He also clearly doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.
‘It feels like things are starting to take shape.’ It’s an obvious attempt to change the subject as he hands me down a stack of books taken from other shelves that belong in the Crime section, and I pass him back a few Romances that clearly don’t.
He’s not wrong. It does feel like we’re making progress as we methodically work along the bookcases organising the categories, cleaning each shelf and dusting each book, and putting titles and authors into the computer database. I’ve set up a half-sized narrow shelf inside the door, and Dimitri’s doodled a ‘Free to a good home’ sign, because the books are in far too bad a condition to sell, or hide around town, but someone might still enjoy them. It’s only the really bad ones that are heading to the recycling bin. The sale table is filling up again, and in the office is a mixture of books for children and adults that aren’t quite in good enough nick to sell, but still deserve to be read and enjoyed.
‘I keep thinking we should have a Facebook page and add it to the bottom of each note with the books we hide,’ I say. ‘Nicole keeps saying it would be good advertising, and even though it’s not about that, it would be nice to ask people to tag us when they find one. We could even ask other people to hide unwanted books and post clues about where they’re hidden … Get the whole community involved, and start our online presence with a boost. Robert mentioned that he’d been trying to build an online presence – he just didn’t mention that he’d been trying to build it on Myspace. So I’m going to start again. We’re going to have a website and offer an option to order online. I follow loads of bookshops on Instagram, so we’re going to do all the modern social media, not a Myspace account that was outdated in 2003, complete with flashing neon gifs and Tom as a friend.’
‘I think that’s a great idea. We should post pictures of the shelves, the window displays, new arrivals when you order them, picks of the week, those mugs and bookmarks that came in earlier …’
The mention of them makes me feel like an ice cube is slowly sliding down my spine, because a very large credit card bill came in with them, and if they don’t sell, I don’t know how I’m going to pay it off.
‘Anything that gets people involved and makes people care about the bookshop. Or even realise there is a bookshop here. You know when something’s stood in the same place for so long that people sort of walk past it without really seeing it? Robert’s raffle draw got a bit of attention from the local press, but the local people who actually shop here should know that you’re moving with the times.’
I like that he agrees. I value his opinion a lot. He’s exactly the type of person I need to appeal to. I push the last of the books he handed me into their newly created spaces on the sparkling clean bottom shelf, and he holds his hand down to pull me up.
‘Any more secret messages?’ I ask.
With a huge grin on his face, he wordlessly hands me a copy of The Hunger Games, the striking dark cover untouched and the spine pristine. I carefully open the first page and read the inscription. In the messy, uncoordinated handwriting of someone who I’m going to guess is a teenage boy, are the words:
Vickie, my hand is shaking because I’ve never told you how much I like you. I keep hanging around with you and trying to make you laugh and every time you laugh, I fall a bit more in love with you. I keep hoping you’ll notice me. I mean, I know you notice me as a friend, but I wish you’d see me as more than that. I would do anything for you.
~ Tommy.
‘That’s so sweet,’ I murmur, instantly picturing a lovesick lanky teenager at the peak of awkwardness around girls, confessing his love for a friend in the front of a book he must’ve thought she’d like. ‘This hasn’t even been read. How sad is that? I mean, he went to all that effort and Vickie didn’t even read it. It doesn’t look like she even opened the cover.’
‘Rejection’s hard at that age. He must’ve been devastated.’
‘Maybe she didn’t reject him. Maybe she was a very careful reader …’ I say, knowing full well that no one is that careful a reader. Dimitri and I have done the most damage to this book by peeking inside the front cover. It’s immaculate. ‘Maybe he plucked up the courage to tell her without giving her the book. Or maybe she already had a copy …’
‘Or maybe he gave it to her and she peeked inside and laughed in his face.’
‘Why are you so positive about everything except for love? How can you say the beautiful things you say about believing in anything that makes the world better but still be so pessimistic about these messages?’
‘Because either people aren’t as sappy as I am, or they don’t want these books anymore. These are the kind of sentimental keepsakes that can’t be replaced by Kindles. To end up in a second-hand bookshop, they must’ve been thrown out, so it doesn’t exactly suggest the relationships were long or happy ones.’
‘But aren’t you desperate to know?’ I clutch the book and hold it up. ‘I know you want to find out about your mum’s mystery man, but aren’t you desperate to know what happened between Vickie and Tommy too? Did his declaration of love work or did she not even read it? How about Esme in Les Mis, and Frankenstein’s monster and his promise? Don’t you want to know what became of them?’
He looks at me with a raised eyebrow. ‘Why do I get the feeling that anything other than “yes” is the wrong answer?’
‘Glad you agree.’ I mark The Hunger Games with a tiny heart sticker at the base of the spine and add it to the box that I’ve currently got the YA section in while I move it downstairs. There’s no way teenagers want their books lumped in with picture books and toddlers sitting at the tables upstairs finger painting and colouring in, so all the YA books we’ve found strewn around other genres are currently waiting for a shelf of their own. And everyone knows YA books aren’t just for teenagers, so there’s a much better chance of adults finding wonderful books they wouldn’t otherwise have looked at if I can squeeze them in between the romantic comedies and the fantasy books.
I turn my attention to the next shelf, the start of the horror books, which also contains a lot of sagas, women’s fiction, and cookery books that have been put back in the wrong places. Although, with my mum and cookery books, horror is admittedly the right section. We’ve been trying to tackle the piles of books on the floor first because everywhere is so stacked up there isn’t even space to slide the ladder along and reach the upper parts of some shelves.
I pick up a copy of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw and open it. ‘Oh, look at this. Someone’s written a baby’s birth announcement. Hadley. Born 19/9/09. 6lbs 2oz. How sweet is that?’
I hand the book up to him and he looks between the cover, the writing, and me, with a confused look on his face. ‘Do you not think this is an odd choice of book to write it in?’
‘A horror? Maybe it’s what they were reading at the time? Maybe it was the only thing a proud grandma or granddad had to hand when the call came through telling them about the birth?’
‘Have you read it?’
I shake my head. ‘I don’t like horror books. I think the world is horrible enough as it is. I read books to escape to somewhere nice. I remember watching the film with Nicole late at night when Mum had gone to bed after expressly forbidding us to watch it because it was too scary for our young minds.’
‘So you know it’s about two seriously creepy children? A governess starts work at the spooky old house and her job becomes protecting the children from the evil spirits that want to get at them, but the children are arguably creepier than the ghosts and certainly don’t want to be protected from them. The writing is maze-like and everything’s left ambiguous, but this book freaked me out when I was little. I grew up in a house not unlike Bly Manor, and after reading this, every time I looked up during a storm, I expected to see a ghostly face at the window. This was on the banned shelves of my mum’s library, but me and my brother used to sneak in and raid them. Why would you write a baby’s birth annou
ncement in a book about evil children?’
‘I doubt it even crossed their mind. They were probably so excited they just grabbed the nearest thing. Or maybe they were really proud parents and wanted to share their baby’s birth with everyone. They could’ve written it in all their books for all you know.’
‘Maybe it’s a warning. This book is very much about not being taken in by beauty. The governess is captivated by the children because they’re so beautiful. She doesn’t understand why people keep saying they misbehave and why they’ve been expelled from school when they’re so eerily perfect. Maybe it’s a way of saying horror can be hidden by even the most beautiful of façades.’
‘For someone who is so unerringly positive, you can be really dark sometimes, you know that, don’t you?’ I ask, feeling myself smiling involuntarily. What I really want to ask is more about his upbringing and if he really grew up in a manor house and if he’s as posh as his lovely English accent sounds.
He looks up at me with his usual smile. ‘I also overthink things, as you can tell. I’m sure there’s absolutely nothing Omen-like to this at all. At least the baby wasn’t called Damian.’
I’m giggling as I reach up to snatch the book out of his hand because he’s just winding me up now. ‘Oh, stop it. You’re nowhere near as funny as you think you are.’
‘I’m just saying. They obviously didn’t have high hopes for how that baby was going to turn out.’
I mark the spine with a heart sticker and slide it into a space on the horror shelves with the other ‘J’ authors. There’s still a long way to go on the alphabetising work.
Dimitri crouches down beside me and takes a marriage manual from between the Joe Hill and Susan Hill books. ‘Now there’s one that belongs on the horror shelves.’
‘You believe in love,’ I say incredulously.
‘I believe in the hope of love. As something to look forward to. A hope to cling on to. My only actual experience of relationships is that they end in misery. And I did specify that it doesn’t necessarily mean love in a romantic way.’ He opens the book and holds it out in front of me. ‘Look at this.’
I read the inscription.
Best wishes on your wedding day, Tracie and Dean
Follow this guide and love will be by your side.
Laugh and love and you’ll be forever young and forever happy.
All my love, ~ B
‘How sweet,’ I say. ‘What a lovely wedding gift.’
‘A novel came out a couple of years ago about a woman who chopped up her husband and ate him. B could’ve chosen that instead.’
I narrow my eyes at him until he nearly overbalances from laughing so hard. ‘At least it’s not written in a “How to get away with murder” book. I’m not sure I can take any more weird book choices tonight.’
I can’t help laughing. He’s trying to wind me up but his eyes are shining and the harder he tries not to smile, the more he does.
‘Oh, stop it,’ I say again as I put my hand on his knee and give him a playful shove.
He squeaks as he topples over and grabs my arm, dragging me down too, until we’re both sprawled on the floor laughing, like a deranged game of Twister, with my head somewhere near his knee and my arm wrapped around his calf and his other foot under my elbow.
‘Left foot, yellow!’ he calls out, and I start laughing. ‘All we’re missing is a Twister mat. I’m going to have to stop crouching down near you. It rarely ends well.’ He thinks for a moment. ‘Although ending up in compromising positions on the floor of a bookshop is not the worst way I’ve spent an evening.’ He nudges his foot gently into my side as we try to untangle ourselves.
‘Now what could be compromising about this?’ I say as I get onto my knees and hold a hand out to pull him up too. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t an excuse to slip my hand into his and feel his elegant fingers close tightly around my mine. I pull him up but the momentum sends him crashing into me and I end up on my back with him on top of me, his chin pressing into my upper boob area.
‘I have no idea.’ He looks pointedly down at my chest and then back up at my face and my whole body flushes as his eyes focus on my lips and his body weighs heavier on mine. His eyes darken and his tongue wets his own lips and my arm tightens around his back, holding him to me rather than pushing him up like I should be doing.
‘Dimitri …’ I murmur, reaching up to tuck his hair back, my fingers curling into thick, straight strands and using the grip to pull him closer, and the movement is enough to shock us both out of the trance we seem to have fallen into. He scrambles backwards and, ever the gentleman, holds his hand out to pull me into a sitting position.
He picks up the book that’s got lost somewhere in the melee, and leans across me to take a heart sticker and put it on the spine. ‘Now, see, I’d love to know if this marriage worked out. It would be a great advertisement for the book if it did.’
I straighten my glasses and try to concentrate on picking up one of the book piles we knocked over, but an idea has popped into my head and every thought is currently centred on it.
‘I’ll go and put this with the non-fiction.’
‘Hey,’ I say as he goes to walk off. ‘Do you realise what we’ve found here? Young love, marriage, and a birth, and that’s just tonight. Every milestone in life can be shaped by books.’
‘It shows how special they are. Books stay with you in a way that TV shows and films don’t. Every one of these messages proves that.’ His smile is soft and his words are quiet and meaningful. ‘It’s been a long time since I met someone who agreed with that.’
I come over all flushed because he makes me feel exactly the same way, and every time I talk to him, it’s like a breath of fresh air – like I’ve found what’s always been missing from my life. Someone who understands me.
‘What if we did find out?’ I blurt out the thought that appeared at his mention of the marriage before I can rethink saying it. ‘Whether the marriage worked out. What about Vickie and Tommy too? What about Esme in Les Mis?’
He leans against the shelf and crosses his orange boot over his blue boot. ‘Go on …’
‘What if we’ve found these messages for a reason? What if we could bring some much-needed joy to Buntingorden? What if the reason we’ve found these is because we’re supposed to reunite the people in them?’
He looks like he’s humouring me, but now the idea is there, I can’t get it out of my head. All these books with messages in them. Romantic messages. Special messages. Messages that don’t seem like they belong, unwanted, in a second-hand bookshop. Robert was always talking about the unique magic that existed in Once Upon A Page. I always thought he was just a soppy old book lover, but what if he was right? ‘What if these messages are hidden away in here for a reason and now we’re supposed to put them back out into the universe and share some of that unique magic that books invoke?’
‘Well, I am starting to believe it can’t be coincidence that almost every second-hand book in this shop has a message inside it …’
‘Exactly! This little bookshop is full of love stories and they deserve to be shared. I feel like we found them for a reason, and now it’s up to us to find out what it is. Don’t you think it would be fantastic to find some of the writers or receivers of these notes?’
‘It’d be incredible, but how, Hal? We have no idea where these books came from or when the notes were written …’
‘The answer to most things these days – the Internet.’ The fact he hasn’t immediately dismissed my idea buoys my confidence and I scramble excitedly onto my knees, re-knocking over the stack of books I’ve just picked up. ‘We need to build our online presence, and this could be how. This is something unique to Once Upon A Page – something that makes us different. We put these notes online. Photograph the books and their inscriptions and post them on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. See if we can get them to spread far and wide … See if anyone recognises them.’
‘The words needle and haysta
ck spring to mind …’
‘I know, but we have to try,’ I say, because there’s something special about this shop and all the hidden inscriptions inside its books – something that deserves to be shared with other bookish people who will think it’s as special as I do.
Chapter 10
It’s ten to one on Saturday afternoon when Dimitri suddenly jumps up from the reading area and starts shoving pencils back into his bag and gathering up his sketchbooks. ‘Oh God, I’ve forgotten the book club!’
Never mind that, I’ve forgotten the book club. I glance at the display of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas on the back wall of the shop. I hadn’t realised how much it had diminished over the past week or so. I know I’ve rung up a few copies, but it didn’t even occur to me they were for the book club.
‘Are you getting up to help me?’ I frantically search around under the counter for where I put the list of teas and coffees Robert left me.
He lets out a laugh so hard that he starts choking. ‘No, I’m going to hide. You know that song by Meatloaf, “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”? The original lyrics were probably “the Saturday afternoon book club at Once Upon A Page in Buntingorden”, but they thought “that” was more succinct for the final version. Did you get biscuits in?’
‘No.’
He freezes in his tracks and his eyes grow impossibly wide. ‘Please tell me you’re joking.’
‘I’m sure they can cope without—’
‘Give me money from the till. I’ll do an emergency supermarket run. Quick!’ He’s practically vibrating on the spot as I fumble around until the till opens and I take a tenner out of it. ‘Will this—’
He grabs it out of my hand so quickly that he nearly takes a couple of fingers with it. ‘Your life won’t be worth living if you’ve forgotten the biscuits! Can you put my stuff away?’ He shouts from outside the window as he’s running down the road. He suddenly stops and doubles back. ‘Hallie, CHAIRS!’ he yells before running off again.
The Little Bookshop of Love Stories: A gorgeous feel good romance to escape with this summer! Page 17