Page 58 of The Battle of the Bookshops
“What a legacy,” mumbled Jules, feeling glum. She turned to Charlie to see her friend’s faced wreathed in a smile. “Why so happy?” Jules asked, feeling a little put out on her ancestor’s behalf.
“Provenance,” said Charlie. “This is exactly the kind of thing that lifts a curiosity like the grimoire into the game with the big players. Next stop, an antiquarian bookselling auction house. And there is one very obvious one to go for.”
“Who?” said Robert, Brynlee, and Jules together.
“Sotheby’s,” declared Charlie, banging his hand down on the table, just like the fall of an auctioneer’s gavel.
Chapter 25
Desperate to find a way to give her aunt some sort of nest egg in a dire financial situation, Jules was relieved at Robert’s findings but then disconcerted when Flo’s response to their news from Exeter was lukewarm.
“I actually think I’d like to keep it,” she announced, when Charlie explored the idea that it might go to auction. “I honestly can’t imagine what interest a scruffy old notebook will attract, even if it did belong to the last witch executed in England,” she declared. “And Bridget was a relative. I’d feel odd about it going out of the family. Of course, it’ll come to you one day,” she told Jules. “You can do what you like with it then, naturally.”
Sitting in her little window seat a couple of nights later, with an insomniac’s mug of hot milk—pressed on her by Flo—in her hand, Jules pondered on Flo’s words. She had, eventually, agreed with Charlie’s suggestion that they at least take it to London’s Rare Book Fair at the end of the month, just to get an opinion from the Sotheby’s representative there. A redoubtable man called Richard Davenport, the unopposed leader in his field, had already agreed to meet Charlie for a quick chat. The trouble was, now Jules wondered if Flo had been guilt-tripped into it. She knew that Charliewas desperate to get a foothold in the antiquarian book world, and he was canny enough to see how the grimoire might serve as a professional introduction for him. After all, there would be nothing more Capelthorne’s could do for Charlie soon. He would be back out on a limb, just like the rest of them.
Worried about Charlie as she was, Jules was mostly worried about doing her best for Flo. Usually buoyant and irrepressibly positive, Flo seemed weary. She was going along with Jules’s heartbreaking job of wrapping up the business slowly and clearing through her possessions in the flat with a kind of hopeless acceptance that worried her young niece. Giving in wasn’t Aunt Flo’s style. But perhaps it was age catching up with her at last. She was in her mid-eighties, after all. A quiet retirement in Middlemass, sharing Maggie’s cottage by the village pond and telephone box library might be the best thing for her now.
It had been put to Maggie, with the predictably negative—but grudging—response both Jules and Flo had expected. There was a considerable question mark over Merlin’s future, though. Maggie was emphatically and consistently against pets—any pets—but particularly cats, which she had suddenly claimed she was allergic to.
This was news to Jules and Flo.
“Also, he’s old and smelly,” Maggie had insisted. “And he’s never liked me. I think he should be put down.”
Jules had to demure at that. “Exterminating someone for not liking you might be a bit much,” she reasoned, thinking that, on those grounds,mostof her mother’s acquaintances should be quite worried.
The thought of being separated from Merlin had uncharacteristically reduced brave Aunt Flo to tears. Jules had discovered her silently weeping with Merlin in her lap one evening. She had cried then herself too, but, thank goodness, lovely Diana had swept in, insisting that Merlin would come to live with her and Mungo,and that Flo would see him all the time—every day if she liked—because she was personally going to be finding myriad ways to keep Flo busy. There were plans for her to join the bridge club, the Portneath Symphony Choir, the Ramblers, and the churchyard working group. She would have not a single minute to miss the shop, and all would be well, Diana insisted.
This was some comfort to Jules, but for herself, the future was a yawning wasteland. Even with less than three months to go until the shop lease ended in December, Jules was desperate to find a way to leave Portneath sooner. It felt like the only way to dull the pain of Roman’s utter betrayal was to be as far away as possible. She hoped very much that absence didnotmake the heart fonder in her case.
Painful as her close proximity to Roman was, it wasn’t just needing to sort things out for Aunt Flo and Charlie that kept Jules in Portneath. The truth was that she still had nothing to go to: no job, no home—and no one in her life to complicate things. Roman, on her insistence, had stayed away, and Jules had been relieved, but like prodding a bruise, there was a secret, masochistic reason for her hours spent curled up in the window seat late at night. Leaning her head wearily against the window, she often saw the dull glow of a light in the second-floor office of Portneath Books opposite, and she knew it was Roman, working late, perhaps battling with the same insomnia that beset her.
They were just yards apart.
It might as well be continents.
The marketing program that Jules had created in the spring trundled on, regardless of the shop’s imminent demise. Jules felt she may as well continue with all the plans, although they no longer filled her with joy. If nothing else, they kept up footfall, and that was a help with selling off stock.
As scheduled, Imogen turned up with her easel and paints to do her artist-in-residence week. Jules was glad to have her company, and Imogen, being so shy, was glad to have Jules as an ally, chatting to pass the time when it was quiet and bringing endless cups of tea to sustain her when it was busier. Imogen was also hugely sympathetic about the Roman thing, although she stopped short of declaring that he was a terrible human being, something Jules would have found helpful, even if she knew well enough it wasn’t true. Jules concentrated instead on publicizing Imogen’s presence in the shop, delighted her new friend was gaining such a positive profile from it. Despite the school term being well underway, there were still some older holidaymakers in town, and they were thrilled to meet the woman who created the books they read to their grandchildren with such pleasure. Imogen signed endless copies of her Tango and Ruth series, and Jules—now generally opposed to buying in new stock—was glad she had plenty of copies on hand.
On Thursday, Jess brought in a gaggle of children from the six primary schools she worked for—these were the children chosen for their particular talent and interest in art, and they could obviously hardly believe their luck at being out of school. They were reticent and overwhelmed at first, but Imogen soon had them sitting around her in a semicircle with brand-new sketch pads and pencils, learning how to draw a cat in lots of different poses, just like the Tango character in her books. Tango, she explained to their rapt faces, was a real-life cat too, and a lively discussion ensued around the children’s pets, ranging from a border collie called Steve to a pair of rats magnificently named Persephone and Hecate, who reportedly lived in the hood of the child’s sweatshirt, but only when he was not in school, he explained to the women’s relief.
Jules was just distributing the tray of orange squash and biscuits that Flo had brought out when the hairs stood up on the back ofher neck. Imogen’s face transformed into a beam of pleasure, and Jules turned to see the reason.
Ruth, in Gabriel’s arms, was delightedly crowing, “Ma-ma-ma-ma!” and pointing at Imogen. Gabriel was looking pleased to see her too, but when his gaze fell on Jules his expression changed.
“Jules,” he said tersely, giving her a little nod.
“Hello, Gabriel,” said Jules, trying to keep her voice neutral, suppressing the urge to ask him why he suddenly, on seeing her, had a face like a slapped arse, whereas if anyone was entitled to look like that, it was her. “How is Roman?” she asked coolly, determined not to accept a single atom of the blame he was quite unfairly, wordlessly blasting at her.
“Not good,” he growled, “as you might expect.”
“Well, Gabriel,” she came back at him in a singsong voice, “since youdidn’task, he’s not the only one having a shitty, shitty time, but hey, when the Montbeau family is keen to call in a ‘debt’”—here she did the bunny ears sign to show what she felt about the legitimacy of the “debt” in question—“which is, by the way, the result of some random drunken card game a hundred years ago, and that ‘debt’ is apparently more important than the relationships and livelihoods of living, breathing people, then I think we all have to accept that a few of us are going to be feeling just a tiny bit crap.” She popped her lips on the final letter, emphasizing her disdain for the topic of the conversation.
“Roman’s a good man.”
“I. Know. That,” said Jules with icy precision.
“So why are you breaking his heart? Because you are.”
