Page 29 of Finding Love at the Magical Curiosity Shop
I write it down and turn the book around to show him, and he tells me it’s beautiful. My cheeks flush and I get a fluttering feeling inside my throat.
He asks me what I am doing out here, all alone, and I tell him by writing it in the notebook. He asks if it was me who saved his life on the night of the shipwreck. He has so many questions, some I can’t answer, but when we stop, the winter sun is much higher on the horizon, and pages upon pages of my notebook are covered in answers, and I feel like I’ve had a real conversation. No one has ever asked me if I can write before. No one has ever cared enough to try communicating with me.
He drags himself to the window and sits beside it to look out. He tells me he is admiring the view from this vantage point, but I suspect that he is really trying to gauge the situation he is in, and he sees it is as hopeless as he fears. He asks me if I have signalled for help. I nod. Many times. No one can see a distress signal from so far out to sea. The very reason for being exiled to this island is so no one needs to think about me for six months, and my sister can pretend I don’t exist.
Before I know what I’m doing, I’ve written that down and shown it to him, and he looks at me with eyes full of sympathy. He reaches his hand out, and I hold mine out too, unsure of what he’s intending to do with it until he takes my fingers in his and holds them. ‘Those people are fools.’
It makes me both laugh and cry, and my knees go so weak that it feels like I really am standing on my mermaid’s fin. I look into his grey-green eyes and I feel my heart grow larger in capacity.
He is a good man, unlike so many of them, and we will survive this together.
‘If I still believed in romance, I’d say that was one of the most romantic things I’ve ever read.’ Ren clears his throat, sounding choked-up.
I glance up at him, feeling the same as the mystery mermaid –heis a good man, unlike so many of them, and from the soft look on his face, I’d say our unknown diarist isn’t the only one with a heart growing bigger.
8
‘I’m so glad Dad didn’t throw out the dragon fruit table!’ Ava hurls herself towards it and strokes the white-and-black pulp of the tabletop. ‘I was sure he’d talk you into getting rid of it.’
‘Your dad couldn’t talk me into anything. And if you want to know a secret, I think he’s a big softie at heart, and he loves that dragon fruit table really, but he’s too embarrassed to admit it now after all the bad things he said about it.’
‘Oh, you think so, do you?’ Ren appears in the doorway, holding a cake box from The Wonderland Teapot and a tray of three takeaway cups, but he doesn’t deny my observation.
I grin at him. It’s been a few days since I last saw him and I’ve missed him enough to make it feel like much longer, and his matching smile makes my heart rate speed up.
Ava comes over and throws her arms around me. ‘Thank you so much for the mugs, they’re the best mugs ever.’
She’s talking about the welly boot and cowboy boot mugs that Ren found the other day and how, when he went to pay for them as he was leaving, I refused and made him take them anyway. ‘It’s so unfair that he got to come and help you and I didn’t.’
Ren steps inside and I move aside some of the stuff on the counter so he can put the drinks down, and he hands me a cup of tea, and Ava a chocolate milkshake, and takes a tea for himself.
‘Well, today, you can stay and help Mickey while I take some of the stuff we threw out down the tip and to the drop-off point for charity collection.’ He opens the cake box and we help ourselves to a red velvet cupcake each.
I wasn’t going to accept his help with getting stuff to the tip, but he made a good point the other day that he’s got a big family car, and I’ve got a tiny two-seater that my dad used to drive. ‘I can help.’
‘I have absolutely no confidence that you wouldn’t rescue it all before it got thrown into the skips.’
I grumble but he has another good point. Agreeing to throw things away is one thing. Actually having to physically lob them over a railing and watch them smash to bits as they crash down into the skips below at the nearest tip is quite another.
‘I could help,’ Ava offers too. ‘I want to see what you made Mickey throw out.’
‘You’d be even worse! You’d rescue it all before I even got it out to the car!’ he says with a laugh. ‘Mick’s said you can stay here, and I’ll go and fold the seats down in the car to make more space and bring it to the door.’
I see Ava’s ears prick up at the shortened name, and I take a sip of my too-hot tea to cover how red my cheeks have gone. Because Mickey is already a nickname, not many people call me Mick, and the ones who do are typically only people who know mereallywell, and I like the feeling that Ren is steamrolling towards that category.
‘You can help me find ocean-themed stuff for the antiques fair at the end of the month, if you want,’ I say to Ava. ‘I don’t know where to start. I was thinking of displaying the diary and telling people the story of the mermaid and the sailor, along with a selection of ocean-themed objects to tie in, so if I start putting stuff aside now, we just need to find out the truth behind the diary and it’ll be a talking point to engage with customers…’ I trail off because my heartbeat is speeding up again at the mention of the antiques fair, but not in the fluttery good way – in the sheer overwhelming fear and dread way. I’m an imposter in the world of antiques fairs. My dadknewhis stock. He knew exactly the kind of customer who’d want to buy it and exactly the right words to use to talk them into it. I don’t even know if I’ve got more than one item from the same house clearance. How canIever do him proud at an antiques fair named in his honour?
I can sense Ren’s blue eyes burning through me and it feels like he can see the thoughts inside of my head, and I turn away until he makes excuses about going to get the car.
‘Dad says you went on a date,’ Ava says as soon as we’re alone.
I blink in surprise. ‘Your dad saidthat?’
‘Well, no, he said you had cake and tea in a café, and you’re both single, so that’s a date.’
‘While we were waiting for you, you wally.’ I laugh in relief that Renisn’tthrowing around words like that. ‘My friend Marnie owns the bookshop up the street and she sends people on platonic dates all the time because she thinks they’ll get on as friends. It’s only a date if there are romantic feelings involved.’
‘He likes you. He blushes every time he talks about you, and Dad never blushes, not even when I talk to him about periods or this boy I like at school.’
