Page 70 of The Bookshop at the Cornish Cove

It didn’t stop me spending all the free time that I did have googling Canada. Looking at the weather and the nightlife and thinking that he was probably out there having the time of his life and might have forgotten me already.

It was so hard not to ask Mum if Vi had said anything about him or ask where exactly in Canada he was, but I was determined that if he didn’t think enough of me to stick around, then he couldn’t have wanted us to be together that much.

While I was in a total daydream, the door to the shop barged open and Vi burst in.

‘It’s no wonder he’s a fuckwit, is it, with me for a grandmother? I’m so sorry, Nancy. I came as quickly as I could.’

I led Vi over to one of the chairs and sat her down. She was trying hard to catch her breath.

‘It’s OK, Vi. Whatever it is can wait. Just get yourself feeling right again.’

‘Oh, Nancy, I’m such a silly old goose. People have been telling me for years that I should be using my hearing aid more.’

‘What on earth are you on about, Vi?’

‘He’s not in Canada at all, Nancy. He’s in Canada Square in London. In Canary Wharf.’

46

‘London? How? What? Why?’ Random words were coming out of my mouth, making no sense at all.

‘I clearly didn’t hear him right when he told me where he was going. He’s not in Canada after all.’

Even though it was great news that he wasn’t hundreds of thousands of miles away, he was still not in Driftwood Bay, although at least London was on the same island as me.

Rash thoughts entered my head. Could I? Would I? No. It would be ridiculous. Wouldn’t it?

‘I know you won’t ask me how he is, because you’re both as shitting stubborn as each other, but he’s sad, Nancy. I can tell. My boy is sad and he won’t bloody do anything about it.’

‘Do you think he’ll come back?’

‘Well, I asked him to come home for Christmas but he said he didn’t think he should. Thought it would be best if he stayed away.’

For the next week, I could think of nothing else. Truro was the furthest I’d been for years and even going there gave me severe anxiety. The thought of travelling to London literally gave me palpitations, but the idea would not go away. I dreamt of trains coming off tracks. I read articles about the threat of terrorists, which gave me the heebie-jeebies. But there was still a tiny little bit of me that felt like I had to go. Owed it to myself and to us.

A knock at the shop door was unusual. If we were open, people normally came straight in. I went to the door and opened it but the street was empty, however on the step was a bag full of second-hand books. I’d started to get more and more of them recently and it was getting harder to find somewhere to display or store them. I’d have to speak to Dan about building me some more shelves.

As I put the bag into the storage cupboard, I noticed the book on the top was described as an uplifting second chance romance. Sounded just what I needed right now to take my mind off things, and as the weather had turned colder and the shop had gone quieter, I decided to grab myself a cup of coffee and settle down in the armchair and have five minutes reading time.

Reading did two things. Firstly, it was helping me to push all the thoughts of Dennis and London from my mind, and secondly, it was giving me a place to escape to. Books as they said, really were portable magic and could transport you away from the world as you knew it to a place where you’d rather be.

Five minutes turned into hours as the pages turned themselves and the book ended before I’d realised that I hadn’t done a thing apart from sit and read. I smiled for what felt like the first time in a while. There was still a part of me who waslike the little girl I once was, who wanted her own bookshop and thought that you just got to sit and read books all day long. Another dream come true. Sadly, that was not the case and owning a bookshop is not about reading books day in, day out. Although with my Dennis hat on, I could just hear him saying, ‘A shop full of customers would have been more profitable, Nancy.’

I thought about the plot of the book. The description had promised a feel-good read and it definitely delivered. I thought about the protagonist who, instead of waiting for a man to come and fix things for her, took the bull by the horns and went out there and did everything herself. It was nice to read something that reflected the world we lived in. These days women were more forthright and just cracked on with stuff.

It was that book that gave me the inspiration for what I knew I was about to do. Maybe in this day and age, a girl didn’t have to wait for the hero to come and rescue her. This girl knew then exactly what she was going to do. She was going to go and get her man!

47

The journey from Truro to London reminded me why train travel was not my favourite mode of transport. Just the eleven station stops, with passengers getting on and off, was enough to stress out the most seasoned traveller. But sitting cooped up in a packed carriage for four and a half hours, trying to keep my eye on my overnight case and wondering whether I should leave it to go to the loo or not, had not helped my anxiety. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had to go further than Truro but I did remember why I liked to stay in my part of the world. Just imagine if I did manage to fix things between me and Dennis, and had to do this regularly! Could I cope? Would I want to? It surely would test our commitment to each other and show us whether true love really does conquer all.

As the train pulled into Paddington Station, my heart was pounding and I started to feel stressed again when all the bodies stood up, racing each other to alight onto the platform. I was already totally fed up with travelling and worrying about my case not bashing into anyone and was desperate for a decent cup of tea. As the flow of passengers went from one way to all ways, I felt like a duck out of water. People were crossing mypath without any notice or apology; my ankles had been rammed several times with other people’s luggage and one man swung his rucksack round without even checking there was anyone behind him, very nearly smacking me in the face. Being quite short, I already felt quite claustrophobic, with everyone else taller than me and being in a packed station was really pushing me out of my comfort zone.

I decided that instead of trying to navigate the tubes and then the streets to the hotel I’d booked myself into, not too far from Canada Square, I would treat myself to a cab and made my way towards where the signs were indicating, to find a queue of about forty people in front of me.

‘Excuse me?’ I tapped the shoulder of the man in front. ‘Does the queue go down quite quickly, do you know?’

He looked at me and babbled quick frantic words in a foreign language, possibly French.

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