Page 10 of The Secret Christmas Bookshop
Sophie turned it over. The handwriting was small and neat, written in biro. ‘Itisfor me,’ she said. ‘Or, at least, it’s for someone called Sophie.’
It read:
Dear Sophie, sometimes you have to look closer to home to find what you’ve been missing. Please accept this gift as an early Christmas present – love from The Secret Bookshop.
‘Goodness!’ Gleeful curiosity dripped from Fiona’s voice.
‘What the hell?’ Sophie murmured. The message brought her anxiety back in full force. Who in Mistingham would send her something like this, and how could they possibly know that she was looking for something new? It was unsettling and disarming and, although she wanted to think of it like a message inside a fortune cookie, applicable to any situation if you only put your mind to it, someone had left it forheralong with one of the most beautiful books she’d ever seen: a novel about a woman who had no family, who struggled to find somewhere she belonged. She glanced around the shop, as if she might see a pair of eyes peering at her through the rows of winter jackets, watching her reaction.
‘That settles it, then.’ Fiona bent to stroke Clifton, who had woken up from a long nap and was blinking sleepily.
‘Settles what?’ Sophie picked upJane Eyreand looked for pen or pencil marks, scribbled annotations, any hint of who it had belonged to or where it might have come from.
‘You can’t leave Mistingham now,’ Fiona said. ‘Not until you’ve discovered who’s behind your gift …The Secret Bookshop,’ she repeated with relish. ‘What a wonderful mystery to have, just before Christmas.’
Chapter Five
Sophie couldn’t stop thinking about the book, and had given it pride of place on her coffee table before she’d left for the village hall that evening. Fiona had said she couldn’t leave Mistingham until she’d discovered who had sent it to her, and Sophie got her point: it was an intriguing present, along with a scarily relevant message, and all the more so for being anonymous.
But Sophie’s circle of friends in the village was small, so her immediate – and obvious – thought was that Fiona was behind it. Perhaps it was a copy that had been collecting dust at home, and she’d concocted the ruse as a reason to keep Sophie here? But then, Fiona had already come up with a reason for her to stay – helping her move her notebook business into the old sweet shop. Sophie hadn’t told her why she was really going, and why would she think giving her a classic book and a conundrum to solve would make a difference?
No, Sophie dismissed Fiona as her secret book Santaalmost instantly. Besides, she didn’t imagine it would take her longer than a few days to find out who it was. It wasn’t lost on her thatJane Eyreresonated with her own history. She had only read it once, a long time ago, and couldn’t remember the intricacies of the plot, but she knew Jane was an orphan who was unhappy and unloved, moving from place to place until she found Mr Rochester – though that wasn’t exactly smooth sailing either.
Mr Rochester sent her thoughts skittering to Harry Anderly. He was reclusive, lived in a crumbling mansion, and some of the more outlandish rumours about him in the village were straight out of the book that had ended up on her shop counter. But it took Sophie a nanosecond to decide that practical, distant Harry would be the last person in the whole of Norfolk to send her a thoughtful gift. He was barely civil enough to give her the time of day, and their recent meetings had been decidedly uncomfortable. It made no sense whatsoever.
Mistingham village hall was stuffy, even on this cold, rainy night, the fug created by wet jackets and damp dog hair. A garland of fake summer blossoms hung dejectedly from the ceiling, forgotten after an earlier event, and the mood was one of general disgruntlement. It was clear some of the villagers didn’t want to be here but felt they couldn’t relinquish their community duties. Sophie wondered if they were also worried that, in their absence, they would be assigned a task, and it was better to come here and actively excuse themselves.
‘Right then, everyone.’ Ermin tapped the wooden podium on the low stage with the corner of his iPhone, and the chatter faded to muttering as people broke off conversations about Christmas plans and fireworks found in gardens andthe temperamental water main down by the stables, and turned their attention to the front of the hall.
‘The Mistingham Festive Oak Fest,’ Ermin said proudly. ‘Our famous Christmas event, always well-attended by locals and visitors alike, will have to be different this year, just as it was last year.’
A groan rippled through the hall, and Sophie cast her gaze around the room. She hadn’t been here for last year’s event, but she had heard about it. For decades, the festival had taken place on the green, beneath the spreading boughs of the beautifully decorated oak tree. Since Harry’s return to the village last spring, he had prevented the planning team holding any events close to the tree and, even though they had still called it the Festive Oak Fest, last year’s celebration had been a street festival, taking over the whole of Perpendicular Street.
There had been mulled wine, chips and candy floss, traditional games like Hook the Duck and Splat the Rat, and a motley crew of carol singers that, Fiona had told her, always stuck to the same set list: the same carols, in the same order, for at least the last decade.
‘Different?’ a silver-haired woman in the second row called out. ‘How do you mean, different?’
Next to Sophie, Annie and Jim Devlin exchanged a glance. They ran the amusement arcade, Penny For Them, had two young children, and had always seemed friendly. She thought that, given half the chance, they would help the organizers come up with entertainment a bit less Eighties than Splat the Rat.
‘Why different?’ old Mr Carsdale echoed from beneath his green felt hat. He sounded curious rather than annoyed.
‘Because, along with our necessary change of venue,’ Ermin said, ‘Winnie can’t organize it this year. With the post office moving to the hotel, she doesn’t have the capacity to do it.’
‘Sorry everyone,’ Winnie called from the back of the room. ‘I don’t want to do a bad job because I’m stretched too thinly.’
‘Don’t see how processing parcels and passport applications can take up much time,’ said a gruff voice Sophie didn’t recognize. ‘The festival’s a tradition, isn’t it?’
‘There’s no need to get into the nitty-gritty.’ Ermin flapped his hands, trying to quiet the mutterings that had started up. ‘The point is, we have a festival to put on in less than two months, and nobody at the helm. The purpose of this meeting is to assign a new organizer.’
The mutterings fell to a deadly silence. Clifton whimpered and Sophie stroked him. The last thing she wanted was to be volunteered to organize a street festival by her dog. In the quiet, the rain and wind made itself known, battering against the outside of the fogged-up windows, reminding them what a filthy night it was. Sophie thought of the soft pyjamas she would get into after her short walk home, the hot chocolate she would make, her new book waiting for her to open it, using the gold ribbon to keep her place as she lost herself in the story.
Around her, every head was lowered, avoiding meeting Ermin’s gaze. Sophie realized that, in all likelihood, the person who had sent her the beautiful book, along with an unsettlingly cryptic message, was in this room right now.
‘Does someone really need to organize it, if we’re just doing the same as last year?’ The bored-sounding teenagevoice could only be Indigo, Natasha’s son. ‘Winnie can give you a list and you can just reorder everything, lights and food and games and stuff, right?’
Ermin shuffled his feet. ‘That would, of course, be a sensible starting point. But we did wonder if – ah, I mean, the villagers I’ve spoken to – if this would be a good chance to …’ He glanced to the back of the room, ‘… to re-evaluate the plan, slightly. Moving it from the green to Perpendicular Street does come with its own complications.’
‘You mean like making sure the council put a proper diversion in place, so you don’t end up with furious drivers stuck in the village with nowhere to go?’ Natasha suggested. ‘The bar truck was next to the cordon, so I got some proper abuse last year.’
