True Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop

by Annie Darling

  The shops on the other side of the courtyard were boarded up and empty and had been for the entire five years that Verity had been working in the bookshop.

  Once upon a time the near-derelict buildings had housed a florist, a tea and coffee merchant, a haberdashers and a stamp shop. The premises Johnny and Posy had just exited, brushing themselves down as they did so, had once been an apothecary that even Posy couldn’t remember ever being open and she’d lived in the mews most of her life. Though it wasn’t surprising it had gone out of business when it hadn’t joined the twentieth century, never mind the twenty-first, and rebranded as a chemist.

  ‘Very!’ Posy called out and Verity walked over. Johnny smiled and kept brushing his hands over his suit and Posy was patting down her hair and an odd feeling yanked at Verity’s gut. A feeling that felt very close to jealousy at the horrible, world-shattering suspicion that Posy and Johnny had been doing things in the old apothecary shop that had got them all rumpled and in need of straightening up.

  Then as Verity got closer, she saw the streaks of dirt on Posy’s pretty face. ‘Ugh! It’s so dusty and rank in there and I think a bat just flew into my hair.’

  ‘I’m sure it was just cobwebs,’ Johnny said, reaching up to pull some out of his own hair. ‘Though I wouldn’t rule out rats. Hello,’ he added to Verity as she tried out a welcoming yet slightly confused smile.

  ‘Hello. Apparently I’m meant to be distracting you from giving Posy ideas, not that I’m going to.’ When it came to taking sides, Verity was Team Posy every time. ‘What kind of ideas are these?’

  ‘Oh, Very! You should see inside! Except you can’t really because there’s no electricity and the windows are boarded up and we think that one of the ceiling joists might have woodworm,’ Posy said excitedly. ‘But … but … the shop still has lots of its original fixtures and fittings.’

  ‘Beautiful cabinetry,’ Johnny said with a soft, wistful look in his eyes. ‘Exquisite. And so many glass bottles and jars, even old-fashioned scales and several different sizes of pestles and mortars.’

  ‘Boring! If I left it to you two, you’d want to preserve it as is as some kind of museum to dusty old things and inefficient business practices,’ said Sebastian, who could never stay away from Posy’s side for too long, even when she was glaring ferociously at him.

  ‘I don’t want to do that,’ Posy countered. ‘I just said that rather than tearing the whole thing down like some kind of capitalist philistine, you … we should think about other options. You could restore the shops, rent them out, and then the flats above them …’

  ‘There are flats above them?’ Verity asked in astonishment. ‘Why have they been empty for so long?’

  ‘Lavinia used to let her impoverished artist friends live there but then her impoverished artist friends all got old and died,’ Sebastian said. When he talked about his grandmother who’d left him everything in the mews that wasn’t the bookshop, his voice became tender and his face lost its usual haughty look. ‘I suppose Morland expects me to let them out rent-free too.’

  Verity squirmed a little at that because Posy wouldn’t even discuss the possibility of she and Nina paying any rent on the flat above Happy Ever After. ‘Lavinia let me and Sam live there for nothing so I’m just paying it forward,’ she insisted each time they broached the subject.

  ‘You could rent them out at a not stupidly exorbitant fee,’ Posy said now. ‘As live/work spaces for young artisans, for example.’

  Sebastian pretended to yawn.

  ‘It does seem a pity to ruin the integrity of the buildings,’ Johnny said before Verity could tell him not to bother getting in between Posy and Sebastian when they were having an argument. In fact, it was best to stand well back and if possible pull on a hazmat suit. ‘I’m not sure that they were originally a stable block, like you said. And they look early eighteenth century to me. Might be worth checking with the Land Registry.’

  ‘Oh! I bet they really should be Grade 2 listed,’ Posy exclaimed triumphantly.

  ‘Over my dead body!’ Sebastian huffed back.

  ‘That could be arranged!’

  Verity had the unwelcome feeling, not for the first time, that unlike herself who would do anything, even walk a mile out of her way, to avoid a confrontation, Posy and Sebastian enjoyed disagreeing with each other. It was a theory Nina shared.

  ‘I don’t think that is arguing, Very,’ Nina had remarked a couple of weeks before when she and Verity were cowering on the stairs as Posy and Sebastian had a furious row about the two carrier bags full of books that Posy intended on taking home with her. ‘I think it’s foreplay.’

  As the newlyweds circled each other, Verity took Johnny by the sleeve of his suit jacket. ‘It’s really best not to get involved,’ she said, as one of the benches became free so they could sit down. ‘What brings you to this part of town?’

  ‘I thought we should have a chat about all sorts of awkward things that it would be easier to leave unsaid.’ Johnny made sure to look Verity straight in the eye and, though she didn’t feel that she was personally responsible for much of this alleged awkwardness, it was still hard not to wriggle under his gaze. He’d really caught the sun over the last few weeks, his face tanned, which made his eyes seem impossibly blue. ‘Like last Saturday, for instance. It all got rather intense. I wouldn’t blame you if you were very cross with me.’

  ‘I wasn’t cross,’ Verity said though she’d been pretty tight-lipped on the way home from the wedding reception. ‘I wasn’t expecting to meet Marissa …’

  ‘I didn’t know she and Harry were going to be there. Not for sure.’

  ‘And I wasn’t expecting you to abandon me,’ Verity said in an aggrieved voice as she remembered all over again how Johnny and Marissa had sat there for ages, their heads together, as if the whole world, and especially Verity, didn’t exist any more.

  ‘I didn’t abandon you. You left the table and never came back,’ he protested. ‘So, what did you think of Marissa?’

  Merry’s pithy summing up of Marissa as a ‘stealth bitch’ after a Sunday debrief pretty much seemed to cover it, not that Verity would ever admit that to Johnny. She believed in what she called the solidarity of sisterhood and what Merry and Nina called hos before bros. Verity wouldn’t want to be one of those women who ran other women down, that was never a good look. ‘I didn’t really get a chance to talk to her properly,’ she said vaguely.

  ‘Well, when I spoke to Marissa the next day, she said that she thought you were fascinating,’ Johnny said, which Verity found hard to believe but props to Marissa for continuing to be able to do no wrong in Johnny’s eyes.

  ‘You talked to Marissa the next day?’ About me? Even after the argument you had with Harry? Unlike Johnny, Verity was determined to leave the awkward things unsaid but she hoped her incredulous tone would say them for her.

  ‘I talk to Marissa most days,’ Johnny said evenly. ‘Is that really so odd, now that you know what she means to me?’

  ‘Well, no,’ Verity admitted. Or rather, it wasn’t a surprise but it was odd. The whole Johnny/Marissa/Harry thing was odd in ways that defied reason and logic.

  ‘And my father thinks you’re, and this is a direct quote, “an absolute smasher”. He used the word “wonderful” several times too, also “intelligent, well-read, kind” and what was the other thing? That if he were thirty years younger, he’d be head over heels in love with you himself.’ Johnny shifted on the bench and moved his hand so it was almost but not quite touching Verity’s hand, which she was resting on the seat between them. ‘I am so sorry, I had no idea that he even knew about you, let alone that he’d come and bother you at work. Apparently, I have Harry and Wallis to thank for that.’

  Just the thought of William made Verity smile. ‘He didn’t bother me.’

  ‘He’s also very disappointed with me for not reading Pride and Prejudice,’ Johnny said with a reluctant smile of his own. ‘Demanded that I rectify this at once.’

  �
��Oh, you don’t have to do that,’ Verity assured him.

  ‘He seemed to think that if I did, you and me were a done deal and that he could look forward to hordes of fat-cheeked grandchildren running amok.’ Johnny shook his head as if nothing could be further from the truth, which was fine. Verity knew that anyway. ‘He means well but …’

  ‘He does mean well and all he wants is for you to be happy. That’s not such a bad thing for a father to want for his son,’ Verity said. ‘It’s just that you both disagree about what will make you happy.’

  Johnny thought that Marissa was the answer to all his prayers and William thought that Verity was what was missing from Johnny’s life. It was a bad case of crossed wires. Then there was William’s own affaire de coeur. ‘So, did he say anything else?’ Verity asked casually though the words got a little stuck in her throat. ‘Give any other reasons about why he was hanging about in a romantic fiction bookshop?’

  ‘He told me about Elspeth, if that’s what you mean,’ Johnny said. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, chin resting on his hands, his gaze fixed on Posy and Sebastian who were still arguing so it was impossible for Verity to see anything other than his profile, which gave no indication as to how he might feel about his father’s new girlfriend. Although she hadn’t sounded new but rather as if she’d been in William’s life for quite some time. ‘Which I’m fine with. I was surprised, yes, and maybe even a little hurt that he thought I wouldn’t be fine with it.’

  ‘He was worried that you might think that it meant that he loved your mother less,’ Verity ventured gently. ‘That you had this romantic idea that everyone only had one true love, like penguins or swans.’

  ‘He’s not in love with the woman. Let’s not get carried away. They’re just friends,’ Johnny said in a voice that dared Verity to disagree so she decided it was best not to. ‘Though William did tell me your theory that people who’ve lost a love are better at finding it again. I had no idea you were such a hopeless romantic.’

  ‘Well, not everyone who’s lost a love,’ Verity muttered because Johnny had lost Marissa to Harry years ago but was still pining. So if anyone was a hopeless romantic, it was Johnny. She racked her brains for something that would steer them to calmer waters.

  ‘Anyway, for what it’s worth, William has taken rather a shine to you. He’s going to email to invite you to dinner so we can both meet this Elspeth. He actually called it a double date.’ Johnny laughed at the notion, though it sounded rather hollow to Verity’s ears. ‘Can you imagine it?’

  ‘Not really,’ Verity said although she would have liked to spend time with William in different circumstances and not in the circumstances where William was hoping that Johnny was going to welcome ‘this Elspeth’ with open arms, then drop to his knees and propose to Verity. ‘Usually, it’s my family who can’t stop themselves from meddling – not that your father was meddling.’

  ‘Actually that’s the other reason why I’m here.’ Johnny was looking at her now, his expression amused, eyes twinkling so she could see the resemblance between father and son again. ‘I had an email from your mother. At least I think it was your mother. She did sign off as Our Vicar’s Wife.’

  Verity choked. ‘Say what now?’

  ‘You might want to brace yourself,’ Johnny advised her.

  ‘Oh God, what fresh hell is this?’ Verity moaned. ‘Why on earth would Muv be emailing you? How did she even get your address?’

  ‘She got it from Merry, who I can only imagine got it from the company website,’ Johnny said calmly enough, even though Verity could feel her heart hammering away like a woodpecker on steroids.

  ‘I am going to kill my sister,’ Verity promised in a suitably murderous voice. ‘Slowly and painfully.’

  Johnny shook his head like he didn’t want to be an accessory to these plans. ‘Anyway, your mother has invited me down for the weekend. Apparently Our Vicar is keen to show me his beehives while you ladies are occupied with wedding planning. Is showing me his beehives some kind of religious euphemism?’

  ‘No! He’s very into beekeeping. He has hives in the back garden and two at the local primary school. Once he starts talking about his bees …’ Verity sighed. ‘It’s a toss-up which is worse, wedding planning with all four sisters and Our Vicar’s Wife, or Our Vicar explaining how he plans to introduce a new queen to one of his colonies. It’s just as well that you can duck out. I’ll phone Muv, extend your apologies and all that.’

  ‘Oh. You don’t want me to meet your parents?’ Johnny asked, his brow furrowing in a way that pinged in a small corner of Verity’s heart until she reminded herself of one important fact.

  ‘You don’t need to meet them. We’re just friends, as Merry knows only too well so I don’t know why she’s meddling too!’

  ‘You’ve already met my family, so I don’t see why I shouldn’t meet yours,’ Johnny argued, like there was some kind of quid pro quo thing going on when there really wasn’t.

  ‘I only met your father. We’re talking about a full house here,’ Verity sighed. ‘Mum, Dad, all four sisters, maybe even a couple of cousins.’ She was running out of fingers to count on. ‘Probably a couple of stray parishioners, who’ve come to talk about the church flowers and ended up staying for a week because their boiler’s on the blink.’

  ‘William is my only family,’ Johnny reminded her. ‘He and my mother were both the only children of couples who married quite late in life. It’s been just the two of us for as long as I can remember.’

  He was using his hurt voice and his brow had furrowed again so Verity had a glimpse of the little boy he might once have been with elderly grandparents and no siblings or cousins to run riot with, invite on to his pirate ship …

  ‘Look, it just feels like a lie if I introduce you to my family,’ Verity tried to explain. ‘If I bring you home, you don’t know what they’re like, they’ll read into it.’ Verity pulled a weary face because this was not her first time at the rodeo, no sir. ‘They’ll read an entire library worth of books into it.’

  ‘But it’s not a lie. Your sisters already know the truth and we’ve never told anyone that we’re dating. We’ve always introduced ourselves as friends,’ Johnny persisted though Verity didn’t know why he was bothering. If he thought he was being invited to a pleasant weekend in a rambling vicarage with a charmingly eccentric family in the East Lincolnshire Wold, he should think again. He was being invited to an apocalypse.

  ‘We’ve let people think that we’re dating. We’ve lied by omission. There’s a reason why lying is frowned upon heavily in the ten commandments,’ Verity said in a manner that was far too close to Mary Bennet, her fictional nemesis, for her liking.

  ‘Actually it isn’t,’ Johnny said with just enough smugness that Verity didn’t feel that much sympathy for his lack of family any more. ‘Thou shalt not lie is not one of the ten commandments.’

  ‘Really? You really want to go there with me? A bona fide vicar’s daughter?’ Verity demanded. ‘The commandment you’re after is thou shalt not bear false witness against …’

  ‘Oh God, you two, get a room!’ snapped Sebastian as he strode over. ‘Word of warning, don’t start arguing with any of these bloody bookshop shrews. The next thing you know, you’re married to one of them. Ow!’

  Posy didn’t look even a little bit sorry for slapping her husband upside his rude head. ‘You begged me to marry you,’ she hissed. ‘I have witnesses.’

  Verity hated arguing with anyone, unless that anyone happened to be one of her sisters and then arguing was not only necessary but about as useful as howling at the moon. She certainly didn’t want to argue with Johnny, especially if it led to matrimony.

  ‘Look, if you really want to come for the weekend you can,’ she said and as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she wanted to pluck them from the air and stuff them back in.

  Johnny beamed so hard that, sitting there in his suit, tie loosened, top button undone, he looked like he’d stepped out of a GQ f
ashion editorial, damn him.

  ‘I’m looking forward to it,’ he said. ‘You’re still quite a mystery to me, Verity. I can’t wait to figure out a few more clues.’

  Verity wished that she were more enigmatic and then she’d never have started down the road of fake boyfriends and ended up in this mess. ‘Well, don’t say you weren’t warned. And you’d better pack earplugs and a stun gun, because you’re going to need them.’

  17

  ‘One must speak a little, you know. It would look odd to be entirely silent for half an hour.’

  The following Saturday Johnny picked up Verity, then Merry who immediately booted Verity out of the passenger seat (‘You know I get sick if I sit in the back’) then barely drew breath for the next hour. First, she filled Johnny in on the likes and dislikes of Our Vicar and Our Vicar’s Wife whether he wanted filling in or not, then moved on to her sisters when Johnny asked if Immy was short for Imogen and Chatty short for Charlotte.

  ‘God, no! Hasn’t Very told you anything about us? How rude, when we’re all so endlessly fascinating! We’re all named after virtues, though Farv and Muv say that they needn’t have bothered, because none of us are the least bit virtuous. Apart from Very, of course.’

  ‘So, your name isn’t Merry, then?’ Johnny ventured as Merry did finally stop talking but only so she could shove another Percy Pig in her mouth. ‘I did wonder.’

  ‘It’s Mercy,’ the woman herself said witheringly as if Johnny was an utter imbecile for not being able to figure that out on his own. ‘Con is really Constance, we call Patience Immy because she’s totally impatient and Charity is Chatty because she never shuts up.’

  Johnny caught Verity’s pained look in the rearview mirror. ‘Talking of never shutting up, I’m going to dump you at Birchanger Green services if you don’t zip it for at least fifteen minutes,’ Johnny said but Merry just grinned then launched into a long story about the psychological warfare she was waging on a woman in her department at work who kept sending round-robin passive-aggressive emails about the state of the office fridge.