I blushed furiously. I mean I was fairly sure I wasn’t repulsive. I was a bit of a late bloomer, truth be told. A (generous) description of me during my school days would be mousy. But Phil couldn’t keep his hands off me at the beginning of our relationship and I always got a lot of attention when I was working at the pub. I guess I grew into my features, as they say. Even Mum said I had the nicest nose in the family. Whatever the hell that meant.
So why was I always so quick to put myself down? It was probably a self-defence mechanism. If I said it first, then no one else could hurt me with a cruel jibe or thoughtless comment. And to be fair, most of the time I was actually joking. Laughing at myself wasn’t something I found hard to do.
Taking pity on me, Alex said, ‘I’ve just made a pasta bake for lunch if you’re interested.’
‘Gah! You’re a monster!’
‘I’m a notorious feeder, remember?’
‘Well…’ I said, pretending to consider it when we all knew what the answer was going to be.
Twenty-One
Rodney was crowing particularly enthusiastically the next morning. I gave up trying to sleep and got grumpily out of bed.
I took a quick shower instead of a soak in the tub—I was still feeling a little guilty about using so much water. Then I made my way downstairs, thinking I might grab a cup of tea and sit in the garden for an hour. Maybe I would “accidently” sit on Rodney. I was unprepared for the chaos that greeted me in the kitchen. Alex and Joe were running around the place in something of a frenzy.
‘Battle stations!’ said Joe, skidding past me. ‘All systems go!’
‘A group booking for lunch,’ said Alex over one shoulder, rolling out a length of dough. ‘The Ladies’ Guild. This was sprung on us late last night. The Carlyle let them down at the last minute. A small fire apparently. We’ll be seating thirty, which is about ten more than we’re equipped for, but what are you gonna do?’
‘You should have given me a shout,’ I said, moving towards them both. ‘But I’m here now at least. Put me to work!’
‘We had a load of new stock come into the bookshop yesterday. It’s sad really, a widower selling his wife’s collection of books. She died a few years back and he’s moving into a care home.
‘They need pricing up and cataloguing and putting out on the shelves. There are rather a lot of them; honestly, I shouldn’t have taken them all. I think it’ll end up costing me money. But well…would you mind sorting through them? I know it’s early.’
‘Of course not! And please call me if you need anything.’
‘Okay,’ Alex said, looking flustered.
I thought the best thing I could do was get out from under his feet, so I went into the bookshop as suggested and started poking through the newly arrived boxes.
By the time I’d finished, it was time to open up the shop. I’d barely turned the CLOSED sign around when the bell above the shop door rang and a sweet-looking little old lady ambled in. She had rosy crab-apple cheeks and a puff of cotton candy hair tucked under a plain mauve headscarf.
‘Hello, dear,’ she said, approaching the counter.
I straightened my back and smiled winningly. ‘Good morning. What can I do for you today?’
‘Yes well, I’m looking for a very particular book.’ At this I nodded encouragingly and asked, quite reasonably, I thought, for the title. She considered this. ‘Well, I expect it does have one,’ she said, ‘but I can’t remember it for the life of me.’
‘And the name of the author?’ I asked hopefully.
She shook her head. ‘No idea.’
‘Hmm…’ I said, pondering the matter, although frankly there wasn’t much to ponder. ‘Can you give me any more clues?’
‘Of course, dear. It was about a donkey named Murphy. Oh, and it had a blue cover.’ She paused to consider this, cocking her head to one side like a spry sparrow. ‘Or possibly it was green, now that I think of it. Either way, I read it when I was just a girl,’ she said dreamily. ‘Oh, it was such a pretty book. Such beautiful illustrations.’
‘Are you sure you can’t remember what it was called?’
The woman looked at me sorrowfully. ‘I thought you might know…’
‘Erm, no. Not off hand. I could always look it up on the system, but I might need a few more details.’
The sorrowful look started to fade, replaced by something more wrathful. ‘That’s not very good, is it?’ she said forcefully.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I wish I could be of more help.’
She fixed me with a baleful stare. ‘Call yourself a bookseller?’
‘It’s only my second day,’ I said, put on the defensive.
But if I was hoping for sympathy or understanding, both were in precious short supply. Instead the old lady gave me another withering look. ‘Just my fucking luck!’ she said.
Despite her advanced years, she was sprightly enough to storm off in a huff and slam the door on the way out, muttering about unhelpful young ladies and inadequate stock. As the frame shuddered after her, I looked up at the ceiling.
‘Great start, Daisy. Way to go.’
Putting it behind me, I started on my next job. Fortified by tea, I booted up the system as Janice had showed me yesterday and checked for online orders from Amazon. These would be packaged up and taken to the post office, ready to be mailed out with the evening post.
Thus began the frustrating task of trying to locate said orders from within the labyrinth of shelves. The task would have been far easier were it not for the perverse enjoyment the customers seemed to take in putting books back in the wrong place. I even found a copy of David Cameron’s biography jauntily shelved under the erotica section. Each to their own, I guess.
Things picked up a little midmorning with several people browsing in the shop and I rang up a couple of sales.
The customers varied from charming to rude to sometimes downright peculiar. I’d quickly come to the conclusion that this was in part because a bookshop is one of the few places where you can legitimately loiter, making a pest of yourself for extended periods of time, without ever spending any money or being kicked out.
Later that morning, I spent an hour digging out a book for a gentleman in an alarmingly tight pair of cycling shorts, socks and sandals. Once we finally found it, he flicked through the pages enthusiastically.
‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘just what I was looking for.’ He spent the next three hours cosily snuggled up in one of the armchairs reading it cover to cover. Then he put it back on the shelf and left without buying anything.
Later that afternoon, by which time I was up to twenty-three quid and a handful of shrapnel, the door was thrown open and in walked a couple wearing matching jumpers. They marched towards the counter with identically stern expressions plastered across their faces. Uh oh, I thought, reluctantly putting down my book—Ursula Le Guin’s The Word for World Is Forest, which I had plucked from the shelves on a whim. Ten seconds after picking it up, I had been totally transported to the planet Athshe in that magical way that a good book can create a whole new reality for you.
I sighed, preparing myself to deal with whatever drama was about to play out in this reality. The vibe I was getting—nothing good.
They both came to the counter and made no reply to my hello, other than synchronised inclinations of the head.
‘Can I help you?’ I asked. After an uncomfortably long silence, the woman finally spoke. Her name was Tina, his name was Trevor. She had a thin, pinched face, deeply etched and mean. He had liver-coloured lips and couldn’t keep his eyes off my tits.
‘Nice to meet you,’ I said, folding my arms across my chest. I was puzzled by their attitude. Had I offended them in some way? I couldn’t see how as I had never spoken to either of them before.
Tina pursed her lips.
‘You must be Alex’s latest stray,’ sh
e said, leaning conspiratorially on the counter.
‘Excuse me?’ I said, thinking that I must have misheard her.
‘Yes, we’ve heard all about you.’
‘You have?’ I wasn’t particularly interested in making conversation with this disagreeable pair, but this piqued my interest.
‘I hear you’re staying rent-free in the bookshop? And do you plan to stay long?’ Tina asked, not giving me time to answer her previous question. ‘Well, I suppose you would. Alex is quite a catch for a young lady like you.’ My mouth dropped open. Where was this coming from?
‘Now hang on just a minute,’ I said as Tina’s mouth opened, presumably to insult me some more. ‘Are you suggesting that I’m some sort of gold digger?’ I asked incredulously. Alex owns a bloody bookstore that is barely scraping by, I thought but didn’t say it.
‘Oh, no dear, of course not.’ Trevor managed to drag his eyes away from my chest long enough to share a knowing glance with Tina.
‘No need to be so sensitive. We’re just looking out for Alex’s best interests,’ Trevor said.
‘His father was a good friend of the family you see,’ Tina said, ‘and we wouldn’t want anyone to, well…we’re just looking out for him, that’s all.’
Trevor nodded sagely. ‘That’s all, young lady, nothing nefarious.’
I was bright red by this point, steam coming out of my ears. What would Ruby do in this situation? Then thought better of it. She’d probably throw a book at Tina’s head and end up in a jail cell. So instead I smiled icily and, channelling my inner Mum, made my way towards the door saying, ‘Well, I thank you for your opinion.’ I held open the door and waited.
‘Now, now,’ Trevor sputtered.
I continued to hold open the door.
Tina bristled. ‘We’re only trying to do what’s best.’
‘I’m sure you are,’ I said. ‘Now, off you pop.’
Once they’d left, I could hardly keep still behind the counter. Bristling with nervous energy, I decided to try to put it to good use. I thought about the little backroom office behind the counter where chaos reigned supreme. You could hardly move for the towering stacks of paper that had built up over the decades. The place was an ungodly mish-mash of old order forms, stray correspondence, and invoices from years ago. It had reached the point where Alex hardly dared stick his head around the door, let alone sort the mess out.
Given my long experience as an office temp, I thought I could perhaps be of use to him by making inroads into the confusion. Steeling myself for the chaos, I turned around, tried the handle, and opened the plywood door.
The door opened halfway and then got stuck, a thick sheaf of old printouts acting as a makeshift doorstop. I peered around the gap into the dim space, shocked by the scale of the epic clutter. Towering piles of A4, teetering stacks of ancient box files, and black plastic bags stuffed with more gluts of paper. Not only was Alex a feeder, it turned out he might also be a bit of a hoarder.
Taking a deep breath, I wedged myself into the crowded room as best I could and waded through the deluge. I thought the old desk might be a good place to start. At the very least, I could clear enough space so that you could see that a desk was actually there.
As I sorted the mountain of paper into orderly piles, I came across a stash of unopened letters that had been secreted away underneath it. They all looked pretty recent and I could see by the postmarks on the envelopes that some had arrived in the last month or two. A good two thirds of them were stamped URGENT in red. I gave a little shudder when I saw that. You didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to guess at the concealed contents. I was looking at reminders from credit card companies, banks, utility firms, and the council, as well as debt agencies. Unless I was very much mistaken, what united this stash of letters was that they all related to debt.
I heard the tinkle of the bell as I stood there, wondering what to make of this discovery. Feeling troubled as well as guilty, I beat a hasty retreat.
Squeezing myself behind the counter again, I found a young man waiting on the other side. ‘Well, hello there,’ he said, resting confidently on the countertop, raising one eyebrow at me. He was cute in a jack the lad, here comes trouble sort of way. Under other circumstances, I might have humoured him a little, but now was not a good time.
‘How can I help you?’ I asked him flatly.
‘Where to start…’ he said, suggestively staring back at me.
After the little old lady, Tina and Trevor, and the unopened bills in the stockroom, my day’s supply of patience was exhausted. ‘Do you want a book or not?’
That did the trick. His inner Bond vanished. He removed his elbow from the countertop. Seeing I was in no mood to play Miss Moneypenny to his 007, he cut to the chase, digging deep in his trouser pocket before taking out a key.
‘Would you give this to Alex for me? Tell him I owe him one.’
‘And you are?’
‘Liam,’ he said. ‘How’s it going?’
‘How do you think it’s going, Liam?’
This time he looked at me in more of a thoughtful and less of a sexual way. ‘I’d say not so good.’
‘Well done. Clearly nothing gets past you.’
I was on a bit of a roll, sarcasm-wise. It was not unlike my phone call with Phil yesterday. It must have been a coping mechanism. I seemed to be channelling my inner Ruby, like I was standing in for my best friend while she was off on her travels.
Liam stared about him, not unsympathetically. ‘It would do my head in as well, working in here. I bet you have to deal with all kinds of nutters.’
This was the first thing he’d said that made me warm to him. ‘Oh, you bet,’ I said. ‘Nutters of every size and description. Why only this morning I was confronted with nutters in matching jumpers no less.’
Now Liam grinned in recognition. ‘You’ve met Tina and Trevor then?’
I nodded back at him. ‘I had the pleasure about an hour ago.’
‘Awful gossips the pair of them and proper nasty with it.’
I nodded again in full agreement. ‘They seemed to think I was working here in order to weasel my way into Alex’s affections and steal his vast fortune out from under him.’
‘Ah well, I wouldn’t pay them much mind if I was you. They’re still sore that their daughter Mandy didn’t steal it from under Alex when she still had half a chance.’
‘Oh right,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I guess it’s none of my business.’
‘Isn’t it?’ Liam said, having a relapse, showing me more of his cheek.
I rolled my eyes at him, although the gesture was less harsh than before.
‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘Thank Alex a million for me. If I hadn’t been able to borrow his van while I got my own heap fixed, I’d have missed out on one hell of a job.’
‘Okay. Will do.’
‘Well, I guess I’ll see you around then…’
‘Daisy,’ I said.
Liam raised his eyebrow again. ‘How about I just call you gorgeous?’
‘Let’s stick with Daisy, shall we!’
‘Yes ma’am.’ Liam beat a hasty retreat.
Twenty-Two
Leaving the counter bell as my able deputy, I went to give the key to Alex. I figured he’d be in the kitchen, chained to its hot stove, while Joe did the job of a dozen waiters out front in the café. Instead it was Joe I came across first, sitting at the table, looking absolutely shattered.
‘Tough morning?’ I said.
He lifted his head wearily. ‘Absolutely brutal.’
‘The Ladies’ Guild put you through the wringer then?’
‘You can say that again. Talk about exacting customers. Everything needed to be just so.’
‘And was it just so?’
Joe nodded, although he was clearly too tired to take much satisfaction in the achievement
. ‘The food went down a storm. They praised it to the rafters.’
‘And where’s the chef? Is he out front milking the applause?’
Joe shook his head then nodded towards the kitchen door. ‘No. He’s out back in the garden.’
Following Joe’s cue, I opened the back door and looked around, but I couldn’t see Alex. I hadn’t appreciated how big the back garden was, or how it had separate tiers leading downwards, but I guessed he must have been somewhere near the bottom end. Still holding the key in my hand, I drifted past mulchy beds overflowing with pretty, colourful flowers and spiky buds of lavender that filled the air with perfume. Neat rows of vegetables that would be picked fresh to go straight into the kitchen.
The chickens were out of the coop running free and I gave Rodney the side-eye as I passed. Lord of his domain, he seemed supremely unconcerned. Something of that lordly expression reminded me of Tina and Trevor and that unpleasant conversation drifted back to me. A stray, was I? “A girl like you!” What the hell was that supposed to mean? The more I dwelt on it, the angrier I got. They were the type of people who instinctively found a person’s personal pain-point and pressed down on it hard with all the cruelty they could muster.
Finally, I spied Alex, shading his eyes against the sun as he put something to his lips and dragged on it furiously. Wolf was by his side, panting. Alex looked up as I approached.
In honour of my first solo day of work, I was wearing a cute yellow sundress—the pride of my charity shop picks. He shot a sly glance at my legs when he thought I wasn’t looking. Little tip, we always notice.
‘Liam asked me to bring you your keys,’ I said, swirling my dress a little. I knew what I’d decided about me and Alex just being friends, but he looked so damned cute that I couldn’t help myself. It was also a fuck you to Tina.
Alex cleared his throat.
‘Thanks, Daisy,’ he said, pocketing them. The way he said my name sent a shiver lightly across my skin. I immediately went crimson. Well, that served me right.
‘You’re a smoker then?’ I said, trying to distract him from my flaming cheeks.
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