The Secret of Happy Ever After (10 page)

The fact that this house had once been loved too made it worse than one of those purpose-built retirement homes, she thought. Butterfields felt as abandoned as its residents. The plaster mouldings were partially boarded over, hiding what little decoration there was in the room. That marble fireplace would once have had invitation cards and photographs crammed on it. Those old ladies in their lumpy skirts once danced with hopeful boys, and wore seamed stockings, and had crushes, and told jokes. And now they were just sitting in their own closed-off worlds, waiting for what? Someone to come in and make them listen to bloody Jane Austen whether they liked it or not?

It was so quiet. No one spoke, there was no music, no television burbling away, no radio blurting out traffic reports . . . nothing. Just the faint ticking of the radiators and the occasional shuffle of polyester slacks against cushions.

Michelle pressed her lips together to stop herself saying something to Anna about the horrible mustard-yellow walls; she knew it sounded shallow, but she also knew it’d be the first thing that would drive her over the edge.

This could be me, she thought, sick with panic. Harvey was right. Mum was right.
This could be me
.

‘Where’s your mother-in-law?’ she whispered instead.

Anna was fishing in her bag for her book. ‘Not here yet. She’ll make her grand entrance just before we start, to make sure everyone’s looking at her.’

‘And what about Mr Quentin?’

Michelle’s cunning plan seemed pretty loopy now, even in her own mind. There were no books here, she thought. No bookshelves, no magazines, no papers. Mr Quentin must be going mad. He’d be even more determined to preserve his shop.

Anna looked around. ‘I don’t think he’s here yet either. Why?’

‘Oh, I thought I might have a word with him. About his shop.’

‘Really?’ Anna’s eyes opened wide; she was too trusting to suspect any ulterior motive. ‘Why?’

Before Michelle could think of an appropriate response, a middle-aged lady in a tunic and leggings bustled over to them with a clipboard and a pen suspended from her shelflike bosom like a plumb line. She beamed with delight at Anna.

‘Anna, my duck! Have you brought a helper today?’

‘Yes, this is Michelle,’ said Anna. ‘Michelle, Joyce is the entertainments manager for Butterfields.’

‘For my sins!’ said Joyce, flapping her arm modestly. ‘They keep me busy, this little lot.’

Michelle and Anna couldn’t help looking in disbelief at the silent room of silent old people.

‘So, what are we having this week?’ enquired Joyce. She raised her voice so that the nearest residents could feel included. ‘Something Christmassy?’

‘I thought I’d read something from
Cranford
.’

‘Ooh, lovely. That’s been on telly quite recently, hasn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Anna.

‘It helps,’ Joyce confided to Michelle. ‘Though they sometimes get things confused with their families. Think they’ve had Joanna Lumley coming in to see them. They haven’t.’

Joyce and Anna set about chivvying the residents gently, herding them like hens into a circle. Michelle felt awkward, but moved some chairs and sat down herself next to Anna, who introduced herself with an unselfconscious cheeriness, then began reading.

Anna’s melodic voice easily filled the space around the chairs, and Michelle was surprised by how different it was from her usual conversational tone. She spoke more slowly and carefully, giving each phrase a rhythm that slid it directly into the imagination, building image on image, each character’s voice distinct.

She’d read maybe a page when a white-haired lady appeared in the doorway, pushing a wheeled Zimmer frame with visible distaste. Unlike most of the others, she was wearing colours with a furious sort of defiance – a bright coral scarf round her neck and a pair of yellow trousers with plastic buttons. Her mouth was a horizontal slash of red lipstick, in a firm, unsmiling line.

‘You started without me,’ she said, glaring directly at Anna.

‘No, Evelyn, we didn’t,’ lied Anna.

‘Yes, you did,’ she retorted. ‘I’ve had a knee replacement, not a lobotomy. I could hear you down the hall. You can bloody well stop until I’ve sat down, thank you.’

So this was the mother-in-law from hell.

All eyes turned her way as she wheeled herself towards the empty chair furthest from the door. She might be an old bag, thought Michelle, but she knows how to work a room.

‘I don’t need a hand,’ she said, waving away Joyce’s attempts to help her into the seat. She took her time arranging herself, and Michelle saw Anna’s composure wobble. She felt cross on her friend’s behalf; no wonder she’d done a runner from her own Christmas Day if she’d had hours of this as well as the girls playing up.

‘Anna,’ she said in a bright voice, ‘I think everyone’s ready now.’

Anna turned the page, switched on a smile and started reading again.

When she began, a few of the more alert residents had their eyes fixed on her, hanging onto every word. Evelyn McQueen made a point of staring at the long windows, apparently intrigued by something in the garden. Apart from Anna’s voice and the occasional flutter of a turning page, there was no sound in the day room, but it was a different sort of silence from the closed-off dullness that had blanketed the air before. Now there was a sort of tension springing between the chairs, and slowly more eyes turned Anna’s way, then closed, then opened with interest.

Even Michelle found herself listening. It was as if there was someone else there in the room with them, someone comfortable and familiar. She felt herself relaxing into the chair, forgetting about its shabby covering as the story unfolded.

And then it came to her.

Anna. Anna could run the bookshop for a year.

The idea was so sharp it was as if some helpful guardian angel had actually spoken the words in her ear.

It was so obvious: Anna had loads of experience with books, and more importantly, she loved them. She came alive when she was talking about novels and words and the magic of storytelling blah blah blah. Her passion would make the shop sing, just like Michelle’s own passion for her house had made Home Sweet Home work so well.

Michelle struggled to contain her excitement. She didn’t need to persuade Mr Quentin to let her change the nature of the shop after all. That snotty solicitor had said it was just for a year; all she’d have to do would be to get Anna to sell what stock there was already, and there seemed to be a good bit of it. If the sums didn’t add up in six months – and with the best will in the world, Anna wasn’t a miracle worker – well, there was the argument. She’d tried; it hadn’t worked out.

I should call Flint and Cook now, she thought. Before someone else does.

Michelle excused herself, but with Anna’s voice rising and falling in the air, no one noticed her leave.

Slipping into a corridor, she got out her phone, dialled the solicitors and asked to be put through to Rory Stirling, trying not to read the notice about Type 2 Diabetes pinned to the wall while the hold music played.

Abruptly, ‘Yesterday’ stopped, and Rory came on the line.

‘Ah, the Knick-Knack Queen of Longhampton High Street.’ He sounded as if he was eating at his desk; Michelle struggled to contain her annoyance. ‘How can I help?’

‘Quentin’s bookshop,’ she said. ‘Is it still available?’

‘It is. I have the advert here in front of me, but as yet, there is no one in the ad department at the
Gazette
to take it.’ He sounded amused. ‘I thought we were quite efficient here, but you’re putting us to shame.’

‘Good. I’d like to take on the lease, please.’

‘As a bookshop?’

‘As a bookshop.’ Michelle moved away from the posters and stared instead out of the window, at what had once been some kind of formal garden. A robin was hopping along the path towards a frozen bird bath. ‘I’ve got a manager lined up who I think Mr Quentin would thoroughly approve of. Someone who’s really passionate about books.’

‘Of whom. Of whom Mr Quentin would approve.’ Rory sounded amused, rather than suspicious, but she could tell he was dying to say,
Come on, this is a joke.

‘Whatever. I’ve been thinking about what you said,’ Michelle went on, ‘about every town needing a bookshop. You’re right.’

There was a snort, then a surprised pause, then Rory recovered his professionalism.

‘Well, that’s great news,’ he said. ‘Would you like to come in to talk about paperwork?’

‘I’ll be in this afternoon,’ said Michelle.

5

Anna stretched out her left leg under the duvet and wriggled her right toes under the dead weight of a snoring Pongo. She knew she should move him but she was as comfortable as he was. A pot of tea, some toast and the new Kate Atkinson hardback that Phil had bought her for Christmas – it was worth a dead leg for that sort of once-a-year indulgence. Anna had absolutely no intention of getting up before lunchtime, and she suspected Pongo wasn’t too fussed either.

The phone rang and she leaned over to click it onto speaker so she didn’t have to put the book down.

I bet that’s Phil, she thought, checking to see I’m enjoying my breakfast in bed while he’s back in the office. She’d tried to persuade him to go in a little late – so they could enjoy some rare morning privacy – but he’d insisted on being there by nine. He was a very dutiful boss.

‘Hello?’ she said, in her best Sybil Fawlty. ‘McQueen Dog Sitters?’

‘What?’ said a voice that definitely wasn’t Phil’s.

‘Oh, Michelle,’ she said, nearly dropping the book onto her crumby plate, and getting marmalade on her fingers.

‘Can you come over to the shop?’ Michelle sounded excited. She also sounded very up and dressed.

Pongo’s ears pricked up at the sound of Michelle’s voice, though he didn’t move. He wasn’t usually allowed on beds, especially when Phil was around.

‘When?’ Anna asked, seeing her morning of reading vanishing. She grabbed the phone to stop Pongo reacting further to the invisible Michelle in the room. ‘I haven’t w-a-l-k-e-d the dog yet, and—’

‘Come now! Bring him over.’

‘Really? To your shop full of baskets and things to knock over?’

‘Well, run him twice round the park first to wear him out a bit.’

Pongo’s ears had detected action, and now he was nudging at Anna’s knee with his nose, upgrading it to a paw when she didn’t respond.

‘What’s this about?’ Anna asked, giving up and putting her bookmark into the chapter she’d just started.

‘Surprise,’ said Michelle. ‘Now hurry. Pongo!’ she yelled. ‘Walkies! Waaaaalkies!’

Pongo leaped off the bed in excitement and Anna resigned herself to getting up, fast.

When they reached the high street, Michelle was waiting for them outside the shop with a jute bag over her shoulder and a couple of takeaway coffees from Natalie’s café in a paper tray.

‘No, don’t go in!’ she said, guarding the door of Home Sweet Home from Pongo’s curious nose. ‘No, next door, Pongo!’ Michelle waved a set of keys. ‘The bookshop.’

Anna wrinkled her own nose, about to ask how on earth Michelle had a set of keys for the bookshop, but she was already letting herself in.

Pongo whined and strained after her. ‘Can he come in?’ Anna called.

‘Sure.’ Michelle’s voice suggested she was already a long way into the shop.

With a warning look at Pongo to behave himself, Anna followed her inside.

The bookshop felt damp and chilly, but it was still an unsupervised bookshop, and Anna felt a frisson of excitement as she scanned the shelves with greedy eyes. Libraries weren’t quite the same, she’d found; something about the prosaic smell of other people’s houses and fingers seeping off the pages diluted that sense of magical worlds, but untouched, unread, unexplored books were something else.

She walked slowly, angling her head to read the titles that were left on the partially emptied shelves: Mr Quentin might have gone but his collection of military history titles still took the prime position by the door. It was strange seeing the shop without his mercurial presence behind the desk and without other customers browsing the shelves. It felt smaller than she remembered, and sadder.

Pongo was sniffing at the wastepaper bin by the desk. Anna checked there was nothing inside he could eat, then tied his extending lead to one of the desk’s heavy legs and went off to find Michelle.

She was standing in the back room, where the shelves were obscured by piles of second-hand stock. Mr Quentin could never say no to a house clearer or a car boot sale. Books were scattered unceremoniously around Michelle’s feet from where she’d dragged a shelf away from a wall, and she was looking critically at two slashes of buttercream paint applied over the faded magnolia.

‘What do you think?’ she asked, turning to see Anna’s reaction. ‘String or Matchstick?’