Page 28 of Book People

We’re a private family, the Blackwoods, and I’m not thrilled with the idea of other people picking over those letters. Great-grandfather Sebastian stuffed them into a box and kept them shoved to the rear of his closet for a reason. I only know they’re there because, after Dad moved to Bournemouth, I was clearing out the closet and found them.

Still, we need something to get Lisa Underwood here and if that something is in those papers then we must find it.

‘Fine,’ I say, rising to my feet. ‘I suppose we do need to solve this dilemma quickly.’

She twinkles directly at me like a tiny star. ‘Great.’

I stride from the pub, ignoring Dan as he raises a pint in my direction, as well as the sideways looks from everyone else. Miss Jones follows in my wake. She doesn’t see all the looks because she hasn’t yet comprehended what living in a village is actually like.

She’ll learn.

‘This is a fantastic idea,’ she says, tripping along at my side. She has to trot since her legs are much shorter than mine and I’m not walking slowly. She doesn’t seem to mind, though, keeping up with me effortlessly. ‘Like, really great.’

‘You don’t need to flatter me, Miss Jones.’ My tone is terse. ‘There may not be any romantic letters there at all and the rest may be of no use to us.’

‘Maybe not, but it’s better than the nothing we had before.’

‘I suppose so.’

There’s a silence as we walk through the warm, summer-scented village twilight. It’s one of my favourite times, when all the shops have shut and everyone has gone home and the high street is empty. It’s very quiet and, in summer, you can smell the lavender from Mrs Bennet’s window boxes next to the post office.

My mother used to love village evenings.

There’s a small garden to the back of Blackwood Books, where the flat is, and she and I used to sit out there with a bowl of ice cream each, enjoying the warmth and silence, and the scent of lavender, and the roses she loved to grow.

The roses have gone now and so has my mother, but I still like a village twilight.

Except now Miss Jones keeps up a running stream of commentary as we make our way to Blackwood Books. Telling me all about Lisa Underwood and how she knows her and what a great writer she is, a consummate professional, and that Miss Jones didn’t editColours, but was her point person and also edited some of her later work, though she had a senior editor’s oversight, and on and on.

Part of me wants to tell her to be quiet, that she’s ruining my peaceful silence. Yet another part of me likes the sound of her voice. It’s light, but not shrill, and full of expression, and the things she’s telling me are . . . interesting. I know the bookshop trade inside out, but not so much publishing.

I like my quiet. However, I’m also aware that maybe I’ve had too much quiet over the years. That maybe I could stand some chatter.

I’m torn.

I seem to be always torn with Miss Jones.

We come to Blackwood Books and I unlock the door, proceeding through the shop to the back-door entrance to my flat. I know a moment’s tension when I push that door open – I want her to see my living space and yet I don’t want her to see it. I feel absurdly like a boy finally deciding to show a girl his precious Matchbox car collection in the hope of impressing her.

The ignominy of it.

Ignoring the feeling, I usher Miss Jones inside.

The flat isn’t big. It’s got two upstairs bedrooms with a tiny bathroom between them, and a kitchen and living/dining area down below. There’s a minuscule bathroom downstairs too, plus the garden to the back.

There’s nothing in that garden now. I came home from school one day when I was ten to find that Dad had pulled everything out of it. All the plants and bushes, and the little herb garden that Mum had tended. Her roses. We’d ended up having a screaming match – the first of many – and I’d sworn to myself that I’d replant it when I had the chance.

I haven’t, though. I don’t know anything about gardening and the shop takes up most of my time.

Miss Jones comes through into the kitchen and then down a couple of stairs into the living/dining area, which is slightly lower than the rest of the house. I had some French doors put in so I could look out into the garden, and I had plans of sitting out there in summer, but I never do.

I spend my time in the shop.

‘This is lovely,’ she exclaims, going over to the French doors and looking out. ‘And you’ve got a garden too.’

I don’t want her obvious pleasure in my living space to matter, yet it does. I wouldn’t have thought it would appeal, since it’s very minimalist and she’s definitely not a minimalist kind of woman.

I’ve made it a little like the shop, with floors of polished wood and Persian carpets. The walls are white, with some of my mother’s favourite pictures hanging here and there. I have a large modular couch in dark linen that takes up most of the living area and faces a flat-screenTVon the wall.

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