Page 28 of The Book Swap

Before I can question myself further, I start writing. Once I’ve started, I have to do it.

Questions for Mystery Book Club, I write, underlining my title at the top of the blank page.

1. Why do you write in the margins?

It’s an easy question. Or I would find it easy, anyway, but perhaps there’s more than one answer. My heart starts its familiar one-two boxing motion just at the thought of what she’ll say back to me. It’s surprising me, how much I’ve come to love our exchange.

I tap the pen against my lip, staring toward the tree in the center of the tiny green, different to the trees in Ruskin Park, but my mind drifts back to my conversation with Joel during our run this morning, as I write out the next question.

2. Is it better to listen to other people’s opinions of you, or your own opinion of yourself?

Helena thinks I can’t commit. I don’t agree. I don’t know which of us is right.

3. Why Wuthering Heights?

I want to know why she chose it. The subject matter isn’t exactly uplifting. My hand keeps moving as I think about the person on the other side of this exchange.

4. Do you ever feel like this is the only thing in life you have to look forward to?

Jesus, James. Way to scare someone away. I can’t tear the page out because it’s on the back of the final words of the book and I don’t dare ruin the aesthetic by scribbling a big black line through question four. It shows I’ve thought about it too hard. But it just came out—it felt like I could ask. Like maybe Margins Girl was somewhere out there checking the library every day, the way I do when I’m waiting. That these books and the notes within them might be something that brings her joy too. I’ve no idea, and I want to know. I can’t finish with that question though. Way too intense. Need one more question to lighten the mood.

5. Do you use the word “dreamboat” often?

Putting the book back in my bag before I can do any more damage, I open up Mansfield Park and scan the introduction.

While Fanny Price may not be everyone’s first choice when it comes to Austen’s heroines, I decide I’m going to make her mine. I’m going to use her to study what makes a popular or unpopular heroine. I need to know that because somehow, every time I sit down to write my book, it seems to be about this mystery woman who I can’t get out of my head. She’s become the main character in my story. She’s opinionated and funny, open and honest. She studies things and asks big questions. She calls people out, even though she’s not totally sure of who she is. She holds a mirror up to the male hero and shows him where he’s gone wrong in life. What mistakes he’s made, and what he needs to do to make up for them.

She’s becoming more and more like the girl in the margins, with every response I get.

11

ERIN

The last place I thought I’d find myself on a Sunday afternoon is in the bedroom of a fifteen-year-old girl who seemingly has quite an unhealthy obsession with Harry Styles. There isn’t an inch of wall that isn’t covered with pictures of the famous pop star. Even the tiny cracks where you might see the paint break through are instead plastered with miniature images of his face. It’s actually quite impressive, and if she’d only put as much dedication into her learning, I imagine she’d be an A-grade student. The centerpiece, which all other pictures sit around, is a framed photo of Harry—a couple of years younger, his face pressed up against the face of my new student’s with an expression of ecstasy so pure that I hope he never does anything to let her down. Then I see the photo next to it, which shows him with his arm around someone in a floral skirt. The woman’s face has been completely destroyed with ballpoint pen.

It was only as I turned up at this house two streets over from my own and rang the bell that I realized I could have just never emailed him. I’d already safely secured the book from the girl’s father now, and the chances of me ever seeing him again were minimal. Yet here I was, having booked myself in for a Sunday lesson a few weekends after Christmas. I don’t know how to teach English. I’ve never done a day’s teaching in my life. Hopefully I’ll do this one session and be terrible, and they won’t invite me back. The girl’s father did at least say that, as well as letting me keep the copy of Mansfield Park that was intended for me, he would also pay me fifty pounds, which is so needed I didn’t even try to protest. My savings and final month’s pay have seen me through the last few months, but now I need a salary again and I’ve no idea where to start. Cash-in-hand jobs are helpful, but not enough to sustain a London lifestyle, even when all you’re doing is reading free books and very occasionally shagging your housemate.

My student, Savannah, greets me with a shy smile from the desk in the corner of her room. She’s lost the chubby cheeks from the framed photo and her long brown hair looks as though it’s been straightened with a very hot iron. Bonnie and I went through that phase. I remember her howling with laughter as she laid my hair under a tea towel on an ironing board, while shouting, “I don’t think this is working.” She laughed even harder when I stood back up and my hair was half waves, half so straight the ends looked sharp enough to slice a loaf of bread.

“I hear you might need a bit of help with English?” I say to Savannah, as though her dad approached me, rather than that I hunted him down like a maniac. “Your dad tells me you didn’t get the grade you wanted in your mocks?”

“I didn’t get the grade he wanted,” she says.

“You don’t agree?”

“I just don’t like it. It isn’t my subject.”

I try to still my features so she doesn’t see the dagger as it lands in my heart. How can anyone not enjoy English? I used to live for English classes back in school. I had such a good teacher. I had already loved reading, but Mr. Carter helped me to understand books. To respect them. To fall in love with the language the authors used. To get right to the heart of what they were trying to say. Shuddering, I push the memories away.

“More into maths,” she explains. “My dream is to be the girl on Countdown.”

So it’s true. We have no hope of finding a cure for cancer when even the smartest kids want to use their intelligence for fame. To stand there as the woman hired to wow men by proving we can be smart and beautiful.

“I’ve already got my own TikTok. I go live and people give me these mad sums to do. The videos get thousands of views sometimes.”

“Wow.” I nod, aware that we only have an hour and all the questions I want to ask her about this are in no way related to the reason I’m here. “You know Jane Austen, who wrote that book,” I say, pointing to the copy of Pride and Prejudice sitting on her desk, as I struggle for a way to bring the conversation back to English. “She made so much money through her writing, she didn’t even have to marry unless she wanted to.”

It’s tenuous, but Savannah scrunches her nose. “If I can’t marry Harry, I’m never getting married,” she says, with such conviction that I think I believe her.

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