Page 33 of The Bookshop Ladies

‘I can get more picnic tables, but it’ll probably take a few weeks, my brother-in-law made them specially. It’d be best if they were matching, don’t you think?’ He couldn’t believe she was offering him the path space.

‘Well, I was thinking of bringing down some of the old chairs from upstairs.’

‘We’ll need some signs,’ he said, hoisting the last of the boxes he’d been checking up onto a high shelf.

‘I can do the signs.’

‘So, then you’re doing everything, that doesn’t seem very fair, or hang on, is there a catch – are you looking for extra shots of coffee every morning?’ he was smiling at her now and she realised that, actually, he was a great neighbour to have, she was lucky.

‘No, well, not unless you’re offering…’ She laughed. It felt good to relax and not think about Kian and Imogene and, for once, not think pessimistically about the bookshop. ‘No, what I really need you to do is unfurl the canopy every morning and put it back at night, it’s torturously heavy and unwieldy.’

‘That’s the easy part, I’ll do it when I’m putting out my own. Is there a key, or, actually, hang on.’ He reached up to a hook and took down his own heavy bunch of keys. ‘Let’s see if this one will fit it.’

Robyn followed him outside and called to Joy to come and see the canopy being wound out for the first time in years. She had a feeling it’d probably need a good washing or even patching up. But it was a pleasant surprise. It unfurled easily enough, once they’d run inside and found some oil to grease up the mechanism after its years of inaction. The canvas was faded, a long run of thick cream and brown stripes with ‘Turner’s Grocery and Haberdashery’ written out in script across the centre on both sides of the door.

‘Lucky with the colour,’ Shane said, standing back. ‘If it had been anything else you’d notice the fading more. But it just adds to the charm.’

‘It does, doesn’t it?’

‘Perfect!’ Joy said, clapping her hands. ‘Now, we’ll need a sign, so people realise it’s for readers as well as coffee drinkers!’

‘There’s a lad out on the industrial estate, he’ll do something up for us quickly. We could be up and running for tomorrow morning, how does that sound?’ Robyn said. It was amazing, but something so small, justdoing, seemed to have dislodged the old inertia in her.

22

‘So, come on, spit it out,’ Albie said when Fern dropped into the big old sofa that had been the comfort blanket of her youth. God, how many times had she ended up sitting here with Peggy’s arms around her and soothing words in her ears?You and me both, love.Albie missed Peggy more than any of them, probably, although Fern wasn’t sure how anyone could miss her more than she did.

‘I wish she was still here.’ She looked up at her aunt’s wedding photograph. Fern had a copy of the original digitally cleaned a few years earlier. She still wasn’t sure if she liked the copy as much. Somehow, it made Peggy feel almost further away, yet at the same time, as if those vibrant green eyes were missing nothing of the lives that had gone on without her since she’d died. It had pride of place in her uncle’s sitting room, centre of the mantelpiece, the carriage clock pushed to one side, even his precious citation from the council for saving a drowning child, when he should have been down collecting his pension, pushed to the other. That was her uncle Albie, never a man to put himself before someone else in need, even a stranger. Fern smiled now.

‘What?’ he asked her.

‘I’m just thinking of you jumping in off the pier to save that child. Was it worth it?’

‘Of course it was worth it. The child must be in secondary school now.’

‘I mean, when you got home, I’m sure Auntie Peggy gave you what for – you could have been drowned, both of you could as easily have been carried out to sea.’

‘Ara, sure like everything else, she got over it and I think it was one of her proudest moments, going to the council and seeing them present me with that award.’ He shook his head. ‘Oneof her proudest moments.’

‘Nothing came close to that,’ Fern said.

‘Hmm, maybe, but she did a lot more talking about your exhibitions than she ever did about my one and only heroic deed.’

‘Stop it, we both know, you’ve done a lot more around this village than just one good thing.’ And that was the truth. He’d taken in his sister-in-law’s child and raised her as his own. She felt no less loved than Leo. ‘I hope to do some more good,’ he said and passed across the roll of mints he always kept in his pocket. ‘Here, you look like you need something and I don’t want Leo coming in here and telling me it’s too early for drinking…’ He smiled at her. ‘Tell me, what’s brought you here looking as if you found a fig and lost a fortune?’

‘It’s that obvious?’

‘I’d like to make you feel better and say no, only a wild guess, but there’s no point lying, you look terrible, as if you’ve aged a thousand years since you were here last.’

‘You really know how to bolster an ego.’ She laughed in spite of herself.

‘Luc?’

‘How did you guess?’

‘Psychic.’ He put a finger to his nose. ‘It’s a gift.’

‘Is it because he’s French?’ she asked him, ‘is that why you’ve never been keen on him?’

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