Page 71 of The Battle of the Bookshops
Jules felt nervous and gauche, having bought a fancy box of dark chocolate Florentines from Finn’s deli and a big bunch of dusty-pink hydrangeas from the florist on the high street.
She had scuttled past the large stone porch and arched, studded oak door of the family home so often, slipping around the corner to Roman’s pad, it seemed strange this time to stand in the gloomy vestibule and knock. The heavy cast-iron knocker sounded louder than she intended, echoing through the house.
There was an anxious wait until, at last, the sound of firm, even footsteps. She breathed a shaky sigh of relief when Roman himself opened the door.
“You needn’t have,” he said, regarding the gifts, after he had swept her into his arms for a knee-tremble-inducing kiss.
“I definitely did,” Jules said defensively. “Flowers for your mum, and chocolate for your dad. I’d have bought him a bottle of something, but I didn’t know what he liked.”
“Anything alcoholic would have gone down a treat,” said Roman. “But don’t worry, they’re going to love you, fullorempty-handed.”
As he spoke, he led Jules across a vast foyer with sweeping stairs rising to a balcony running the full width of the hallway, the backwall punctuated with wide Georgian paneled doors and portraits of ancient relatives.
There was a green baize-covered door tucked under the stairs, and it was through this that Roman took her. As soon as he pushed it open, there was a wall of sound: barking dogs, clattering pans, and the crash and clash of a young woman, surely Roman’s sister, banging knives and forks down carelessly on a long, heavily scratched, and pitted mahogany table. At the far end of it was a well-covered and red-faced older man, gold-framed spectacles perched on his nose, and the Sunday papers piled on the table in front of him. He lowered the paper he was engrossed in and peered over his spectacles.
“Aha!” he said. “So, my son finally brings in the reason for his distraction over the last few months. At last, my dear.” He stood and came over, putting his hands on Jules’s shoulders and pecking her formally on both cheeks.
“Are those for me? Youarea darling,” said an older woman, coming toward them from the stove, looking pink-faced and shiny from her cooking efforts. She took the hydrangeas, wrapped in brown paper with a green Petersham ribbon, and captured Jules in a warm, one-armed hug. “How did you know I adore hydrangeas?” she went on, looking around vaguely for something to put them in, before dumping them absent-mindedly in the stone butler’s sink.
“Perdy,” she said to the young woman who was finishing setting the table. She looked up and shot Jules a welcoming smile. “Darling, see if you can find that big cream enamel jug in the boot room,” Roman’s mother said. “We can put these divine flowers in it and have them on the table with us. Ten minutes till we eat,” she added to Roman, who was watching the tableau of his family in their natural habitat with detached amusement.
“And this,” he told Jules, with a sweep of his arm, “is my family.”
Jules’s nerves had eased a little by the time Roman’s father, Henry, had dug out an enormous wineglass and filled it to nearly halfway from the bottle of red he had on the table in front of him, settling Jules with it in the seat on his right-hand side. It was unctuous—almost viscous—and warming. Not having eaten breakfast, Jules felt it hit her bloodstream almost immediately. She had better go steady, she thought. The last thing Roman’s family wanted to see was that his new girlfriend was a lightweight with alcohol.
The young woman, introduced to Jules as Perdita, looked pointedly from Roman to Jules and back again, apparently on the verge of a remark that Roman quelled with a look.
“My younger sister,” he told Jules. “I urge you not to listen to a word she says, about anything.”
“Especially former girlfriends,” agreed Perdy, grinning back at Roman, who was scowling fiercely in her direction.
“Especiallythem,” he agreed, breaking into a reluctant smile.
Perdy was essentially a younger, prettier version of Roman, with the same straight, dark brows, vivid blue eyes, and wavy black hair. Henry, on the other hand, had little hair, and what there was had turned completely gray. In addition, his florid complexion appeared earned through a love of red wine and good food and contrasted unfavorably with his children’s Celtic pallor. It seemed clear to Jules that both Roman and Perdy had their mother to thank for their looks.
Roman’s mother, introduced as “Bunty”—not, Jules felt sure, her real name—was soon nagging her two grown-up children as if they were still small, getting them to bring a parade of steaming dishes to the table. There were piles of green beans studded with crisply fried lardons, carrots gleaming with butter and maple syrup, perfectly crunchy roast potatoes, enormous, billowing individual Yorkshire puddings, and—the centerpiece—a proudfour-rib piece of roast beef with a crust of golden-burnished fat. Ruby-red juices ran from the delicate pink inner meat, revealed as Henry attacked it with a fiendishly long, sharp carving knife. He piled slices of meat generously onto plates that were passed clockwise, followed by the vegetables and a large brown stoneware jug of port-wine gravy.
Jules, having gone from queasily nervous to ravenous, was happy to tuck in while Roman and his father exchanged notes about business matters. The loss adjuster looking at the fire damage had, it transpired, challenged the rebuild amount. “He’s saying we were overinsured,” Roman explained.
“Rubbish,” expostulated his father. “Tell ’em that building is worth two mil if it’s worth a penny. If Capelthorne’s value is nine hundred k, which we know it is, then it stands to reason Portneath Books is more than twice that. It’s three times the size, for a start.”
Belatedly, Henry seemed to notice his son’s stony face and realized mentioning Capelthorne’s was a faux pas.
“Sorry, my dear,” he murmured to Jules, beside him. “Sore point. Mea culpa.”
Jules nodded her acceptance of his apology gracefully enough, but on the inside, she was shocked. Nine hundred thousand? That was even more than the impossible sum she and Aunt Flo had already been thinking. Jules had harbored a secret hope that the sale of the grimoire in just a couple of weeks would, in fairy-tale fashion, raise enough for Aunt Flo to triumphantly buy the freehold and settle down to enjoy her tiny empire for the rest of her days. But that was ridiculous, of course. Especially if the Capelthorne’s building was really worth what Henry was saying, and she had no reason to doubt him. Ah, well. She could hardly expect real life to pan out like the pages of a novel. That would be too much to ask.
Tuning back in and trying to look alert and interested as she returned to her delicious lunch, she picked up that Roman was talking about the shop’s listed status.
“So, I had that meeting with the conservation officer I told you about. She’s fine with the rebuild and pleased we are going to restore the stone fireplaces. They just need a really good, careful clean. I’ve got a proper stonemason on the case. Obviously, a lot of the beams will need replacing, and the builder is sourcing those from a reclamation agent, but some of the ones in the ceiling of the ground floor—which, as you know, was less badly damaged—look as if they can stay.”
“Really?” asked Henry with raised eyebrows.
“Yeah, they’re so old and hard, the structural engineer says what fire damage there is doesn’t change their load capacity. They’re just a bit smoke-damaged, with a tiny bit of charring—plenty of material left to do the job.”
“Remarkable,” said Henry.
It was kind of compelling, watching the two men converse, Jules decided. Henry was imposing, but Roman clearly had no fear of him. It seemed Henry was hardly the monster Maggie had told her about.
