Page 1 of The Battle of the Bookshops
Chapter 1
Technically, her boss hadn’t sacked her.
Saying “Be back at your desk by eight o’clock sharp on Monday or don’t come back at all” was miles—okay, inches—away from “You’re fired,” so why did Jules’s stomach flip over every time she replayed the conversation in her mind? She could see Caroline’s bloodred talons tapping impatiently on her vast oak desk, her raised, impeccably shaped eyebrow condemning Jules’s request to leave an hour early on Friday to the category of heinous crimes equivalent to genocide. Fine, maybe not genocide, but it was definitely on a par with daring to deliver an unacceptably lukewarm flat white to Caroline’s office first thing in the morning, even if itwasbecause she had picked up Caroline’s dry cleaning on the way.
No, the sad reality was that editorial director Caroline Farquarson, of the small and venerable independent publishing house Farquarson and Trimble, was not an issuer of empty threats. There would be a queue of eager hopefuls keen to step into Jules’s shoes if she dared to do just one more thing to disappoint her exacting employer. Leaving early on the Friday before the London Book Fair was pretty disappointing. Jules saw that.
But work—her career, if you could call it that—didn’t matter now. What mattered was making it onto the last train of the day, out of Paddington toward the little Devon seaside town of Portneath. Even if it meant taking nothing with her but her work bag with a laptop, a dowdy brown cardigan, the last quarter inch of a dark red lipstick that didn’t really suit her, and—thankful for small mercies—a spare toothbrush. She had little else, not even a pair of underpants. There had been no time for a return to her dispiriting digs: the smallest bedroom in a shared Zone Four terraced house with a tiny kitchen and one bathroom for the five of them. It had never become somewhere she had thought of as home.
Home was Portneath.
Jules dug out her phone and revisited that electrifying text from her mother:
Need urgent help with Aunt Flo. Life and death. Hurry before it’s too late.
And then, yet again, Jules scrolled through all her unheeded and increasingly panicked replies. Her last text—also unanswered—confirmed she was on her way, ETA midnight or thereabouts. Clearly her mother had lost her phone or turned it off, or—horrifying thought—was so embroiled in her darling aunt Flo’s final moments she had left it in some Devonshire ambulance. At the thought of getting there too late, at the thought of losing Aunt Flo—technically Great-Aunt Flo, and the nearest thing to a grandmother that Jules had ever had...
Jules dashed away a tear and then sat with both hands pressed to her face to stem the anguish. She could see her wan reflection in the rain-streaked glass of the train window, the darkness outside forcing her to observe her lank second-day red hair bobbed to the shoulder, a snub nose and round face making her appear youngerthan her years, alabaster-pale skin that freckled rather than tanned, to her great frustration, and the remains of the post-box-red lipstick that she slicked on many hours ago in an attempt to appear sophisticated. Huge green eyes completed the childlike look that infuriated her as she hurtled toward thirty, however many times Aunt Flo told her being asked for proof of age would start to feel like a compliment soon enough.
Turning away from the window, she yawned and shivered.
The train had emptied steadily as the hours went by, and by the time it pulled in at Portneath station, Jules was the only one left in her carriage. She stepped down onto the platform, stiff as an old lady, shuffling along to the exit behind a single figure, a tall, broad-shouldered, raven-haired man with an easy, loping walk that was indefinably familiar.
By the time Jules had persuaded the automatic barrier to accept her ticket and spring her reluctantly from the station’s grasp, the man was bent over, talking through the open window of the lone cab at the taxi stand of an otherwise deserted station forecourt.
Damn. Terry the Taxi was her only way home, and now this man was snaffling him. Sods law, he was going miles. Jules sighed heavily. The sound made the man turn toward her, and her sigh turned into a gulp.
Roman Montbeau.
It had to have been nearly thirteen years. Jules felt her pale face flush, remembering the last time she had seen him, standing with his rich, aristocratic mates at the village dance, hands in pockets, leaning against the wall and observing the scene with an insouciance laced with scorn. He had been laughing, she remembered. Laughing at her. And with good reason, which had made it no less humiliating at the time.
She dismissed the memory with a little shake of her head andrealized he was gazing at her, a lazy smile curling one side of his mouth.
“What?” she snapped.
“I said ‘care for a ride’?”
At least he didn’t seem to recognize her. Of course, he didn’t. Why would he remember that fleeting moment, all those years ago? Also, why would he rememberher, an awkward sixteen-year-old, wearing her first grown-up dress, a bottle-green silk off-the-shoulder number that was too long and too old for her? In fact, why would heeverhave noticed her, despite their years growing up in Middlemass—together, but worlds apart?
Jules drew her coat around her against the chill and stepped back to avoid a large, freezing puddle inches from her feet. “I’ll wait, thanks,” she said stiffly, looking away.
“I don’t recommend that,” shouted Terry from the car, leaning over onto the passenger seat to look up at her. “It’s the pub pickups after this, and then the nightclubs. I’m booked solid till two a.m. easy... It’s Friday night, innit, my love.”
“You heard the man,” Roman told her, holding open the rear car door and giving her a little bow. “I’d throw my coat over that puddle and everything,” he went on, “only I’ve just had it dry-cleaned, so do you mind if I don’t? Where are you off to anyhow?”
He really didn’t recognize her, Jules told herself with relief. “Middlemass,” she muttered, avoiding eye contact.
“Perfect. Me too. Want to narrow it down at all?”
“Outside the pub will be fine,” she snapped. She wasn’t going to give him her address if she could help it. Thankfully Terry was in no danger of knowing it either—she had barely been home in eleven years.
Skirting around Roman and his open door, clutching her handbag to her chest, she climbed in the front passenger seat instead, shooting Terry a look of thanks while trying to simultaneouslyfreeze Roman’s overfamiliarity with a blank stare. It was a challenging maneuver. She probably just looked a bit insane.
Sizing up his two passengers, the taxi driver sighed and shook his head, as if perplexed—and perennially disappointed—by the ways of man. “Righty-o,” he said, starting up the engine.
Settled in the car with the heating on full blast, Jules’s shivering eased in the welcome warmth. They were out of the little town now, sweeping through narrow lanes, the headlights lighting up the hedgerows rising high on either side.
Jules stared straight ahead, uncomfortably aware of Roman sitting behind, imagining his arctic-blue eyes boring into the back of her head. But then, why would he, a Montbeau—a family who considered themselves masters of their own tiny Devonshire universe—be giving her, a frumpy nobody and a mere Capelthorne, more than a passing thought? No, this easy charm with a hint of mockery? It was his default setting. She knew that because she remembered him and his cronies all too well. They were always obnoxiously confident, and that night was no different. They had been standing together—the usual crowd with their expensively casual Jack Wills and Abercrombie clothes—drinking beer from the bottle and taking the piss. They invariably had Marlboro Reds dangling from their bottom lips too, eyes narrowed against the smoke, at that time—years ago—when smoking was still badass as opposed to full-on stupid. At the epicenter of the cool clique was always Roman, invariably flanked by his sidekick, Gabriel, and the handsome Irish brothers Finn and Ciaran. All of them just as hopelessly unattainable as the film stars she and her friends adored, but it had been Roman, she remembered—not the Toms Hiddleston or Hardy—who had been her most hopelessly unrealistic teenage crush.
