Page 18 of The Bookshop Ladies

‘And aren’t you looking after me, didn’t you give me a blanket?’ He pulled himself up in the chair, groaned slightly in spite of himself. ‘Listen, I’m a very old man, I’m going to have the occasional accident, but I’m fine, now if you go calling up Leo, he’ll think I can’t cope and then what? Off to some nursing home or maybe, if I’m lucky, some young girl in here bossing me about in my own home. I won’t be having that, the only woman there’s room for here is my Peggy.’ He stopped.

‘Please don’t upset yourself. Look, I won’t call him tonight if you really don’t want me to, but you have to let me stay here just until the morning, to make sure that you’re okay, is that a deal?’

‘Pah,’ he shook his head, but she could see he wasn’t really cross, maybe just a little exasperated. ‘Women, you lot always have to have your way!’ he smiled at her. ‘I suppose, if therewassome tea going, I might manage a small cup,’ he said and that familiar twinkle was back in his eyes.

It was only as the sun began to rise and glint across the water, sending up sparks of light, that Joy realised they hadn’t slept all night. Instead they had sat there, talking about everything under the sun, except Albie’s fall of course. He told her all about his life and mostly about Peggy. Joy cried as he told her about the last days in the hospice where he’d held her hand and wished so hard he could just go with her, but she’d smiled at him when it was nearly over and he knew since then that his darling wife was happy to die. Maybe he knew too, that when his time came, she would be waiting for him in a better place.

‘That’s so lovely,’ Joy sighed.

‘I’ve never told anyone else that, not even my own son.’

‘Leo?’

‘Yes, Leo – I’ve only got the one, well, we had Fern too, we raised her as our own.’

‘Wouldn’t it give them some comfort…’

‘No, they’d think I was for the birds.’

‘And you don’t suppose I might think that too?’

‘No, because I think you have secrets of your own.’

‘We all have secrets.’

‘Yes, but most of us know our world won’t end if they come out,’ he said and he tapped his nose.

‘I don’t know what you mean?’ Joy shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

‘Don’t worry, I don’t know what your secret is, Joy, but I’m a good judge of character and I know whatever it is that’s been haunting you, or maybe whatever brought you here, is not going to bring the world as we know it to an end. If anything, the opposite might be true.’

‘I wish I could be so sure,’ she said and it felt for a moment as if this might be the time to tell someone exactly who she was and exactly what she had come to Ballycove to do.

‘Look, you’re a good person, a really good person, and whatever that cross is that you’re determined to carry on your own, let me just say, I’m here with a strong shoulder if you ever want to share it.’ He reached out and touched her hand.

‘Oh, Albie.’

‘So, you’re going in to the bookshop today, are you? Even in spite of not getting your beauty sleep?’ he looked as if he was reassessing her. ‘And last night, on the stairs – that’s our secret, yes?’

‘It can be our secret only if you promise to call me if you feel dizzy or unwell again.’ She stared at him hard, so he knew that was a dealbreaker.

‘Agreed.’ He smiled at her and then his eyes twinkled again. ‘Perhaps I just drank one rum too many…’

12

2020

Motherhood was never meant to be easy. Everyone knew that. ‘But this hard?’ Fern rolled her eyes and looked across at Margot.

‘Come on, you’ve had an easy ride so far. Robyn is a delightful child.’ Margot sipped her gin. ‘I’d like to get my hands on those girls and let them have what for. Pah! These are exactly the sort of creatures that give women a bad name.’

‘I don’t think giving them a piece of your mind is going to make things any easier for Robyn.’ In spite of the worry, Fern laughed. Her daughter was too quiet, that was the problem. Robyn had stuck her head in a book when she was five years old and it felt as if she hadn’t really peered over the edges very often since. Now, the school had rung with news that they had concerns about her. Concerns! Such a way to put it. It took two days and the equivalent of an elephant’s dinner in ice-cream to wheedle the truth out of Robyn. She was being bullied unmercifully by Albertine Whyte and Imogene Norton. Fern remembered when Robyn and Albertine had been best friends. ‘How could this have happened right under my nose, Margot, how did I not see this?’

‘Urgh, teenagers,’ Margot shrugged. ‘Don’t beat yourself up, you know now, that’s the thing. It’s what you do from here that counts.’

‘You’re right, of course you’re right.’ They would make a plan. Together, she and Robyn. She finished secondary school this year anyway and then she would go to college and never have to look at either of the pair of them again.

‘Exactly. Here’s to new starts.’ Margot raised her glass.

---