But Martha had duties to perform. The library didn’t close for another fifty-three minutes. She looked over at her niece and nephew, still studying their phones. “I can’t go. Someone might need me.”
* * *
As the morning ticked by, Martha carried over Skulduggery Pleasant, Divergent and Percy Jackson, and placed the books on the table beside Will. He smiled but didn’t pick them up.
Martha found Little Women and Chocolat for her niece. Although Rose muttered, “Thanks,” Martha could tell that the books would remain unread. She kept the two of them topped up with cups of tea.
She also tried to call Owen Chamberlain a further two times but the phone still rang out.
Siegfried Frost shuffled into the library and, as usual, didn’t say hello. The reclusive seventy-something always wore the same gray knitted hat, the same texture and color as his wiry hair that sprang from under it. His beard obscured his lips, so on the rare occasions he spoke, you couldn’t see them. His brown mac almost reached the ankles of his frayed, turned-up jeans. He’d moved into the old Sandshift lighthouse after the Pegasus accident.
His fingers crept towards the battered book and he picked it up.
Martha shot out her hand to stop him. “That’s not actually a library book.”
Above his gray whiskers, Siegfried’s eyes didn’t blink. He twisted his upper body, moving the book away from her. Flicking through it, he paused to peer at an illustration of a blackbird.
Upside down, Martha read the title of the story, “The Bird Girl.”
An image slipped into her head then vanished just as quickly, of her reading a story to her mum and Nana. It was one she hadn’t thought of for a long time and her head felt a little floaty. She reached behind her for a chair, her hand hovering in the space above it.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghoul,” Suki said.
Siegfried dropped the book back on the table and shuffled away.
Martha immediately picked it up again. The ground seemed wavy beneath her feet. “I think I know the story that Siegfried was looking at.” She turned the pages and located it, her eyes scanning the words. She stared at its title. Gingerly, she lifted the book to her nose and inhaled, recognizing the smell as a hint of Youth Dew. “I have got to read this.”
“Sure. I’ll make you a coffee.”
Martha sank into the chair and traced her finger down the words. She read the story twice, recognizing “The Bird Girl” as one she’d made up many years ago.
She turned the pages and other words and titles began to leap out at her. Stories told by Zelda to Martha, created by Martha for Betty. Stories the three women had shared together.
What on earth are they doing here?
“You look very pale.” Suki returned and placed a steaming cup of coffee on the desk.
Martha nodded. She got to her feet and knocked her hip against the desktop. Coffee splashed onto the corner of Branda’s photocopying. She took a tissue and dabbed it, her fingers feeling strangely big and clumsy. “I know the library doesn’t close for twenty-three minutes, but I need to go,” she said. She surveyed the room, making sure that everyone was able to cope without her.
“You’re going home?”
“No. To Chamberlain’s.”
“Oh.” Suki raised an eyebrow. “Good incision.”
“It’s decision. And sorry, I won’t drink the coffee, though it does look very flavorsome. Apologies for the spillage.” Martha reached down and picked up her bag. Her hands shook as she placed the book carefully inside it.
Stepping into the history section, she spoke as loudly as her small voice allowed. “Will and Rose, put your shoes back on. We’re going over to Maltsborough.”
5
Bookshop
As they walked to the bus stop, Martha glanced over both shoulders to make sure that Clive wasn’t around to see her leaving work early. She asked Will and Rose if they’d prefer to go to the bookshop with her, or to meet their mother at the restaurant.
Will lowered his phone. “Chichetti’s does an amazing chocolate fudge cake. Can we go and get a slice?”
“Mum sounded like she needed some time out,” Rose said cautiously. “Like, without us.”
Will shrugged and returned to his game.
“I’m sure your mum will be pleased to see us,” Martha said, though she wasn’t convinced. “But I must get to that bookstore before it closes.”
“What time’s that?” Rose asked.
“One thirty, I think.”
“But it’s almost one o’clock now...”
When the bus rumbled up five minutes later, they got on board. Will and Rose made their way to the back seat and positioned themselves as far away from each other as they could. Martha sat down between them. She touched the sparkly slide in her hair and held on to her bag.
Her upper body did a strange dance as the bus turned and wound its way out of Sandshift and up onto Maltsborough Road. She raised her head to look down at the bay, where the sky was a shroud of mist hanging over the gray-blue sea. Siegfried’s lighthouse gleamed in the hazy February daylight, and Martha willed the bus to get a move on.
* * *
Maltsborough was Sandshift’s wealthier neighbor. It had a run of smart seafront bistros, a bank, a grand hotel with turrets, fish-and-chips shops galore, a museum and a state-of-the-art library that had a coffee shop, gift shop and large lights that looked like giant blue test tubes hanging from the ceiling. It attracted lots more funding than Sandshift and was where Clive sat in his office, hatching plans for budget cuts, synergy and synchronicity.
Chichetti’s was a new Italian restaurant on the high street with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the promenade. It was the kind of place where eating pasta and being seen were of equal importance to diners.
Martha, Will and Rose stood in a line, on the pavement outside, looking in.
Martha spotted her sister’s gold pumps near the window. She raised her hand to wave, but then paused with her hand midair. Lilian was leaned forward over the table with her face pointing down. Another woman, who Martha presumed must be Annie, had an arm wrapped around her shoulder.
Martha slowly lowered her hand but Will didn’t seem to notice there might be something going on. He rapped loudly on the window and gave a double thumbs-up to his mum.
Annie shook Lilian’s shoulder, and she sat up abruptly. She knocked her glass of white wine with her wrist and it wobbled. A passing waiter reached out and steadied it.
Lilian blinked hard at Martha, Will and Rose. She got up so quickly her stool rocked, and she sped towards the smoked-glass front door.
“What are you doing here?” she asked breathlessly as she stepped outside. Her eyes were pink and glistening above her puffy cheeks. “It’s only twenty past one.”
Martha swallowed. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Just a spot of, um, hay fever.”
“I have a packet of tissues in my bag. They’re extra soft and have aloe vera in them.”
“I’m fine,” Lilian said. “What’s this about?”
“Sorry for bringing the kids early, but I want to get to that bookshop before it closes. Will and Rose don’t want to join me. I think they want food instead—”
“I’m really hungry,” Rose said.
“Me, too.” Will nodded.
Lilian knitted her hand into her hair and didn’t speak for a while. She took a deep breath and held it in her chest. “I suppose that’s fine. We’re just about to order dessert.” Then her eyes grew harder. “I hope this isn’t about that old book?”
Martha felt as if she was shrinking in size, like Alice in Wonderland after drinking from a potion bottle. “The shop doesn’t open again until Wednesday,” she said meekly.
“I told you to leave it alone.”
“I just want to find out where it c
ame from, that’s all.”
Lilian pressed her lips together. “It’s your choice,” she said finally. “I don’t know why you’re so interested in that stupid old thing, anyway. You could join us for a lovely dessert instead.”
“Oh yeah, go on, Auntie Martha,” Rose said.
“The chocolate fudge cake is really gooey.” Will licked his lips.
Martha stared inside the restaurant, at a waiter who glided past carrying an enormous ice cream sundae. Her mouth began to water. “I, um...”
“And I need to ask you for another favor,” Lilian added.
“Yes?” Martha said. She fumbled in her bag for her notepad and pen and flipped to her current task list. “What is it?”
“Will you look after the kids the weekend after next? I need to, um, work away.”
“I bet it’s at a posh spa,” Will quipped.
Lilian fixed him with a brief stare, then found a smile for Martha. “I have a few things to sort out. Can we make it an overnighter?”
Martha wrote this down and thought about it. Now that they were getting older, Will and Rose hadn’t slept at the house for a couple of years. Her parents’ old bedroom was full of bags and boxes. “I’m happy to have them during the day, but there’s not enough space for them to—”
“Great,” Lilian interjected. “Thanks, Martha. Now, let’s grab that dessert.”
Martha’s mind ticked between her two options. She was here now, but Chamberlain’s closed in a few minutes. She placed her notepad in her handbag and fastened the zip. Lilian’s eyes still looked tense, but it could be because of the pollen. “The restaurant looks lovely, but perhaps some other time...”
A veil seemed to slip across Lilian’s features. She wrapped her arms around Will’s and Rose’s shoulders. “You seem to remember our grandmother as some kind of fairy godmother figure,” she said sharply. “It really wasn’t the case.”
Martha’s mouth fell open a little. “Zelda was wonderful. She was bright and fun, and always...”
Lilian shook her head. “Sometimes, Martha,” she said as she placed her hand against the restaurant door. “It’s easy to remember things differently to how they actually were.”
* * *
Martha could hear faint electronic tunes from the amusement arcades on the seafront, but the street where Chamberlain’s Pre-Loved and Antiquarian Books was located was quiet, except for two seagulls cawing and flapping over a dropped bag of chips.
Suki said the bookshop was new, but the shade of the duck egg–blue paint coating the window frames and door, and the semicircle of silver lettering embossed on the large windowpane made it look a couple of centuries old.
Flustered after her uncomfortable discussion with Lilian, Martha struggled to regulate her breathing. Her chest felt tight again and she gave it a rub. There was something about the flicker in her sister’s eyes that made her question her decision to come here.
Even though Lilian was the younger sister, she’d always taken the lead. When she first arrived home from the hospital, as a plum-faced newborn, she had assumed control. She would sleep and eat when she wanted, and the rest of the family had to fit their lives around her.
Thomas loved his new daughter. He cooed at her and puffed out his chest when he pushed Lilian in the pram, showing her off to friends and neighbors. He didn’t allow any of the fun toys that Zelda bought inside her cot.
Martha could admit that, with her icy-blond hair and blue eyes, her sister was a beautiful child. However, her father’s devoted attention to her made Martha feel like the ugly sister in comparison.
As she stood in front of the shop door, she lifted her chin. There were only a couple of minutes left until closing time and she had to follow her instincts. Twisting the brass knob, she opened the door.
A brass bell rang and she felt a little otherworldly as she inhaled the heady aroma of leather, cardboard and ink. Her eyes widened at the sight of the books lining the floor-to-ceiling shelves. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, some worn and some like new.
Her forehead crinkled a little with disapproval as she spotted a screwed-up tissue and a felt-tip pen without its lid on the desk. There was a small heap of sweet wrappers, several key rings and a plastic pug dog with a nodding head. Her own house might be busy, but this shop looked disorganized, in need of a good system.
A long wooden ladder, leaning against a bookshelf, stretched from the floor and rose upward as far as Martha could see. There was a pair of legs, with feet facing her, clad in monogrammed red slippers. The toes wriggled as if their owner was listening to music that nobody else could hear. The ladder rungs creaked and bowed as the legs climbed down.
The red slipper–wearer was tall with a circular face. His sandy hair was pushed back off his forehead and streaked white around the temples. A red silk scarf framed his open-neck black shirt and his gray suit fitted loosely over his large rounded chest. He wore four colorful pin badges. One featured an illustration of a book, and another said, “Booksellers—great between the sheets.” Martha noticed that his hand was large enough to hold several books in its span and that he had a smear of ink on his cheek.
Martha tapped her own face. “You have a smudge.”
“Oh.” The man put down his books and lifted his scarf. He used it to rub his face. “I keep finding bruises in strange places, but it’s ink from the books and newspapers. There,” he said triumphantly. “Is that better?”
Martha stared at his cheek, which was now denim blue. “You may need a mirror.”
“I don’t think I have one.”
Taking the battered book from her bag, Martha searched for a spare space on the countertop. “I think you might have left this for me?”
“Ah, you must be Martha?” Owen smiled and held out his hand.
Martha hesitated. Although she liked to help library-goers, physical contact was something she tried to forgo. Helping her parents out of their chairs was as close as she’d got to others for a long time. She reached out and lightly shook his hand, then quickly let it go. “May I ask where the book came from, and how you found me?”
Owen picked it up, handling it as if it was an injured baby bird. “A fellow bookseller sent it to me for repair. But it’s in such a bad state and would be too expensive to reconstruct. When I told him the price, he told me not to bother. I paid him a tenner for it because I could sell some of the illustrations. But then I got The Guilt.”
“Guilt?”
“I can’t bring myself to disassemble books, even if they’re beyond rescue. I always end up keeping them. But then I can’t sell them, either.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Though, over the years I bet my wives would have liked me to.”
Martha blinked, wondering just how many times he’d been married. He did have an air of Henry VIII about him.
“When I flicked through this one,” Owen continued, “I spotted your name in the dedication and knew it from leaflets about the library. There aren’t any other Martha Storms in the telephone directory, so it had to be you.”
“Were you huddled by the library door yesterday evening?” Martha asked with a frown.
“Yes, that sounds like me.”
“I called out to you, but you vanished.”
“Really? I didn’t hear anything. I was on my way to the footie match with my son—he was waiting in the car. There was an author event on or something, so I left the book by the door.”
“The event was canceled. It was written on the poster.”
“Oh.” Owen scratched his head. “I don’t think I was wearing my glasses.”
Martha noted that his sentences were as higgledy-piggledy as his bookshop. He started to speak then looked distracted, as if he had to physically search for his next words. “Where did your contact get the book from?” she asked.
Owen scratched his head, leaving his hair stuck up on to
p. “I’d really have to ask him or check my notes. I do write these things down...sometimes...”
Martha waited for him to look around but he didn’t do anything.
“You look a little disappointed, or puzzled,” he said.
She twisted her fingers around her wrist, wondering if she should tell him the reason for the book’s importance. “The dedication inside is from my grandmother, Zelda,” she said. “But the date she’s written is three years after she died. The stories in the book are also...well, personal.”
Owen cocked his head to one side. “I’m not sure what you mean?”
“Um,” Martha said, scolding herself for mentioning the last bit.
“You can tell me anything.” Owen held up three fingers of his right hand. “I’m a bookseller and we have a code of secrecy.”
“Really?”
“Well, no.” He grinned. “I just wanted to assure you.”
Martha stared at him, wondering if he was a little crazy or not. But with what she had to say, he might think the same thing about her. After Lilian’s negative reaction to the book, she just wanted someone to listen to her and take this strange situation seriously.
“I used to write stories, when I was younger,” she admitted. “I only shared them with my family, Zelda mainly. And now I’ve found them here, printed in this book. They’re alongside other ones she and my mum told me.”
Owen rocked back and fro on his heels for a while. He worked his mouth. “I’ve certainly not heard that one before.”
Martha wasn’t sure if he was mocking her or not. She wished that the ground would swallow her up, or that a bookshelf would fall over and squash her flat.
Owen picked up the book and leafed through it again. “Publishers usually print the title of the book on each page, but it’s missing here. It looks like the book might be self-published, so it will be more difficult to trace...not impossible, though.” He tapped the side of his nose. “I’ll get back in touch with Dexter, my contact. I’ll see if he remembers where it came from. He knows people.”
The Library of Lost and Found Page 4