The Bookshop Detective

by Jan Ellis

  “Well, I think your silence says it all.” Before Eleanor could answer, Daniel picked up his empty beer bottle and got to his feet. “I’m going inside. It’s getting cold out here. Coming?”

  “Don’t let’s argue, Dan, please.”

  “I’m not arguing.” He walked down the steps towards the kitchen then turned towards his wife, his face tense and drawn. “I’ll check on supper.”

  Damn it. Eleanor loved her new husband with all her heart and when they’d met and fallen in love she’d wanted nothing more than to be married to him. But her little house represented freedom and true independence: it was the first time a place had completely belonged to her. In her twenties she’d gone from her parents’ home to sharing with girlfriends in France. Back in London she’d met and married Alan, had the twins – Joe and Phoebe – and now here she was with a whole new life.

  She and Alan had lived in an Edwardian pile in what was now a highly desirable part of southwest London. Eleanor had loved it, but it had never been entirely hers, unlike the cottage in Combemouth she’d fled to when they divorced.

  When the Wimbledon house was finally sold, Eleanor had felt a combination of things: extreme sadness that the place where she and Alan had spent so many happy years was no longer hers, and alarm that this stage in her life was over. She’d also been amazed at the astonishing amount of money they made on the sale, insisting to Alan that they make a one-off donation to a housing charity to assuage her vague feelings of guilt.

  With the huge pile of cash coming her way, she could afford a characterless flat in the same part of London or half a terraced house miles from the centre of town. She made the effort to visit a few properties, but her heart wasn’t in it. Nowhere was right under the circumstances: she had expected to be married to Alan forever, not to find herself having to start her life again in her forties.

  The Eureka! moment came during a walking holiday to the west coast of Scotland. She’d plucked up the courage to go on her own, keen to escape from the well-meaning but oppressive advice coming from friends and family. Striding along a beach on Arran with a group of strangers had got her thinking: away from the city she could breathe. The air was clear and clean and, at night, she could look up and see stars shooting by instead of jumbo jets. In particular, it felt good to be away from the constant bombardment of traffic noise.

  She spent one rainy afternoon of the holiday stretched out on her bed writing a list of the advantages and disadvantages of living in London and was surprised by how few positive things she could come up with. Yes, she loved the city of her birth, but there were plenty of reasons not to live there any more.

  Why continue to live in the capital when she’d always loved the sea? The answer was blindingly obvious: there was no reason to stay if she didn’t want to.

  Eleanor returned from that walking holiday all fired up. In the evenings after work, she scoured estate agents’ websites looking for a house and garden in a small country town. Buying a seaside cottage with a bookshop attached hadn’t been part of the initial plan: it was pure serendipity.

  Being a legal secretary had been a way to earn a living, but it was not something Eleanor could ever feel passionate about. On the other hand, she loved books, read voraciously and had a good financial brain. Why shouldn’t she run a bookshop? Having persuaded herself it was worth a punt, she bought the house and the business, joined the Booksellers’ Association, did a sales course, read lots of books about marketing, crossed her fingers and plunged in.

  And here she was six years later with a successful shop, a home she adored – and a brand-new, loving husband who wanted her to move again.

  Am I being selfish? she asked herself. The inevitable answer was yes, she was. She frowned, pulling one of Daniel’s sweaters around her shoulders.

  Light was fading as she picked up her glass and padded down the steps. Dan was the most important person in her life so she was going to have to bite the bullet and sell the cottage. She stopped in her tracks as an alarming thought hit her: would anyone want the house without the shop? She’d bought them together as a package and for centuries the two properties had been indivisible. The thought they might have to be split up was unthinkable – and she’d hop naked down the high street before she’d ever give up The Reading Room.

  Chapter 6: A Long Walk

  The next morning, the atmosphere over breakfast was pretty frosty but Eleanor chattered away as normal, deciding that the best thing to do was to ignore Dan’s low mood and wait for it to go away.

  After clearing up the dishes, Eleanor grabbed her hat and boots. “Ready for walkies? I thought we could take the dogs up on the moor today.” She turned to her husband, hoping to bring a smile to his handsome face. “If we’re lucky, we might spot Maureen’s ghost ship.”

  “Actually, I think I’ll go for a run along the beach instead, if you don’t mind. Can you take Crumpet with you?”

  “Of course, darling. Whatever you prefer.”

  Daniel nodded and went upstairs to change, returning a few minutes later in his jogging gear. Eleanor smiled, admiring her husband’s slim figure encased in a sports top and shorts despite the chilly spring air. When they first got together, she had made a brave attempt at jogging but soon came to the conclusion that her running days were over. In her twenties she had loved to pound the London streets, especially running along the South Bank, which was entirely free of trendy cafés and tourists in those far-off days. Since then her body seemed to have shifted around and certainly wasn’t built for speed any more. Bits of her jiggled alarmingly, so she decided to give up running and take up something like crochet or felt-making, activities less likely to remind her of her saggy bits. Of course, she hadn’t done this either and instead stuck to walking and reading for exercise.

  “Enjoy your run.” When Eleanor put her face up for her usual morning kiss, she was sad when Daniel seemed to give it grudgingly.

  After Dan had left, Eleanor grabbed her keys and headed out. It wasn’t yet 8am, but she liked to go out nice and early before it became busy with other dog-walkers. She herded the two dogs into the vintage campervan that was her guilty pleasure and drove out of town and up to the moor. She never tired of the road, which curved up behind the town through narrow, shady lanes before reaching an area of high, open land known locally as the Top.

  She parked in her usual spot then walked along the path, enjoying the crunch of gravel under her feet. The weather was blustery and the wind whipped in off the sea, tossing strands of hair across her face until she extracted a woolly hat from her pocket and pulled it firmly down over her head.

  Walking along, hands tucked in her pockets against the cold, she thought about her life. She knew her stance over the house business was making Daniel unhappy, but she didn’t know how to resolve it. What was wrong with her?

  Before she and Dan married she’d generally been happy, but there were times when she had felt lonely, despite the presence of friends and family. She’d missed not having a husband around and the lazy comfort of being married to someone you knew as well as you knew yourself.

  After a few months in Devon, Eleanor had succumbed to pressure from her mother and made a feeble attempt to meet someone. Connie was a huge advocate of online dating, having found her beau Harold that way. Eleanor’s efforts at finding love were less successful: she’d had a date with someone called Ted who spent the whole evening telling her why printed books were dead. Eleanor wasn’t averse to a lively discussion about the future of the book trade, but when Ted insisted that bookshops were a waste of time she made her apologies and slipped out while he was arguing with the waiter about the bill.

  The second man she met had clearly used a photograph that was at least ten years old and which made him look considerably taller and thinner than he was. Again, she could have put up with it if he’d been pleasant and hadn’t spent an hour talking about his ex-wife and telling Eleanor how much better she herself would look if only she lost a couple of stone and dyed
her hair blonde.

  The only hints of romance in her life pre-Daniel were two recent encounters with her long-lost French boyfriend, Christophe Vauban. She and Christophe had spent an intense few months together in their early twenties, but seeing him again after two decades had made her realise that love is twenty per cent attraction, thirty per cent luck and fifty per cent timing: Christophe had been perfect for her in her youth, Alan was the right person to marry and have children with, but Dan was the only man she wanted now and she felt incredibly lucky to have met him.

  With Dan, it was as though everything finally fell into place. She had someone to share things with again: a person she could talk to for hours, who enjoyed reading, long walks and good food. They didn’t always agree and Daniel had different tastes from her in many ways, but those differences meant their life was never dull. And for the first time in many years she experienced a true passion that stirred her mind as much as her body.

  Eleanor stopped at the cliff edge, watching as waves rushed to and fro onto the rocks below. The power and motion of the sea excited and soothed her at the same time: there was something comforting about the regular rhythms of the tides yet the strength of the water as it chipped away at the stone was frightening, too. She thought about the tales of ships lost along the coastline and shivered.

  She turned away, watching the dogs as they scurried along. Bella was head down and tail up following the scent of some small creature under the heather while Crumpet the terrier poked her head down every hole in search of rabbits.

  Eleanor breathed in the honeyed scent of gorse, which always reminded her of Ambre Solaire: spring was definitely here and summer would not be long in following.

  Up ahead, she caught a glimpse of a brand-new building. This was a house and meditation centre designed by Freya, Daniel’s ex-wife. The building was set far enough back from the cliff top not to cut off the public footpath and to avoid collapsing into the sea the next time rough weather claimed a bit more land for the ocean, as it did with alarming frequency.

  The complex was too far away for Eleanor to see it well, but from a distance she could make out what would become a “green” roof sloping back towards the town. She had to concede that Cruella – as she was known to Eleanor and her sister – was a damn good architect: planting banks of pink and purple heather on the roof meant that the building would be almost invisible from the sides once the plants had grown up. At the front, the opaque glass and polished copper of the sweeping semicircular wall reflected the sea and sky, so the entire building would soon merge into the landscape.

  The damned woman was talented but, best of all, she was now based in London out of harm’s way. It was Freya who had divorced Dan, so Eleanor had no reason to dislike her or feel jealous, but she was wary. It had taken many months for Daniel to reconcile himself to the break-up and his first wife still mattered to him a great deal.

  Freya was a woman who liked to be in control, and Eleanor always worried a little when she knew her predecessor was in town. She knew from Daniel that Freya popped back occasionally to check on progress at the building site but was generally happy to leave the day-to-day work in the hands of her project manager.

  The house and meditation centre had been commissioned the year before by an ageing rock star who went by the name of Bill “Fingers” Widget. Bill had enjoyed a long and successful career as the front man of Tryll Spigot, a band better known for ear-shattering volume than catchy melodies. Bill’s arrival had caused quite a stir, but Combemouth residents had gradually taken him to their bosom and were now rather proud of their celebrity resident.

  The building was evidently going to be a beauty and no doubt lots of Bill’s show biz friends would flock there to meditate and “find themselves”, but Eleanor couldn’t help chuckling at the thought of how much the smelly cliff-top goats and inquisitive ponies who lived on the moor would enjoy nibbling Freya’s carefully arranged vegetation.

  She put her head down as the route took her close to the end of the drive, concentrating instead on the pale stones under her feet. The last thing she wanted was to bump into Freya who – as well as being annoyingly talented – also had the unnerving capacity to look chic even at 8am.

  Eleanor turned away, following the well-trodden path that looped up and around the headland. It was quite a climb and she was distinctly out of puff by the time she reached the top and could collapse onto a handy rock, the dogs panting at her feet.

  It was a stunning spot from where she could look up and down the coast for miles in both directions. To the east, the land fell away towards Combemouth; to the west, a chain of scallop-shaped bays edged the land, disappearing into the distance. Eleanor closed her eyes, raising her face skyward. If she could choose to live anywhere, here on the Top would be a pretty good spot. She loved the fact that it was different every time she came: the sea, the sky and the plants beneath her feet were constantly changing.

  Her heart sank slightly as she remembered the issue that was spoiling things between her and Daniel. He was the most important person in her life and she knew it was important to sort things out between them.

  “Come on girls – it’s time we did some work.” She clambered to her feet and set off down the rough path at a clumsy jog, the wind at her back making the return journey much easier than the ascent. Looking towards Bill’s house, she caught a flash of red through the trees and recognised the car: Freya was in town.

  Chapter 7: Sisterly Advice

  Once Eleanor had settled the dogs into the campervan, she had an urge to talk to Jenna. Checking her watch she could see that if she rang now, there was a chance she would catch her sister before she became too busy with school stuff. Jenna was Head of Maths at a smart London school and could usually be guaranteed to come up with a sensible solution to most things.

  How odd it was to be sitting in her van, gazing out over the moor at an expanse of blue-grey water while Jenna was stuck in an office surrounded by paperwork. Eleanor smiled, very pleased to be where she was. The phone only rang two or three times before her sister answered. “Good morning, Jenna. How are things? Are your pupils being good?”

  “Oh, you know what the little beggars are like. Just because mummy and daddy are stumping up squillions for Clytemnestra and Figaro’s education doesn’t mean they behave themselves any better than kids in ordinary schools.”

  Eleanor laughed at the silly names her sister came up with “to protect the innocent”. “You love them really.”

  “You’re right – I do. But how are things with you? As idyllic as ever, I’m guessing.”

  “A bit less than idyllic, actually.”

  “What’s up? Run out of Combemouth tea towels?”

  “Ha, ha! My life does get a teeny bit more stressful than that, you know?” It amused Eleanor that city girl Jenna believed everyone who lived outside the capital enjoyed a totally carefree existence.

  “Okay, tell me what’s up.”

  “The usual – we’re not making any progress with the house-buying business and Dan is getting pretty grumpy about it.”

  “I’m sorry Sis, I know you’ve explained it to me before but I still don’t see the problem. I mean, why would you not want to live in the cottage with your lovely, adoring husband? It’s not like me and Kiff – I mean, we’ve been married and living together for so long that neither of us would survive alone in the wild.” Jenna was quiet for a moment, obviously thinking. “We’d be like a couple of wildebeest separated from the herd. I’m sure I’d be picked off by hyenas in no time.”

  “You paint an interesting picture, but I can’t say I’m following your rather dramatic analogy.”

  Jenna sighed. “In plain English, what I’m saying is that I know you’re fine living – almost – independently, but I need Kiff around. If it’s any consolation, living with the other half does get easier after the first couple of years.”

  “I remember: the first two years with Alan were great. It was the last two that were dire. But I
have no intention of living on my own – everyone seems to forget that Daniel and I are together more than not. The problem isn’t about us living together. The issue for me is giving up the cottage.”

  “Yup, it does sound pretty daft when it’s your marriage at stake.”

  “Woah! I wouldn’t go that far Jenna!”

  “Okay, teensy exaggeration. But do you have to sell up? Couldn’t you keep the cottage but rent it out to carefully vetted tenants?”

  “I suppose I could, but I’d hate to have strangers living next to the shop. It wouldn’t be right.”

  “In that case, what about Erika moving in?”

  “I asked her if she’d like to, but as she works in the shop she says she’d rather not live in it as well. And her flat in the 1930s block is pretty fabulous.”

  Jenna sighed. “You have an unnatural affection for that house.”

  “I know it seems bonkers to love it so much, but it’s part of me.” Eleanor was frowning now as she struggled to explain what she meant. “I’ve chosen everything in it – the rag rugs, the ‘vintage’ crockery from the charity shops, the Welsh dresser, the hand-tinted prints on the wall.” She frowned. “And I know it sounds daft, but I can’t bear the thought of the house being separated from the bookshop when they’ve been a unit for two hundred years.”

  There was silence from Jenna, which was not an encouraging sign. After a moment or two she spoke again. “If you refuse to rent out or sell your place and Daniel won’t – or can’t – move in with you, then I don’t see a solution.”

  “Oh dear.” Eleanor sighed, disappointed that her clever sister hadn’t been able to come up with a simple answer. “That’s worrying because, at the moment, neither can I.”

  “Don’t worry – everything will sort itself out eventually.”

  “Well, if you or Kiff come up with any brilliant ideas, let me know.”

  “I will. Meanwhile, how are Mum and Harold? Still giving it their all down at the salsa class?”