He blinks like he was lost in a daydream and suddenly startles and pushes himself upright and pulls his arm away from mine. ‘I’m going to grab Pentamerone and make it look like I’m working, but really I’m thinking up inspirational quotes and literary images to put on greeting cards.’
He’s almost bouncing as he disappears into the shelves, and I can’t help smiling at his enthusiasm. I’ll be so proud to have any of his work on display here.
Customers start to trickle in and the sale table is quickly emptied, and the cash in the till has started to add up from lots of cheap books being sold, as opposed to few expensive ones.
Every time I look up from serving someone, I look over at Dimitri, and every time he looks up at the exact same moment and meets my eyes, and we smile at each other across the shop, and there’s something so calming about his presence. I never did very well in shop floor jobs because I got too flustered when there was a queue. One time on the checkout at a DIY shop, a young couple in a hurry came up with forty tester pots of paint, and I had to scan every one of them individually while the man shouted at me to scan one and alter the quantity. While I was trying to explain they were all different brands and different prices, another man with a large trolley full of plants joined the queue and started loudly telling everyone how much of a rush he was in, and then another woman with an armful of wallpaper came along and told him to shut up by saying, ‘Don’t rush the poor girl, she’s obviously new.’ I’d been working there for over a year, but I got so flustered with all of them watching me that my hand jerked and I knocked over a tester pot and, like dominoes, the whole lot went sliding onto the floor and smashed into an impressive number of pieces. I got fired, but all those shades of purple and blue made it the prettiest accident anyone had ever seen.
Maybe it’s because it’s a bookshop and things are naturally calm here. Or maybe it’s because I know Dimitri’s over there, silent support, and if things are busy, I have no doubt he’d jump in to help.
Apart from the customers who take random books from the shelves, wave them in the air to get my attention, and then call, ‘Is this one on sale, love?’ despite the fact there’s a very clear notice on the sale table saying only books on this table are included, it’s a good and busy day, but for once I’m counting down the hours until closing time, until Dimitri and I are alone again and taking stock of books and what other messages we might find.
Chapter 7
‘What is this again?’ I push my fork through the unidentifiable goop on my plate.
‘Lasagne.’ Mum says it like it’s obvious.
It is not obvious. I have strong doubts about it being lasagne. And about it being edible.
Nicole and I share a glance. It’s an unwanted reminder of every childhood teatime we shared. There are probably some benefits to living near your mum, but her cooking isn’t one of them.
‘Mum, you didn’t use a pouch with “Whiskers” written on it, did you?’
Mum thwacks my sister good-naturedly with a tea towel. None of us are under any delusions about her cooking abilities, but at least she hasn’t given up trying. That’s what she always says anyway. Nicole and I wish she’d given it up about thirty years ago.
Bobby’s working late, so Mum forced me to come over to Nicole’s for a family tea. Actually she coerced me with promises of getting a takeaway. We do not have a takeaway.
I decide to be brave and try a bit of the goop. Isn’t there supposed to be pasta in a lasagne? If there is, God knows where she’s put it. One of my mum’s favourite time-saving cooking tricks is to remove vital ingredients that take too long. Nicole and I spent our childhood being given ‘macaroni cheese without all that fuss about a cheese sauce’ so we just had the macaroni with a bit of cheese grated on top. Fish finger sandwiches without the fingers – tuna between two slices of bread – and Cottage Pie with a box of Micro Chips ‘to save all the fuss of mashing potatoes for the topping’.
‘I cut up some pasta bows and stirred them in,’ Mum says. ‘Save all that bother with those lasagne sheets.’
Nicole gags. My teeth crunch on a bit of the pasta – it’s a shame she didn’t think to cook the pasta bows before she added them to the goop.
I could be eating cookies with Dimitri right now. He was all set to stay and do more of the stock take and hunting for dedications, and he seemed so disappointed when I said I had to go out instead, and I keep thinking about him. Should I have invited him? Mum wouldn’t have minded even though it was supposed to be a family dinner. Oh, who am I kidding? Minded? My mum would be dancing down the street if I brought a man to dinner. She’d have got her megaphone out to announce it and started selling tickets to the neighbours to come and witness this rare event.
What am I thinking? This goop is addling my brain. I could never, ever bring Dimitri to meet my mum. He’s my age and he’s single. She’d have him in handcuffs and signing a marriage register within three minutes of opening the door. No, scratch that, she’d never let us get as far as opening the door – she’d have met us at the end of the street with a wedding dress and two rings.
‘Now tell me all about this job.’ Mum shovels goop into her mouth, clearly having lost all her taste buds over the years of terrible cookery. ‘Have you met anyone yet?’
‘A lovely woman stopped for a chat yesterday. She’d read all of Marian Keyes’ backlist and wanted something similar. We chatted for ages and she bought a selection of Cecelia Ahern, Sophie Kinsella, and Jojo Moyes. And I recommended one of my favourite books – See Jane Date by Melissa Senate – and she bought our only copy and promised to come back and let me know what she thought. It was great to chat to someone who likes the same kind of books as me,’ I say, knowing full well that she means anyone of the male persuasion.
‘If you’re not careful, I’m going to make you dessert as well.’ She tries to glare at me, but using her cooking as a threat always makes us laugh. ‘You know what I meant, Hallie.’
‘No, I haven’t met anyone.’ It’s not exactly a lie. I can’t tell her about Dimitri. She will literally move into the shop and hassle him for every minute of every day. And it’s not like there’s anything between us anyway. He’s just a friend. A very lovely, very hot friend. With the best smile I’ve ever seen, eyes that brighten up any room, and quite possibly the sexiest naked back in the universe. If sexy backs are a thing … Oh God, I have to stop thinking about him.
‘Well, have you at least updated your occupation on all the dating sites to “business owner”? It sounds much better, you know.’
‘I’m not on any dating sites.’
‘No, but I’m on them for you. You get a lot of potential matches. And a lot of unsolicited photos of nether regions.’
‘Mum! You can’t be looking at dick pics on my behalf.’
‘You’re welcome to look at them yourself. If you’d run your own accounts on these sites …’
I sigh because I’ve told her I’m not interested a million times, in dating or dick pics, especially dating men who send dick pics, but she won’t have it.
‘I just like to point and laugh,’ she continues. ‘The ladies in my knitting group pass my phone around and we all have a good giggle about it. None of us can understand why it’s the men with the smallest appendages who seem the most keen to take photos of them.’
‘Mum!’ I groan again.
‘We’re thinking of knitting a selection of willy warmers to send them for Christmas. The poor chaps must be freezing with all that whipping it out so often.’
Nicole’s choking on her ‘lasagne’ – air quotes audible – and I’ve given up on trying to figure out if Mum’s serious or not.
‘Maybe it’s a good thing anyway,’ Mum carries on.
‘The dick pics?’ Nicole and I pull a face at each other.
‘You working in the shop, silly.’
‘Because I love books and I love that shop and owning it is an actual dream come true?’ I say hopefully, because I know she’ll mean it in some
romance-skewed way.
‘Oh, well, that too, I suppose.’ She sighs, like the books are a pesky afterthought spoiling her plans. ‘But when you get men in looking for relationship books, you can ask them out. Save them the trouble of self-help books in the first place. You should move the relationship self-help section to right near the counter so you have a good view of any potential matches. Just think, if you were to fall madly in love, they wouldn’t even need to buy the book, so it’d be a great money-saving measure as well.’
Great. Just what you want to be to a potential partner – a money-saver. ‘Well, it’s a good job that my purpose is to sell books then, isn’t it?’
‘You could sell them something else.’
‘The Kama Sutra?’ Nicole offers. ‘How To Please A Woman In Bed? Fifty Shades of Grey?’
‘Ooh, I’ve got a great chat-up line for you.’ Mum clears her throat. ‘Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and I’m free at eight o’clock.’ She winks at me and continues before I have a chance to protest. ‘You have been doing your hair and make-up every day, haven’t you? It won’t do to be scruffy – you never know who could come in. A handsome tourist, a millionaire after some old rare edition, a single—’
‘Someone who’s not so shallow that they can’t see beyond my hair and brand of foundation?’ I say to distract her from the fact that far from appearing on the shop floor poised and primped every morning, it’s a rare occurrence that I manage to get down there fully dressed, and I should mark it on the calendar as a special occasion if I’ve managed to run a brush through my hair too.
She sighs again at the tone in my voice. ‘I wouldn’t keep going on about it if you gave some of the dates I do find for you a chance. What was wrong with that nice gynaecologist I set you up with?’
‘He wasn’t a gynaecologist. He was a gynaecological cosmetic surgeon and he spent the entire date listing all the ways he could make me look better down there. When the waitress came over, he offered her a twenty-per-cent off voucher, and then over dessert, he finished off with a rousing top ten list of the best vaginas he’d ever seen. And I’d ordered the banana split, which suddenly looked a lot less appetising in the way it was, you know, split down the middle with a lot of cream in it and red fruit around the edge. They have vaginal overtones at the best of times and his monologue didn’t help the situation. Any man who can spoil dessert is not for me.’
‘Were you more upset about that or about the fact that he didn’t offer you a twenty-per-cent off voucher?’ Nicole asks. ‘Maybe he thought you’d need so much nipping and tucking that he couldn’t possibly afford the discount.’
I poke my tongue out at her. ‘Oh believe me, across the table of the pub was the closest he was getting to any part of me, especially that part. The only thing in his favour was that he was marginally better than that undertaker Mum set me up with.’
‘It’s a perfectly respectable job,’ Mum scolds.
‘Oh, I know it is, but he spent the entire date trying to sell me a funeral plan.’
‘He was only trying to plan ahead.’
‘Funnily enough, I don’t want to spend a first date planning ahead to my death. It was morbid, and made me wonder what he had in store for me if he was so certain I’d be imminently dead.’ I drop my head into my hands. ‘Why am I talking like I voluntarily went on dates with these men? I worked in the pub and you sent them in to ambush me, and you had a deal with my manager so he’d make me sit down with them while I was still on shift so I couldn’t get away.’ God knows how she bribed him with jars of her home-made apple jam, which is just about the only thing she’s ever made that hasn’t poisoned someone. It’s the amount of brandy in it that gets people drunk on one slathering across a piece of toast that makes it so popular, I reckon.
‘What about that lovely dentist I set you up with?’
‘You didn’t set me up with him, Mum, I went for my six-monthly check-up.’
‘Yes, but I’d been the week before and confirmed he was going through a divorce. I mentioned you were single and he mumbled something about a conflict of interest in dating patients, but obstacles can be overcome in the face of true love. All you had to do was ask him out. You could always have started going to another dentist.’
‘It’d be easier to get a seat on the next space shuttle to the moon than it would to get a new dentist these days,’ I mutter.
‘Well, a visit to the moon is about as realistic as all those silly romance books you read. They’ve given you unrealistic expectations when it comes to real men.’
I groan and put my hands over my ears. ‘Oh, not this again.’
‘I’m just saying that not all men are going to be handsome, rich, and brooding like Mr Darcy. They’re not all going to sweep you off your feet, or lend you money for nice scarves like Luke Brandon. They won’t always leave you vast amounts of money and trips to Paris like Will Traynor, or notes from beyond the grave like that handsome Gerard Butler in the film of P.S. I Love You. Sometimes eyes don’t meet across a crowded room and spotlights don’t illuminate each other while stars glitter and angels sing. You can’t expect that—’
‘I don’t expect that.’ I don’t know why I’m bothering – I’ve already said it 8,954 times in the past couple of years. She didn’t listen any of the other times, so I don’t know why today would be any different.
‘You expect men to behave like characters in books.’
‘No, I wish men behaved like characters in books. They don’t – that’s the problem. It doesn’t mean I’ve got unrealistic expectations – it means I don’t want to date a guy who wants to do cosmetic surgery on my hoohaa or a funeral director who’s planning to murder me. Most of the men you sent into the pub seemed to want to be anywhere but there and definitely wanted to look at women who were anyone but me. I can only imagine the amount of gossip you must know about people to have blackmailed them into it in the first place.’
‘I only had to show them a picture. That nice one of you at Nicole and Bobby’s wedding. You look quite pretty when you do your make-up and leave your hair down.’
‘Last time I left my hair down, I accidentally got too close to a candle and set myself on fire!’ I glare at them both for laughing. It wasn’t funny at the time. Well, not until afterwards. When I’d cut the singed hair off. ‘And are you seriously going around showing random men my photo? I’m surprised you haven’t stuck up posters on every lamppost with those tear-off strips on the bottom saying “ring this number if you’d date my daughter”.’
Mum sits up straighter like this is the best idea she’s ever heard.
‘Mum, no!’ I say quickly while Nicole doubles over with laughter. ‘And you …’ I turn to my sister. ‘You can get that photo off her. No wonder she’s attracting lunatics. I’m wearing a bridesmaid’s dress and clutching your bouquet with a slightly deranged look on my face after too much Prosecco at the reception. I look like some kind of desperate Bridezilla!’
‘Are you kidding? Mum trying to find you a boyfriend is the best entertainment I get all week. It’s not as much fun now you don’t work in the pub and get coerced into actual dates with them though. What’s she going to do now – send them in to buy a book?’
‘Oh, now that’s—’
‘No!’ Nicole and I both say in unison.
‘No more dates, Mum, please. No more single men. No more photographs of me. No more online dating sites. I don’t have unrealistic expectations. If anything, my expectations are too realistic in that every relationship I’ve ever had has been an unmitigated disaster at worst and a crushing disappointment at best. Something always goes wrong. And enough things go wrong for me alone; I don’t need to strike someone else down with my bad luck too. Besides, I have the shop now, I need to concentrate on that, not on men.’
She mutters something about too many romance books.
‘And speaking of romance books, I’d better be getting back.’ I push my chair out and look down at the three-quarters full plate of �
��lasagne’ left on the table. ‘That was, er, delicious, as always.’ My stomach lets out a loud rumble to contradict my lie, either because it’s still hungry or because it’s threatening to object to the few spoonfuls I did eat.
At least I pass a chip shop on the way home.
‘Oh, don’t go yet,’ Nicole says. ‘She’ll start on me about when Bobby and I intend to have a baby if she hasn’t got your love life to keep her occupied.’
No wonder she was so keen for me to come over tonight. With Mum living in her own annex at the bottom of their garden, Nicole and Bobby are under her constant scrutiny and subject to each new recipe experimentation.
‘I’m only trying to help you both.’ Mum pushes her bottom lip out. ‘I’m a good matchmaker and I’d make an excellent grandmother, and I live here so you’d have free childcare on tap!’
Nicole rolls her eyes like she’s heard that argument as many times as I’ve heard about my unrealistic expectations from reading too many romances.
‘Why are you so eager to get away anyway?’ she asks me. ‘You’ve only been here an hour, and there’s chocolate cake for afters. Shop-bought!’ she adds quickly, making us all dissolve into giggles again.
I push the ‘lasagne’ away and sit down again, unable to resist the temptation of cake. Why am I so eager to get back anyway? It’s not like Dimitri’s still going to be there. It’s just me, going through books on my own, which has become a far less attractive prospect without him there to help. I suppose I could tackle some of the boxes in the flat that I still haven’t unpacked because spending my evenings sorting books with Dimitri has been a far more attractive prospect, but if it’s a choice between boxes and cake, the cake wins every time.
‘We’ve found messages,’ I say when Mum’s sat back down after serving up a suitably big slice each and covered it with extra cream to make up for the lasagne disaster.
Mum’s ears prick up. ‘Who’s we?’
The Little Bookshop of Love Stories: A gorgeous feel good romance to escape with this summer! Page 14