Page 25 of Finding Love at the Magical Curiosity Shop
‘If things were better organised, theywouldn’tmiss it.’
I go to spout a clever and witty comeback, but no words come out. He is frustratingly good at making points.
‘Ava will love that one.’ He spots the cowboy boot mug and comes back to put them both on the counter. ‘There you go, two sales already today. Shall we make a start or are you leaving that tea until it’s stone cold or just unpleasantly lukewarm?’
He’s seen right through the diversion of nursing my cuppa then. I swallow the last of the offensively tepid drink and steel myself. Ihaveto start somewhere, and the scene of the Clarice Cliff crash is the perfect place because I never did get around to tidying it up properly.
Ren follows me through to the second room of the shop and surveys the mess. ‘Well, look at that, the junk has started self-ejecting already.’
He says it so totally deadpan that it makes me break out in a nervous giggle, and when he looks at me and grins, the nervous giggles turn into outright laughter, and he laughs too, making his bright eyes twinkle and crow’s feet at the corners crinkle up, and I realise this isn’t a bad thing.
He’s practical, logical, and sensible, and brave enough to help me. It’sworthputting in an effort too.
* * *
By lunchtime, my resolve about not killing him is weakening. Would a lifetime in prison and an orphaned thirteen-year-old on my conscience be worth it? This morning, I thought it wouldn’t, but now, I’m wavering towards… maybe.
Ren’s blocked off an area of the second room and is piling all the things to go to the tip into it, along with separate boxes for donations to charity shops, and another one for recycling.
‘Why would anyone…?’ It’s an unfinished question that he’s asked several hundred times so far today. The end of it is some variation of ‘…buy this… want this… be stupid enough to buy thisandthink other people would want it…’ but he stopped adding those parts several hours ago, after I gave him a look that made him think he needed full body armour, not just steel-toe-capped boots.
‘It’s a curiosity shop. It’s supposed to be full of weird things. Curiosities, some might say.’
‘Yes, but why are they all fruit related? Seriously. This is a raspberry planter in the shape of an actual raspberry.’
‘Yes, and imagine growing raspberries in it. Raspberry-inception. A never-ending circle of raspberries. An endless circle-of-raspberry-life.’
He looks like he’s trying to hold it back, but eventually he bursts out laughing. ‘Maybe you need a certain type of mindset to run a shop like this, and I clearly don’t have it.’
He’s trying to be kind, and I’m trying to embrace this, because Iknowhe’s right, and the more stuff he picks up and questions, the more I think about how my dad would never have bought something like it, and how much I’ve strayed from what he wanted his shop to be, and as much as I hate having to downsize, I appreciate Ren being the first person to make me realise that.
Ren picks up a little glass bottle and examines it. ‘Why do you have a random inkwell from, at a guess, the 1860s?’
‘Because it’s adorable? Come on, can’t you just imagine some lovelorn man, a Mr Darcy type in his frilly shirt and breeches, sitting at a table in the window, looking out over his country estate and penning letters of love to his beloved with his quill and ink fromthatlittle bottle?’
‘Mickey, I hate to break it to you, but…’ He comes over with the bottle turned upside down, reaches for my hand, and when I hold it out, he takes hold of my wrist and positions my fingers on the bottom of the bottle, so they’re running over the embossed lettering that’s stamped in the glass. His fingers hold mine in place for longer than strictly necessary. I’d seen the branding before and assumed it was the name of the manufacturers of the inkwell, but he seems to know otherwise.
‘You know who these people were? They were the leading divorce solicitors of the late nineteenth century. In 1857, there was a landmark legislation that allowed people to obtain a divorce through the courts for the first time. It was expensive and a privilege given only to upper-class men. There were no equal rights for women. The only things likely to have been written by ink fromthisinkwell are the signing of divorce papers of a hoity-toity man who’d got fed up with his wife and wanted to get rid of her and leave her destitute. Love letters between Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett, it was not.’
I yank my hand back like the empty inkwell has burnt me. Why did I invent a story about it rather than doing any actual research? That’s ahorriblehistory behind it, and I want to throw it out immediately. ‘I don’t even want to touch it. It’s like a cursed object masquerading as something good.’
‘Fear not.’ He tosses it from one hand to the other, trying to hold back laughter at my reaction. ‘I’m already cursed in that department, I’ll put it in the box for recycling.’
When he comes back empty-handed, he bows and tips an imaginary hat in my direction, like he’s expecting the welcome of a conquering hero, but I’ve got stuck on his joke about being cursed and I’m suddenly more desperate than ever to know more about his life.
‘Why are they always about love?’ he asks. ‘Why is every story you invent connected to love and sweeping romantic gestures and unrealistic expectations?’
‘Why shouldn’t they be? Objects become symbols of love. Gifts. Tokens of appreciation or little ways of showing someone they’re cared about. People lovethings. Sometimes things become a physical representation of feelings that don’t have anywhere else to go.’
‘These have been thrown out or sold on. They can’t mean much any more.’
‘You don’t know that. Maybe they’ve been sold accidentally, or in a fit of rage, or maybe the person has died and their family hasn’t known the significance, or the things have been lost or stolen. There are multiple possibilities as to why much-loved objects can end up straying far from home…’ I’m thinking of my dad and how he reacted after my mum’s death. I’ve always hoped that if anyone else was in a similar situation, desperately looking for something they’d lost,myshop would be the place they’d find it. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
It takes him a while to answer. ‘Because from what you said on the second day we came in, you’re single and it didn’t sound like you’d been particularly happy in that side of your life. How can you believe that all this trash is enchantment and magic and fairytales when youknowthat lovedoesn’tconquer all, and probably just makes us more miserable than we were to begin with?’
‘Because it gives me something to hope for. At our cores, we all go through life hoping to find life-changing, world-shaking love. We never really outgrow the idea of over-romanticised Disney movie happily-ever-afters. On some level, everybody wishes they had that. Just because I haven’t found it yet doesn’t mean it’s not out there waiting to be found. It doesn’t mean that other people haven’t found it. Finding these treasures and imagining the love stories behind them is an escape. Objects can transport us from the everyday mundane reality of life and give us something to believe in. Whether they’re true or not is less important than the hope they give.’
He’s still looking at me like I’m an alien species he hasn’t encountered until now, shaking his head in a despairing way. ‘I don’t know how you can go through everything you’ve been through and still come out with such hopefulness. I wish I was more like you. To quote a famous mermaid, I wish I could be “Part of Your World” and see things the way you do.’
