Trust her to pick up on the important parts of a sentence. ‘Me and the goldfish. Heathcliff.’
She looks sceptical. In all fairness, Heathcliff isn’t exactly pulling his weight in terms of shop chores, but he’s a big hit with customers. Kids love watching him, especially at feeding time. ‘Are you sure there’s not a man waiting for you?’
‘Why would there be a man waiting for me? That’s ludicrous. As if. And even if there was, it’s nearly eight o’clock – the shop’s shut.’
‘What messages?’ Nicole asks, getting us back on track.
I tell her about the notes inside books and the unusual amount of books with dedications written inside their opening pages. By the time I’ve finished gushing about how romantic some of the messages are, she looks like she’s about to fall asleep.
‘No maps marking out buried treasure? Because that would be cool. And useful.’ She sounds unimpressed by my tales of sharing love and romance through reading. ‘None of them signed by authors or special editions or anything? You could make a bit of money out of those.’
Typical Nicole. ‘It’s not about making money. These books are special. I want to know where they came from, who wrote them and who they gave them to. They meant a lot to someone once – both giver and receiver.’
‘Well, clearly not that much or they’d still be on their own bookshelves, wouldn’t they? Not lounging about in some mouldy shop.’
‘My shop’s not mouldy!’
Mum interrupts before I can protest any further. ‘You should track some of these men down and see if they’re single. I mean, that Esme one – if she didn’t want him, you’ll have him. He likes Les Mis, and so do you, so you’ll have something in common – what more do you want?’
‘Well, firstly, I want their relationship to still be going strong and happy. Secondly, we have no idea what year that was written in. All we can decipher is that it’s in biro so it was sometime after the invention of the biro pen. The mystery Sylvester could be dead by now. He could be ninety years old. And thirdly, what makes you think I’m so desperate that I’m going to track down some random man who once wrote in a book and throw myself at him? Whoever or wherever he is – I don’t want him, I want him and Esme to have lived a long and happy life together.’
I try not to get annoyed, but I just want someone to get it. Like Dimitri does. All right, he was a bit disbelieving at first, but since we found that note written by his mum, he’s been getting as involved as me. We’ve checked every copy of every Virginia Andrews book in the shop – there was nothing, but both of us have still been opening every book with a fizz of excitement, hoping for some mysterious message from some random stranger across the decades.
I should have known Mum and Nicole were not the people to understand that.
Books are magical in that they can transport you to another time and place, introduce you to people you come to know as friends, in both characters, authors, and now in real people who, at some point in their lives, have chosen each book as carefully selected gifts for someone they cared about. My family will never understand that books contain whole worlds to get lost inside, like the people who wrote those messages knew and wanted to give that gift to someone else. And I want to know more about them.
Chapter 8
‘Will you marry me?’
‘Well, I’m flattered, but …’ Dimitri fans a hand in front of his face like he’s about to swoon. ‘This is so unexpected. It’s all moving so fast.’
‘Not you, you idiot.’
He grins at the affectionate insult as I hold the copy of Jane Eyre up and tap the cover page. ‘Someone proposed in the book.’
‘Wow.’ He comes over to take it out of my hands and his glasses fall down as he looks at the neat writing. ‘Do you think she said yes? Or he, seeing as there’s no clue about who actually wrote it?’
‘Hopefully. I mean if you love books, maybe this book in particular …’ I reach across and close the book in his hands, running my fingers down the front of the pink cover with a woman’s silhouette on it. ‘Whoever it was must’ve chosen this book for a reason. Maybe it was her favourite, or his; it must have been significant. You wouldn’t propose in a random book, would you? And for someone to go to this much effort … Of course they said yes.’
‘Why is it here then?’
I stop mid-cover-stroke. ‘You mean, why isn’t it still lovingly ensconced on their family bookshelf where the happy couple get it out every so often and reminisce about how wonderful their relationship has always been and maybe show it to a few precious munchkins while a handsome dog looks on from a furry rug in front of the hearth?’
‘Something like that.’ He laughs. ‘You’ve got to admit it’s the kind of thing you’d keep. Unless you’d split up and hated each other.’
‘And you’re meant to be the cheery, optimistic one between us.’
‘I’m realistic when it comes to love.’
‘There are plenty of reasons it could have ended up here unintentionally.’
He raises an eyebrow and crosses his arms, clearly waiting for an answer.
‘It could have got lost in a house move,’ I say.
‘When they moved to a bigger house to accommodate their growing brood of treasured moppets and handsome dogs?’
‘Exactly! Or some well-meaning friend could have sorted their bookshelves for them and chucked it without knowing its significance.’
‘Maybe one of them was reading it as they drove along the motorway with the window open, and whoosh, a gust of wind rips it out of their hand, never to be seen again. Or maybe it was pilfered by a particularly well-read squirrel.’
I narrow my eyes at him for the sarcasm. ‘Maybe they took it to the wedding to share this incredibly romantic proposal with all their friends and it got left behind at the venue.’
‘Do you really think it’s romantic?’
‘Of course.’ I answer like it’s a trick question. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Well, it’s a bit impersonal, isn’t it? He hasn’t even written her name or signed it or anything. There are no sweeping declarations of love, not even a paltry “I love you”. It’s so generic that you could use it to propose to the milkman, and if he turned you down, you could have a crack at the postman instead.’ He thinks about this for a moment. ‘Although why anybody’d be proposing to all these random men who bring things to your house is a bit weird … I think I might have got off track here. Besides, if it’s her favourite book, she’s undoubtedly already got a copy, so he should’ve kept the money he wasted on another copy and put it towards a nice meal out and got down on one knee in the traditional way.’
I giggle at his rambling reasoning, but despite my reluctance to believe that a proposal in a book could have ended anything but happily, he’s got a point. Well, maybe not about the milkman and the postman, and some people aren’t naturally wordy, like this straight-to-the-point proposer, but this is the sort of thing you’d hang on to for sentimental reasons, unless the proposee said no or the marriage wasn’t a happy one.
I sigh and put a tiny little heart sticker on the base of the spine – my new method of marking out which ones have messages inside them – while Dimitri enters it into the laptop in the office. I can’t take them all off the shop floor but I can’t lose track of which ones have got something written in them. They feel important, special somehow, like I might need to find them again one day.
The books with messages hidden inside their covers are endless, and in the past few days of looking, we’ve found everything from well wishes to family recipes to declarations of love. I’m desperate to know where Robert got his second-hand books and if he knew that quite so many of them had words inside, but something tells me this is no accident. Dimitri keeps saying that Robert loved finding old messages inside used books, and I know from my own experience that he preferred second-hand books to new ones because of the life each book had had before it reached him. He liked books that had been passed around, their st
ories shared between friends and families, and often talked about it when I came in and he had his latest delivery spread across the counter while he priced them up.
Dimitri hands Jane Eyre back to me. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure there are plenty of reasons their proposal book could’ve been thrown away and they’re too busy living happily ever after to notice.’ He says it with the same tone he’d use to suggest the Loch Ness Monster was thinking of setting up a nest on the roof terrace, but I appreciate his attempt to humour me.
Instead of the waistcoat today, he’s wearing jeans and a grey T-shirt with a pair of brightly striped braces across his shoulders, although they seem to be solely for decorative purposes and don’t appear to be bracing anything as his jeans are held up perfectly well by a belt. My eyes have wandered to Dimitri’s lower half again, and it’s not good. Heathcliff can get away with it; I cannot.
It’s two minutes to nine, so I go over and open the door. The sun is shining and the fountain is burbling away across the street. The flowers in the hanging baskets are starting to trail over the edges and the gentle breeze rustles their green leaves. I prop the door open to make it more welcoming and go back across to the counter. There’s a stack of books with messages in them piled up at one side, an open Tupperware container of coconut lemon bars and a cup of coffee each, which he risked buying again even after the disaster last week.
‘These are so good.’ I pop one of the small rectangular bars into my mouth.
He doesn’t look up from the book he’s scanning through, but a smile spreads across his face as he pushes his glasses back up his nose for the fortieth time, and I love how much he loves other people enjoying his baking.
‘Nothing in that one.’ He closes the book and puts it back on its rightful shelf. The reorganisation of the shelves is a long and arduous process, far worse than I thought it would be because there are simply so many books to move around, and rarely space to put them in the right places and nowhere to put the ones we’ve taken out. And there’s the small matter of how we keep getting waylaid by the messages scrawled inside covers and on title pages.
‘Yeah, but look at this.’ I pull one of the books off the pile beside me and open it, leaning on the counter to flick through the copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The words inside look like they were written in quill and ink, and it’s the kind of fancy handwriting that you’d expect to see in a letter closed with a wax seal. I read the message aloud. ‘Remember what I promised you. ~ Reginald.’
Dimitri leans across the counter from the other side and reads it upside down. ‘Hmm. Vaguely threatening.’
I smack at his arm and he grins and takes another coconut lemon bar from the container before he moves his coffee out of the way, turns around and hoists himself up to sit on the counter, and I like how at ease he is here. His back is facing me and he leans back on his hands so he can see the book from my angle and I push it forwards and lean further across so my shoulder is touching his side.
‘It’s old. The writing and the book,’ I say. This edition is from the 1930s, and the ink is faded and the page edges are brown with age, the clothbound green cover threadbare and frayed.
‘It’s crazy how much I want to know what this means.’ He picks up his coffee cup again and sips it. ‘Who is Reginald? What did he promise? Who did he promise? Was it a promise or a threat?’
‘Oh, come on. Look at his handwriting. It’s like something out of The Phantom of the Opera.’ I nudge my shoulder into him, nearly making him spill his coffee. ‘Even his handwriting is romantic. No one writes like this anymore.’
‘I didn’t know handwriting was the defining factor in identifying a psychopath.’ He looks down at me with a raised eyebrow, but he’s smiling as he shakes his head. ‘Besides, this book is about a man who dug up graves and raided morgues to collect body parts to sew together as a new person. His “promise” could be that this is what’s going to happen to the receiver if they don’t do whatever he’s demanded.’
‘Nope. I’m not having that. Frankenstein’s monster wanted love; he wanted to be accepted for what he was. He didn’t fit in. This Reginald is clearly telling the receiver that he has promised to love and accept them for all their flaws, come what may. He’s promised to give them the unconditional love that the monster always craved.’
He’s smiling when he looks down at me this time. ‘God, you are so …’
I look up and meet his twinkling blue eyes even though I’m looking over the rim of my glasses so he’s a bit blurry, we hold each other’s gaze for a long moment, and it’s like the air between us is sparkling.
But that’s probably just my dreadful eyesight.
Even so, I can feel my smile getting wider as his does, spreading slowly, making everything look more twinkly and—
‘A man!’ Mum’s squeal comes from the doorway. ‘I knew there was a man!’
‘Kill me now.’ I drop my head down onto the counter and hiss urgently at Dimitri. ‘Run. Save yourself while there’s still time. Your legs are long – she’ll never catch you.’
I look up and rub my fingers across the head I clonked down too hard and I’ve now got the corner of the book imprinted in my forehead. ‘There is no man, Mum. You’re imagining him.’
‘Well, I’ve got an excellent imagination. You are gorgeous.’ She approaches Dimitri. ‘Are you single?’
He looks slightly alarmed as he jumps off the counter. ‘Yes. And planning on staying that way.’
‘Oh, now that’s no attitude to have at your age. A handsome young man in the prime of your life.’ She turns to me. ‘Is he the “we”?’
‘What?’
‘We! The we!’ She sounds like she needs the bathroom. ‘When you said “we” last night, I knew it wasn’t about the fish.’
He looks at me and waggles his eyebrows. ‘So you’ve told your mum about me.’
‘No. I have categorically not told my mum about you. There’s nothing to—’
‘She doesn’t need to tell me! I’m a mum! I read between the lines!’
‘No, you make up lines that aren’t there and then read words that aren’t there either. There are no lines to read between. He’s a customer.’
‘I saw that look! That is not a customer look. And you’re sharing baked goods. Everyone knows the way to a person’s heart is with baked goods.’
‘Go out the fire exit,’ I hiss at him again. ‘I’ll throw a blanket over her while you make your escape. If that fails, jump from the roof. It’s the only way.’
He’s laughing. He’s actually laughing. He thinks I’m joking.
‘No wonder you were so eager to get away last night. Now I see why.’
‘He wasn’t here then. The shop was shut. Besides, I don’t even know him. He’s just walked in. In fact, he was just telling me about his wife, weren’t you?’ I try to wink at him to get him to agree, even though he’s already told my mum he’s single.
The look on Mum’s face makes me wonder if she was standing outside the door for a few minutes and we didn’t see her. I’ve got to admit that with Dimitri sitting as close as he was, we could’ve been in Morocco and I wouldn’t have noticed with the warmth from his body pressing against my shoulder and the earthy scent of his woody burnt lavender aftershave all around. She’s a bit over the top, but even she wouldn’t approach a customer in the way she’s approaching Dimitri.
She’s cornered him and is about a centimetre away from pinching his cheeks.
‘Mum! Personal space!’ I shout, momentarily distracting her and giving him a chance to duck out of the way.
‘Well, it was lovely to meet you, Mrs Winstone, but this customer had really better be getting on with his work.’ His bag and sketchbooks are already on the sofa in the reading area, and he starts towards the shelves to fetch his Italian book.
‘Polite!’ she squawks.
He does a sort of mix between a curtsey and a bow as he backs away, his glasses sliding down his nose again.
She points
in the direction he’s gone and mouths ‘wow’ at me, then she comes over and pinches one of the coconut lemon bars from the open box and pops it into her mouth. Her eyes widen in delight and she mouths ‘wow’ again with her mouth full.
‘Please leave him alone,’ I say. ‘There’s nothing between us, and he’s quiet, he doesn’t need—’
‘Then he needs a girlfriend, doesn’t he?’ She’s in the reading area before I can stop her. She lifts the cover of one of his sketchbooks on the table and starts rifling through it.
‘Mum!’ I put my hands on my hips. ‘You can’t do that! It’s not your—’
‘Ooh, he’s very good, isn’t he?’ She flips a few more pages. ‘Although quite an odd subject matter. Why is there all this parsley? Why’s this ogre wearing a dress?’
‘That’s apparently the oldest known version of Rapunzel.’ I start trying to explain some of what Dimitri’s told me about his subject matter. ‘This girl’s mother stole some parsley from an ogress’s garden, so as punishment, the ogress imprisons the girl in a tower, but she’s rescued by a handsome prince climbing up her long hair.’
‘Oh, now the ogre’s being eaten by a wolf.’ She shudders and lifts another page. ‘Couldn’t he draw some cute fluffy bunnies instead?’
‘Don’t you find cute fluffy bunnies awfully boring, Mrs Winstone?’ Dimitri reappears with the huge Italian fairy-tale book under his arm. He doesn’t seem even vaguely annoyed that she’s invaded his privacy by inviting herself to look through his work.
‘I didn’t mean it in a bad way.’ At least she has the decency to look guilty. ‘Your talent is exceptional. And look at your lovely blue eyes. Oh, with eyes like that, you could draw a dustbin lorry and I’d think you were the most talented man I’d ever met.’
‘I’m not sure having blue eyes is a discernible talent or how they relate to his work, Mum.’
She ignores me. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Dimitri.’
She gasps like a fly’s just gone down her throat. ‘Anastasia was Hallie’s favourite film when she was younger.’
The Little Bookshop of Love Stories: A gorgeous feel good romance to escape with this summer! Page 15