True Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop

by Annie Darling

  Actually three hours in a car with Merry was a good way to desensitise Johnny for the ordeal ahead.

  As usual, his phone beeped constantly to compete with Merry’s verbal diarrhoea and when they did reach Birchanger Green services, Johnny immediately seized the phone, thrust a ten-pound note at Verity and asked her to get him a coffee and a muffin. ‘Darling,’ she heard him say as he strode away. ‘First chance I’ve had to call you.’

  Verity wished that Costa Coffee did shots of love-repellent so she could slip a couple into Johnny’s latte. She also wished she could get a shot of liquid Valium to add to Merry’s cappuccino. As it was her sister only stopped talking when they left the A16 at Louth, which put the SatNav into such a panic that it tried to direct them back to the motorway, and Johnny finally snapped. ‘Have some mercy, Merry! Can you please be quiet before I lose my mind?’

  Merry couldn’t even be quiet quietly but huffed and sighed as they drove up the hills and down the valleys of the Lincolnshire Wold and through tiny villages, each prettier than the last, until they came to Lambton. It had a village green with duckpond, a Post Office cum general store, a pub, the Lambton Inn, and a church, which had been rebuilt in utilitarian brick and stone with very few fancy flourishes in the mid eighteenth century though no one could say what had happened to the old church. Across the road from the church was the Old Rectory, built a hundred years later; a three-storey Gothic-style redbrick house, which had all the fancy flourishes that were missing from the church including mullioned windows and a hexagonal turret that overlooked the side lawn.

  It was nearly twenty-six miles and a world away from the three-bedroom prefab on the edge of a sprawling council estate in Grimsby where they’d grown up. As the tyres crunched over the gravel drive, Verity wondered, not for the first time, if life would have been different if they’d had a bit of breathing space then. Room to roam and grow, instead of being heaped on top of one another, with nothing to do but bicker and gang up on each other. Perhaps she wouldn’t have been the only quiet one.

  ‘Oh my God! Am I allowed to talk now?’ Merry dramatically gasped for air as if Johnny had told her to stop breathing too and Verity revised her opinion. It was possible that, if they’d had a bedroom each and a huge garden to play in, so there had been further distance between them and a genuine need to shout, her sisters would have been even louder than they were, which didn’t even seem possible.

  ‘I do like a good turret,’ Johnny remarked, as he turned off the engine and took a moment to give the Old Rectory the once-over. ‘Looks like it may have been designed by S.S. Teulon. He was quite a famous Victorian architect.’

  Merry had already scrambled from the car so it was just the two of them.

  ‘It’s not too late to turn round,’ Verity said and she wasn’t even joking. ‘We could be back in London by ten.’

  ‘We’re not turning round,’ Johnny said firmly with a reassuring smile. ‘For one thing, I can’t wait to explore the house.’

  Verity gave Johnny one last chance to back out. ‘Are you sure you’re up to this?’ she asked him as she unlocked the front door, because of course Merry didn’t know where her keys were.

  ‘It’s twenty-four hours in the Lincolnshire Wold, what could be more pleasant?’ he asked even though through the open windows Verity could already hear three separate sources of music, a dog barking, children shrieking and what sounded like a rugby team running up and down the stairs in hobnailed boots.

  Then Verity got the door open and the noise became a veritable wall of sound that would have even Phil Spector begging for a pair of ear defenders. In the front room on their right, the TV was on and three small children, whom Verity had never seen before, were leaping from armchair to sofa and back again, screaming as they went.

  ‘Mind the boxes,’ Merry told Johnny as they inched down the hall past a stack of cardboard boxes and a teetering pile of laundry bags spilling out old clothes, battered toys, dog-eared paperbacks and assorted items to be filed under bric-a-brac. ‘Must be for the jumble sale.’

  Through the next doorway, the dining room, a girl of about nine or ten was pounding away at the piano.

  ‘Hello! Hello! Who are you?’ Merry asked and the girl swung round. She had a stubborn tilt to her chin, a turned-up nose and a ferocious glare.

  ‘Madison,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘All right. Moving on,’ Verity said and they proceeded to the big kitchen at the back of the vicarage, where Our Vicar and Our Vicar’s Wife were standing, with their backs to them, at the sink happily peeling vegetables and singing ‘I Like To Be In America’ from West Side Story.

  ‘Farv! Muv!’ Merry cried and their parents turned round.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ Dora Love said vaguely as if she wasn’t quite sure who they were or what they were doing in her kitchen. She was the sort of woman who drooped slightly at the edges. Even when they were freshly ironed, her clothes looked rumpled. Her messy bun, wisps of ash-blonde hair escaping, rivalled any messy bun that Posy had attempted, but she had the warmest brown eyes, which were never anything but kind.

  ‘What visions of loveliness stand before me?’ intoned Ken Love in a loud voice perfect for sermonising and leading the congregation in song. He was a head taller than his wife, equally crumpled, and with the wild hair of a mad professor. To a stranger, Mr Love might seem imposing but Mr Love also firmly believed that there was no such thing as a stranger, only a friend you hadn’t met yet, so would usually end up inviting said stranger back to the vicarage for supper. ‘Second daughter! Middle daughter! Come give your father a fortifying kiss! And who is this handsome chap? Has he come to ask for one of your hands in marriage?’

  ‘Not my hand in marriage,’ Merry said as she pushed Verity out of the way so she could be first in line for one of the vicar’s exuberant hugs. ‘Maybe Very’s.’

  ‘Ignore her,’ Verity advised, as she offered her left cheek for her father to kiss, then her right cheek to her mother for the same treatment. ‘This is Johnny, my friend. He’s an architect. He knows who designed the vicarage.’

  ‘Oh! Your friend! Johnny! Yes, so pleased you could come.’ Dora Love took Johnny’s hand. ‘And so pleased you and Very are spending time together.’

  Our Vicar looked Johnny up and down. Johnny suffered the attention with a patient smile until Ken nodded. ‘I will execute great vengeance on them with wrathful rebukes. Then they will know that I am the Lord, when I lay my vengeance upon them,’ he said by way of a greeting. ‘Ezekiel 25:17. Be nice to our Verity. We’re rather fond of her, you see.’

  It was the first time that any of Verity’s boyfriends had got a bible verse but then the only other boyfriend she’d ever had was Adam and before she’d brought him to meet the folks, she’d pre-warned her father that Adam didn’t have the inner reserves of strength to cope with a bible verse.

  As it was, Verity had been terrified that the combined force of all the Loves would destroy Adam before he’d even taken his coat off. They hadn’t but they’d certainly crushed his spirit. He’d barely spoken two complete sentences during the entire uncomfortable weekend that he’d spent at the vicarage.

  Johnny was made of stronger stuff because he simply dipped his head in acknowledgement of Our Vicar’s implied threat. ‘I’m rather fond of Verity too,’ he said and though he meant in a friendly way because they were friends, it made Verity’s heart do a strange, skippy thing. Then Johnny held up a bag from the very posh Ottolenghi deli in Islington and a bottle of red wine that looked as if it had cost a lot more than six quid, which was the most that Verity had ever paid for a bottle of wine. ‘Thank you for inviting me.’

  ‘Is that chocolate brittle?’ Merry asked, trying to make a grab for the Ottolenghi bag but was held back by her father. ‘Did you get the salt caramel?’

  ‘Desist, devil child!’

  ‘Actually, talking of devil children, who are the rugrats wrecking the front room and the piano?’ Merry asked, as Verity watched Johnny look
around the kitchen, the late-afternoon sun streaming in through the large window by the sink.

  With its Aga, Welsh dresser full of mismatched crockery, scrubbed pine table and sagging sofa covered in a threadbare collection of blankets where Picasso and Dali, their two Calico cats, snoozed, the kitchen was the heart of the vicarage.

  There was always something simmering on the hob, a cake baking in the oven, the kettle whistling as parishioners were counselled and given a sympathetic ear, a shoulder to cry on and/or a piece of cake.

  ‘The kiddies are from the next village. Mum’s been rushed to hospital with an almost burst appendix and dad’s working on an oil rig in the middle of the North Sea, though he should be with us later tonight.’ Dora Love frowned. ‘They’re very nice children but I keep forgetting their names.’

  ‘So, there’s no room at the inn, then?’ Verity asked hopefully. ‘Because we could just go …’

  ‘There’s plenty of room. The children have made a den in my sewing room, you and Merry can have the blue room, Chatty and Immy are in their old room and when we emailed, Jimmy said he didn’t mind sleeping on your grandfather’s old camp bed,’ Mrs Love said calmly. ‘That reminds me, we still need to get it down from the attic.’

  ‘Jimmy? It’s Johnny,’ Verity said. ‘And really Johnny is a guest so he should have a proper bed. He can have the blue room and Merry can sleep on the sofa in the front room and I’ll sleep on the camp bed.’

  ‘Sleep on the sofa? With my bad back?’ Merry complained.

  ‘I don’t mind the camp bed,’ Johnny said just as there was a commotion at the back door and two women burst in followed by a large golden retriever who tried to jump on the kitchen sofa but was kept at bay by the two cats who had woken up and transformed into hissing, spitting monsters.

  ‘Poor Alan,’ Verity said, because in the six years since Poor Alan had been the vicarage’s resident dog, its resident cats had always treated him with disdain and, in the case of Picasso and Dali, outright hostility. Not that Poor Alan took it personally. Now, he caught sight of Merry and Verity and bounded over, tail wagging, only to be mown down by the twins.

  ‘Chatty! Immy!’ Merry yelled loud enough to burst eardrums before she was engulfed in a sisterly huddle. ‘So good to see you! Where’s Con?’

  ‘She’s at the farm. Some kind of cow emergency.’ Immy scrunched up her face at the horror of what a cow emergency might be.

  ‘As long as she doesn’t have to put her hand up a cow she’ll be all right,’ Chatty added, her own face contorted in disgust.

  Chatty and Immy were similar enough that most people thought they were identical until they stood still long enough so that it became obvious that Chatty was taller and Immy had a slight cleft to her chin and her hair was flaxen rather than just blonde. But now they turned to Verity with matching expressions of up-to-no-good. ‘Hey Very, can we get some love?’ Immy asked, advancing on her elder sister as Chatty brought up the rear and Verity didn’t even have time to shrink back before she was enveloped in a double hug, both her cheeks peppered with slobbery kisses. Not out of sisterly affection but solely to torment her.

  Verity suffered the onslaught for a count of ten then pinched them both on an arm so they released her with indignant squeaks. ‘Not cool, Very,’ Chatty said.

  ‘Not cool at all,’ Immy echoed.

  Verity assumed her most saintly smile, because she knew just how to torment her sisters too. ‘But we must stem the tide of malice, and pour into each other’s wounded bosoms the balm of sisterly consolation,’ she said in her prissiest voice.

  All three Love sisters groaned. Merry made a point of checking the clock on the microwave. ‘We’ve only been here ten minutes and Very is already quoting Pride and Prejudice. I think that must be a personal best.’

  Johnny had been watching all these sisterly shenanigans with an air of bemusement but when Verity caught his eye he smiled and she rolled her eyes in the direction of her sisters and smiled back.

  ‘Who’s this?’ asked Chatty from behind her.

  ‘Is this your young man, Very?’ Immy had her back to their parents so she treated Johnny to a theatrical wink because Verity’s sisters were nothing if not predictable.

  ‘Less of the young I’m afraid,’ Johnny said with a rueful grimace.

  Chatty and Immy both grinned. ‘We like him,’ Immy announced. ‘He can stay.’

  ‘Of course he can stay but I need you all out of the house now,’ Mrs Love announced. ‘The children have to be fed and they’ll only eat chicken nuggets and chips and your father still hasn’t written his sermon for tomorrow. He was meant to be done with it by Thursday.’

  ‘There was a fellow in Hull who was having trouble uniting two colonies of bees so I felt duty-bound to drive over and lend my assistance,’ the good vicar protested. ‘I wonder if I shouldn’t just sermonise extempore. It might be quite freeing.’

  ‘You what?’ Merry grunted.

  ‘He wants to wing it,’ Verity replied as Mrs Love shook her head.

  ‘Last time you winged it, your sermon lasted nearly two hours and all the Sunday roasts in the village were ruined.’ She gave her husband an affectionate slap on his rump. ‘Go to your study and no supper for you until you’re done.’ She made a shooing motion with her hands at her four daughters and Johnny. ‘Go to the pub. Take Poor Alan with you,’ she added as Poor Alan once again tried to get up on the kitchen sofa only to get swiped by a furious Picasso.

  ‘Sorry,’ Verity said to Johnny as they exited the vicarage a scant twenty minutes after arriving. ‘So sorry that you haven’t even been offered a cup of tea or a chance to sit down.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Johnny said. ‘I could do with stretching my legs after all that driving.’

  ‘There’s not much scope for stretching,’ Chatty told him. ‘Pub’s only a minute away.’ Then she winked at him. ‘Very, does he know that we know?’

  Verity decided that she must have done something very bad in another life, or even something bad in this life – namely inventing fake boyfriends – to deserve all this misfortune. ‘Well, if Johnny didn’t know then he knows by now.’

  ‘Knows what exactly?’ Johnny asked and Verity was at a loss to explain how he managed to keep his voice calm and his face grimace-free.

  ‘That you and Verity are just “friends”.’ Immy air-quoted and smirked. ‘Though Farv and Muv aren’t buying this friends malarkey at all. They’re praying, literally praying, that you’re in love.’

  ‘We’re not in love, but we are friends,’ Johnny said with a sidelong look at Verity.

  ‘Yup, just friends,’ she confirmed.

  ‘Don’t worry, you can just be yourselves around us,’ Chatty said kindly. ‘You don’t have to pretend to even like each other if you don’t want to.’

  ‘We do like each other!’ Verity and Johnny said in unison and Immy smirked again and Chatty and Merry nudged each other and even Poor Alan looked as if he were laughing at them.

  ‘Yeah, but you don’t “like” each other,’ Merry said and now she was air-quoting too.

  Verity rolled her eyes so hard it was a wonder she didn’t strain something. ‘Well, I certainly don’t “like” you very much right now,’ she said tartly. Merry pouted as Chatty and Immy snorted like two gleeful little piggies.

  ‘If you really want to stretch your legs, shall we go for a walk before we head to the pub?’ Verity suggested to Johnny, who nodded gratefully. ‘You’re not invited,’ she added to her three sisters. ‘Only Poor Alan and that’s because he can’t talk.’

  There was a gate set into the stone wall, which bordered the side lawn. Verity and Johnny headed for it, Poor Alan happily trotting ahead to lead the way.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Verity said again; she suspected it wouldn’t be the last time she said it over the next twenty-four hours. Johnny hadn’t even met Con yet.

  ‘Not too many secrets between sisters?’ Johnny guessed as they crossed over the lane to another wooden gate that
led to a footpath that would take them for a gentle stroll on the outskirts of the Wolds.

  ‘Not between my sisters,’ Verity agreed. ‘Even if I don’t tell them everything, they can always tell when I’m withholding and manage to winkle the truth out of me through sheer persistence.’

  ‘Sounds exhausting.’

  ‘It really is.’

  Verity risked a glance at Johnny to see how annoyed he was, but he didn’t look the least bit cross. ‘Well, I say we stick with the friend defence unless questioned under oath. Sound like a plan?’

  ‘It does.’

  ‘If you like we can walk in silence for a while,’ Johnny suggested. Before Verity could ask him how he knew that she didn’t want to hear another word from anyone for at least half an hour, he pressed the tip of one finger to her brow bone. ‘I’ve noticed that when you’re about to go all Greta Garbo, a little muscle starts banging away here.’

  It was true. When modern life with all its noise and chaos started getting to Verity, a tic just above her right eyelid began to spasm in much the same way as it was doing now.

  ‘Also, you’re going monosyllabic on me,’ Johnny pointed out. ‘That’s another sign, so I’m going to shut up now.’

  If Verity truly was going ‘all Greta Garbo’ then she’d want to be alone, preferably in a dimly lit, soundproofed room, but as it was she was quite happy to be outside. The sticky heat was gone now they were further north and a delightful breeze rustled the leaves. The air was glorious and fresh and Verity took big lungfuls of it in as if she were a hardcore vaper.

  Verity loved London. Loved how easy it was to be anonymous in a big city. Loved her friends and her little rent-free flat and the life she’d made there for herself, but she did wonder if really she was a country girl at heart.

  As the long grass edging the path kissed her bare legs and Poor Alan happily gave chase to a lazy butterfly darting through the flowers, Verity could feel all the tension from three hours in a car with Merry incessantly yapping float away.