Page 82 of The Midnight Book Club
“I wasn’t sure whether you were on holiday, only you didn’t mention anything last week,” he said by way of a greeting.
“No, I’m not on holiday—I was just upstairs editing,” Aurelia said, waving her pages.Her face fell in shock.“It’s not Monday, is it?”
Mark nodded with a laugh.
“What time is it?”
She looked behind her at the mantel clock and couldn’t believe it was nearly half past ten.
“Oh, honestly,” Aurelia said, shaking her head at herself.“Come in, come in!I was lost in revisions.I can’t believe I almost missed you!”
A few minutes later, after Aurelia had raised the blinds and made them both tea, Oliver appeared.
“I’m just on my way to meet one of my authors, but I thought I’d stop by for a quick hello,” he announced.Seeing Mark with his mug of tea, he added, “Good morning.”
Aurelia introduced them.She’d told Oliver about some of her regulars but hadn’t told him Mark’s story, worrying that Oliver might take it lightly or make fun of him.As it turned out, Mark wasted no time in telling Oliver himself, and Aurelia was pleased to see that Oliver seemed touched by Mark’s love of the shop and Marigold.They chatted quietly outside of Aurelia’s hearing for a few minutes, making her slightly nervous that they might be discussing her tendency for tears.But when Oliver turned back to join her at the desk as Mark continued wandering the shop, he seemed normal—no looks of sympathy or concern.
“I wanted to ask—since we both like walking around the city—would you want to walk together?Maybe tomorrow?”he asked.
“Walk… together?”
Somehow, those two words weren’t making sense.He wanted to go for a walk.Andhe wanted to go for that walk with her?
“We could talk about the book,” he added quickly.“I usually take a break to walk in the early afternoon, so maybe you could pick a spot for us to meet and we can go from there?”
Aurelia’s mind was still trying to process this: a walk, with Oliver.Something about it felt like a date, but no, he’d said it was to discuss her book.She looked over at Mark, who was nodding encouragingly, and she started nodding too as she turned back to Oliver.
“Sure, that sounds great.”
They made a plan to meet at two o’clock the next day at Russell Square.
“What do you think?”Aurelia asked Mark as soon as Oliver was out the door.
“He’s a lovely fellow,” Mark said, sounding confused.“When you first mentioned him, he sounded a bit…” He trailed off and Aurelia could just imagine the colorful words she’d used to describe him.
“I might have been a little quick to judge,” she admitted with a wince.“But I think we’re friends now.”
“Well, you let me know when that book of yours is finished.I’d like to see the result of all this hard work.Will you be selling it here?”
“Here?”
Aurelia hadn’t thought about selling her book in the shop.She hadn’t thought about selling it anywhere, come to that.She was just working toward having one published copy to put on the table for Vronsky.
“I know it might seem out of place with all the old books, but I think customers would like buying a book from the author herself.”
“Maybe,” Aurelia mused.“I’ll have to think about it.”
After Mark left, her mind continued working over their conversation.Time was racing forward and her time with Vronsky was growing shorter as they got closer to having a published book for their big experiment.She hadn’t taken much time to think about the mechanics of what would happen once they put his new book on the table.Would Vronsky and another character come out of the new book?What would this ‘new’ Vronsky be like?Would he remember her?What if Vronsky didn’t come out at all?
As questions ran through her mind, she decided to see if Sergeant Cuff had any answers, as he so often did.
Aurelia had wanted to catch Cuff on his own that night, but Vronsky was at her side before she could slip away.
“I’m just going to speak with Sergeant Cuff for a moment,” she said, hoping Vronsky would wait for her by her desk.Instead, he stepped in alongside her.
“Does this concern our experiment?”he asked.
“Well, yes.How did you know?”
