Daisy Does it Herself

by Gracie Player

  ‘And is that what the bookshop is to you?’

  ‘I guess it is. I really do love it.’ His forehead creased in a brief frown.

  ‘And you, Daisy? Is that what coding is – your calling?’

  I was a little taken aback. No-one had ever asked me that before, my boyfriend included. After giving it some thought, I nodded. ‘To be honest, it took me by surprise,’ I said, ‘I never really expected I would be capable of something so…academic. I think that’s why it felt like such a kick in the teeth when my boss decided I wasn’t, I don’t know, good enough. Educated enough.’

  ‘But you didn’t let it get you down. That’s one of the things I admire about you. Your drive.’

  I smiled, pleased with the compliment.

  ‘Maybe you’re best off out of there anyway. It doesn’t sound like this Oliver valued you the way he should.’

  ‘But I worry. I mean will anyone ever hire me again?’

  ‘I’ve hired you! You’re building me a super-fancy website. As soon as it’s finished, I’m going to sing your praises to the high heavens and recommend you near and far.’

  ‘Woah,’ I said. ‘Hold your horses. It might suck for all you know.’

  Alex shook his head firmly. ‘No way. I have complete faith in you. It’s going to be great.’

  ‘You’re a shameless flatterer,’ I said to him. ‘You know that, right?’

  ‘I’m a notorious feeder too, remember? Come on, let’s get you fed.’ Alex gently steered me outside, lightly touching my elbow, being careful not to overstep his bounds.

  I sat on a little patio-set in the small but pretty garden, sipping the excellent wine I’d chosen, watching Alex work the grill. We chatted easily, the lingering awkwardness between us slowly fading. I was glad now that he had invited me.

  ‘Here we go,’ he said, setting a perfectly cooked steak down in front of me.

  I helped myself to salad and another glass of wine. For a few minutes we were busy eating, comfortable again with silence. I found myself thinking about our friendship and just how much Alex had come to mean to me in such a short amount of time. Looking at Alex, I could sense he was less relaxed. He seemed troubled, a little on edge, although he was trying to hide it.

  I was pretty sure things were okay between us again, but I knew something was wrong. I recalled the pile of unopened bills I’d found in the stock room. Perhaps his finances were worrying him.

  I didn’t have any great desire to bring it up, but I knew it needed addressing. I had to know just how bad things had gotten for him – wasn’t that what friends were for?

  I put my fork down and Alex looked over at me when he heard it clunk against the plate.

  ‘The other day,’ I said, trying to think of the best way to broach the subject. ‘I thought I’d give the stock room a tidy. After what you said about it being a mess, I decided to make a few inroads into the chaos…’

  Alex’s shoulders slumped.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And while I was clearing the desk, I came across this big pile of unopened mail…’

  ‘You saw that then?’ Alex said.

  I smiled in sympathy. ‘I guess that means you did know they were there?’

  ‘It’s where I put them – the letters I don’t dare open. Which in the last few months means all of them.’

  ‘But that’s…’ I couldn’t think how to finish the sentence.

  ‘Madness,’ said Alex. ‘I know. I’m making a terrible situation even worse, although I doubt that’s actually possible. Things are about as bad as they can get.

  ‘I don’t think anyone could have predicted the disruption independent booksellers were going to face starting in the nineties, but even so, first Dad and then me, we fought against the tide. We did everything we could think of to supplement the income from book sales. Book launches and signings, author readings and book groups of every description. I cooked up literary lunches, book curation services, we even tried children’s story time and birthday parties. Renting out our rooms to anyone and everyone. But nothing was ever enough,’ Alex said, visibly upset. ‘It’s been a slow slide, with things gradually getting worse and worse and I’ve had to borrow more and more just to keep our heads above water.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Lose the bookshop,’ Alex said. ‘At this stage, it’s only a matter of when.’

  ‘No!’ I cried.

  Alex allowed himself a weary smile. ‘I don’t think I’ve got any choice.’

  I shook my head ferociously.

  ‘No, Alex. Don’t say that. There has to be a way.’

  Alex stared down, poking at his food with his fork. ‘To be honest, Daisy, I don’t know what else I can do. I’ve remortgaged the house; I might lose that too.’

  My mind raced into action, casting about for solutions. ‘Couldn’t your mum help you out? I know you might not want to ask her, but I’m sure she’d hate to see the bookshop leave the family.’

  Alex shook his head vehemently. ‘I couldn’t.’ He sighed. ‘There was an…incident, last year.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘She fell for one of those telephone scams.’

  ‘Oh no!’

  ‘Apparently, it had been going on for months. It could have been a lot worse, in all honestly. But most of her savings are gone. The bank won’t reimburse her even though they say they will in these cases. I can’t even be cross with her. Honestly, when I heard the details, I can’t say I wouldn’t have fallen for it too.

  ‘She doesn’t even know about all this. If I lose the bookshop it’ll be like losing another piece of Dad. I don’t know how she’ll cope with it. They had one of those marriages, you know, that just seem to work. They were always laughing. And then he was gone. A car accident.’

  ‘Oh Alex, that’s dreadful.’

  We both took a large slug of wine.

  ‘Does anyone else know? About your situation, I mean.’

  ‘Joe knows some of it. Janice too. But the only ones to know the real extent are me and now you.’

  ‘Okay, then,’ I said. ‘What is the real extent.’

  Alex paused, winced, and took a deep breath. ‘More than any amount of book, cake, or quiche sales is ever going to clear.’

  ‘There has to be a way.’

  Alex shrugged miserably. ‘I don’t see how.’

  ‘No wonder you started smoking again,’ I said taking another large glug of wine.

  ‘You’ve helped,’ he said. ‘It’s been better since you got here.’

  I swatted the idea away. ‘Me! What have I done?’

  ‘Just having someone to talk to. I’m not the best at that. I tend to try and fix everything myself. Then it all builds up, you know?’

  ‘What about Jim, Noah, Rosie and the rest of the gang? Can you talk to them? I’d say you’re pretty blessed in the friend department.’

  He nodded. ‘You’re right. I am pretty lucky there. But I just feel like…it’s different with us.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said softly.

  Our eyes locked. Alex didn’t move a muscle, but I could see his pulse beating in his throat. My heart started pounding. I knew he wanted to kiss me again. I have never, in all my days alive on this planet, wanted to kiss someone more than I did right at that moment.

  ‘I think I should go home now,’ I croaked. Alex exhaled.

  ‘My God, woman,’ he said. ‘You’re going to be the death of me. Come on. I’ll drive you home.’

  Thirty

  ‘Oh for goodness’ sake, loosen up,’ Cece said, grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking. ‘Would it kill you to give me a hug!’ I huffed, then hugged her anyway. It was inevitable. Might as well just go with it.

  Cece had meant business when she said she would take professional photos for the website. Yesterday, she and I had gone for lunch, to, as Cece put
it, conceptualise the shoot.

  ‘So what do you want me to do?’ she’d asked. Straightforward. No question in her mind that I had a clear vision. My impostor syndrome loosened its stranglehold another inch.

  When I’d come down this morning Cece was already busy, snapping a series of generic shots. ‘Just getting in the zone,’ she’d said airily. Janice was behind the counter sipping tea. No sign of Alex.

  Today Cece was wearing some kind of tie-dye monstrosity, secured at the waist with what looked like the inside of a bicycle tire. Naturally, she looked fabulous. She was on highly excitable form bouncing all over the place and bossing everyone around.

  I’d never done anything like this before but I’d prepared as best I could. And Cece was a great collaborator, refining my ideas until we had a solid concept and a list of specific shots we needed to check off. We decided that we wanted the images to show a friendly, community atmosphere. Quirky, authentic and natural with warm tones. We wanted customers to feel like part of the family.

  Having met our customers I wasn’t sure how I felt about that one. Luckily, this was for Alex, who was endlessly patient and charming with them. Not for a cynical old cow like myself.

  We’d even managed to wrangle a few of the more compliant customers into joining the shoot. We were going to pose them in various, hopefully natural-looking scenes; browsing, reading and up in the restaurant eating some delicious concoctions Alex had come up with. We also had the usual litany of events – Book Club, gin tasting and open mic nights running throughout the week. Cece, bless her, planned to pop into these with her camera as well.

  As I’d sipped mimosas over brunch with Cece and we drew up our plans, I’d realised with some amusement that I, Daisy Monroe, was on the verge of directing my own photoshoot. I might have been paying for it in prosecco and eggs benedict, but hell, it was a start. Who would have seen this coming a few weeks ago?

  The bell above the door rang and Rosie came in on a blast of air with Joey trailing behind her. ‘I found this one loitering on the street outside,’ she said. Joey pooched out his lip.

  ‘I was just chatting to some mates,’ he said.

  Cece clapped her hands. ‘We’re on a tight schedule, people. We don’t want to lose the light.’ The front of the shop had lots of natural light flooding in through the windows. Deeper in, it got a little murkier. Cece did have a lighting kit, which would help in the deepest, darkest corners of the bookshop. Waif though she was, she’d still somehow managed to lug the whole lot inside and set it up all by herself.

  ‘I would have helped you with that,’ I said.

  ‘Ah thanks, chick,’ she said, ‘but I’m used to it.’

  Rosie tucked her arm through mine. She had her professional bag with her; a neat black case, the strap slung over her shoulder. ‘Right, where is he? I’m going to pin him down and physically force him to have his hair cut.’

  ‘In the kitchen, I think.’

  ‘So that just leaves you, Daisy,’ Rosie said. ‘I’ve been dying to get my hands on all that hair.’ She made a scrunching gesture.

  ‘It’s not that bad is it?’

  ‘No, it’s bloody gorgeous, maybe that’s why Alex fanci— Oops sorry, we’re not meant to be talking about that are we?’

  ‘Um,’ I said, unsure what she knew.

  Cece collapsed into giggles.

  ‘Love you Rosie, but you’re such a blabbermouth.’

  ‘What! How am I supposed to keep up with what I’m not meant to say? If it’s not those two dicking about then it’s some other drama!’ Rosie said, indignant. ‘Anyway,’ she carried on, ‘I just want to take a little weight out of the back.’ She was running her fingers through my hair. ‘Shape it up around your face. And then with the makeup, I want to keep it quite neutral, but your eyes are such a pretty colour I think a bright lip would really make them pop.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘okay.’ Unsure but trusting Rosie. ‘I hadn’t realised I was going to be in the photos too.’

  ‘Well you’re staff, aren’t you? We need you for the group shot.’

  ‘Okay, fine,’ I said reluctantly. Self-promotion – the horror!

  Wolf, overexcited by all the commotion, was pawing at everyone and getting underfoot. He was photogenic though, mugging for the camera whenever Cece snapped a shot.

  I hung back, chatting casually with Joey and watching Cece boss the customers about, posing them in various positions while Rosie chased them around with the lint roller. Cece, I noticed had a natural warmth to her that put people at ease, seeming to make them forget they were in front of the camera.

  Half an hour later, as we were discussing the second half of the shoot, Alex and Rosie came down from upstairs. I nearly lost my breath. Holy Mother of Dragons, he looked good. Rosie had cut his thick, dark hair short. He was wearing his glasses. His jeans and polo fit him like a glove. I thought I might have to roll my tongue back into my mouth like a cartoon cat. Bloody hell, if we put him on the website looking like that we were going to be flooded with horny women…and men. Aliens, probably too.

  Dark eyes looked my way. He looked serious for a beat, no trace of a smile. Then he grinned at me a little goofy, embarrassed at all the attention.

  ‘Well?’ he said, ‘will I do?’

  ‘Um yes, very nice,’ I said stiffly. ‘Good job Rosie.’

  I heard Cece snort behind me and carried on talking, though lord only knows what I said. Determined to style it out, even though my heart felt like it was going to hammer its way out of my chest. Dammit. You could mentally decide that you didn’t want to be with someone but there was no stopping a physical reaction.

  Alex’s eyes crinkled at the corners. Was he laughing at me? The corner of my mouth inched up.

  ‘Right-oh,’ Alex said smirking. Yup, he was teasing me. And suddenly I was giggling too, remembering our awkward behaviour the first night we’d met. When I’d almost dropped my bath towel and flashed him a sneak preview of the goodies. The others were shaking their heads, confused, wondering what the joke was. But they were laughing a little too. We finally managed to get a hold of ourselves and I attempted to carry on in a professional manner, rather than drooling over my client.

  ‘Right,’ Cece said an hour later. ‘Have you got everything you need?’ I quickly ran through the list and nodded. ‘Okay then.’ She clapped her hands together. ‘That’s a wrap.’

  Thirty-One

  In the following days, every time I saw Alex, whether in the kitchen, café, or bookshop, all I wanted to do was put my arms around him. Give him a hug and tell him everything was going to be okay. But I couldn’t do that. Because, honestly, I wasn’t sure that things would be.

  Now I fully understood the mess he was in, I could hardly sleep for worrying about it, thinking about all the weight he had been carrying around, all by himself. He might lose the bookshop, his beautiful cottage that he’d worked so hard on. He was still grieving the loss of his father. His worries about his mum. Through it all, when a stranger had turned up on his doorstep, a bedraggled mess, he’d dropped everything to help me.

  Although I continued work on the website with the same dedication as before my perception of the project had altered. I’d wanted it to be the answer to Alex’s problems, but that was before I understood the depth of them. As for Alex I think he’d started to think of the website as a kind of memorial. Something to remember the bookshop by once it was gone.

  When Cece came in to show us the photographs, Alex seemed melancholic while we reviewed them. Like he was already looking back on happier times. His fixation on the past saddened me. I’d wanted to equip the business for the 21st century, but he’d come to think of the website as a digital tribute to something that would soon be lost. Either way, I put my heart and soul into the design. If it was going to be a memorial, then I was going to make it the most beautiful and poignant version I could create.


  By the following week, I had the hosting configured, the domain registered and had started to test the website across browsers and devices.

  After countless hours consumed by the project I sat back in my chair and examined the work critically. It looked professional but friendly, warm and inviting, elevated to something special by Cece’s beautiful photography. The tight, excited feeling in my belly told me it was good.

  I made a final few adjustments and, heart in my mouth released the website into the wild. Pushing it live for all the world to see.

  I didn’t expect this to generate much, if anything, in the way of visitors, but I wanted a “soft” launch first. That way it could be up and running for a few days, letting me iron out any last glitches before I showed it to Alex.

  When I woke early the next morning and checked the analytics, I was expecting zero hits. To my surprise, thousands of people had already visited the website. That can’t be right, I thought.

  Digging deeper, I found that the flurry of visitors came from all over the planet. The US, South America, India, China, New Zealand, you name it. All of the search terms focused on some variation of the phrase “tom benchley upper finlay” and “books”. Although there was no mention of anyone called Tom Benchley on the website, the dark magic of the internet had somehow managed to push us onto page two of the search engine results page. Weird.

  I checked the bookshop’s new dedicated email account. Curiouser and curiouser. Dozens of emails were already waiting in the inbox. All the enquiries were related to Tom Benchley. Who the blazing hell was this person?

  I did the obvious and typed the phrase who is Tom Benchley? into Google’s search engine. Seconds later I was rewarded with page after page of results.

  The answer apparently was that Tom Benchley was a very famous author. ‘Well, I’ve never bloody heard of him,’ I muttered, refining my search. Turned out I might have been the only person on the planet who hadn’t.

  Tom Benchley was world famous for the Dominion of Gyrth series of fantasy novels. When he’d initially written them they had made little impact beyond die-hard fantasy fans, but several years later a large American network had bought the rights and turned them into a monstrously successful TV franchise. The books had been repackaged, republished and had sold millions of copies worldwide since the show first aired.