I recognise it as one of the YA fantasy books Dimitri and I hid. All hope of remaining civilised and clinging on to sophistication fly out the window. ‘You did this?’ I say to his smug beady-eyed face. ‘How can you be so proud of yourself for ruining a book? What did you do – go at it with a meat cleaver?’
‘I told you exactly what I’d do if I came across any of your rubbish lurking around the village. If I was a nastier person, I’d have you done for fly-tipping. Littering at the least. That would come with a hefty fine that I’m sure you’re earning enough to pay.’
‘It’s one book!’
‘It’s paper. It belongs in the recycling bin.’
‘Oh, because you’re all about saving the planet, aren’t you?’ I glare at him over the poor, limp mash of paper still dripping on the counter. ‘How could anyone do that to a book? It was put there to give someone the enjoyment of finding it and reading it. Not that I’d expect someone like you to understand the joy of reading.’
‘I enjoy reading. Contracts, mainly. And the accounts of failing bookshops. They always make for interesting stories, although they never end happily.’ He looks around and clicks his tongue. ‘And all this merchandise. Must’ve been a hefty credit card bill this month.’
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up and not in a good way. How does he know that? I glance over at Dimitri who has stopped with the teapot in mid-air in the middle of pouring a tea and is watching us with a … worried expression on his face. He is the only person who knows I put the bookish merchandise on my credit card. And now Drake Farrer does too.
I trust Dimitri, I tell myself. It’s not the first time I’ve had to repeat those words in my head. Drake Farrer takes over failing businesses for a living. He’s just making some lucky guesses, like Dimitri said. Even as I hear my mum’s words in my head about self-sabotaging relationships when they start to go well, a knot has formed in my stomach and I can’t shake the feeling that something’s wrong.
‘Oh, why don’t you get out?’ I force the words through gritted teeth. ‘I will never in a million years let you have this shop, and I don’t want you in here, so just—’
‘Oh, relax, princess. I’m not here for your shop today. I’m here for one of your daft little notes. My brother said there’s one of ’em from our mother.’
I glare at him. ‘It’ll be on the tree. But don’t touch anything. And don’t ruin it. Or I’ll have you done for criminal damage.’ I give him a stern nod, quite proud of myself for thinking of that comeback on the spot. Usually I only think of great comebacks while in the shower three days later.
He looks between me and the tree like I’ve asked him to mount an elephant and ride up Kilimanjaro. ‘You’re not honestly expecting me to look through all that crap, are you?’
I don’t make any move to help him, and eventually he gets fed up of me glaring at him because he rolls his eyes and saunters over to the tree.
I try to keep an eye on him, but another customer comes over to buy a book, and someone else takes a book from the window display and asks me if I know anything about the origin of it, and when I look back, Drake Farrer’s got a grimace on his face as he looks through the tree leaves, crumpling them with his big fingers as he rejects each one. I catch Dimitri watching him too, half his attention on the tea he’s making for an old man who’s started telling him about his knee replacement and half on Drake Farrer looking through our carefully printed and cut leaf shapes.
I serve another couple of customers before Drake Farrer finally says ‘Ah ha!’ and reaches up to rip one of the notes from the string.
‘Don’t do that!’ I shout at him, startling several customers, but it’s too late; he’s already bringing it towards the counter. All I’ve done is attract the attention of every customer in the shop, while Drake Farrer strides back over, holding the crumpled leaf aloft in victory. He barges past a customer who was about to hand me something to ring up.
‘Excuse me, I’m busy.’ I give him a scornful look and smile at the woman who’s waiting for me to take a couple of books and a stack of greeting cards from her, but he waves the leaf determinedly in my face, and I catch a glimpse of the cover printed on it. It’s Pride and Prejudice.
I go to take it from him but he pulls it out of my reach, and pure fury at his rudeness makes my reflexes much better than they usually are, and I feel almost cat-like as my hand catches his and curls around it like a claw as I pull the note from between his sausage fingers.
I drop his hand and smooth the leaf out, staring at the printed cover of Pride and Prejudice looking back at me. I turn the note over and read Della’s writing on the back. Words that I’ve looked at many times now, memorising the handwriting so I’d recognise it again. Comparing it to the note in Anne of Green Gables to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. The times I’ve watched Dimitri run his fingers over it.
I’m shocked by how quickly the tears come, and it takes every inch of strength I have to hold back a sob. ‘Dimitri’s your …’
‘Brother, yes.’
No. No no no no. No.
‘Did he not tell you?’ Drake says sweetly. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He knows that I didn’t know. He obviously came here with the sole intention of telling me. That’s why he made such a performance of it.
My stomach turns over like I’ve just been punched in the gut, and I cling on to the wooden counter to keep myself upright. Everything about the past two months goes rushing through my mind, like falling to earth with a parachute that won’t open. Suddenly everything that didn’t add up arranges itself into a painfully clear sum. Why Dimitri’s been so vague. Why I don’t know something as simple as his surname. Why he’s an artist but he studied business and knows a heck of a lot about retail and property law. Why he doesn’t seem to be on any form of deadline for his publisher. Why I’ve always had a vague feeling that he’s hiding something and it didn’t disappear after he took me to his house. How Drake Farrer knows so much about the shop. That weird hushed conversation I watched them have outside a few weeks ago. How can I have been so stupid?
‘Hallie, it’s not what you think.’ Dimitri has come out of the office and is approaching the counter cautiously.
‘You would say that!’ I yell, attracting the attention of every person in the shop, Heathcliff, and a couple of people sitting around the fountain opposite. ‘People always say it’s not what you think when it’s exactly what you think.’ I try to regain some composure, but composure has never been my strong point, and tears spill out of my eyes, blurring the sight of him coming closer. It doesn’t blur the flash of a camera as someone takes a photo.
I shake my head to try to clear it. ‘Farrer and Sons.’ I draw the ‘s’ out until I sound like a hissing snake. ‘You’re the plural. You’re the other son.’
‘No, I’m not.’ His hands touch the counter. ‘My father wanted me to be, but I’m not. He named his company when we were kids, when he intended us both to follow in the family business, but I didn’t. You know that.’
‘I don’t know anything! I don’t know who you are, Dimitri! But I do know that he knows things about this shop that he has no right to know and they happen to be the same things I’ve told you privately. You must’ve been reporting back to him from day one!’
‘That’s not true. He knows exactly what to say to make people doubt themselves. He’s trying to spook you because he thought you were new enough to fall for it.’
‘Oh, come on, Dimitri. Don’t add insult to injury too. You’re obviously in it together. I didn’t fall at his feet on the first day so he sent his brother in to gain my trust from the inside, spy on me, and learn my weaknesses so you can both swoop in and take advantage.’
‘No. That’s not true. I have nothing to do with their company.’ Dimitri’s voice is going higher and there’s a look of panic on his face.
Complete silence has fallen in the shop, something you’d think would be impossible with this many people, but no one lets out so much as a snif
f. Apart from me because I’m trying to sniff back some dignity, but more tears spill out of my eyes, and I shake my head, annoyed at myself for not being able to keep it together in public, and not just in public, but in front of the biggest public I’ve ever seen, including some journalists who are undoubtedly recording every inch of this for posterity.
‘God, how can I have trusted you so much – and so easily, so quickly? I actually convinced myself that you were spending so much time here because you liked me.’ That’s more like it. Inappropriate oversharing. That’s much more my style. ‘Not a word you’ve said to me from the very first day has been true, has it?’
‘Yes! Everything has. This is all a misunderstanding. Hallie, please …’
I intend to shut him up, but I’m crying so hard that my throat feels swollen and I can’t get the words out, and he takes this as permission to carry on.
‘Why would he tell you? Think about it, Hal. If we were in this together, why would he sabotage it? He’s telling you this as a way of getting back at me. He was at the house last night, throwing his weight around, trying to bully me into selling. I couldn’t stop myself yammering on about you because I’m so arse-over-tit in love with you, and he guessed you didn’t know who my brother was and tried to use it to blackmail me into giving up the house.’
When I replay this conversation over and over in my head, I’m going to notice there’s a sentence in there that I should probably pay attention to, but right now, my head is throbbing from the sinus pressure of crying and my mind is in such a knot that I can’t hear myself think. ‘That’s not how blackmail works. You lose the edge if you tell someone what the other person doesn’t want them to know. Then you have no leverage to blackmail with. That’s the point. So either you’re lying again or Drake Farrer is really useless at blackmail.’ I look at the offending man. If someone put ‘professional blackmailer’ in the dictionary, his photo would pop up. ‘And you don’t honestly expect me to believe that Drake Farrer is inexperienced in blackmail, do you?’
‘Why, thank you.’ Drake Farrer has been silent up until now, except for his smirk, which is loud enough to hear. He actually has the nerve to bow like I’ve paid him a compliment.
‘He’s got nothing to gain from you knowing, but I’ve got something to lose – the only person who’s made me feel worth something in years.’
A collective ‘aww’ goes through the shop.
I can’t think about that. I can’t think about the people watching or the words Dimitri is saying.
He sighs. ‘Drake Farrer does things for one of two reasons – money or spite. And he certainly isn’t getting any money out of me, so he came in here this morning with spite written all over his face.’
‘At least Drake Farrer is honest. Dimitri Farrer is anything but.’ His name actually hurts to come out of my mouth, like it physically burns the skin of my lips as I speak it. ‘You’re acting like he’s done something wrong by telling me. You’re the one who should have told me two months ago! There’s no reason you wouldn’t unless you didn’t want me to know.’
God, I’m being melodramatic, aren’t I? I’ve been reading too many books. I allowed myself to believe that, for once, something was going to work out for me. I should have known better. Things never work out for me – especially not relationships.
‘Everything you’ve done, Dimitri. I thought you were an introvert, like me. Just a quiet reader who likes books more than most humans, like me. Just a lovely baker who gets me in a way no one ever has before.’
‘I am. I am all those things.’
‘You can’t be all those things while also being the “s” in Farrer and Sons!’
‘Do you know, it’s very unprofessional to argue in front of customers …’ Drake smarms.
‘Get out!’ Dimitri turns and bellows at him. He gathers up the destroyed book on the counter and shoves it at him, pushing wet paper into his pristine suit, forcing Drake to hold it against his chest. ‘This is between me and Hallie. You’ve done enough damage.’
He gathers his suit by the scruff of his neck, wraps his fingers in it and uses the grip to march him towards the door, dodging past Mum and Nicole, who have just arrived and are standing open-mouthed in the doorway. Drake goes sprawling onto the pavement, catching himself on his hands but smooshing the ruined book between paving and chest. At least he’ll have a hefty dry-cleaning bill to look forward to.
‘You can go with him,’ I say when Dimitri comes back towards me. I don’t realise I’m crying again until water splashes onto the counter, and I duck down behind it to find a tissue before snot joins it, but mainly so I don’t have to look at his soft face and how sad his blue eyes look.
‘Not until you hear me out.’
I shake my head, my voice too thick with tears to speak, and one quick glance towards the door shows me that Mum and Nicole have linked arms and formed a human barricade. No way is Mum letting a man leave my life that easily.
I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to give him a chance to come up with a reasonable explanation and wheedle his way back in. I have to stay strong. I gained two things when I got here – him and Once Upon A Page, and I’ve only lost one of them. So far. And as much as I hate agreeing with Drake Farrer, it is unprofessional to argue in front of the customers.
A few have slipped out without buying anything, but most are still here. Some have got their noses buried steadfastly in books, and some have got headphones in and I see hands furtively flicking towards volume buttons to turn it up and drown us out. The others are not trying to hide their interest in the storyline. I can see people talking, nudging, whispering among themselves like this is a soap opera. She should take him back. She should throw him out. She should hear him out. She should wallop him round the head with a book.
The middle-aged woman who was waiting to be served and stepped back when Drake Farrer started talking approaches me again, holding out well-loved copies of Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree and a Famous Five collection along with a stack of Dimitri’s greeting cards. ‘So sorry to interrupt, love, but my bus goes in five minutes.’
I half-laugh and half-sob at the same time, beyond grateful for the distraction of a completely normal moment in the middle of this horror of a morning. I serve her with my brightest smile even though there are teardrops dripping from my chin that I’m trying to wipe off with my shoulder and my glasses have tear splashes drying on the lenses. After she takes her change from me and refuses a bag in favour of slipping the books and cards into her handbag, she reaches out and pats my hand. ‘The path of true love never did run smooth, but these things have a way of working out. You’ll see.’
As she leaves, Dimitri folds his arms. ‘I’m not going anywhere until you talk to me.’
I sink down to my knees to hide behind the counter and blow my dripping nose with the wettest, snottiest, most undignified noise anyone has ever made in front of this amount of people before.
‘Or let me talk to you,’ he continues when I stand back up. ‘Hallie, please, I can explain.’
My eyes are stinging again and I have to bite my lip to stop it wobbling, and when my voice comes out, it’s shaky and thick from crying. ‘Share every part of your life with me, eh?’ I repeat the words he said to me at his house the other day. ‘Is there any part of it that hasn’t been a lie?’
‘Everything. Drake is the only thing I didn’t tell you about. Everything else was tru—’
‘Even Pentamerone?’ I cut him off. ‘You’ve ducked every question I’ve asked you about your publisher. You’ve mumbled something non-committal every time I’ve mentioned your deadline. The whole thing is another lie, isn’t it? There is no deadline because there is no publisher. An expensive book that you couldn’t afford to take off the premises was just a way of worming your way in here, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Well, nothing you’ve told me so far is true. You used to read it to your sister in the library and followed it h
ere when the library closed – bollocks.’
‘Why would I lie about that? That is what happened. I used to read it to Dani in the library, the library closed and we didn’t see it again, and then when Robert brought me here, I started telling him about it and he realised which book I was talking about and went and got it off the shelf.’
The problem is that everything Dimitri says sounds like a lie now. No matter whether it’s true or not, and in fairness, that part probably is, how can I ever trust anything that comes out of his mouth again?
He knows I don’t believe him. ‘I made a mistake and told a stupid white lie.’
I swallow hard and blink fast in an attempt to ward off yet more tears.
‘I haven’t been commissioned to illustrate Pentamerone. I mean, I’d love to, and when I’m done, I am going to pitch it to a publisher, but I’m living on what little is left of the provisions Mum left, barely getting by and struggling to survive—’
Oh, this just gets even better. ‘So your brother paid you to spy on me.’
‘No.’ He looks like he wants to say something else, but nothing comes out.
‘Oh, so someone else paid you to sit in a bookshop and drink tea all day?’ I almost laugh at the nonsense he expects me to believe. ‘And yet, magically, Farrer and Sons know all my secrets, and it’s just a coincidence that one half of the “sons” earned my trust, is it? You wheedled information about the shop’s accounts out of me. You got yourself right in the middle of my future plans.’ I don’t add that I mean both professionally and personally.
I’d pictured a future with him. I could honestly see something going right for once. I could see me and Dimitri running this shop between us for years into the future. And this is nothing but a short, sharp kick in the metaphorical balls about what inevitably happens when I start thinking that something might go right.
The Little Bookshop of Love Stories: A gorgeous feel good romance to escape with this summer! Page 29