Page 1 of The Mended Hearts Bookshop

Chapter One

The day the letter arrived was a perfectly normal day. Ash worked in the morning, lining up the neat columns of numbers until everything balanced out nicely, and at twelve fifteen precisely tucked in her chair and pulled on her down jacket. The weather was surprisingly chilly for March and she was glad of the jacket as she walked down the Embankment.

She spent a satisfactory forty five minutes at the Royal Opera House attending a free lunchtime concert, and by two o’clock was once again walking back down the Embankment toward her building.

The first odd thing that happened was that her phone rang. Pausing by the railing overlooking the river, Ash stared at the tiny screen. The number was unknown, but that didn’t mean anything. After all, it could be a client. She was a freelance accountant, it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that someone would phone her.

On the other hand, she currently only had long-term jobs and all of those had, so far, been dealt with online.

It might be spam or the phone company, she supposed. Or perhaps it was a wrong number.

She sighed and decided there was only one way to find out.

“Hello?”

“Ash?” The voice on the other end of the phone was crackly and sounded far, far away. Which, given that it was her mother, and given that her mother was currently on an around the world cruise with her latest husband, was probably true.

“Mum?”

“We’re in port,” her mother said. “So Ted said I should ring because it’s impossible to call from the ship.”

“Is everything alright?” Ash asked, perhaps a little anxiously because her mother had, once, left a husband on what was supposed to be their honeymoon.

“Wonderful, darling. We’re in Patagonia.” There was an infinitesimal pause. “Or Paraguay. Peru?”

“South America,” Ash said helpfully.

“That’s the one,” said her mother “Everything’s beautiful and all in Spanish, which does make it all sound more… passionate, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose,” Ash said, looking into the dismally brown-gray river. She’d heard somewhere that at any one time there were at least a dozen bodies bobbing along down there. “So if there aren’t any problems…”

“Yes, I’m calling to check on you,” her mother said. “You’re my only child. Is that so wrong? I just want to know that you’re alright.”

“Mother, I’m almost forty years old, you don’t need to do welfare checks.”

“You live alone, for all I know you choked to death on a steak three weeks ago and no one’s found you yet,” retorted her mother.

“I’m sure the neighbors would have complained about the smell,” said Ash. Later she cursed herself for this because perhaps, just perhaps, she’d brought all of this on herself by mentioning the word neighbors. Maybe she’s awakened someancient neighbor spirit or something. “And anyway, as you can tell, I’m perfectly fine.”

“Work?”

“Fine.”

“Other… things?”

“Fine.”

“Seeing anyone?” The question was almost but not quite casual.

“Mother.”

“Right, yes, alright, well, I suppose since everything’s fine then you don’t really need to talk to me, do you?”

Ash sighed, put one hand in her jacket pocket and started walking down the embankment again. “I was at the Opera,” she said, and began filling her mother in on the concert.

By the time she could see her building her mother had become bored with the run down of concerts and exhibitions and books that Ash had read, and had decided that Patagonia (or Paraguay or Peru) held greater interest.

“Well, I’d better be going,” her mother said cheerfully. “Or the boat might go without me. I’ll call again when I can. But it might be a while, I’m afraid. We’ll be at sea for quite a while this next stretch.”

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