The Village Green Bookshop
Rachael Lucas
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Three Months Later
Acknowledgements
The Telephone Box Library
To James, with all the loves
Chapter One
‘I can’t believe you’ve been left in the lurch to go on your own.’
Hannah Reynolds took the opportunity that a queue of traffic offered to look fleetingly at her own expression in the rear-view mirror of her untidy car. At thirty-five, she still managed to look like a schoolgirl who’d been told off – again – for talking in class. She rolled her eyes. Somehow the girl she’d been, though, had been replaced with a pretty-ish (her own estimation – trying to embrace the whole love yourself movement on Instagram) woman with a tangle of dark brown curls (and a sprinkling of sneaky greys).
Traffic began to shift, slowly, and she waved with gratitude as a lorry driver held back, giving her space to move left into the lane that fed into the Oxford turn-off. Meanwhile, her friend Katie was still grumbling her disapproval through the hands-free phone.
‘You’re too bloody soft, that’s your problem.’
‘I know,’ Hannah said patiently. She didn’t really think she was. If you asked her – which the loving but strident Katie didn’t, very often – she’d admit that she could be a bit of a pushover, but that she stood up for what mattered. And if that meant that Phil, her salesman husband who worked increasingly ridiculous hours, couldn’t make it to her Aunt Jess’s funeral and she had to go alone, well, that was just what happened in modern families. Or that’s what she told herself, at least.
‘But Phil had work. Ben has an exam. The last thing he needs is any more trouble at school.’
A picture of Ben earlier this morning – rucksack slung casually over his shoulder, the mop of dark curls he’d inherited from her hanging over his eyes – popped into her head. It was a source of constant amazement to her that she had a fifteen-year-old son, when she still didn’t feel like a proper grown-up herself. But somehow the little boy had grown into a hulking six-foot teenager with a fine line in sarcastic humour and an increasing propensity for getting into trouble, both in and out of school.
‘I’m just saying that if someone in Phil’s family had died, you’d have been there no matter what.’
Hannah rolled her eyes again. Katie was right. Of course she was right.
‘Yes, I would. I’m the sucker, he’s an idiot, that’s the end of it.’
She knew precisely how the conversation was going to go – and Katie, who was like a dog with a bone about these things, wasn’t going to give up.
‘Oh come on, don’t get arsey.’ Katie’s tone softened slightly.
‘I’m not. Bloody hell!’ She swore as a motorcyclist swerved suddenly in front of her, so she had to slam on the brakes. ‘Not you, a maniac on a bike.’
‘I did wonder.’ Katie laughed. ‘Look, I love Phil. I think he’s a perfectly nice husband and father, and all that stuff. I just love you more, and it makes me cross that you’ve somehow made a career out of being the easy-going one.’
Don’t come round here with your undeniable logic, Hannah thought, shaking her head.
‘Just maybe for once think about putting yourself first? For me?’
‘Deal.’ Even as she said it, she knew that the chances of that happening were vanishingly small. Katie knew exactly the same – after all, they’d all been friends since secondary school, growing up together in the Manchester suburbs. The difference was that while Katie had made something of her life, Hannah had somehow ended up pretty much where they’d started off, with only the stretch marks and frown lines of motherhood to show for it.
‘Right. Got to go. Speak later. Love you!’
It was easy for Katie, Hannah reflected, turning off the motorway and watching as the green of the countryside was replaced with the sprawling outskirts of Oxford. She was on her own, no children, had a brilliant job as head of research at a huge multinational company, and didn’t take any shit. She’d been working on not taking any shit since she left university, graduating with a first (of course) and climbing the ladder with a dogged determination to succeed.
It wasn’t quite so easy to start not taking any shit at the age of thirty-five, when you’d had a lifetime of being the lovely, obliging one. Hannah ran through the mental list of things she’d put aside for one reason or another. Oxford always brought this hankering out in her. Years ago, when she’d found out she was pregnant at nineteen – in the first term of her degree – she’d put aside her ambition to be a professor of literature among the dreaming spires and instead married Phil, her sixth-form sweetheart, who’d been slogging away at a business studies degree at a red-brick uni in Lancashire. He had carried on his studies while she got a job working part-time at a nursery school, and when Ben was born she’d taken him to work, popped him in the baby room and fed him on her breaks. Logical, methodical, reliable. These were the words people used to describe her. They weren’t bad things, though. That was what she consoled herself with.
The grey sky split apart and the city was lit with a shaft of bright, pale sunlight as she drove down the road, the golden stone soaking up the light as if it was the least it deserved. The hotel was situated down a pretty tree-lined driveway – an old manor house that looked over a meadow full of cows grazing incongruously opposite a row of tattered shops and student houses. She parked the car, hauled her overnight bag out of the boot and headed inside to check in.
If there was one thing the Reynolds family did well – excelled at, in fact – it was funerals. In the foyer of the hotel, she could see an assortment of distant friends and relations – most of whom she hadn’t seen since her mother’s funeral two years before. They looked up on seeing her, greeting her with warm smiles of welcome.
‘No Phil today?’
‘Is he following on?’ Her cousin Andy lifted his chin and looked at her over the top of his pint of Guinness.
‘He’s working. Can’t get away. Last-minute thing.’ She pressed her lips together and waited.
‘Oh, what a shame. And Ben?’
‘School. An exam.’ I’m going to have this conversation about eighteen times before the service, Hannah thought to herself, smiling politely and pointing in
the direction of the reception desk. ‘Just going to check in.’
‘Hannah Reynolds,’ she said, taking out a credit card and handing it across to the girl behind the desk.
‘And will Mr Reynolds be joining you later?’
She suppressed a small roar of fury.
‘Not today,’ she said politely. ‘Not this time.’
The funeral was just as moving as she expected. Tears – because Aunt Jess, Hannah’s mother’s sister, was only seventy-eight, no age at all, as everyone was telling themselves. Laughter – because her daughter Beth, who was as exuberant, loud and chatty as ever – had put together a photo montage set to music which made everyone snort with amusement at the things Jess had got up to. Hannah had swallowed back the enormous lump in her throat that formed the moment she saw a picture of Jess standing arm in arm with her sister, Hannah’s mum. They’d been best friends. Being an only child meant Hannah had missed out on that kind of bond herself.
Washing her hands in the bathroom before the buffet, she thought about Ben and the troubles he’d been having at school. If he’d had a sibling, would things have been different? If they hadn’t been shuttled from London to Inverness, and then to Manchester, would he have been more settled? If she’d tried harder to find out why she couldn’t get pregnant again – well – no. That wasn’t really her fault. She’d tried. She’d taken the vitamins and eaten all the things they’d recommended and bloody Phil had taken it into his head that it couldn’t possibly be his fault because somehow it had to be her problem, not his, but . . .
‘You okay? Look like you’re miles away.’
Hannah looked up, seeing her cousin Beth’s reflection in the mirror. She shook her head. She was lost in her own self-absorbed thoughts, and here was Beth, who’d just lost her mum, asking if she was all right.
She turned, reaching out to give Beth a hug. ‘I’m fine. How are you? It was a lovely service, wasn’t it?’
Beth gave an irreverent snort, which made Hannah laugh. ‘Everyone always says that, don’t they? Imagine if we did a TripAdvisor for funerals. 1/10 – terrible boring ceremony, shit food. 4/10 – sandwiches delicious, guests mind-numbing.’
Hannah giggled. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘I do. Phil didn’t decide to drop everything at the last minute and make a surprise appearance, I see.’
‘Don’t you start.’ Hannah shook her head.
‘He doesn’t deserve you, you know.’
‘That’s what I’m always telling him.’ She wasn’t, actually. She followed Beth back to the function room, where everyone was milling about drinking slightly warm white wine and eating sandwiches. Beth had a word with the woman behind the bar and returned with a chilled bottle of Pinot Grigio.
‘Let’s sneak off outside. I can’t do any more of this polite conversation. I want to hear everything that’s going on.’ She tipped an unwise amount of wine into Hannah’s glass. ‘Shame Ben couldn’t have made it – he and Lauren haven’t seen each other in years . . . What?’
Hannah indicated the glass with a nod of her head. ‘I’m going to be over the limit tomorrow at this rate.’
‘Bollocks.’ Beth poured herself a similarly huge glass. ‘So, little cousin, what’s going on in your world?’
‘You’ve just lost your mum,’ Hannah began. ‘We shouldn’t be talking about me.’
It was lovely to spend some time with Beth. Growing up without siblings, the two of them had developed a close bond despite their apparent differences. She and Beth were opposites in so many ways – Beth had always been a magnet for gossip, bold as brass, not afraid to say what she thought and upset people. Hannah, on the other hand, had done pretty much anything she could for an easy life.
‘I’m not being funny, but I’ve been losing her for a year and a half. Cancer is evil. Honestly, by the end, it was like waiting for a bloody train that’s hours late. She hated it, I hated it. I lost her ages ago, not last month.’ Beth shook her head in a gesture of frustration.
‘I know, but . . .’
‘Honestly, it’s a relief to talk about something other than funeral arrangements, medication deliveries and Macmillan nurses, amazing though they are. I feel like my life’s been completely subsumed by cancer for the last eighteen months.’
‘Okay.’ Hannah took a large mouthful of wine and looked out across the terrace. ‘So weird that there are cows just there in the middle of the city.’
‘I know. It’s like being back in the village, except with all the glorious advantages of actual civilization.’
‘I thought you loved living in Little Maudley?’
‘I do.’ Beth looked thoughtful. ‘Well, I did. But I’ve been back and forth so much, and – I dunno, it’s just all this has made me realize I want something more.’ She gazed out of the window again, looking out at the city that stretched into the distance.
‘What about Lauren?’
‘Even more so her.’
As if she’d heard her name, Lauren appeared – tall, willowy, impossibly glamorous in a short black form-fitting dress, her hair tumbling down her back in perfectly coiffed curls.
‘Do you mind if me and Ellie go into town?’ She gave Hannah a brief smile. They’d kissed hello before the service, Hannah marvelling at how tall and assured her niece seemed. It was a far cry from the childhood days when Lauren and Ben would run around the garden in their waterproofs, covered in mud.
‘I think that’s fair enough.’ Beth reached for her phone and tapped on the screen. ‘There, I’ve transferred some money to your account. Go and get a Wagamama’s or something.’
‘Thanks, Mum.’ Lauren’s face brightened. ‘You’re a star.’
‘I’m a sucker, is what I am.’ Beth blew her daughter a kiss and she and Hannah watched as Lauren headed back inside and linked arms with her identically glamorous friend. They sashayed off across the room and headed into the city centre.
‘God, we weren’t that self-assured when we were eighteen, were we?’
‘No chance.’ Beth chuckled. ‘But that’s partly why I’ve decided I’m moving through here. She needs something more than the village has to offer.’
‘Moving to Oxford? What about the shop?’
‘I just need to find someone to take it over. It’s not exactly rocket science.’ Beth rubbed her ear thoughtfully and then pulled off her earrings, shoving them into the pocket of her bag. ‘I hate being dressed up for things like this.’
‘You two are like chalk and cheese.’ Hannah tipped her head in the direction of the door where Lauren had just been, wafting expensive-smelling perfume.
‘You’re not joking. How did I give birth to someone who looks like she should be on Love Island, when I’m happiest in a pair of jeans and Converse?’
‘How did I give birth to a football genius, when neither I nor Phil can figure out the offside rule and grass pitches give me raging hay fever?’
‘Being a parent is weird.’
‘It definitely is.’ Hannah tipped her glass forward and chinked it against the edge of her cousin’s in a toast of agreement.
‘Mum was saying a while back that you’d been having some trouble with Ben?’
Hannah ran a hand through her hair, pushing it back off her face in the gesture she always used when she was stressed or thinking. She’d been doing it so much of late, she half expected to find long strands of it coming away in her hand.
‘He’s just fifteen. Very fifteen.’
Beth nodded in the way that only another parent, or a teacher, could. ‘I get it.’
‘There’s a group of lads that live near us – he hangs around with them after school – they’re not exactly focused on their education. In fact, they seem to be more focused on what mischief they can get up to, if you know what I mean.’
‘Drugs?’ Beth widened her eyes in horror.
‘No.’ Hannah shook her head vehemently. ‘But we’ve had a bit of under-age drinking, and . . .’
‘Do you remember getting p
lastered at Grandma and Grandpa Miller’s silver wedding?’ Beth interrupted, to Hannah’s relief. The catalogue of Ben’s misdemeanours was growing weekly, and driving down the motorway with only the radio for company had given her time to think about what was going on.
Hannah laughed. ‘Yes I do.’
‘A bit of drinking isn’t the end of the world – even if he is under age.’ Beth raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ve had all sorts of nonsense with Lauren. It’s what they do.’
‘No, I know. But getting picked up by the police for shoplifting with the same gang of lads is more of a problem.’ Hannah’s shoulders dropped slightly. The relief of saying it out loud, when until now she’d been keeping it secret from absolutely everyone, was huge.
‘Ohhh.’ Beth made a face. ‘He did not?’
‘Oh, he did.’ Hannah shook her head. ‘And worse still, because he’s got as much nous as me when it comes to stuff like that, the others got away and it was all pinned on him.’
‘My God.’
‘I know. So the school got involved, and social services came to visit to make sure I was doing a good enough job of parenting—’
‘Er, hello – what about Phil?’
‘Oh yeah, him too – only he was working as usual, so it all sort of fell down to me.’
‘Of course. Honestly, Han, you’re like a single parent with none of the advantages.’
‘There are advantages?’
‘Course there bloody are. Nobody hogging the duvet, nobody farts in bed after they’ve eaten parsnips with Sunday dinner, I get the remote to myself, and—’
‘You wouldn’t like to meet someone?’
Beth poured them both another – equally huge – glass of wine. ‘Course I would. Don’t think it hasn’t crossed my mind when I think about moving through here.’ She waggled her eyebrows. ‘Online dating in Little Maudley isn’t exactly up to much. I reckon there’s a far better chance of finding someone gorgeous and rich and charming in the middle of the city, don’t you?’
‘Well, that’s the theory, anyway. Can’t say it’s worked that well for half my friends back home – they’re always complaining that everyone on the dating sites is either married or commitment-phobic.’
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