Page 77 of The Battle of the Bookshops
“But you can buy Hollyhock Cottage,” said Jules, rapidly doing the math. Her own eyes filled with tears as she saw Flo’s brimming eyes. “You can retire. You can have the garden you’ve always wanted.”
“Yes, I can, my love. Thanks to you. Thanks to you both,” she added, turning to Charlie, who was unashamedly in floods of tears too.
The rest of the afternoon passed in the most extraordinary daze. There was more toasting, with champagne this time. Vanessa marshaled them all back into the meeting room, and guarding Flo fiercely, like her very own offspring, she ushered a series of journalists and film crews in to record their soundbites, hustling them out bossily as soon as they had had their opportunity.
Jules barely remembered getting Flo and Charlie in a taxi back to the station. On the train, they took turns to laugh at one another as they cycled seemingly endlessly through excited chatter, lunatic grins, and happy tears.
“The poor woman, though,” said Flo soberly at one point. “Doing all she did for her community and then being turned on like that. It’s heartbreaking even now. And not even a grave in her own churchyard to remember her by.”
“We are remembering her now,” replied Jules emphatically,deciding not to tell her aunt quite yet about the conversations she had recently been having with the vicar of the church at the top of the hill.
Astonishingly, after such high excitement, the women managed to doze on the train in the end, exhausted after their early start. The morning, when they had stood on the platform with their coffee, felt like a lifetime ago. So much had changed.
Everything had changed.
Chapter 35
Jules woke to a feeling of elation, but it took a couple of seconds to remember the reason. And then, stretching sleepily, she smiled.
The door swung open and in came dear Aunt Flo with a mug of tea. She sat on the side of the bed and slipped an arm around Jules’s shoulders, pulling her in for a hug.
“How are you, my darling?” she asked, smiling.
“Ready to buy you a house,” Jules replied. “We get up, dressed and out the door, straight to the estate agent before she sells Hollyhock Cottage to someone else.”
“How are we going to do that, exactly? We’ve not got the money yet.”
“Um, I think she’ll know you’re good for it,” said Jules with masterly understatement. Even if she hadn’t picked up on the blanket media coverage—a story the whole country had taken to its heart—Jules, frustrated that they had arrived back in Portneath too late to catch the estate agent in her office, had dashed off an email to her stating Flo’s intentions and offering the full market price. With any luck, she would be reading it right now.
“And you’ve got your marvelous ball this evening,” Flo reminded her. “I can’t wait to see you in that dress of yours.”
Charlie came in to provide cover in the shop while Flo and Jules went to have an extremely satisfying conversation with the estate agent, who professed herself delighted to take the cottage off the market with immediate effect and phoned her client to tell them they had a cash buyer while Flo and Jules sat listening.
They got back to the shop to discover a small welcoming committee of locals who were flooding in to pass on their congratulations, most of them buying a book or two while they were at it. The upper floor of the shop was largely stripped bare now, and even the ground-floor stock was starting to look a little thin on the ground.
Obviously, the plan to close the shop still needed to go ahead. The grimoire sale was never going to raise enough to halt that particular disaster, but Jules was newly sad—even on this exciting day—to be getting ever closer to closing the doors of Capelthorne’s once and for all.
At Flo’s insistence, Jules gave herself plenty of time to get ready, having a heavenly long, hot bath with some of Flo’s precious Aesop bath oil, which smelled amazing and left her skin as soft and silky as she had ever known it. She took extra care drying her hair, having decided to leave it loose. She was pleased she had taken the time to get it trimmed and shaped the week before. Sliding into the dress with a whisper of silk against silk, she stood back and judged the effect in the mirror. Her makeup was simple: just mascara and a wing of black eyeliner, along with the scarlet lipstick she had worn that hen night when Freya got drunk and Roman had to come to the rescue.
And now he was coming to take her to the ball. A Montbeau escorting a Capelthorne. The two families uniting at last—and if that was a heavy weight of responsibility for her and Roman to carry, it didn’t feel like it. Not anymore. Their union, their partnership, felt like the most natural thing in the world. It was exciting—scary even—but also deeply, deeply calm, like a boat coming into safe harbor after a tumultuous voyage. Jules smiled at her reflection and then carefully wiped away a single, happy tear.
“The green silk dress!” Roman exclaimed when he came to collect her, looking impossibly handsome in his black dinner jacket.
“What?” Jules was incredulous. “Don’t tell me you remember...?” That sultry summer evening, all those years ago, with Roman and his posh mates leaning against the wall, hands in pockets, laughing together and watching the girls parade by.
“You were the prettiest girl in the room,” Roman said. “How could I forget?”
Chapter 36
Middlemass Hall looked magical. There was a throng in the main hall where the sponsored champagne reception was taking place. The others were already there: Freya and Finn, Gabriel and Imogen, with Imogen already wanting to check in on the babysitter and Gabriel trying to get her to relax.
“Can’t remember the last time we managed to get out the door in the evening,” she confessed to Jules as she swigged from her glass nervously. “Ruth’s been a bit fretty—going through an anxious phase—so we may not last the night. Gabe’s promised to walk me home whenever, if our babysitter calls, but he can’t leave really—he’s the host.” She pulled a face.
“It’s only a short walk to your house, isn’t it? I can come with you,” Jules reassured her. “I wouldn’t mind an excuse. This isn’t really my sort of thing,” she confessed.
Freya was twitchy too. Her catering company had been subcontracted to provide the canapés for the reception. The banqueting manager at the hall had had his nose thoroughly put out of joint that his own team wasn’t being used, but Roman had insisted on Freya’s team, and she was anxious it all went perfectly. She kept dashing off to the kitchen to chivvy the waitresses to bring thingsout faster, and her eagle eye studied every tray as it went past, ensuring the presentation was perfection.
Dinner wasn’t a patch on the canapés, a woolly-tasting goat cheese tartlet followed by some sort of chicken. Of course, everyone wanted to hear about the grimoire auction, but conversation was stymied by all the fundraising activity. First a team came around selling the raffle tickets for Jules’s donated books, then there was the auction during pudding, then the speeches, which droned on as coffee and petits fours were served. By this time, after such ridiculously exciting exploits the previous day, Jules was feeling lightheaded with fatigue. Imogen had slipped away during the auction, apologizing to them all for an early departure, and Gabriel—nodding curtly whenever yet another person thanked him for providing the venue—looked bored out of his skull.
