The Village Green Bookshop: A Feel-Good Escape for All Book Lovers from the Bestselling Author of The Telephone Box Library

by Rachael Lucas

  ‘This isn’t the middle of nowhere. Oxford isn’t far, and there’s a supermarket and shops in Bletchingham, and there’s Milton Keynes and there’s a lovely pub here – we had dinner the other week, you liked it. You said it was nice.’

  ‘It was nice.’ He looked up at her. ‘But I don’t want to live here.’

  ‘You can’t do this,’ Hannah said, her voice raising an octave. ‘You’re moving in this weekend. Ben is expecting you. We’ve been invited for dinner tonight. You said this was what you wanted – you can’t just change your mind and pull the rug out from under me now.’

  ‘Hannah,’ he said, and ran his hand through his hair again. ‘I’m not coming.’

  ‘You can’t say that.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You’re just going to – what? You’re not going to rent the house out? You’re going to carry on living there?’

  ‘No, I’m going to rent it out as we planned, but I’m getting a flat.’

  ‘A flat?’

  She felt like an echo machine. Everything he said, she repeated back to him, her voice getting higher and higher. If she wasn’t careful she was going to reach a point where only dogs could hear her. She giggled wildly at the thought.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Me? Oh yes, I’m fine. You’ve just turned up out of the blue and gaily informed me that you’re not moving in, you’re moving out. And I’m living in a cottage surrounded by –’ she picked up a piece of Beth’s hideous discarded porcelain – ‘by this. And Ben has had so much change to cope with already, and what the hell, Phil?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘That’s it? That’s what you’ve got to say?’

  And then there was a buzz. He picked up his phone and looked at it for a split second, before pocketing it and looking at her. That, as she told Katie later, was when she realized.

  ‘You don’t pick up the phone when I message you.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You do not.’ And the sinking stone feeling increased, so Hannah felt as if she was pinned to the sofa by some heavy weight and she couldn’t have moved if her life had depended on it.

  ‘Look, Han,’ Phil said, raising his tone slightly in the way he did when he was trying to close a sales deal on the phone. ‘I’m going to be straight with you. I think it’s for the best.’

  ‘No.’ She stood up, which took a tremendous effort, and crashed the coffee down on the table with shaking hands. It slopped out and made a little lake, which turned into a river and started moving at speed towards the edge of the table. ‘Hang on.’

  ‘You don’t need to get a bloody cloth,’ he said, banging his hand on the arm of the chair in frustration.

  ‘Yes I do. This isn’t even my house.’

  ‘It’s Beth’s, and she’s said you can stay as long as you want.’

  ‘She said we could.’ Hannah disappeared into the kitchen, grabbed a J-cloth and returned, mopping up the spillage.

  ‘Sit down.’

  He looked at her then, and for a moment she was reminded of the person he’d been back when they first met.

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘I know. But we need to have this conversation.’

  ‘Do we?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t want to lie to you.’

  Bile rose in her throat and she covered her mouth with her hand. ‘I think I’m going to throw up.’

  ‘You always think that, and you never do.’ He gave her another look. ‘Right. The thing is, I’ve met someone. And I’ve been trying to work out how to tell you, so I’ve been avoiding the situation. But it’s like ripping off a plaster.’

  ‘It’s nothing like ripping off a bloody plaster!’ Hannah exploded.

  ‘Shh, your village gossips will be having a field day with all this.’

  ‘They will not,’ Hannah said, defensively. ‘In fact, it turns out that the only village gossip was my cousin Beth, and that’s half the reason why I’m finding it so bloody hard to settle here, because everyone assumes I’m the same as her and as soon as they see me, they zip their mouths shut.’

  ‘Really?’

  She nodded. ‘I’m not talking about this with you now, Phil. You’ve just told me you’re having an affair. We’re not having a friendly chat. In fact –’ she raised her voice, completely forgetting about the people in the shop – ‘you can go – now.’

  ‘We need to talk practicalities.’

  ‘Go. Go!’

  He hovered for a moment, as if he wasn’t quite sure she was serious. Then the phone buzzed once again in his pocket, and she gave him a look which made it more than clear that she wasn’t joking. He said, ‘I’ll give you a shout,’ quietly, and walked out of the tiny sitting room, leaving her sitting there in a stunned silence.

  Being Phil, of course, he still unloaded the boxes from the back of the car and left them stacked neatly in the walkway between the shop and the cottage. When Hannah – having washed her face, swallowed very hard, and decided that she was going to do what she did best and be practical – came through, she found the shop tidied up, the door locked, and the cashing up done by one of the village volunteers. There was nothing obvious to suggest that someone had just dropped a very precise bomb on all of her hopes and plans.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘Oh gosh, Hannah, it’s lovely to see you. Where’s hubby? Just parking?’

  Helen opened the door to her huge house with an equally huge beaming smile of welcome. Inside, it was every bit as beautiful as Hannah had imagined. An enormous bouquet of flowers spilled voluptuously from a glass vase on a dresser in the hall. The stairs – the banister a gleaming dark wood that only served to highlight the spotlessness of the white walls – curved upwards, lit from above by a huge skylight that filled the whole hall with buttery yellow late evening sunshine.

  ‘He’s not, no, he couldn’t make it.’

  Helen gave her a very brief look which Hannah ignored. ‘Well, I’m glad you’ve come along, because it turns out we’re one down in any case, so the numbers are balanced. I’ll just have to shuffle the place settings around a little.’ She gave Hannah a slightly mischievous smile. ‘In fact, I might just give you something – or someone – rather nice to sit beside. You look like you could do with cheering up.’

  And that was all it took. Hannah’s chin started to wobble, and she put a hand to her face to try and cover up the fact that her lower lip was trembling, too.

  ‘Sorry,’ she whispered. ‘Sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Nothing to be sorry for, my sweet,’ said Helen, putting an arm around her shoulder. ‘Come on, come with me.’

  Hannah followed her obediently up the stairs and into a beautiful blue-and-white bedroom. Helen put a hand on each of her shoulders and pressed her firmly but gently onto the end of a massive king-sized bed, where she sat on top of a blue-and-white-checked throw.

  ‘Now then, sweetheart, you don’t have to say a word. Let me get you a tissue.’

  Tears were rolling silently down Hannah’s cheeks. She tried to bat them away without smudging the make-up she’d applied to try and hide how dreadful she looked. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.

  ‘I don’t think it’s you that has to apologize, is it?’

  Hannah shook her head.

  ‘The thing is, I didn’t expect – I mean, I know it’s not perfect, no marriage is, is it?’

  Helen’s face softened and she dabbed at Hannah’s tears with a neatly folded handkerchief. ‘No, that’s absolutely spot on. What has he done to you?’

  Hannah took a shuddering breath, and it all came out.

  ‘I feel like it’s my fault.’

  ‘What on earth makes you think that, my love?’

  ‘Well . . . I pushed for this move, and I didn’t once think about what Phil might like.’ She took a fresh handkerchief from Helen and blew her nose noisily. ‘I mean, the thing is, I’ve always done stuff he wanted, and now I’ve done something for me, it’s all gone wrong.’

  H
elen sat down beside her on the bed and put an arm around her shoulder. ‘It’s not a bad thing to want to do something for yourself, Hannah. I bet you’ve spent the whole of your marriage doing the right thing for other people.’

  Hannah looked up at Helen, who gave her shoulder a little squeeze. ‘I’ve tried to.’

  ‘Exactly. You’re a lovely girl, and it’s glaringly obvious to everyone just how much you want to make this work. And you must’ve been missing him while he’s been away. I’m sorry.’

  Hannah gave a sort of half-laugh, half-sob. ‘That’s the thing, though.’ She twisted the corner of the hanky, looking down at the floor. ‘I haven’t been missing him. Is that awful?’

  ‘Not at all. I have to confess, you haven’t really struck me as someone who’s been pining away.’

  Hannah looked up and pulled a face. ‘I love him,’ she said, realizing as she said it that maybe somehow along the way, the love she’d felt had shifted from romantic – she cringed inwardly, thinking of her fruitless attempt to seduce him – to something more, well, brotherly. ‘I mean, he’s Ben’s dad, and we’ve been together since we were teenagers, and . . .’ She tailed off.

  ‘That doesn’t mean you have to stay married for the rest of your life, though, does it?’

  Hannah chewed her lip. ‘I suppose not?’

  Helen tucked a strand of hair behind Hannah’s ear, maternally. ‘It most certainly does not. And you’ve got your whole life in front of you – you’re only thirty-five? Thirty-six?’

  ‘Thirty-five.’

  ‘A baby!’ Helen laughed. ‘Most people aren’t even married at that age. Not that I’m suggesting you start signing up for online dating or anything like that, just yet. I’m just – well, I don’t want to see you thinking your life is over when it’s all in front of you.’

  Hannah leaned forward, peering into the mirror. ‘God, I look absolutely awful.’

  ‘Nothing a bit of make-up won’t fix. And you look lovely, as always.’

  ‘I’m not going to be able to fix my marriage though, am I? It’s not that easy.’

  ‘Probably not, my love.’ Helen put an arm around her waist. ‘I’m afraid not. But you’re amongst friends here, and we’ll look out for you.’

  ‘You will?’ Hannah raised still damp eyes to look at her.

  Helen nodded. She didn’t even seem to mind that Hannah had somehow smudged mascara on the arm of her pristine white and pink blouse. ‘Yes, we will.’

  ‘I’ve felt a bit like – well, like everyone here in the village has been judging me on Beth’s behaviour. And I know she’s my cousin, but I’ve managed to gather that she wasn’t always exactly the best behaved.’

  ‘Oh, Beth could be a minx. She likes gossip, and she can’t resist stirring it. Too clever by half, if you ask me, and Lauren was just the same. If you get chatting to Mel and Sam – I saw you getting on at the committee meeting – they’ll tell you that Lauren caused both of their girls no end of trouble when they were at school together.’

  ‘I thought Sam was with Lucy?’

  ‘Yes, they got married last year. But he and Mel have been friends since school, and their daughters grew up together. They’re at sixth form college now – you know Freya, of course – and they’ll be off to university soon. Funny how time flies.’

  Hannah, thinking of Ben and having to tell him, gave another gulp. He’d never been particularly close to his dad, mainly because Phil had always spent so much time away – but that didn’t mean he was ready to hear that he was now part of a broken family. She cringed again at the thought of those words – they sounded so dramatic and old-fashioned. What on earth was she thinking? Loads of people managed as single parents. She needed to pull herself together and stop sounding like a marriage guidance leaflet from the dark ages.

  ‘You’re a lovely mum,’ Helen said, pre-empting her. ‘Now before you go downstairs, let’s fix your make-up and get you a hefty gin and tonic. Where’s your boy tonight?’

  ‘Staying over with one of his new friends for a gaming party.’

  ‘Excellent. Well, I’ll make a couple of calls, sort out the shop arrangements for the morning, and we can get you well and truly sozzled on gin.’

  ‘I can’t—’ she began.

  ‘You jolly well will.’ Helen was firm. ‘Now there’s every kind of make-up under the sun in the en suite, and some nice Clarins cleansing balm and some cotton-wool balls. I suggest you get in there tout suite and get yourself tidied up, and I’m going to make you an enormous drink.’

  Helen hadn’t been joking about the make-up – which was a surprise, given that her handsome, square-jawed, slightly horsey face was only ever adorned with a slick of tinted moisturizer and a pale pink lipstick. Hannah wiped away the smeared, tear-stained mess and looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were red-rimmed and shadowed from crying. She took a glass of water and drank it down, then splashed her face after letting the tap run for ages until the water was icy. It made her gasp, and brought some colour back into her cheeks.

  ‘Well that’s better,’ Helen said kindly, reappearing with a glass of gin that clinked promisingly. ‘Now I’m going to insist that you drink this, and then we’re going downstairs and we’ll have no mention of errant husbands or anything else.’

  Hannah nodded obediently. The gin was definitely helping something – even if it was only psychological.

  Downstairs, in a spacious and beautifully furnished room, Hannah was surprised to find not just David, Helen’s husband, but a handful of faces she recognized from the shop and – her stomach gave a lurch – Jake. On seeing her, he stood up from his chair and headed over to say hello.

  ‘Nice to see you,’ he said, adding under his breath, ‘It’s a relief, actually. We Northerners have to stick together.’ He was dressed in dark blue chinos and a soft, pale blue shirt, and gave her a conspiratorial smile. ‘It’s a long way from Manchester, isn’t it?’

  She nodded. ‘But you’ll be used to this sort of thing.’ She looked around. The room was expensively decorated – of course – but tastefully neutral, with duck-egg blue cushions propped up on pale cream sofas. He inclined his head towards one.

  ‘Shall we sit down?’

  ‘Okay.’ She managed a smile. ‘So posh kitchen suppers aren’t your thing either?’

  He shook his head, waiting until she’d sat down at one end of the sofa before sitting at the other end, crossing one long leg over the other. ‘No, this isn’t really me. Football is more about nightclubs and fancy restaurants – or it was, anyway. Dinner parties with the country set hasn’t really been my scene.’

  She remembered photos she’d seen online – Jake seemed to have kept himself out of the limelight as much as possible, but there were still a fair number of photographs of him with a glamorous model or actress on his arm, making his way into or out of cabs in all the right places in London.

  ‘I didn’t really do dinners like this back home, either.’

  David materialized by their side and handed them both a glass of champagne. ‘Down the hatch,’ he said, cheerfully. ‘Plenty more where that came from.’

  ‘I’ve had a whopping gin already,’ Hannah said to Jake, taking a sip.

  He smiled. ‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned about this lot – and not from experience, just from talking to Pippa, my PA – it’s that there’s not much else to do in the village in the evening, so they all drink like fish.’

  ‘And you’re a model of abstinence?’

  ‘I used to be, when I was playing.’ He took a drink. ‘Not so much now. I mean, I don’t want to be rolling up to train the boys with a massive hangover, but I don’t have to be as disciplined as I was back then.’

  ‘From what the papers say about footballers, you’re all knocking back magnums of champagne in the changing room after a game. That’s what Ben’s hoping for, anyway.’

  Jake looked at her for a moment, meeting her eyes with his blue-green ones. They were fringed with incredibly dark lashes.
She swallowed, feeling suddenly awkward at his gaze on her.

  ‘I know I’ve said it before, but he’s got a good chance of making it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. He’s good.’

  ‘I think he is,’ she agreed. ‘But I can’t really tell. He just – looks like he knows what he’s doing. Does that sound weird?’

  He shook his head as everyone stood up to follow David into the dining room. Without thinking, Hannah sat down on the chair next to Jake, then flushed, realizing that Helen had probably spent ages deciding who went where. Helen caught her eye for a brief moment and gave her the ghost of a wink.

  ‘I was about to suggest that you two sit together. You’ll have lots to talk about, with your son being in the football team?’

  Hannah smiled at her, feeling relieved. She couldn’t face making conversation with any of the others who were there – they all seemed nice enough, but she was tired and felt as if she’d been hollowed out. At least she knew Jake well enough to chat to him between courses, and it didn’t help that he wasn’t exactly unappealing to look at.

  She sneaked a glance at him as Helen was putting down the starter. He was tanned – probably from some exotic trip abroad – and a sprinkling of dark hairs covered wrists that weren’t adorned with an expensive watch or any of the bling she might have expected of a footballer. He had a five-day beard, which shadowed his cheeks and showed off a strong jawline, and that tangle of dark, unruly hair that flopped down over his forehead. She thought of Phil’s emerging bald patch and wondered if she was being bitchy, then took another drink and decided that if ever there was a time when she could be, it was the day that he’d announced he was leaving her for – for who?

  ‘You okay?’ Jake turned to look at her. He was thoughtful, too. He turned her water glass the right way round and poured some for her, and then for himself. Meanwhile, conversation was flowing around the table.

  ‘Very excited about this possible bookshop idea,’ said one of the men, who clearly hadn’t been into the shop in some time.

  ‘It’s more than a possibility now,’ his wife said, rolling her eyes at Hannah. ‘Jason doesn’t get out much, do you, darling?’