Page 17 of An Enchanted Moment on Ever After Street
‘Anyone daft enough to like that stupid book deserves to be judged on their horrific tastes. You have that displayed in your window – no wonder your shop isn’t pulling in enough customers.’
I… well, I intend to pace up and down the path, but I end up clomping around angrily. ‘This is an incredibly important book to me. I wouldn’t have found it without Ever After Street, and I wouldn’t have found A Tale As Old As Time withoutit.’
He’s pacing too, and he stops and turns towards me and takes a few calming breaths, and when his voice comes out, it’s a lot more composed than I expected it to be. ‘How’d you work that one out?’
I do the same because I’m getting too worked up at him. ‘I was like the main character. Totally lost in life. Stuck in a dead-end job, feeling like the world was passing by without me being a part of it. I knew of Ever After Street, but I thought it was somewhere for children and adults had no place here. My mum’s bungalow is on the other side of the woods, and I was out walking one day and got turned around. It was winter, cold, wet, and misty, and I stumbled through the trees and came out on Ever After Street. I didn’t have any money on me, but I went into the tearoom for warmth and, obviously I didn’t know Lilith at the time, but she took pity on me and made me a cuppa and gave me a cake even though I couldn’t pay for it, and I felt this sense of being somewhere I was meant to be. When I left, I stood and watched the carousel turning by the evening light and the vintage music took me right back to my childhood, and when I turned around, this old guy was outside his bookshop, and I’ve never been able to ignore a bookshop. He was a book restorer and antique book dealer, but in the window was a copy ofOnce Upon Another Time, even though it wasn’t an antique or in need of restoration. I asked him about it, and he said his daughter loved it and insisted he have a copy in the shop. I must’ve looked so intrigued that he gave it to me and told me to come back the next day to pay for it. I read it that night. I went on these adventures with the main character. I emerged feeling likeI’dbeen stuck in a bookshop overnight, likeI’drevisited my fictional childhood friends and they reminded me of my younger self and what I thought life would be like by now, and most importantly, how much I loved books, and how much of a childhood dream it had been to own a bookshop. When I came back the next day with the money, the old guy was outside his shop again, putting up a “for rent” sign.’ I’m hugging the book to my chest as I speak. ‘I asked him to write down the details for me, and by the time I went home and told Mum, she was readingit as well. She’d always dreamed of owning a bookshop too, and she’d recently retired and was wondering how she’d fill her days, and it all just clicked into place. This was something we’d both always wanted to do, the timing was perfect, the place was perfect, and… here we are.’ I stop myself abruptly when I realise I’ve been talking for ages. I didn’t intend to share my life story with him, just as much as I’m sure he didn’t want to hear it.
There’s silence from the other side of the hedge, and I’m half-convinced that he’s gone inside and left me to it. ‘Have you fallen asleep?’
‘No,’ he grunts, but his voice sounds thick and, with the absence of any other sound, I can hear the shaky breath he takes. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise it meant that much to you.’
‘I feel like we all need to be reminded of who we were once, what we wanted when we were younger and how much we dreamed impossible things could be real, before life got in the way and turned us into cynical old adults.Once Upon Another Timeis the antidote to adult life.’
He lets out an unexpected laugh. ‘You have a unique way of seeing the world, Marnie. I wish I could be more like that.’
‘Why can’t you?’
‘I’m too old.’
‘I thought you were thirty-eight,’ I say in confusion. Thirty-eight isn’t old by anyone’s standards, unless he was lying about it.
‘Not in an age way. I’m too… cynical. Jaded. Worn down. Life has chewed me up and spat me back out. I will never be able to see the world through hopeful eyes again, end of story.’
‘No story ever has to end. I’ve got a great book here you could start by reading…’
‘No, thank you.’
I like how he never loses his politeness. He can be rude and sharp and blunt, but he’s always polite about it. ‘It’s never too late to start believing in fairy tales again.’
‘Hah.’
It is not the good kind of ‘hah’.
I hadn’t realised we’d both sat back down until there are the familiar noises of discomfort as he moves. ‘You know what itisgoing to be too late for at this rate? Gardening.’
I let out a groan of my own. It’s gone half past five and the light is fading fast. I get to my feet and pick up the shears again, listening to the snip of his pruners as he cuts off rosehips and tells me it’s to stop the plants wasting energy on producing seeds.
I kneel on the kneeling pad he’s lent me and start snipping through weeds and brambles, and self-sown hazelnut trees that have grown from squirrel-dropped nuts in the cracks between concrete. ‘You’re probably the wrong person to say this to, but I thought about trying to get in touch with U.N.Known and asking him to come to the book festival as a guest author and give a talk or something…’
I can sense the horror from across the hedge without even looking up from my weed cutting.
‘Oh, I’m probably the right person to say it to because I won’t hesitate to say – what thehellare you thinking? The unknown author, whose name literally revolves around being unknown, who has remained unknown for years… Why do you think that unknown person will suddenly reveal themselves because you ask nicely?’
‘His book changed my life.’ I’m surprised by how much I’ve had to defendOnce Upon Another Timetonight. Does he hateallbooks this much or is there just something about this one? ‘A lot of other people love his book because of me, because I talk it up at every chance I get and foist it into the hands ofunsuspecting customers at any given opportunity. Maybe if he knew how much people around here love him, he’d want to share that…’
‘And while I’m sure the anonymous prat appreciates your efforts, spend your time on something more rewarding, because with six weeks until the festival, you don’t have time to waste chasing down a wild goose. And if you do, might I suggest that an actual wild goose would be a better festival guest?’
‘What have you got about birdlife today?’
He laughs. ‘I’m just saying, an actual goose, honking, pooing everywhere, and attacking the guests, would give a more appealing author talk.’
Oh, what a mental image that brings to mind. He might dislike reading, and most other things, but even I’m perplexed by how much he seems to dislikethisbook. ‘If I could get U.N.Known to agree, it would attract so much attention to Bookishly Ever After. People are curious, even now after seven years, people still want to know who he is and why he didn’t write anything else.’
I can’t get the thought out of my head. U.N.Known’s book has been with me since the start of this journey. It’s never been out of the window display. Barely a week passes without me talking someone into buying a copy. Mum and I would never have had our shop withoutOnce Upon Another Time, and maybe its author is also the key to saving it.
‘How do you know it’s a guy?’ Darcy asks.
‘Oh, that’s easy. There’s a line about period pain where it’s described as a minor inconvenience, and that could only have been written by someone whohasn’texperienced their ovaries turning themselves inside out while their uterus goes on a one-organ quest for revenge in seething anger because you didn’t get pregnant that month.’
