Page 3 of The Book Swap

“Jesus, Erin, I wasn’t expecting you,” says Callum when I let myself into our shared flat in Loughborough Junction a good few hours before I’m normally home. My flatmate is sitting in front of the television, dressed head to toe in a red Adidas tracksuit, dark brown hair slicked to the side, thick sideburns almost touching his chin. His Sheffield accent is the nicest sound I’ve heard all day and for the briefest of moments I want him to hug me. It passes.

“Thought you were working today?” I manage to say.

“Gave myself the day off,” he replies, staring at the cycling on the screen. He means he’s called in sick to his product design job, the way he seems to whenever there’s some sort of bike race happening. In true Callum fashion, he asks me nothing about why I’m back and instead turns the sound up.

“I quit my job,” I shout over the top of the commentator, because I need to say it out loud to believe it.

“Nice one,” he replies without looking up, so I disappear into my bedroom and shut the door.

Bonnie’s sitting in the chair in the corner, reading a magazine. It’s the one place in my bedroom which isn’t completely covered in stuff. All around it are bags of freebies from work and boxes I’ve only half unpacked since I moved from my last flat, in Stockwell. I found this flat after starting a brief relationship with the security guard on the door of my old place. When he told me he was falling for me and wanted to quit his job, I lied and told him it couldn’t work because I was moving out. Which meant I actually had to.

There are the shoes I’ve kicked off at the end of a fourteen-hour day. Books, everywhere. So many books that they won’t fit on the one shelf above my bed and are instead stacked in hopeful “to be read” piles anywhere that there’s space.

“Home early,” Bonnie says, a big smile on her face. She’s wearing one of her wigs. The purple one that’s so long, it reaches her bum.

“I just did it, Bon. I quit.” I throw myself onto the bed, leaning my head against the wall.

“Shit yeah, you did.” She tilts her head back and laughs. It’s deep and throaty. It warms me. “Finally! How do you feel?”

“Like I might have blacked out?” I squeeze my eyes shut. “And also...relieved. Like it’s the start of something.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Like it should have happened years ago.”

“It should have.”

“I just want to reset everything, start again with a clean slate.” I look up at my bookshelf, my eyes landing on a neat white spine: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I look at Bonnie. “Can I Marie Kondo my life?”

“Do it, do it, do it,” she says, jumping up and dancing, so I smile for the first time all day. Maybe all week. “Out with the old, in with...well...nothing new, yet. But soon. New job. New you.”

I look at the boxes by her feet. What’s even in them, anyway? Clothes I clearly don’t wear. Books I don’t read. Stuff I don’t need. I haven’t missed any of it since I moved in here. That’s got to mean something. I open them up and look through them, hardly even recognizing the contents.

Bonnie’s back in the chair, watching in amusement as I grab a bin bag and throw some shoes in. Pull a few more things from my wardrobe. I go through the books on my shelf, filling a suitcase with any I know I won’t read again. I’ve never thrown out a book in my life, but I need to make space for the new ones. The ones I’ve yet to read. I move the stacks that were on the floor onto the shelf and stand back smiling. Finally, the shelf looks full of promise. Finally, I’m excited about reading again.

I keep going. Half-finished moisturizers, broken hair straighteners and uncomfortable bras. Bonnie claps along, her eyes landing on a bright blue nail varnish I’ve just thrown in the bin. She pulls it out, resting her left hand on her leg as she starts painting.

I’m on a real roll now. I clear most of the contents of my bedside table. Old batteries. Chargers for things I no longer own. Christmas cards that don’t mean anything. A single birthday candle. By the time my phone rings I’m down to my T-shirt, sweating as I ready myself for the inevitable bollocking from Charlotte, but it’s Mum.

“Sorry, but you do not spark joy,” I mutter, sending her to voicemail. With each small step, I’m starting to feel like, after seven years of moving from shit flat to shit flat, and from shit fling to shit fling, while staying in a job that only makes me miserable, I finally have a bit more control over my life. I’m going in a new direction.

Before the momentum goes, I take the unwanted bags to the wheelie bin outside our flat, and fill my little old Ford up with boxes for the local charity shop. I’ll take them on the way to the fundraiser back home in Frome. If I go this afternoon, I’ll have enough time to make it to Cley Hill after all. I can still do what I intended to today. It’s not like I have a job to get to tomorrow.

First though, the books. I’ve got another idea for them.

“Back in a sec,” I say to Bonnie, grabbing the suitcase.

“I’ll make us a cuppa,” she shouts after me. “When you’re done with all this mad makeover stuff you can tell me exactly what Charlotte’s face looked like. I want a wrinkle-by-wrinkle description. And, Erin,” she says, waiting for me to turn around, “I’m so proud of you.”

I smile, tears springing to my eyes. I don’t tell her, but she’s the person who gave me the confidence to go through with it. I did it because I knew it would make her proud.

A short walk from our flat, just under the bridge toward Ruskin Park, there’s a little community library, which sits there apparently “in loving memory of Eileen Gladys Day.” I’ve taken the odd book from it when I’ve passed, but I’ve never given back any of my own. Not until today.

There’s rarely anyone here, and when I reach it, the sight of it makes me smile. It’s an old repurposed cabinet that someone’s added a roof to, so it’s like a little home for books. Pale yellow, with a blue door frame and patterned glass panels showing three shelves, sparsely filled. I unzip my suitcase and start pulling books out, putting them wherever there’s space. Modern classics. The one about the world ending in twenty-four hours that everyone was talking about last year. A few by the same author who was a good holiday read. With each handful I put in, the more excited I get about the books waiting for me at home. The more this feels like the right thing to do.

Marie Kondo says it’s wise not to look too closely now, because this is the moment where I could crack and wheel them all home again.

“They don’t spark joy. They don’t spark joy. They don’t spark joy,” I repeat as I fill the shelves.

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