Page 5 of The Battle of the Bookshops
Lugging all the furniture out single-handed was dusty, sweaty work. Merlin repaired to the pile of ledgers on the desk to watch the action, clearly put out that Jules had ousted him from his warm cushion. The long, curly wire bench was the last piece to move out through the French doors, and Jules had no option but to drag it with a tooth-clenching shrill screech across the floor. Pushing her hair out of her face with a grubby hand, she took a moment, panting, and then pressed on, arranging the furniture in the way she remembered it before standing back to admire her work. Spring would soon be here, and now Aunt Flo would be ready to enjoy it, but furnishing the garden was not the overall point of the exercise.
Jules went back inside and appraised the space she had cleared. Yes, that would work nicely, and now she needed a screwdriver.
“In the cupboard under the stairs on the first floor,” Flo instructed, in response to Jules’s inquiry. “But what on earth are you up to?”
“You’ll see,” Jules told her.
Going back up to the little flat at the top of the building was a revelation after all those years. It seemed so much smaller up there now.
There was no chance of getting Flo’s great, high iron bedstead downstairs, and it wouldn’t fit in the office even if she could, but the little single bed in the second bedroom that had been hers was another matter.
The room she had cherished as a child was barely eight feet square. Even the bed seemed smaller than she remembered. She reminisced over the day Flo brought it back as a flat pack, a sweet, little, white-painted wooden bed that her great-aunt had let her choose herself from the bed shop in Exeter. It had a pretty, curved headboard with a hole the shape of a heart. It was just like Goldilocks’s bed in the fairy-tale book Jules loved her great-aunt to read to her. She still recalled her excitement at seeing the bed and hearing that she couldcome and stay whenever she wanted. At the age of four, Jules had started spending one, perhaps two nights a week with Flo. The tiny second bedroom had been cozy, warm, and safe, the bed piled—as it was now—with fluffy feather pillows, a heart-shaped cushion embroidered by Aunt Flo herself, and a beautiful patchwork quilt in soft greens and blues. Jules loved that quilt. She took a moment to sit on the bed, tears pricking her eyes unexpectedly. And then she straightened, sniffed, and stood up. Things to do.
Flo had a decent tool kit in the under stairs cupboard, and Jules made quick work of dismantling the bed frame. In pieces it was relatively easy to take down to the shop. Putting it back together again in the office was easy enough too, but she got sweaty again dragging the single mattress down three windy, uneven wooden flights of stairs, and she was exhausted by the time she had finished making up the bed, complete with the heart-shaped pillow, a dried lavender-smelling nightdress from the airing cupboard, and a couple of well-washed white towels. Aunt Flo would miss her beloved bath, but, for now, she could at least be in the shop during the day and have somewhere accessible to sleep at night. Which was not to say that her poor aunt could manage without a lot of help. Help from whom...? But there was still the rest of the weekend to work on how she was going to sort that one out. In the meantime, the toast with marmalade felt like it was a very long time ago.
“How are sales this morning?” she asked, when another solitary customer had finally made their selection and left.
“Huh. A local ordnance survey map and a couple of postcards are the sum total of a morning’s trade,” Flo admitted despondently. “Hardly worth opening for.”
Jules pulled a sympathetic face. “I need to get us some lunch. Where’s a good place for sandwiches nowadays?” she asked.
“Sandwiches? Shan’t hear of it,” Flo protested. “I’m taking you out for lunch, no arguing. Plus, we’re expected.”
“Where are we going?”
Flo hesitated for a moment and then pointed. Just at the base of the high street the road split into two, leaving a cobbled triangle and two shops cheek by jowl at the base. One was a deli now—Jules remembered it was an Italian ice-cream shop years ago—and the other, a charming-looking restaurant with “Freya’s” emblazoned in white on an olive-green base.
“Cute,” said Jules. “Looks expensive. And what do you mean ‘we’re expected’?”
“None of your business how much it costs,” retorted Flo. “And we’re expected because I phoned up and booked a table while you were huffing and puffing up and down those stairs.”
“This is going to sound silly,” Jules said, “but for a moment I was wondering if it was my old mate Freya from school... you remember? But she’s doing some fancy chef thing in Paris, I think, so it can’t be.” Jules’s gut twisted with guilt. She had been a rubbish friend, not keeping in touch.
“Ah, well, wouldn’t it be nice if it was,” said Flo enigmatically. And then she burst out, “Oh, all right, I’ll tell you. Itisyour Freya. Honestly, I’d forgotten how you’ve always been so terrible at surprises, wheedling secrets out of me.”
“Oh my God!” squeaked Jules, her heart pounding. “What time is it? Gone twelve? Let’s go now!”
She impatiently waited until Flo had gathered herself together and positioned her crutch for “liftoff,” as she put it. With her good hand on her crutch and Jules supporting the upper bit of the arm with the cast, they walked, after a fashion, down the steps and across the road. Flo trod gingerly over the cobbles, but they arrived at the restaurant without incident. The maître d’ was just chatting charmingly as she showed them to their table when a tiny figure in chef’s whites and checked trousers appeared as if out of nowhere.
Chapter 3
“Oh my God, Jules!” squeaked the little woman, arms flung open, and before Jules knew it, she and Freya were hugging, both talking at once, and laughing at each other as they wiped away tears. When Jules next looked around, she saw the maître d’ had settled Flo at the table and she was sitting, watching the reunion she had engineered with a delighted grin on her face.
“It issoamazing that you’re back,” gushed Freya.
“Same!” Jules effused.
“Are you staying?”
“Ah, no,” said Jules sadly. “Got to go tomorrow night back to London for work.”
“Damn! Weekends aren’t exactly the best time for me,” said Freya. “I’m fully booked. I don’t have any time off until Thursday.”
“Don’t you worry, she’s staying,” Flo assured her.
“Am not,” protested Jules.
“We’ll see,” said Flo, and Jules gave up, laughing.
