Page 32 of Winter Nights at the Bay Bookshop
‘And my life is all the richer for it.’
It was an in-joke as Cassie was actually really popular among the school gate crowd. She had one of those bubbly personalities people couldn’t help being drawn to, smiling and chatting to everyone but never being fake. She couldn’t abide fake people and the one-upmanship some parents and carers seemed to subscribe to drove her to distraction. ‘They’re just children,’ she frequently lamented. ‘Who cares if one isn’t as good at spelling or numbers or sport? If some of those blummin’ parents would stop making it into a competition and just let their kids be kids, life would be so much easier. They’ll find their way. They’ll discover their gifts and that won’t necessarily be something academic or sporty.’
I used to laugh along with her school gate tales and wonder if I’d experience the same thing when Wes and I had children but the stories hit differently now. I still laughed, but I did wonder whether children were part of my future anymore and occasionally I questioned whether I’d done the right thing by walking away from Wes, especially when letting him go meant letting go of our future plans to get a house and have a family. The thought popped into my head again now, immediately followed by Dad’s declaration that Wes hadn’t been my Gilbert Blythe. We weren’t right together. I could see that now.
‘The Paperback Pixie has been gifting again,’ Cassie said, bringing my attention back to the present as she thrust her phone in front of me.
‘Today?’
‘Yes. No theme this time but five books again. She’s definitely making up for the missed summer.’
I took Cassie’s phone and scrolled through the photos, recognising the various locations around Whitsborough Bay where the Paperback Pixie had placed the books.
‘Who are you?’ I murmured, shaking my head. The accompanying message just had the usual spiel about tagging the Pixie in for any finds and wishing the finders an enjoyable read.
‘I think that’s going to forever remain a mystery,’ Cassie said as I returned her phone. ‘Oh! You know what we’ve never tried? Searching the system for an email address withPaperback Pixiein it.’
I glanced towards the till where Dad was serving a customer. ‘I doubt they’d be that obvious but it’s worth a try. I’ll look after we close.’
‘Too right! Okay, I’ll leave you to crack on and I’d best see what my two are up to. We’ll get books and then Mummy can go home and drink wine until she’s obliterated the trauma of Satan’s playpen.’
She headed over to where Hallie and Rocco were looking through our Halloween reads and I finished tidying the shelf I’d been working on, thinking about her email comment. It seemed ridiculous now that we hadn’t searched onpaperback pixiebefore. The search facility was designed to take a partial email address so I could trypixietoo and see if that brought up anything. My heart leapt at the possibility but my head told me that, if the Paperback Pixie had kept their identity secret for fifteen or so years, their email address wouldn’t give anything away.
The end of the day soon arrived and we said goodbye to our last customer. While Dad finished vacuuming, I ran off the sales report for the day, cashed up, then did an email search onpaperback pixie,pixieandpaperback. The first two brought up nothing but my heart leapt whenpaperbackyielded a couple of results. They were a dead end as I knew the customers attached to both – a regular who devoured historical novels, had been in a few days ago and was now on holiday in Lanzarote, and a former regular who’d moved out of the area a few years ago.
Although I was no further forward with identifying the Paperback Pixie, the email address search had given me an idea. Cassie and I had searched on Lars’s name but what if he had an account registered under a different name – perhaps his business? I found the email address Lars had put on his CV and tapped that into the search field, generating a customer account for an Aileen Bridges living at 17 Fountain Street. There was a long history of orders, mainly consisting of romantic fiction, Viking fiction and non-fiction books about Vikings, Iceland and photography.
‘That’s a serious face,’ Dad said, reaching round me to unplug the vacuum cleaner. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Yes. It’s relief, actually.’
When Dad raised his eyebrows questioningly, I felt I had to expand.
‘I did a thing. You know how Lars mentioned in his interview that he hadn’t been in the shop since he was a kid but he bought from us online? Cassie wanted to check out his reading tastes but couldn’t find him on the system.’
Dad nodded his head knowingly when I paused. ‘So you assumed he’d lied to us.’
‘Exactly. And you know what I’m like with liars. It’s been bugging me all week but I’ve just searched on his email address and found a long order history so now I feel awful.’
‘Did you say anything to Lars?’
‘Thankfully no, but I might have been a bit off with him after Cassie told me and I don’t know what to do about it now. If I apologise and he never noticed anything, I’m going to look daft. But if he did notice and I don’t apologise, he might think I’m still holding a grudge from school even though I promised it was all forgotten.’
Dad placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder. ‘I haven’t picked up on any bad vibes between you so I don’t think you’ve behaved as differently as you might think you have.’
I smiled at him, reassured and relieved because Dad was exceptionally observant and would have picked up anything remiss.
While Dad put the vacuum cleaner away, I glanced once more at Lars’s order list before shutting the system down. Discovering that Lars hadn’t been lying about being a customer should have made me happy but, instead, I felt disappointed, which made no sense to me.
* * *
Most evenings I ate my tea with Mum and Dad in Everdene but they were dining out with friends so I picked up a takeaway pizza on the way home. Dad had said I was welcome to eat in the main house but, after such a busy day, I fancied slipping into my pyjamas before I ate and I didn’t want to get all warm and cosy then have to brave the cold as I darted back across to my annexe.
Sprawled out on my bed munching on my pizza while watching a new episode of a drama series I’d been enjoying, I had to admit to myself the reason why I’d felt disappointed when I found Lars’s book orders on the system. Aileen Bridges. The woman with whom Lars lived. Girlfriend? Fiancée? She could even be a wife who’d kept her own name, although Lars wasn’t wearing a wedding band. Of course, she might not be romantically connected to him at all. Lars had said his parents were divorced so Aileen might be his mum using her maiden name, although he’d also said he barely saw his parents so perhaps not. Could be a sister who’d changed her name through marriage. I didn’t remember him having a sister at school or mentioning one when we used to talk about books, although I had a vague recollection of him sometimes buying picture books so it was possible that he had a younger sister. A big age gap would have made her too young to be at senior school at the same time as us.
I desperately wanted to know who Aileen Bridges was but it was hardly something I could ask Lars without admitting I’d been searching for him on the system because I thought he was a liar. I’d have to hope it came up in casual conversation.
As I settled down to sleep, it was still on my mind. I found myself willing Aileen to be family because the idea of her being someone in a romantic relationship with Lars bothered me way more than it should.
