Page 21 of The Bookshop Ladies

‘The poor thing.’ Kian took up the bird, it was huge. Robyn had never realised how large seagulls actually were. ‘It’s been shot,’ he said. ‘It’s dazed too, properly out of it, otherwise, there’s no way he’d let me touch him.’ The bird made a pathetic stab at pecking Kian’s hand. ‘Is there a vet in the village… I mean, it might be too late, but we can’t just…’

‘A vet?’ Robyn repeated a little stupidly, almost as dazed as the bird. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. There was something so pathetic about his beady-eyed stare. She had never properly seen anyone or anything die before and, there were no two ways about it, this great big bird was about to bleed out right here before her eyes. She placed her hand on the gull’s breast. He was lying on his back. His eyes followed her hands, although he was helpless to do anything to stop her. ‘Oh he’s so beautiful.’

‘Come on.’ Kian grabbed her. ‘We have to get him some help.’

‘It’s too late for him,’ she said simply, catching Kian’s eye, and she thought perhaps he knew it too, but he still wanted to help. Was that a boy thing? Needing to feel he could make things better? Later, she realised that was just the way he was.

When the bird died minutes later, they were kneeling either side of him.

‘He’s gone,’ Kian said softly.

‘Oh.’ It was all Robyn could manage.

‘It’s all right. It’s probably better that way. You were right, no vet could have saved him and, even if they had, that wing wouldn’t have carried him properly again.’

‘He was so beautiful, I’ve never realised how majestic they could be…’

‘Your mother is going to murder me for moving him onto her beach blanket.’

‘She won’t know, we’ll say he landed here.’

‘Do you want to help me bury him?’ Kian nodded towards a discarded child’s spade and bucket.

‘Okay,’ Robyn heard herself saying softly. They dug as large a hole in the sand as they could with their limited tools and wrapped him in the blanket. Robyn was just placing a flat white stone across the mound when her mother arrived back.

‘I was sure I brought a blanket,’ she said, looking around their little patch with a confused expression, ‘oh, never mind, will you two go back to the car and bring any blankets you can back up for me?’

‘Sure, Mrs T,’ Kian said. After his second day staying with them, her mother had given up asking him to call her Fern.

On the walk back to the car, Robyn almost chewed the side of her thumb off; anything to stop herself from crying in public. In the car park, Kian took her hand from her mouth and held it in his own for the briefest moment. In the boot he pulled out two old rugs and the huge flask of cocoa that had also been left behind. He dragged her into the back seat and poured some cocoa into a mug, even though the day was stifling hot, there was something comforting in the aroma of it.

‘Here.’ He handed it to her, staring ahead while she sipped it. He did not look at her while she cried, but once she began to gain some control of herself again, he turned to her. ‘It’s okay to cry now and again, you know,’ he said, then smiled at her and pointed to a huge seagull diving into the water opposite. ‘I bet if there’s a bird heaven, that’s what he’s doing right now.’

‘It’s not just the bloody bird,’ she said bitterly and then the whole story spilled out of her, of how her best friends had fallen out with her just before school split up for break and she had never felt more of a misfit in her entire life.

‘It’s okay to feel miserable so, in fact, it’s absolutely essential,’ he said and she knew he was jollying her along. ‘It’s shit! But life is crap sometimes. You just have to learn to take the bad with the good. A bit like one of those books you’re reading, there couldn’t be a happy ending if you didn’t have some pain along the way.’

And in spite of all the other reasons that she had to feel completely miserable, Robyn felt her heart tumble into a more peaceful place. Not that she’d admit it, contentment was for old men in rocking chairs.

And it was as simple as that. Hot chocolate, kind words and she fell in love with her brother’s school friend. It seemed there was no getting over it. Not even now, when she should know better.

14

Joy almost had to pinch herself. She was actually sitting at a table on a narrow street in a small village in the west of Ireland, sipping coffee from the bakery below her little flat, while the world ambled by and every second person greeted her by name. And strangely, it couldn’t be more different from Paris. For all those moments when she felt a stab of guilt about why she was here – on a day like this, it felt as if it was the only place she was meant to be.

‘Hah, you’re the early riser today.’ Albie Keeling came towards her, balancing his morning mug of tea on a saucer with a tower of steaming buttered toast on the side.

‘Well, I’m definitely not planning on catching any worms.’ It was a running joke between them. They met here most mornings outside the little bakery where Albie had spent a lifetime.

‘Who needs worms, when we have lovely brown scones to toast?’ he said, looking at the book she had left lying on the table. She’d started it the night before, intending to work her way, for the second time, through Penelope Fitzgerald. Robyn had pushed a copy ofThe Bookshopinto her hands a week earlier and from then on it had been compulsive reading. Of course, there was little or nothing in common between the bookshop in Ballycove and the one in her book. For a start, the people of Ballycove were not against the bookshop as such, rather it felt to Joy as if they merely didn’t realise it existed. Anyway, she was enjoying it, perhaps because she loved sitting at the large window in the evenings, absorbing the Irish aromas of the salty waves, the damp earth and sweet peas in the window boxes.

‘Well, wouldn’t you know it? I forgot to bring some marmalade.’

‘No problem.’ Joy hopped up and went back into the bakery. She squeezed past the queue of women waiting for Leo to serve them. Joy grabbed two small sachets of marmalade. She had to admit that Leo Keeling was a good-looking man and although she had found him unfriendly, it looked like he could turn on the charm – when he wanted to.

Urgh. Too many French men were exactly the same. Somehow, without meaning to, she had committed to the lease of the little flat upstairs for the next six months and Joy had taken to meeting up with Albie for breakfast most mornings. If the weather was fine, they sat on the bench in the street, watching the world go by as if they had nothing more important to do. Which of course, Joy hadn’t really, except turn up at the bookshop before ten o’clock when Robyn would be waiting for her with a cup of coffee.

Robyn.

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