by Jenny Kane
‘Cameron’s fault,’ she muttered up to the constellations, but even as she said it, Charlie knew that wasn’t true.
It was her fault. She’d been hurt, but rather than deal with it like a normal person, she’d put it all in a book. Which would have been fine if that book hadn’t then been published and read by strangers – a lot.
The Love-Blind Boy had secured Charlie an agent, a good publisher, and an income which meant she could write for a living without having to have a job as well. However, it also meant that what had started out as a means of therapy to recover from her heartbreak had become a constant reminder of her humiliation. The story had touched a lot of people; after all, everyone has had their heart shattered at some time.
Charlie had written three novels, but no one seemed to remember the other two. Except for Gervase. She smiled. The river had been right, that had to be a good sign.
Reaching the outside of Scott Skinner’s, it dawned on Charlie that she hadn’t told Alice she had a date. It hadn’t even crossed her mind to. An odd sense of isolation crept over Charlie. They used to share everything; that seemed impossible now after Alice’s deception. Unless the river was right. Perhaps Alice wasn’t being deliberately mean; perhaps she’d simply forgotten how to be nice in the race to succeed.
Sighing inwardly, Charlie tried not to feel bad about keeping secrets. She was only talking to Gervase for Kit’s, and therefore Alice’s, sake anyway. If she and the bookshop man got on well, then that was a bonus. If not, she’d have appeased her conscience by still trying to help out the festival.
Chapter Nine
Tuesday November 24th
‘Go on, get it over with. Pitch this festival idea to me,’ Gervase took a sip from his pint of Macbeth beer, ‘tell me why I should spend a fortune in return for very little financial gain so close to Christmas?’
Charlie found herself put on the spot before she’d had the chance to decide if she should order a starter with her meal and be sophisticated, or go for a pudding later, making it appear that she didn’t care about her weight or appearance – which she didn’t, but she didn’t want Gervase to know that.
‘OK then. This is how I think the bookstall at the castle should work. The stall should be within the Horsemill, where the refreshments will be. A drink is included in the ticket price, so all the guests will go there. They’ll be a constant captive audience, and more likely to buy a book from the authors present.
‘The authors for each session will bring their own books. You can sell them on the stall on their behalf, and take ten per cent of the sale price for providing the selling service.’
‘Me? I haven’t agreed yet.’ Gervase raised his eyebrows playfully, but Charlie wasn’t sure if he was joking or not.
‘OK, so the bookseller, whoever they might be, should also be able to take any of their own stock to sell at the correct retail price. That way, the retailer in question isn’t in the position of trying to arrange loads of books on sale or return at such short notice, or having to buy outright a lot of books which we can’t guarantee to sell.’
Having finished her speech, Charlie took a mouthful of wine before hiding in the safety of her faux leather menu while nervously waiting for Gervase’s response. To her surprise, it mattered to her that he agreed, even if she wasn’t going to be there to help. She could picture him clearly against the backdrop of stone walls and Victorian-style Christmas trees. Honestly, woman, you’re letting your suppressed romantic gene get the better of you. Stop it at once.
Gervase was looking at Charlie with more shrewdness than she’d ever been regarded before. His examination only lasted a few seconds, but it seemed far longer, and she couldn’t stop herself from blushing like a ripe strawberry as the bookshop man’s face broke into a grin.
Charlie tried not to giggle as another thought sneaked into the back of her head. Why ever did I fancy Cameron?
‘I’m impressed.’
Charlie risked peeping out from the safety of the food list. ‘Really?’
‘I will think it over further during dinner.’
Returning the intensity of the look in his deep chestnut eyes, Charlie couldn’t help but laugh. ‘You’ve already decided, haven’t you?’
‘Maybe.’ Gervase winked, ‘Now, what would you like to eat? I’m famished.’
They’d discussed books at length, and for the first time in as long as she could remember, Charlie felt she wasn’t boring the person listening. She’d discovered that Gervase had originally been born in Cardiff, but his family had lived in Aberdeen since he was six, and although he’d worked in IT for most of his life, it had always been understood that he was doing a job he didn’t like so he could save up enough money to buy out his Uncle John once he retired.
By the time they came to pudding, something called ‘Crathes Crunch’, which they ordered out of sheer curiosity, Charlie had laughed, talked, and smiled more in one evening than she had in years.
When the waitress laid their desserts before them, Gervase tapped his spoon over the hard, crunchy surface of the turret-shaped pudding which stood proudly in the middle of his plate, a raspberry sauce moat all around it. ‘How cool is that. It’s even harled like Crathes.’
‘Harled?’ Charlie sliced a spoon through her mini-tower, enjoying the crack of the thick biscuit and brown sugar outer layer that hid gooey chocolate and vanilla ice cream within.
‘Harl is the name for that textured coating that covers many of the castles in Scotland, and lots of the houses as well. I love running my hands over it, and seeing the sun shine off the granite flecks. Harl makes the castle look as if it’s projecting the rays of the sun itself.’
Charlie, who always made time to run her hands over the walls of any castle she visited, hoping to touch history through her fingertips, said, ‘I had no idea it was called that. How’s it made?’
‘It’s a mix of slurry, small pebbles, and stone chips which are stirred and plastered over the building. It sets so hard that it’s totally storm proof.’
Charlie’s imagination had gone into overdrive, ‘Can’t you just see them? All those sixteenth-century workers stirring vast vats of the mixture, like treacle. Crathes is huge. It must have taken forever to smear the harl over it. The mess, the smell, and all those ladders and trowels! I can almost hear them shouting “You’ve missed a bit” at each other.’
Gervase laughed. ‘You are something else, Charlie, or Erin, or whoever you’re being when you start talking in stories. Tell me, why Erin Spence?’
Running a finger around her plate, Charlie mopped up the remains of the ice cream, sucking off the melted liquid before saying, ‘There’s no deep-seated reason. I like the name Erin. I wished my name was short and simple when I was at school, so I deliberately went for a nice short one.’
‘And Spence?’
‘Shops line up books in alphabetical order; the S’s are usually in the middle of the shelf at eye level, and the name Spence seemed to fit well with Erin.’
Gervase burst out laughing. ‘You marketing whizz, you!’
‘Hardly! It’s more that I was naïve, and assumed that if you wrote a book it got into bookshops.’
‘But you are in bookshops.’
‘Only by luck.’
‘And that stroke of luck was?’
‘I sent The Love-Blind Boy to an agent who’d just been left by the man she loved. The book hit every one of her raw emotions, and she took it and my previous novel. If she’d been having a good day the situation may have been very different.’
‘You sell yourself short.’
Charlie shook her head. ‘No, I don’t. Yes, I can write, but that isn’t enough. You have to be lucky as well. You ask Kit when you meet her. She’ll tell you the same.’
‘Kit Lambert? Is she coming? Excellent, I have a few of her books in the shop, so she won’t have to bring too many of her own for me to sell on.’
Tilting her head to one side, meeting Gervase’s eye, and enjoying the pleasurable t
ingling feeling rising in her chest, Charlie said, ‘You are going to run the bookstall then?’
‘On one condition.’
‘Which is?’
‘You have to run it with me.’
‘But I can’t.’ Charlie swallowed uncomfortably, ‘I’ve made it very clear to Alice that I will not be helping.’
‘Can I ask why?’
Charlie saw the waitress heading towards them to clear their plates away, relieved that she was being given the chance to change the subject. ‘I’d love to order a coffee, do you want one?’
‘I always want one.’ Gervase smiled, ‘By the way, I have a second condition to doing the festival.’
‘Ohhh, that’s cheating!’
‘True.’
‘Go on then, what’s the extra condition?’
‘You come out with me again. Soon.’
Charlie flushed with a heat her cashmere scarf could never produce. She couldn’t believe it. The man ran a bookshop. How perfect was that? Promising herself she would text Kit as soon as she’d got home, to thank her friend for making her walk into the bookshop, Charlie said, ‘Alright, but only if you do the bookstand at Crathes, with or without me.’
‘You drive a hard bargain, Ms Charlie Erin Lottie Charlotte Spence Davies.’
Charlie laughed, ‘Indeed I do.’
‘Well, if that’s the price I have to pay for maybe being able to – hopefully one day soonish – discover what it’s like to take hold of those incredible curls and see if they spring back if I pull them gently, then I’ll do it.’
Gervase’s kind chocolate-brown eyes suddenly glazed with a desire that made Charlie’s throat go dry. Somehow she managed to squeak out, ‘Good. Umm. Yes. Thank you.’
Then, not quite sure why she did it, Charlie, her gaze still captivated by his, let her right hand take a single red ringlet, and pulled it downwards to its full length. Holding it straight for a few seconds, she then let it go. The flash in Gervase’s eyes as the ringlet rebounded upwards told Charlie everything he was thinking at that precise moment.
Neither of them spoke until the arrival of the waitress with their coffee broke the spell sixty seconds later.
Gervase cleared his throat, shuffling on his red tapestry covered seat. ‘You were going to tell me why you aren’t taking part in the literary festival anymore. Which is insane, as you’re the local writer. Shouldn’t you be hosting it or something?’
Charlie, not sure she wanted to tell him something that would extinguish the first spark of attraction she’d felt or received in years by telling him about Cameron, said, ‘It’ll sound really feeble.’
‘Try me.’
‘It’s Alice. You’ve had first-hand experience of how pushy she’s become in recent years.’
‘I certainly have.’
‘She hasn’t always been like that. When we were at uni together, her being the popular one suited me fine. I’m not one for the limelight, and when we were on our own together we had so much fun. We’d tell each other everything. But after she’d got her degree Alice was determined to prove herself as a hot-shot businesswoman. Which she did. Brilliantly. But somewhere along the way she seems to have lost the ability to turn off the pushy persona and just be Alice.’
Gervase reached a hand across the table for Charlie to take. ‘And you’d like to find a way to bring the real Alice back, even though she’s obviously overstepped the mark with you somehow?’
‘How did you know?’ The heat of his palm soaked into her freckled hand and coursed through her entire body.
‘Well, you’re refusing to help her, aren’t you, and yet you still care enough to have come into my bookshop to ask about the stall. And I read a lot of fiction. This sounds like the sort of plotline you’d write. In my experience, writers write out their own lives, even if they don’t know they’re doing it.’
Charlie sighed. ‘I can’t argue with you there.’
Chapter Ten
Monday November 30th
With only twelve days until the first of the festival guests arrived, Kit’s workload seemed to be increasing rather than decreasing.
Thanks to Gwen and her posse from the SWI, who were not only on ticket-selling detail, but were primed to make a fresh batch of festive cupcakes for each event, local interest in the festival had transformed from a trickle to a flood, and suddenly each of the organisers was in demand to do radio interviews, newspaper interviews, and school visits. Not only had the locals become enthused about the event, but due to Gwen having a wide network of SWI friends, tickets had been purchased from as far away as Glasgow and Inverness, making the festival organisers popular with the local hoteliers, who were experiencing unexpected extra overnight bookings.
Every time Kit spotted Alice she was attached to her mobile, talking to agents, or double-checking hotel bookings for their guests, or explaining, with forced patience, to a few of the less accommodating local businesses, that the reason they weren’t featured on the festival posters was because they hadn’t donated any sponsorship.
Peering up from the pile of paperwork as she leant against the back of Cameron’s empty office chair, Alice grumbled, ‘Honestly, Kit, why do so many people think they can get something for nothing?’
Kit shrugged. ‘Got to give them top marks for trying though.’
Alice grimaced. ‘It wouldn’t happen in Edinburgh.’
Having heard that complaint far more than she wanted to, and way more than was diplomatic, Kit snapped, ‘Well, we aren’t in Edinburgh, Alice.’
Seeing the surprise on the younger woman’s face, Kit moderated her tone. ‘Come on, Alice, you know the market, it’s what you’re good at. This is a small town, the rules are different here. You’re going to have no audience for anything if you don’t respect that.’
Wiping a yellow hair that had dared to stray from the confines of its clips, Alice sat on Cameron’s office chair with an unladylike thump. ‘You’re right. Sorry, Kit.’
‘It’s not me that needs apologising to.’
Alice went quiet, making Kit sure she was missing Charlie. Beginning to feel like she was running a crèche and not a literary festival, Kit said, ‘I can see something is wrong, and I can see organising this festival is getting to you. So if you want to talk, then I’m here.’
‘But you’re Charlie’s friend.’
‘I’m also a grown-up, and I don’t take sides,’ Kit found herself snapping again, not sure what it was about this woman that riled her. ‘If this is about missing Charlie, then all you have to do is say sorry for whatever you’ve done and she’ll be back on side.’
‘It’s not that simple.’
‘Actually, it is.’ Kit grabbed her bag, ‘If you’ll excuse me, my taxi will be here soon. I’m off to Torphin’s Primary School to promote your event.’
Standing outside the estate office, Kit closed her eyes and counted to ten. The taxi due to take her to Torphin’s wasn’t due for an hour yet, but if she’d stayed in the office with Alice she’d have said something she’d only regret later.
Opening her eyes again, Kit noticed that the door to the castle was open. Deciding it was high time she inspected the festival venue properly, she headed straight for it.
Kit found herself walking through a time capsule of the Burnett family’s history. The air was still and cool, and yet it clung to her skin, enticing her as she stood taking in the thickness of the whitewashed walls and the uncompromising security of the thick iron Yett Gate. Walking from room to room, Kit had to sharply remind herself that she only had an hour, and that there would be chances to linger later. This good intention lasted until she entered the Muse’s Room and saw the ceiling.
Charlie had been right; it was unlike anything she’d ever seen before. Exquisite medieval-style writing adorned every painted beam. If ever anywhere had appealed to her as a writing venue more than Pickwicks did, then this was it. No wonder it was called the Muse’s Room. Inspiration seemed to ooze from the walls themselves.
O
nly the call of time made Kit hurry on, to inhale the air of banquets past in the wooden-ceilinged Long Gallery. The second she saw it, Kit knew that it was the perfect choice for the festival’s main venue. The feel of the space and the acoustics of the room were perfect. Glancing at her watch, vowing she’d return as soon as she could, Kit regretfully hurried down the spiral staircase just in time to see her taxi pull up outside the castle entrance.
Kit and Charlie raised a glass of wine in a toast to each other. It had been great fun getting the schoolchildren to make up their own fairy tales, but now they were shattered.
‘You know, I could get used to living up here.’ Kit dug her spoon into a deliciously creamy bowl of Cullen Skink as she stared out of the window.
‘You wouldn’t miss the hurly-burly of London then?’
‘Do you?’
‘Not really. Sometimes I wish I could just nip into a bigger shopping centre rather than have to drive for forty minutes into Aberdeen, but then I look around me. The scenery is more than adequate compensation for not having a KFC on the doorstep.’
Staring out of the window, Kit could only agree as Charlie added, ‘After supper I’ll take you to my thinking spot, if you like. I suspect you’ll appreciate it.’
The words ‘more than Alice does’ were left hanging in the air, giving Kit an opening to ask, ‘Tell me again why you don’t want Alice to know you’ve secretly been helping with the festival?’
‘Because I don’t want her to think she can continue to get away with treating me, and people in general, like a tool in a business plan.’
Kit nodded. ‘But at the same time you don’t want her festival to fail.’
‘Exactly. I know this all looks a bit juvenile, and perhaps it is, but now I’ve stood up to Alice …’
‘With the encouragement of the lovely Gervase?’
Charlie blushed in the face of Kit’s knowing expression. ‘I have to admit, his unexpected arrival in my life has helped.’