Page 58 of The Bookshop at the Cornish Cove

Mum had popped over to the lodge that morning and had said that she’d passed Dennie who was sitting on the steps of the bookshop waiting for me to open up.

She relayed the tale of how she told him I was keeping the shop closed for the moment and that I hadn’t decided when I was coming back. He begged her to tell him where I was staying because he wanted to come and find me but she refused flatly, saying that she couldn’t possibly give away that information without checking with me first. I was glad she hadn’t. I wasn’t ready to see him. She did say that she was going to go into the shop to collect the post and would bring it to me, and at that point, his eyes lit up.

Up until that point, apparently, he’d looked washed out, pale, despondent and dishevelled; the polar opposite of how henormally looked and acted. I sighed at this and she gave me a great big hug.

She didn’t stop for long, and before she left, she told Dan to look after me, gave me my post and went on her way to work.

But today was not one for wallowing. I finally had a new plan, and today I was going to put it into place. Dan thought I was a lunatic but if he wanted me to humour his wishes and dreams for the future, then he had better do the same for mine.

It was in the light of the silver moonlight that I unlocked the shop door and the loudness of the bell jingling against the silence of the night made me jump out of my skin.

Dan went out back and checked for parcels – Karl the postman always left anything that was too big for the letter box in a rattan box in the porch area by the back door – and came back with just one thing. On closer inspection, it was a small red box tied up with pretty ribbon with a big bow on top, with a gold envelope inside. I used the letter opener on the counter to prise the envelope apart and clutched my hand to my chest when I realised that the letter was from Dennie.

I looked over to Dan, who had grabbed a blanket from the back of the wing-backed chair and, within an instant of sitting down in it, was gently snoring away. Mum always said he could sleep on a clothes line if he had to.

My heart pounded as I began to read.

Nancy,

I can only presume you have blocked my number, because I am unable to connect with you, so as you are the biggest lover of words I know, I thought that the only way I could tell you how much you mean to me was by writing you a letter and using my own words. I do hope you don’t mind.

Nan has told me, on numerous occasions over the last few days, that I’ve been a total fuckwit and that I had a lotof work to do to make up for my behaviour. So I’m going to try my hardest to do that and hope that by communicating in this way you might find it in your heart to forgive me. If you are dead set on not doing that, at least maybe you might humour me and soften your heart towards me enough for me to explain a few things to you.

I’m truly sorry that I have bruised your heart, Nancy. I never ever meant to do that and you are the last person in the world that I would ever wish to hurt.

While Craig was wrong in the way that it came across, he was right, and I did accept a bet from him to turn your bookshop around.

I gasped out loud. The bastard. I looked up to the ceiling, trying to blink back the tears that were threatening to spill at any point. I looked down again.

I reckon that right about now, you are probably looking up at the ceiling trying not to cry.

How did he know that I’d be doing this? He hadn’t known me long. He couldn’t know me that well surely. I looked around me. Was he somewhere nearby? Then I realised that it was a letter and I had no idea when he would have written it. I continued to read.

I know that we haven’t known each other long but believe me when I say that I feel like I’ve known you all my life. Right now, I feel like I’ve had my arm chopped off and I have an ache in my heart that just won’t go away.

I never thought it would be possible to ever feel like this about someone and I probably should tell you why I’ve shut myself off for so many years if you could bear to read on,to hear my reasons. They are not excuses but they are explanations. Above all else, I feel that I owe you that.

My parents have never been the most loving parents in the world. When I was eleven years old, they sent me off to boarding school. I was petrified. They used to tell me that they would come and collect me for the holidays but they never did. There was always something more fun for them to do and a child wasn’t someone they wanted hanging around them hindering them. I left that school, hoping they would then see me as an adult and we would all live together as adults. I was looking forward to it so much. It was really the only thing that kept me going while I was away at school. But instead of that, my whole life was blown apart.

It happened on my eighteenth birthday when we were sat eating a meal around their dining room table. I’d like to have said, in our home, but I never saw it as my home. The meal was nice, the company was, I suppose, stilted. They didn’t know me; I didn’t know them.

I’d been dreaming of where I’d been brought up for the last year. How when I left school, it would eventually become my home too, how we’d all learn to know each other and become the family that we hadn’t been up till then. I’d been excited of what lay ahead and what the future held for us.

I should not have expected more. Instead of getting a normal present, they gave me £5,000 and told me that they were selling the house and going to live in Spain. It was their dream when they met and apparently when I came along their dream was somewhat scuppered. They’d been holding back for so long, while I grew up, and now it was their time to live their lives their way.

I tried to process what they were telling me and couldn’t have been more mortified when I said that I was OK with that decision and that I would look forward to learning about a new culture and a new home in Spain. My parents looked at each other, before my father turned to me and told me that a childdidn’t feature in their plans. Even when I argued that I was an adult now, they were adamant that it was a future for just the two of them and I had to make my own way in life.

Needless to say, I’ve never been so shocked in all my years. They made me feel like I’d been a mistake since birth and it probably explained the way they’d treated me all my life. Their absent parenting.

They sent me off into the world to fend for myself.

I’d never felt so alone.

I’d love you to call me so we can talk and I can explain more.

And I suppose what I’m trying to say, Nancy, in a ridiculously roundabout way, is that quite simply, I am an idiot and I miss you.

Dennie

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