Page 69 of The Mended Hearts Bookshop

“What does it look like?” asked Pen, busily cleaning the painted flowers off the window.

“But… but they’re nice,” said Lucy.

“They’re silly,” said Pen. “Unrealistic and sunshiney and just plain silly.”

Lucy stared at her for a moment, then gently tugged the cloth from her hand. “Come and sit down,” she said. “Let me make you a coffee.”

“I don’t want a coffee.”

“Fine, tea then,” Lucy said firmly, placing Pen in a chair and pulling out her mobile phone. “Just sit right there and don’t move.”

She went behind the counter and a minute or two later, George came crashing into the bakery. “What? Where is it? What’s the emergency?”

Lucy nodded over to where Pen was sitting and Pen rolled her eyes. “I’m not an emergency,” she said.

“When I came in she was washing the flowers off the windows,” said Lucy, pouring hot water over a tea bag. “She’s said hardly a word since I came in and she hasn’t smiled once.”

George shook his head and pulled out a seat opposite Pen as Lucy brought over three cups of tea. “Pen, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said. “Except the council put the development grant toward a new children’s center.”

“Well, we knew it was a stretch,” said George. “I know it’s a disappointment, but there must be other things we can do. Let’s brainstorm, shall we?”

“But what’s the point?” asked Pen. “Ash is gone and the place doesn’t belong to her anyway, does it?”

George took her hand. “That’s not what this was about though, was it Pen? This was about keeping the bookshop open, keeping it in town, not about keeping Ash here. In fact, it was about buying the shop from Ash so that she could leave town.”

“Yeah, but…”

“But you thought she might stay in the end,” Lucy said. “But she hasn’t exactly left you in the lurch or anything. I mean, you’re still together, just a bit further apart is all.”

“It’s not ideal though, is it?” George said.

Pen snorted. “Ideal doesn’t even begin to cover it.” She sighed. “I had this picture in my head, about Ash in the bookshop, me in here, maybe knocking through and having the two places be one. The sun was shining and the tourists were coming and every night we went up the stairs to bed and… and…” She couldn’t finish, her throat felt like it was full of cotton wool.

George looked at Lucy who shrugged back at him.

“Pen, come on, this isn’t like you,” George said. “You’re the optimist, remember? The sunny one? The one with hope that thinks that every cloud is lined with silver and unicorn tears?”

“That’s the problem though, isn’t it?” Pen asked. She’d been thinking about this for a long time now, since Ash had left the morning before, since she’d been alone and the air had seemed to go out of her life.

“It’s not a problem being optimistic,” Lucy said.

“But it is,” said Pen. “I need to stop living my life like a sixteen year old convinced that everything is always going to turn out alright. Because I’m not sixteen and because sometimes things don’t turn out alright. Just look at me, almost forty and in debt up to my eyeballs with the woman I love a million miles away and stupid flowers painted on my stupid windows.

“I like the flowers,” George said. “And you’re not stupid. You’re… you. You dream, Pen, and that’s what’s so nice about you. And your debts are being taken care of, they’re under control, you only have them because you help so many people out.”

“They’re under control because someone with half a brain, namely Ash, came in and did the realistic and sensible thing, rather than what I did, which was to bury the letters under a pile of mail and forget about them. Which sort of proves my point, doesn’t it?” Pen asked, looking at them both in turn. “I need to straighten up, be more sensible, stop believing in unicorns.”

George looked at Lucy and Lucy looked back at him and Pen felt like she was being excluded from some kind of decision.

“Listen,” said George. “I only came by to check on the shop and Fabio, so I’m not exactly doing anything. Why don’t you take a break, go have a walk on the beach, get some clarity. Lucy and I will look after things here for a while.”

“I don’t want a walk on the beach.”

“Nonsense,” said George, standing up and offering his hand to pull Pen out of her chair. “Of course you want a walk on the beach. Go on, off you go. The bakery will still be here when you get back.”

Pen felt herself being ushered out of her own shop, bundled onto the pavement until she had no choice but to start walking toward the promenade.

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