The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend (7 page)

For a moment, her world was thrown off-kilter, just like it had been with Jimmie Coogan Street. Only by a few degrees – enough to make everything seem distorted and unreliable, but not enough that she could put her finger on exactly what had changed.

He was dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, which made her grey trousers seem ridiculously inappropriate. She was no longer under any illusion that her trousers made her legs look in any way elegant. They were back to their usual, scrawny selves, and she was back to being utterly plain.

This has happened before, Sara, she told herself. If you were stupid enough to think that things would change just because Amy's youngsters were involved then it's your own fault. Mascara! You idiot.

She found a certain consolation in that, or she was used to it, at least.

‘Andy asked me to give you a ride,' Tom said, as though it was, in some way, her fault.

‘I could've walked.'

‘Sure.'

She thought about turning around and heading back inside. She didn't think she would be able to cope if Andy turned out to be this unfriendly too. But Tom had already opened the car door, and now he gave her arm a gentle boost to help her up into the seat.

‘So you're Sara,' he eventually said. He sounded tired, but apparently he still believed in trying to make polite conversation.

Small talk was not something Sara excelled at. She couldn't think of anything to say, so she stayed silent. Without realising it, she was clutching her jacket pocket, where she had shoved a paperback just to be on the safe side. She didn't think she could really take it out, even though it was entirely obvious that Tom had no desire to talk to her. People were strange like that. They could be completely uninterested in you, but the moment you picked up a book,
you
were the one being rude.

As soon as they turned out of the little lane which led to Amy's house, the cornfields appeared again. She couldn't decide whether they were protective or threatening.

‘Sara who likes reading.'

For a second, she wondered if he could read her mind.

‘You've got a book hidden in your pocket.' He was sounding more and more dismissive.

‘People are better in books,' she muttered. She said it so quietly she didn't think he could have heard her, but when she stole a glance at him, she thought she could see one of his eyebrows twitch. ‘Don't you agree?' she asked defensively.

‘No,' he said.

She knew that most people would disagree with her too. ‘But they're so much more fun and interesting and …' Friendly, she thought.

‘Safer?'

‘That, too.' She actually laughed.

But then he seemed to lose interest again, both in the conversation and her. ‘But they're not real,' he said, as though that would put an end to the discussion.

Real
. What was so great about reality? Amy was dead, Sara was stuck here in a car with a man who clearly disliked her. With books, she could be whoever she wanted, wherever she wanted. She could be tough, beautiful, charming; she could come up with the perfect line at the perfect moment, and she could …
experience
things. Real things. Things which happened to real people.

In books, people were charming and friendly and life followed certain set patterns. If a person dreamt of doing something then you could be almost certain that, by the end of the book, they would be doing that very thing. And that they would find someone to do it with. In the real world, you could be almost certain that person would end up doing absolutely anything other than what they had dreamt of.

‘They're meant to be better than reality,' she said. ‘Bigger, funnier, more beautiful, more tragic, more romantic.'

‘So in other words, not realistic at all,' said Tom. He made it sound as though she had been talking about some romantic schoolgirl fantasy about heroes and heroines and true love.

‘When they're realistic, they're more realistic than life. If it's a story about a meaningless, grey, normal day, then it'll be much more meaningless and grey than our own grey, meaningless days.'

Sara thought he seemed to be struggling not to laugh. But then his smile vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

‘The books you got Amy to order arrived two days before her funeral,' he said, and with that, the conversation was definitely over.

Just at the same moment, Sara was feeling selfish enough to think: so where are they, then? Her thirteen books wouldn't last long at all. Especially if she continued getting through them at the rate she had been.

The Square was a large, bulky building surrounded by empty parking spaces. It rose in lonely majesty above the asphalt. Tom stopped the car and looked around as though he too was seeing the bar for the first time. Then he shook his head and opened the door for her. ‘Maybe I should warn you about Andy and Carl,' he said. ‘They're … well, they're together. Everyone's very understanding. We don't talk about it.'

‘I know,' she said. Tom raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment.

There were only two other customers in the entire bar; one looked as though he was sleeping, the other was eating non-stop from a bowl of peanuts. Sara hadn't realised that people in the USA actually wore cowboy hats, but when she turned round to comment enthusiastically, Tom looked so unimpressed she decided that now wasn't the right time.

He gestured for her to keep going and followed her over to the bar. She climbed carefully up onto one of the bar stools and he pulled out the one next to her and sat down in one single relaxed movement.

When he caught sight of Andy, he smiled the first real, genuine smile she had seen from him. It made him look younger.

Andy didn't look at all like she had imagined from Amy's letters. The only similarity was the boyish glint in his eye, which somehow suggested he still expected life to be full of adventure.

He grinned at her as though he was sure they would get on well, a grin which was impossible to resist. Then he looked back and forth between Tom and Sara in a way which made her cheeks burn and Tom straighten his stool so he ended up further away from her.

‘Welcome to the Square,' said Andy. ‘A piece of history, a constant source of alcohol, a gathering point in Broken Wheel long before I was here.' He gestured around him.

Sara blinked.

‘I only took over …' He looked questioningly at Tom. ‘Seven years ago? Can it really have been that long? When Abe departed this life. By then, he'd become worryingly obsessed with female country musicians.'

Sara felt increasingly relaxed the more obvious it became that she wasn't expected to take part in the conversation. Andy seemed to be doing fine on his own.

He leaned forward across the bar. ‘His wife left him. And it wasn't Cash or Williams or Nelson he turned to for comfort but Dolly, Emmylou, Patsy, Loretta and Tammy. For five years, their lovesick, miserable voices put a downer on things here in the Square, right until the Dixie Chicks put a stop to all that.'

‘Oh, for God's sake, Andy.' Tom had clearly heard this story one too many times.

‘He was one of the first to burn their records, in protest over those things they said about Bush and Iraq, in a green trash can out in the yard. It's still there. I kept it. History, you know? He died a week later. No one thought there was any real link, but you can't help but wonder, can you? So that's when I brought Carl back from Denver with me and we set up here.'

‘And the country music started blaring from the speakers again,' Tom said quietly to her.

It certainly had, but Sara had no idea who or what she was listening to.

‘And we've been here ever since.'

Tom ordered two beers which Sara, unsuccessfully, tried to pay for. Tom simply held out his own money, certain that Andy wouldn't take hers. He was right.

She wished Tom had let her pay. There was something tragic about being bought a beer by someone who didn't even like you. He sat there, silent and unmoving, looking as though he would rather be anywhere other than here, beside her in the bar. She took a cautious sip of her beer and regretted that she had ever left the kitchen.

‘Carl,' said Andy, ‘come say hi to Amy's tourist.'

As Carl made his way from the other end of the bar, Sara looked expectantly towards him and then she froze, her beer half raised to her mouth. He really was indecently handsome. He looked like he belonged on the cover of a Harlequin novel. Though he was wearing a white T-shirt instead of a purple silk shirt, of course. Not that it made much of a difference.

She tried not to let any of this show as she held her hand out to him, before realising that you probably weren't expected to look quite so blank when you met new people for the first time.

She tried a relaxed smile instead.

Carl shook her hand quickly before retreating back to the wall, as though he was afraid she would throw herself at him. Even though he had an entire bar in front of him for protection. She could understand why. Looking like that, it was probably best to be on the safe side.

‘Just like a Harlequin novel,' she said quietly. Tom snorted into his beer.

‘Read a lot of those, do you?' he asked.

‘Every woman has read one,' she said. ‘Harlequin have sold six billion books. They publish over a hundred new titles a month. They've sold one and a half million books in Sweden alone, and there are barely nine million of us. Believe me, even if you include the fanatics with drawers full of them, it's a statistical fact that every woman has come across at least one.' She looked at Tom. ‘The majority of men too, probably.'

‘Ah'. He seemed slightly taken aback.

She shrugged. ‘I worked in a bookshop.'

‘And you sold a lot of Harlequin books there?'

‘No, actually. Jilly Cooper and Judith Krantz were about as close as we got.'

Andy pushed another beer over towards each of them and shook his head at her money.

‘So, Sara,' he said. Their book talk was clearly over. ‘What is it you're doing here?'

‘I'm on holiday,' she said decisively. ‘And I need to talk to someone about Amy's house. I haven't paid a thing to stay there. It doesn't feel right.'

‘Paid,' said Andy. ‘Who were you planning on paying? Tom?'

Tom looked as though he found the whole topic distasteful. But it wasn't
right
, staying there completely free.

‘Amy wanted you to stay there,' said Andy.

‘There must be someone I can pay.'

‘She wouldn't have let you pay,' said Andy.

‘But we'd agreed on it. She
promised
I'd be able to pay my way. It was completely impossible for me to bring enough books to pay her that way, you see. Not when SAS only gives you twenty-three kilos of baggage.'

‘There was no chance she'd have let you pay, not once you'd got here,' said Andy. ‘What does it matter, anyway? She wanted you to stay. And she'd been ill for so long that if she invited you over for two whole months, she must've known there was a risk she'd die during your trip. Sorry, Tom, but that's how it was.'

‘She knew she was going to die?' Sara asked idiotically.

Amy knew she was going to die?
Her grip on the beer tightened.

‘She's always been ill,' Andy said, sounding troubled. ‘Several years. But only bed-bound more recently. It didn't come as a surprise to anyone. You, on the other hand, did.'

Why had Amy invited her here if she had known she might die during her stay? Who invited someone to their
deathbed
? Sara felt strangely betrayed. She had never found meeting new people easy. The thought of staying with someone for two whole months had terrified her, but there had been something in Amy's letters, in the knowledge that she also loved books, which made her feel brave, made her want to take that chance.

‘Maybe you should go to Hope instead,' said Tom. ‘There's a perfectly decent motel there. It might be more comfortable for you.'

‘Hope!' Andy blurted out. ‘Why would she do that when she's got a free house here?'

He pushed a small glass of liquor over to her. She sipped cautiously from it and pulled a face. Whiskey. Maybe it would help. She knocked it back, coughed, and nodded thanks as Andy refilled it.

Behind the bar was the refrigerator, covered with advertisements for Coors and Bud, a string of coloured lights hanging above it. They twinkled before her eyes and reflected prettily in the mirror. It all seemed annoyingly festive.

‘There's really no reason for you to stay here,' said Tom. His voice sounded distant. How could someone invite a complete stranger to visit when she knew she might die during the stay? It was incomprehensible. Sara took another gulp of whiskey.

‘But, Tom, you're the one who's always defended Broken Wheel. Even when we were young, you never thought about leaving. I wanted to get away, go to the gay bars, and Claire wanted to do something big, but you … you always planned on staying here, helping your dad –'

‘Yes, but now he's dead,' said Tom.

Sara looked up. ‘I'm sorry,' she mumbled to no one in particular. Everything around her was spinning.

‘– with the farm.'

‘Yes, but now it's been sold.'

‘Helping Mike with the business. Always loyal, always here.'

‘Yes, but where has any of that got me?' Tom had clearly grown tired of the conversation. ‘Why did you want to come here anyway?' he tried asking Sara, but she didn't know how to reply.

Maybe she should just drink herself silly, she thought. She took a few deep gulps of her beer. She had never been drunk, so she had no idea if it would actually help solve her problems. Others seemed to get drunk a lot, so maybe it did help a bit. Though if her colleagues were anything to go by, it seemed mostly to create new problems instead.

‘Sara?' Tom said. She looked up. ‘Another beer?'