Page 26 of The Battle of the Bookshops
“James!” Flo greeted him. “Long time no see! This is my niece, Jules, who is dealing with stock orders. Jules, this is James, who used to be our Gardners agent but who has not graced us with his presence for a considerable time. You were missed,” she told him sternly.
He ducked his head apologetically at the same time as holding out his hand for Jules to shake.
“To what do we owe this exceptionally rare pleasure?” Flo went on, clearly determined not to let him off the hook easily.
“I was in the area,” he admitted, seeming to shrink slightly under Flo’s censorious gaze.
“Visiting the enemy across the road, I dare say,” said Flo.
The tips of James’s ears had gone pink. His silence spoke volumes, although his discomfort was so intense, Jules ended up feeling a little bit sorry for him.
“Let me make you a cup of tea,” she suggested. “Then you can tell me what’s hot and what’s not. Flo’s got me in charge of purchasing these days.”
Merlin had done James the honor of choosing to sit on his knee, and the poor man was now carefully staying completely stationary and awkwardly holding his mug high over Merlin’s head so as not to put him out in any way.
Being nice to the cat counted for a lot in Jules’s eyes.
“We’re doing a big push on the latest Cressida Cornworthy at the beginning of the month,” he told Jules once they had exchanged the usual niceties.
“There’s an excellent readership for that here,” Jules said. She had, just that morning, been looking at the surge in backlist sales when the previous one came out. “Plus, it’s still the Easter holidays for most of the kids, so we’ll have lots of holidaymakers around. If there’s rain, giving the kids something new to read will be hugely popular with the parents.”
“I’ll put you down for fifty copies then,” said James, poised with his pen and notepad.
“Make it a hundred,” said Jules. “And I assume there will be some good point-of-sale kit for the displays?”
“For sure, and a big national media push too,” James enthused. “The London chains are expecting queues camping out overnight. You could maybe hook up with local media with a similar story?”
“Dunno about camping out,” admitted Jules, “but I reckon we can generate a picture of a decent queue. A picture paints a thousand words and all that. Plus, we’ve got a strong social media following here.” That might have been a bit of an exaggeration, but the Instagram followers had been rising exponentially, and Juleshad even been seriously thinking of doing some TikToks. She was well aware BookTok was huge, although Flo, naturally enough, could not be persuaded to take an interest. “And I imagine you’re providing similar support to Portneath Books too?” Jules pressed mercilessly, feeling only a little bit mean.
James flushed again, his eyes beseeching her not to ask.
“How many copies are they ordering?” she demanded.
He sighed. “A hundred.”
“Ha! Good,” said Jules. She would show him.
Chapter 12
It was perhaps inevitable that Jules would be walking past Portneath Books on the way up to Belinda’s to meet Freya at the exact moment Roman and Cally were coming out, deep in conversation with each other.
“Aha,” he said, spying her trying to sneak past with her head averted. “Enemy incursion.”
“I believe the pavement is generally considered to be no-man’s-land,” she countered, contemplating pushing past, but Roman was standing solidly in her way.
“What do you think of our new window display?” he asked. “You know, you should really lightyourwindows better.”
Jules glanced. She always knew exactly what he had in the window. Wasn’t she sneaking looks at it all day long? “One word,” she told him scathingly, pointing at the searingly bright spotlights, “‘the planet.’”
“Actually, that’s two—”
“Iknow,” she snapped.
“And it’s all low energy, to be fair,” continued Roman in an infuriatingly reasonable tone.
“No defense,” Jules replied. “Light pollution is bad. It, er,confuses the bats—which you would know, if you knew anything.Excuseme.” She pushed past on the narrow pavement. “Places to be.”
Her heart was still pounding when she got to Belinda’s, where Freya was already waiting with the owner of the eponymous shop.
