I learned, and it takes a second before I remember they’re not real people I can just go and talk to.”
Jack smiled. “Often characters in books are considerably more consistent than the people around us. All that messy life stuff does rather get in the way. Speaking of,” he said, brushing crumbs off his apron as a tinny beep sounded through the shop, “my pop cakes are calling. Come and try one in a bit.”