Page 4 of The Book Swap

As I place the last paperback in and zip up my suitcase, I sigh.

It makes me happy to think of someone else reading these books. Finding something in them that I didn’t. Taking them somewhere I’ve never been.

Of course, the suitcase feels a lot lighter on the way home—it’s empty—but I’m surprised that I feel lighter too. I’ve done it. I’ve just cleared all the baggage from my life, ready to start again. It’s so overdue.

Today should never have been the day I changed my life.

I promised Bonnie I’d do it three years ago. I promised her the day she died.

2

JAMES

“All set for tonight, J.J.?” Mum asks when I come back in from my morning run.

I’m so happy to see her showered and dressed rather than curled up on the sofa in a dressing gown that I pull her in for a hug and, standing nearly a foot taller than her, kiss the top of her head.

“If you want to go, we’ll go,” I say, releasing her.

Now that Mum’s improved, it’s my last night here before I go back to London, and she’s decided that we should get tickets to the fundraiser for the town’s hospice. It’s at the local event hall, the Cheese & Grain, and has been held every September for the last three years in honor of Bonnie, a friend of mine from school. There’s nothing I want less than to walk into a room filled with fellow ex-pupils, but I’ll do it for Mum, because attending events with her is never something that I can count on, and she’s so excited.

What makes it worse is she stayed up all night making my costume, and it’s...well, it’s good. Too good. Embarrassingly good. Like I’ll look like a total twat in it. It’s going to feel like I’m back at school. Walking into a room and everyone laughing.

“Isn’t it a fun idea though? Anything beginning with b? I might steal it for my own party next year.”

Mum always has high hopes for her birthday when she’s out of a bad bipolar episode.

Here she is now with rosy cheeks and a sparkle in her eye, like she hasn’t spent the last six weeks unable to get out of bed or eat anything aside from fried chicken. Like she hasn’t turned down every single offer to leave the house, while crying so hard, and for so long, that Dad and I both called the doctor at exactly the same time, more than once.

When Elliot and I were little, Dad would liken her illness to the Very Hungry Caterpillar. That Mum goes away and builds a cocoon around herself, before reemerging as a beautiful butterfly, hungry for life. For all the days she’s missed.

“Not sure I’d call this a party exactly, Mum. But you should do it. Patricia opens up a whole world of exciting fancy dress options. Pimp. Pepper shaker...” I run out of ideas, but it doesn’t matter. She’s back at the sewing machine in the kitchen, starting on Dad’s outfit.

“I’ll just get changed,” I say, grabbing a glass of water. Dad’s at the table, playing some diamond crush game. I wish I’d never taught him how to use his iPhone properly.

After a shower I pull jeans and a T-shirt out of the suitcase that’s been laid on the floor, packed, for the last six weeks. It’s waiting for the day I can fold the two halves back together and return to my other life in London.

I’ve got used to it now. The switching between my two lives. This childhood bedroom, with the single bed in the corner and the desk in the window, set up for the Zoom calls and the training I do remotely. Books on business wedged in next to all the English ones from my GCSEs and A levels. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and How to Win Friends and Influence People, sitting beside The Catcher in the Rye and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. My London room in the depths of Penge holds much less of me within its walls. Just clothes and a few things in a desk drawer. I rent it from my mate Nathan, from uni, and it’s the only thing that’s set to change when I get back. His girlfriend, Hannah, is moving in and I need to find a new place to live.

“Consider it an opportunity,” my best mate, Joel, said when I told him. “To get out of the arse end of London and start living. It’s not like you can’t afford it.”

Nothing’s more important to Joel than being rich. That’s why I’ve ended up at Big Impressions Training. Totally lost as to what to do with myself, I followed his motto: “If you don’t know what you’re good at, find something that will eventually make you shitloads of money instead.”

It turns out it’s near impossible to catch up with someone financially when they work in banking, but with my latest promotion I might be one-hundredth of the way there.

“Going into town,” I shout at the front door.

Dad appears, dressed in jeans, a shirt and a waistcoat. His long gray hair is pulled back into a ponytail.

“I’ll join you,” he says, peering into the kitchen. “If that’s all right with you, love?”

He disappears to give Mum a kiss.

We start the short walk from just outside the town center, down to the little cobbled street which leads to the shops.

“Thought I might check out the bookshop one last time.”

“Closed all the ones in London, have they?” He grins at me.

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