How to Find Love in a Book Shop (20 page)

Alice looked startled.

He reached over and touched her face gently.

‘You’re beautiful. You do know that?’

She was staring at him. Time stood still for a moment. He stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers.

‘You poor little chick.’

He knew he was touching her for longer than was necessary. But she didn’t seem to mind. She seemed frozen to the spot.

‘Oh Dillon,’ she said.

‘What?’

Her face scrumpled with confusion. ‘You make me feel funny. That’s what.’

‘Funny.’ He smiled. ‘I was trying to make you feel better.’

‘You do! That’s the point – you make me feel as if it doesn’t matter how I look.’

‘Well, of course it doesn’t.’

She bit her lip. ‘Thank you …’

She leaned forward. She smelt of antiseptic and baby powder and chocolate. Dillon’s heart thumped. She was going to kiss him.

Then suddenly they heard Hugh’s voice in the corridor, exchanging idle banter with the nurses. Alice pulled back sharply, and Dillon got to his feet, moving away from the bed. Dillon usually left at half six, because Hugh came in at seven and he wanted to be long gone. But today, because of the bandage and the conversation about the scar, he was running late.

The door opened and there was Hugh, in his City suit, his hair slicked back, self-important. He glared at Dillon.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

‘I’ve been visiting Alice.’

‘He’s been reading to me.’

‘Isn’t there gardening to be done?’

‘Don’t be so rude!’ Alice was indignant.

Hugh turned to look at her.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, when he saw her scar.

‘Shut up,’ said Dillon under his breath.

Hugh looked appalled. ‘Look, it’s OK. We’ll get the best people. There must be something we can do.’

He leaned forward to take a closer look.

Alice looked between Dillon and Hugh. ‘Dillon said it wasn’t too bad.’

‘What is he – blind? He’s just told you what he thinks you want to hear. We’ll talk to the consultant. We’ve got time to sort it before the wedding.’

‘I think what Alice needs is support,’ said Dillon. ‘Not a plastic surgeon.’

Hugh stared at him. His eyes were dead, thought Dillon.

‘I better be going,’ he said.

‘You had.’

‘You don’t have to go,’ said Alice. ‘Just because Hugh’s here.’

‘My parking’s running out any minute.’ Dillon made his way to the door. Hugh followed him and opened it for him.

‘I don’t want to see you here again,’ he said, sotto voce.

‘Fine,’ said Dillon, thinking
you won’t see me, because I’ll be gone before you get here
.

‘I mean it,’ said Hugh.

And it turned out he did, because when Dillon went to see Alice the next day, the nurse at the reception desk stopped him.

‘I’m really sorry, it’s close relatives only for Miss Basildon.’

‘But she’s expecting me.’

The nurse looked sympathetic.

‘I can’t let you through.’

Dillon went to push past her. ‘Let’s see what Miss Basildon says.’

The nurse put a hand on his arm. ‘I’m sorry. If you go any further, I’ll have to call security.’

Dillon stopped. He looked at her. ‘It’s that bastard, isn’t it? He’s told you not to let me in.’

‘I have to obey the wishes of the family.’

‘Not the patient?’

The nurse sighed and Dillon knew he couldn’t push it.

‘Could you tell her I came to see her? Dillon. Could you tell her Dillon came to see her?’

‘Of course.’

He turned to leave, knowing full well the message wouldn’t be passed on.

Seventeen

On the day of Mick Gillespie’s book launch, Thomasina went to the cheesemonger to get some Irish cheese. She stood outside, looking in the window at the display, keeping half an eye on the queue inside until she could be sure that she would be served by Jem. It was the most calculating thing she had ever done.

‘I want some Cashel Blue, for some baby tartlets,’ she told him. ‘And some Gubbeen, so I can make little cheesy choux puffs.’

‘Sounds great.’ Jem lifted a wheel of Cashel Blue out of the refrigerator and grabbed the end of the cheese wire. ‘What else are you doing?’

‘Potato cakes with smoked salmon. And Clonakilty Blackpudding with pan-fried apple on skewers. And miniature chocolate and Guinness cakes.’

‘Wonderful.’ Jem handed her the two cheeses, wrapped in wax paper with the shop’s logo printed on it.

There was a silence.

‘Twelve pounds seventy,’ he said eventually.

She paid him quickly and scurried off. She’d wanted to ask him, because Emilia had given her two tickets. But she didn’t have the courage. This was exactly why she didn’t push herself forward when it came to men, she thought. She didn’t have the guts.

She got back home and started to instruct Lauren on how to prepare the canapés.

‘I’m going to teach you how to make flaky pastry,’ she told her. ‘It’s time-consuming, but it’s worth it.’

The two of them spent the afternoon rubbing butter into flour, kneading the dough, rolling it out, cutting up cubes of butter, folding the dough and rolling it out again. The mixture was smooth and soothing beneath Thomasina’s fingers and Lauren was a natural pastry maker and had an innate understanding of the process: her results were as neat and professional as Thomasina’s. As she looked at the results of their afternoon’s work, she felt hugely satisfied.

Thank God for cooking, she thought. Cooking never let her down.

‘You look fantastic,’ Jackson told Mia, and it was true. She did. She was only in jeans and a silk paisley top, but she looked much healthier than she did in all the fitness gear she wore these days, which just made her look like a shiny stick insect.

She’d been wary when Jackson had flourished the tickets. She had looked at him as if it was some sort of trap. He’d hoped she couldn’t resist, especially as he had arranged for his mother to come and babysit for Finn. He was pretty sure that, except for her ridiculous training sessions, Mia hadn’t been out for a long time.

‘Are you guys going on a date?’ asked Finn. He was in his pyjamas, all ready for Cilla to put him to bed.

Jackson didn’t know what to reply. Mia put him straight.

‘No. We just happen to be going to the same thing. So we’re going together.’

‘Cool.’

Outside, on the way to the book shop, Jackson turned to her.

‘So this isn’t a date then?’

Mia made a face. ‘No. That would be weird.’

‘Oh.’ Jackson was a bit stung by her vehemence.

‘We’re going to a thing together,’ Mia reiterated. ‘But not
together
together.’

Funny, thought Jackson, I thought I’d bought tickets for something I thought you’d like and invited you out. It was typical of Mia to completely recalibrate the gesture and throw out the original intention. But then, that was partly what he loved about her. Her relentless goalpost moving.

‘You’d be annoyed if I buggered off to the pub, though, wouldn’t you?’

Mia sighed. ‘Go if you want. When has what annoys me stopped you doing anything?’

‘I don’t want to go to the pub.’

‘Then don’t!’ She looked exasperated.

Jackson kept quiet. They were going round in circles, like they always had done. It was how their relationship worked. They arrived at the book shop. Inside, it was heaving. There were silver moons hanging from the ceiling. And behind a table, a figure with white hair behind a stack of books.

‘Mick Gillespie,’ breathed Mia. ‘Actual Mick Gillespie.’

‘He’s about ninety-seven!’ Honestly, thought Jackson. There was no accounting for women, or pleasing them.

The window of Nightingale Books took June’s breath away. She’d seen it in progress, but now it was all lit up from the inside it looked incredible. She pulled her coat around her, standing in the chill air. The window display was crammed with shots from his most famous films. Fifty years of Mick Gillespie playing heroes and villains and sex symbols and icons. He was an icon himself. And amidst them hung silver moons, the symbol from the film that had made his name.
The Silver Moon
…

It was almost a shrine.

There were thirty-seven of them in the window. She counted. Thirty-seven Mick Gillespies. And she shivered. He could still do that to her.

Just before she stepped over the threshold, she stood and measured how she felt. It still hurt, even now. That dull tug deep inside her, the one that never left. She imagined it, her feeling: a tangle of scar tissue that would never be allowed to heal.

She was here tonight as a guest, not a member of staff, because she still wasn’t technically a member of staff – she just did what she could to help as and when she was needed. She refused to take payment, so Emilia had insisted tonight was for her enjoyment. Mel and Dave were holding the fort, and Thomasina and Lauren were passing round the food and drinks.

They’d sold seventy tickets – the shop wouldn’t fit many more – and Mick was sitting behind a wide table, surrounded by copies of his book. Bea had made a veritable throne for him to sit on: a golden high-backed chair that was to be the shop’s special signing chair for visiting authors. At the back of the shop, Marlowe was playing Irish tunes on his violin, adding to the atmosphere. It reminded June of the tiny pub in the village they’d filmed in where the locals had often taken over in the evening, entertaining them with their fiddles and whistles and drums.

June took a Silver Moon cocktail: she wasn’t sure what was in it, but it tasted delicious and there was a glittery moon perched on the side of each glass. She needed a drink to take the edge off her jitters, although she wasn’t quite sure how to identify what she was feeling, or even what she was expecting from the evening. Just to be breathing the same air as him felt momentous.

She picked up a copy of the autobiography and joined the queue for it to be signed. June never usually queued for anything … The shop was buzzing, and she felt pleased. Julius would be so proud of what Emilia had done. She’d rolled up her sleeves and got on with making the book shop work. She was there, behind the till, hands on, smiling and laughing with the customers he had built up over the years, but also the new ones who’d been drawn in by the lure of a legend. June hoped more than anything that things would fall into place and the shop would stay open.

It was her turn. Mick Gillespie looked up at her, his eyes as dazzling as they ever had been, his smile making you feel special … even though you weren’t. June knew that well enough. And as she smiled back and handed him her book open at the flyleaf for him to sign, there was no recognition. Not a flicker that he had any memory of her.

‘Who will I sign it to?’ he asked.

‘To June,’ she said, waiting for a moment, but there was no reaction. He wrote her name and signed his with a flourish before handing it back to her with another smile. He was so practised. She managed a smile back, although inside she felt fury. How could she still be furious? It was a lifetime ago.

She joined the till to pay.

‘Don’t be daft,’ said Emilia. ‘There’s no way I’m going to make you pay after everything you’ve done for me.’

At the back of the shop, Mick Gillespie turned to Marlowe with a glint in his eye.

‘Do you know “Whiskey in the Jar”?’

‘Of course.’

‘Come on, then, boy. Let’s show them how it’s done.’

And he stood up and as Marlowe struck up the tune on his violin, Mick began to sing. And the delighted crowd gathered round and clapped their hands.

‘As I was goin’ over the far-famed Kerry mountains …’

June abruptly turned and left the shop. After all, she’d heard him sing that song herself, all those years ago in a tiny pub with a dirt floor and an equally appreciative audience.

June walked the short distance to her cottage. There, in the sky above, was a full moon, as if it had known about the evening and made a special appearance. She got home, slipped off her high-heeled boots and put on the slouchy cashmere bedsocks she used for padding over the flagstones. She threw some logs on the wood-burner, poured a glass of wine and sat with her legs curled up on the sofa in her living room.

She leafed through his book until she reached the section about
The Silver Moon
. It had been his turning point, and was an historic film, so there was a hefty chapter.

There was no mention of her. Not a word about the blonde-haired extra who’d played the barmaid and his affair with her. Not a hint of the passion he had professed to feel at the time. She was insignificant. The scenery was discussed at length, the genius writer, the visionary director – even Mrs Malone, the landlady of the cottage they’d stayed in during the shoot was given a namecheck. But as far as the rest of the world was concerned, she didn’t exist and had made no contribution.

She went upstairs. In her sparest spare bedroom she had stored a box in the wardrobe.

She pulled it out. Inside was his Aran sweater and the script from
The Silver Moon
. Beer mats from the pub they drank in. Shells and pressed flowers. She could smell the air if she breathed in deeply enough. She was there, in the drizzle, the scent of damp wool, the taste of his mouth, tinged with whiskey …

And the photographs. Faded and curling now, but here was her evidence. Irrefutable evidence. The two of them, arms around each other, laughing into the camera. You could see the chemistry between them, crackling and fizzing, evident even in yellowing black and white. She remembered the little old man with the donkey and cart looking at the camera in consternation but taking the pictures nonetheless. Not exactly David Bailey, but it had been a memory not a work of art.

And she remembered holding the camera at arm’s length, back to front, and the pair of them lying on their backs, smiling, as she took what would now be called a ‘selfie’, his dark hair tangled up in her platinum blonde.

They had been so beautiful, she thought. There was a purity to the photographs that you never got today. It was the real them, no filter, no fiddling and she’d worn no make-up, yet their beauty shone through nevertheless.

She laid everything out on the bed. It was all there, their story, in the few artefacts. All the proof she needed.

That had been another her. She’d stopped bleaching her hair, going back to her natural brown, and had put on some weight. No one would ever have known she was Juno.

She suddenly felt angry. He had ruined her for anyone else. She had loved her two husbands in a low-key way, and the divorces had been amicable rather than acrimonious. But she’d never felt the same way about anyone as she had Mick Gillespie.

There was a large brown envelope too, that she hadn’t opened yet. She lifted it: it was heavy with paper. She opened the flap and pulled out a manuscript: pages and pages typed onto cheap flimsy paper.

In 1967, Michael Gillespie ripped out my heart and dashed it onto the rocks at Coumeenoole Beach. To my amazement, I managed to live without it. And I’m here, living, breathing, and able to tell you the story of what happened when an innocent young girl fell in love with the world’s greatest star. It’s a fable, really. A warning.

It was her story, of what had happened to her. She remembered writing it, two years after she had come back from Ireland. She’d sat at her typewriter and written, long into the night, the words tumbling out at a breakneck pace, so fast she couldn’t keep up with them.

June smiled as she remembered the sound of a real typewriter. Somehow the gentle tip tap of the computer keyboard didn’t have the same satisfaction. She began to read the words, the words of a wounded young girl.

Halfway through, she stopped reading. She found it too sad, the memories. She wasn’t that girl any more. She was a part of who she had become, but she didn’t need to go back and revisit the pain. She knew now that everyone had heartbreak in their life at some point. What had happened didn’t make her special or unusual. It was part of being human. A broken heart was, after all, the source material of a myriad books. Some of those books had become her comfort, and had made her realise she was not alone.

She slid the papers back into the envelope and sealed it back up again.

Mick and Marlowe were in full swing. Mick had produced a bottle of Paddy whiskey and was topping up the audience’s cocktail glasses in an expansive ‘one for you one for me’ gesture, then calling up ballads for Marlowe to play: ‘The Irish Rover’, ‘Molly Malone’, ‘The Rising of the Moon’ … The atmosphere was bordering on riotous.

Eventually Emilia had to call a halt to the proceedings. She could sense Mick getting slightly out of hand, and she wasn’t sure about the legality of getting all her customers insensible at this hour of the day. So she gestured discreetly to Marlowe to wind things up, and despite Mick’s protests – he would have gone on all night given the chance – the shop gradually emptied, and after much effusive hugging and kissing, Mick headed off to the Peasebrook Arms. Emilia had no doubt he would waste no time making friends in the bar, but she was too exhausted to accompany him herself.

She was cross when Marlowe refused to let her pay him for playing.

‘It’s the best fun I’ve had for weeks. Playing the fiddle for Mick Gillespie? I’d have given my right arm for that. I don’t want payment.’

‘But I wouldn’t have asked you if I thought you wouldn’t let me pay.’ Emilia hated the thought of exploiting anyone’s better nature.

‘I know. Which is why it’s OK.’

‘But I won’t ask you again.’

‘You can pay me next time. But this time: gratis. It was a pleasure. And I did it for your dad.’ Marlowe smiled kindly. ‘You have his magic, you know. People want to do things for you, like they did him. You’re going to be all right.’