Page 59 of The Battle of the Bookshops
At this, Jules faltered and pressed her hand to her upper lip, which was trembling in a precursor to tears. The last thing she wanted to do was cry in front of this unreasonable, unfeeling ape, who seemed to think this whole painful matter was her fault.
She kept her gaze on the middle distance even as Ruth blew a raspberry and reached out to plant her little starfish hand on Jules’s face. Jules caught it and dropped a kiss on the little girl’s palm, making her giggle delightedly. Her soft skin was slightly sticky and smelled of vanilla. Would she—Jules—ever have a gorgeous little girl like Ruth to call her own? Not at this rate. For a fleeting moment she pictured herself here, in the bookshop, with a baby in her arms and Roman standing proudly over them both.
She took a shaky breath. “The last thing I want to do,” she told Gabriel, meeting his eye again, “is to upset Roman. I love him. He knows I do. But it’s not just about us. We can’t be together. We just can’t. I’m sorry you can’t see that.”
Gabriel made to speak, but Jules held up her hand, silencing him.
“We can’t be together,” she went on, “because the actions of his family in damaging the people I love”—she struck her chest with the heel of her hand—“would always be there between us. Quite apart from the financial impact of it all on my nearest and dearest, the impossibility of having any kind of relationship with his close family would cast us into a situation of permanent conflict and impossible compromises. Ultimately, our relationship would be mortally damaged, and I love Roman too much to put him through that. See?”
This little speech was delivered in the most neutral, dispassionate tones Jules could muster. Only the last word was imbued with the turmoil and pain Jules had been living with every moment since the last time she and Roman were together—a meeting she played over and over in her mind.
“He’s fiercely loyal,” Imogen explained apologetically when Jules complained about the ambush afterward. “He and Roman have been friends forever. You mustn’t take it personally.”
“Why not?” Jules demanded. “It was meant personally. I mean, how am I supposed to feel about my ex’s family’s determination to ruin my aunt’s life? Am I supposed to just shrug my shoulders?”
“But aren’t you visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children, just a little bit?” quizzed Imogen gently.
“Isn’the?” Jules snapped back, but she softened. Imogen might have a point. “Roman understands why,” Jules told Imogen. “He gets it. Why can’t everyone else?”
“But what if it was literally just you and Roman in the world?” pressed Imogen. “What then?”
“Well, then...” Jules faltered. “But it’s not, though, is it?” she went on. “He’s a Montbeau. And I’m a Capelthorne. Family comes first.” It was what Jules believed, and given his agreement to stay away from her, it was obviously Roman’s belief too.
So that was that.
Saturday evening, long after Flo had retired for the night, Jules found herself curled into her book nook in the window as usual. The idea that, one day soon, neither she nor Aunt Flo would have access to this little spot, beloved since she was a child, seemed inconceivable. She should make the most of it now, savor the sensation, gaze up and down the high street for one of a countable number of times left, to file away a memory vivid enough to sustain her for the rest of her life.
Tired but wired, Jules was resting her head on the glass as always, her gaze fixed dully on the glow from Roman’s office window high up in the building opposite. Sometimes she would see the movement of a shadow—someone walking in front of the light—and would feel, in that moment, a little closer to him. When the light was finally extinguished, perhaps at one or even two in the morning, Jules, exhausted, would find that she too could finally go to bed to grab a few hours’ sleep, knowing that Roman was at lastdoing the same. It was her new routine. It wasn’t great, but their relative nearness—in the hours of the night when it was just the two of them awake—was the only comfort she had these days.
Of course, Roman had no idea she was there.
So, those were her nights—they were painful enough—but the rest of the time Jules felt even worse. The continual gnawing ache in her stomach, the cold sweat, and the racing heart that she experienced pretty much every waking minute felt normal to her now. It was impossible to say whether it was stress or fear. Perhaps it was just grief. She knew it showed outwardly from the pale, dark-shadowed face she saw in the mirror and the pity she saw in Aunt Flo’s expression when she thought Jules wasn’t looking. The sooner the situation was resolved and Jules was able to leave Portneath, the better, she thought wearily, rubbing her face with her palms.
Jules sighed, and then she stiffened. Had the light grown brighter? No. This glow wasn’t golden like the old Anglepoise desk lamp in Roman’s office; it was a dull, angry red, and it was coming from the floor below. And now it was all but shrouded in black before reappearing, a little larger than before. Was it flickering...?
Fire!
Jules was suddenly wide-awake, her heart pounding so hard in her chest she could hear it. There was a fire on the second floor, and there was Roman in the office on the floor above, unaware. Or, worse, already overcome by smoke. Jules scrambled to her feet. Think! What first? She grabbed her phone and, fingers shaking, dialed 999. Gabbling the address to the operator even as she was scrambling down the stairs, she flew out into the street, barefoot and in her pajamas, leaving the shop door wide open behind her.
Evil orange flames were visible now as the fire took hold. She could see through the rapidly darkening plate glass windows that smoke was billowing down the staircase onto the shop floor. The top floor, and Roman’s office, must be filled with smoke by now.Jules sobbed. For a few seconds she hammered bruisingly on the door, but it was a solid oak frame with double locks. She would never break in. And then she remembered: when the shop was locked up, Roman came and went by the stairs at the back, accessed from the little yard behind. Panting, she ran through the narrow alleyway to the yard, which was filled with pallets and folded cardboard boxes from the stockroom. She tried the door. Damn. Locked. Then she recalled there was a key: in her mind’s eye she could see him feeling for the key resting on the ledge above the lintel of the door. The lintel was too high for her to reach, so she grabbed a pallet, then another, piling them precariously, impervious to the splinters piercing her hands from the rough-sawn wood. Sobbing in frustration, she reached on tiptoe, arm stretched high. She could feel the edge of the key with her fingertips and held her breath, terrified that, in her haste and panic, she would knock it off the ledge and lose it in the dark.
She had it.
With trembling fingers, she unlocked the door and tried the handle, offering up a prayer of thanks when it opened. The air in the stairwell on the ground floor was still clean and sweet. She flew up the stairs two at a time, noting in a freeze-frame that tendrils of evil black smoke were billowing from under the door to the shop on the second floor, but she powered on to the floor above. Opening the door to a wall of choking black smoke, she took a deep breath and ran in. Visibility was practically zero, but she found her way, running her right hand along the shelves of books as she clung to the back wall of the shop, where the smoke felt marginally less dense. Her chest ached, and she was trying to breathe as little as possible. The office doorway was on the far end of the back wall, but the smoke was too thick for her to see. Suddenly the shelves gave way to space. The door was open, and Jules stumbled in, her arms stretched out in front of her. She tooka breath to call for him, but it caught in her throat, then all she could do was cough. Retching, with streaming eyes, Jules dropped to her knees and felt around the floor, certain that any second now she would come up against Roman’s body. And then what? Flailing ever more desperately around her, seconds passed—maybe even minutes—and Jules sat back on her heels, trying to catch her breath but coughing and choking helplessly now. Her head swam. He wasn’t here. She needed to go back and see if he was behind her, if somehow she had managed to pass him, perhaps unconscious and slumped on the floor of the shop. She crawled back in the direction of the doorway, feeling along the wall with her hand. There was a corner where she didn’t expect it. Which way was the door? She was panicked now, her chest so tight she could hardly force the air in—if you could even call it air, the evil, thick smoke scouring her lungs. She felt along the length of the next wall, every moment expecting to arrive at the open doorway to the stairs, when again she encountered a corner instead. Sobbing, she crouched down into a tiny huddle on the floor. It was too hard to breath, too hard to keep going. Roman must have perished, and Jules knew, in that moment, life without him was impossible.
She was done.
Chapter 26
“Get up!”
It was a shout, coming from far away, but there was nothing distant about the strong arms lifting her, first to semi-standing and then off her feet completely.
“Hang on,” came the voice again. “Don’t let go. Christ...”
Every breath was a cough now, for both of them, and Jules’s head was spinning as she followed his instruction to wrap her arms around his neck and hold on. It was too difficult to keep her smarting eyes open, so she closed them, feeling safe. If she and Roman didn’t make it out of the building, at least they were together. She was content.
They were out in the stairwell now. The smoke was lighter here, swirling as a blessed draft of fresh air was blowing in through the open fire door and up the stairwell as if it were a chimney.
