by Anna James
Finally she pulled the photo out again and laid it on her bed before slipping a narrow album off her shelves. In the pages were a collection of photos her grandparents had let her collate that all featured her mum: as a child, with Grandma and Grandad, in the bookshop, even some in New York, where she had gone to university. The photos looked back at Tilly, a puddle of memories that weren’t hers.
Tilly felt like she was being wrapped in a heavy blanket that was comforting and suffocating at the same time. Her mum’s face looked up at her from too many photos all at once. When Tilly tried to picture her mum in her mind she felt like she was trying to imagine what a character in a book looks like. You think they’re standing right next to you, but as soon as you whirl round to look straight at them everything blurs and dissolves, and the harder you try to see them, the more flighty and unfocused they get until they barely resemble a real person at all.
She tried to calm her breathing down and tucked Mary’s photo into the album, before putting it on her bedside table. Then she took a deep breath and settled down to look at the box of books instead, which felt more manageable.
“Books are my thing,” she muttered to herself. “I can do books.”
She tried to blow the dust off the top of the box, but it worked rather less well than it did in films, so she wiped it with her sleeve. There wasn’t any other writing on the box apart from her mum’s name in blocky capitals. Tilly peeled back the rest of the barely sticky tape and pulled out the copy of A Little Princess. Underneath that was a dated-looking version of Anne of Green Gables, which she picked up, but she found herself just gazing at the cover, unable to open it. The top front corner was ripped off and she could see “Beatrice Pages” written on the first page in a child’s handwriting.
Tilly traced the lines of her mother’s writing with a fingertip, trying to picture her mum at her age carefully inking a little bit of herself onto the paper. Tilly felt as though there was a delicate thread stretched between her and her mother that she had only realized was there when this book had tugged on it. Grandad had always told her to write her name in her books, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that her mum did the same thing when she was little.
“It’s about creating a record of who’s read and loved each book,” he would say. Grandad was always hunting in charity shops for copies that had someone’s name in, or messages from people who had given books as presents. “I love thinking about other people reading the books I love, or why someone gave that book as a present—those names and messages are like tiny moments of time travel linking readers from different eras and families and even countries.”
Tilly wondered why her mother had cared for these books, for they were clearly very well loved. Tilly wanted to know if her mother had loved these characters for the same reasons she did. Had Anne Shirley made her mum laugh in the same places? She closed her eyes and imagined a parallel life where she could ask her, where she could go downstairs and find her at the kitchen table, chopping salad leaves with Grandad, or rubbing flour and butter together to make crumble topping with Grandma. Their house was always full of laughter and music and conversation, but Tilly could hear the silence where her mother should be, like an orchestra without a cello section.
She was pulled from her imagination by a gentle knock on the door, and Grandma popped her head round.
“Hi, sweetheart, how are you getting on? Grandad said you’d found a box of your mum’s books?”
Tilly nodded as Grandma stepped into the room and picked up the copy of A Little Princess. She held it to her chest like it contained a small part of her daughter in its pages. “I’m going to start thinking about dinner soon,” she said, still hugging the book tightly. “Do you want to come down and help close the shop up beforehand? It’s a bit chilly up here.”
Tilly nodded and followed Grandma downstairs. And, even though she knew the kitchen would be empty, she couldn’t help but picture opening the door to her mother. But as she went in and felt the warmth of the room envelop her she rooted herself once again in the present.
Later that evening, over a meal of chicken roasted with garlic and lemons and rosemary, with crusty bread and green beans, Tilly felt the hard gem of her sadness thaw a little, leaving questions as it melted.
“Do you know what sort of books my dad liked?” she asked, and Grandad seemed to choke a little on a mouthful of bread.
“I’m afraid not,” Grandma said as she patted Grandad on the back. “We didn’t really know him very well at all.”
“Do you think my mum would have known his favorite books?” Tilly asked.
“I’m sure she did,” Grandma said. “I’m sure they talked about books along with everything else you talk to the person you love about.”
“Why don’t we have any photos of him?”
“Well, for the same reason that we don’t know what his favorite books were: we just didn’t get to spend any time with him before he died.”
“Do you think Mum left because my dad died?”
“Oh, my love,” Grandma said. “‘I don’t know’ is the honest answer. I’m not going to pretend to you that it didn’t break her heart not being able to be with your father for longer, or that she didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about how things might have worked out differently. But then she had you, and she had a little bit of him back again, and that’s part of the reason you were so precious to her.”
“I wonder which bits of me are from him?” Tilly said.
Grandad smiled. “Well, you didn’t get your hair or your height from us. Although I have a sneaking suspicion that you might have inherited your literary tastes from our side of the family.”
“But, Tilly,” Grandma said, “you may have a bit of him and a bit of her and a bit of us all mixed in there, but the best bits of you are all your own, that much I know. Now. Whose turn is it to do the washing-up?”
* * *
When Tilly had been small she had read with Grandad every night before she went to bed. Every evening after dinner, Tilly and Grandad would curl up on the big, squishy sofa in front of the fireplace, and Grandad would read aloud a chapter or two of whichever book they were engrossed in. Together they had gone sailing with the Swallows and Amazons, met the witches of Miss Cackle’s Academy, and visited worlds balanced on the backs of elephants.
As Tilly got older the tradition had gradually faded; first they started reading their own books next to each other, exploring vast and separate worlds while sitting side by side, and then Tilly had started taking her books up to bed to read, and before she knew it, and without anyone making a particular decision about it, they didn’t read together anymore.
Later that evening, with her mum’s copy of Anne of Green Gables still closed, Tilly crawled out of bed and crept back downstairs. Her grandma was reading with a cup of tea at the kitchen table and looked up when Tilly came in. Seeing the book in Tilly’s hand, she just smiled and went back to her own. Tilly pushed the door to the shop open and saw Grandad on the sofa, lit up by the flickering light of the fire. She crawled up beside him and put her mum’s copy of the book on his knee. Without saying anything he put his arm round her, and when Grandma came through with three mugs of hot chocolate he put his own book down and began to read.
4
Somewhere Adventures Live
The next morning Tilly was sitting at the kitchen table, reading her mum’s copy of Anne of Green Gables, when Grandad popped his head round the bookshop door. He came and gave Grandma a kiss on the cheek as she simmered gooseberries on the stove, singing under her breath along with the radio.
“Oskar’s here,” he said to Tilly, smiling. “He said you’d promised to help him find a book.”
“Oh, I didn’t think he’d come,” Tilly said, putting a bookmark carefully in her mum’s book and placing it well out of reach of the sticky gooseberries. She headed into the shop and saw Oskar wandering b
etween the bookshelves, trailing his fingertips along the spines of the books. Tilly watched him soak up the atmosphere of the shop for a moment.
“Have you never been here before?” she asked, making Oskar jump a little.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” he said sheepishly. “And yes, of course I’ve been in before; it’s where Mum gets all her Christmas presents. But I’d forgotten how . . .” He paused.
“Magical?” Tilly suggested. “Exciting? Beautiful?”
“Yes, but that’s not what I mean. It’s not what it looks like, it’s how it makes you feel, isn’t it? Is there a word that means somewhere adventures live?”
“I don’t think so, but there should be,” Tilly said.
“But anyway,” Oskar said, collecting himself, “it’s cool, is what I mean. But I haven’t been in for ages. I’m not up this way that much. We have someone else who looks after the café on weekends, and I usually spend the school holidays with my dad.”
“Where does your dad live?”
“In Paris, with my big sister, Emilie.”
“Oh wow, I thought you were going to say south London or something,” Tilly said. “It must be amazing to get to spend the holidays there. I’ve never even been outside of England.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Oskar said. “Paris is pretty cool, but Dad got remarried last summer and Marguerite’s really nice, but now it kind of feels like I’m visiting someone else’s home when I’m there. And Emilie is always out with her friends, so I decided not to go this holiday.”
“How come Emilie lives with your dad?” Tilly asked.
“She decided to go to college there,” Oskar explained. “She wants to be fluent in French so she can get into university there too. Her boyfriend lives in Paris.”
“Do you miss them?” Tilly asked.
“Yeah, I guess. I don’t know. I miss my sister more than my dad, I think. Sometimes it feels like I’m in the way when I’m there. Not that I’m not wanted, but that it would be easier if I weren’t there.” Oskar paused. “Do you miss your parents?” he asked quietly, as though he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to talk about them.
“Mostly it’s almost fine,” said Tilly, surprising herself at how comfortable she felt talking to Oskar honestly, “but every so often I can feel the gap where they should be. It’s not like that all the time, but I’m always aware of it a little bit.”
“What happened to them?” Oskar asked, still looking at his feet.
“My dad got ill and died. I don’t know many of the details. He had to go abroad for work; he got ill; he died before he could get home. We don’t really know what happened to my mum. She left really soon after I was born without telling Grandma and Grandad or anyone where she was going, and she never came back. We haven’t heard from her since.”
“Whoa, that’s like something from a TV show,” Oskar said, before stopping. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . . It must be horrible. Do you really not know anything?”
Tilly shrugged. “She didn’t leave a note or anything. The police think that maybe she had postpartum depression and she ran away and is living a completely new life somewhere else. They said she might try to make contact at some point, but that I shouldn’t get my hopes up.”
“Do you think about your parents a lot?”
“Kind of. It’s funny because I can’t remember them at all, so it’s hard to miss them or feel sad about them in a very specific way. It’s like feeling sad that you never had a diamond ring, or a unicorn. I feel sad about the idea of them, and knowing that they’re not here, and I hate that I don’t understand why Mum left—but I don’t really have any memories of them as real people. I have this, though.” Tilly pulled out her necklace from under her jumper and showed Oskar. The small gold bee was no bigger than the nail on Tilly’s thumb.
“Was that your mum’s?” Oskar asked.
“No, it’s mine but she had one just the same. Hers was a present from my dad and when I was born she had one made for me too.” Tilly tucked it back into her jumper.
The shop phone suddenly started ringing and made them both jump.
“Anyway, I’ve never really told anyone else about all of that,” Tilly said a little awkwardly.
“I’m glad—” Oskar started, but Tilly cut him off.
“Let’s find a book for English. I need a new one too.”
Oskar nodded and followed her up the stairs to the children’s floor. Tilly picked out a pile of books for Oskar that she knew were printed on a different kind of paper that made it easier for people with dyslexia to read and placed them in front of him with a flourish.
While Oskar flicked through them, she went to find A Little Princess and realized the shop stocked several different editions. She looked through some of the different covers, wishing she’d had the chance to talk to her mum about the book. She was sliding the various editions back onto the shelf when, after careful consideration, Oskar settled on a slim book with a black cover and a creepy illustration on the front.
They took it downstairs, where Grandad put it in a canvas tote bag stamped with the Pages & Co. logo and refused to let Oskar pay for it.
“It’s a pleasure to have you in Pages & Co.,” Grandad said. “Special offer for friends of the shop.”
Oskar thanked Grandad and gave Tilly an awkward half-wave before making his way back across the road to Crumbs.
Tilly headed upstairs to her reading nook, but when she turned the corner she saw that her sofa was already occupied by a girl with red pigtails. She looked up at Tilly as she approached and sighed dramatically.
“I know what you must be thinking,” she said in an accent that Tilly couldn’t place. “You’re thinking what a dreadful burden it must be for a girl who is already so skinny to be forced to endure red hair as well.”
“I wasn’t thinking that at all,” Tilly said. “I was just wondering what you were doing on my sofa?”
“I’m so awfully sorry,” the girl said, jumping up and haphazardly straightening the cushions, “I didn’t know it was yours.”
“I mean, it’s not really,” Tilly said, realizing that she must have seemed rude. “It’s just where I like to sit and read, and you surprised me. I hadn’t noticed you when I was up here with my fri—with a boy from school.”
“Oh, I know that feeling,” the girl said, smiling broadly. “I have a tree that is laden with the most beautiful, sweet-smelling, pale pink blossoms that I like to read under.” The girl’s face suddenly morphed into a look of horror. “But can you ever forgive me?”
“Forgive you for what?” Tilly said, thoroughly flummoxed at the change in tone.
“My horrible manners. I haven’t even introduced myself. My name is Anne. With an ‘e.’”
“With an ‘e’?” Tilly repeated hazily.
“Yes, the ‘e’ is ever so important. People are always telling me that the name is much the same with or without the ‘e,’ but I think those people are severely lacking in imagination. How could you ever think that Ann without an ‘e’ was the same as Anne with an ‘e’? It’s like saying . . . Why, it’s like saying that dessert is the same as desert! But there I go again with my terrible manners. I haven’t even asked what your name is. Oh, wait! Let me guess, you look like . . . an Emmeline, or maybe a Penelope. Or Cordelia?” she added, sounding hopeful.
“It’s just Tilly, I’m afraid. Short for Matilda, Matilda Pages.”
“Why, that is a lovely name and I am quite envious,” Anne said, looking entirely delighted. “I’m so thrilled to meet you.”
“Are you looking for a book?” Tilly asked.
“That sounds wonderful, thank you!” Anne said. “Autumn is the most magical time of the year for reading, don’t you think?” She gestured toward the window, which framed only drizzle and gray skies, but Anne reacted as though she could see auburn leaves tumbling in the wind. “O
ctober is my absolute favorite month. And to read outside, with the sun dappling . . . Do you think dappling is a real word, Tilly? I think it must be, don’t you? With the sun dappling the leaves of a tree, a glass of raspberry cordial at hand . . .” She tailed off, staring dreamily into nothing.
Tilly began to find the silence a little awkward, but struggled to think of something to say and so returned to her fail-safe question. “What’s your favorite story?” she asked, jerking Anne out of her autumnal daydreams.
“Do stories you’ve made up yourself count?” asked Anne.
“I don’t think so,” said Tilly. “I think they have to be, well, proper stories, like in a book.”
“A story you’ve made up yourself is just as proper, don’t you think? Although I suppose it is harder to share with other people unless it’s written down. But I do love telling stories out loud as well. My friend Diana and I have a club where we read each other our stories and offer helpful advice on how to improve as writers. I must say, though, the advice is mainly one-way. Poor Diana, she doesn’t have much of an imagination, although I love her fiercely regardless. I daresay it is good for my soul to be bosom friends with a girl who is so lacking in imaginative powers.”
The mention of a friend named Diana made Tilly’s brain itch; something about this girl was so familiar.
“But, anyway, it must depend on what the purpose of your story is, I suppose,” Anne concluded, and looked up triumphantly.
Tilly nodded supportively, although she wasn’t really very sure what Anne’s point was.
“Do you know,” Tilly started, glancing down at the book in her hand, “you do remind me of—” But she was interrupted by a harried-looking man who came up behind them and tapped Tilly on the shoulder imperiously.
“Excuse me, young lady, I need to pay for this immediately. Do you work here?” He was holding a very thick business textbook.