Page 2 of The Secret Christmas Bookshop
‘Panic?’
‘Don’t you get that?’ he asked. ‘There’s always a sense, round about now, that you should really start buying gifts, but then you get caught up in other day-to-day stuff, and suddenly it’s the twentieth of December and you’ve done none of it. I’m trying to respond to that original instinct before it disappears.’
‘I don’t usually …’have anyone to buy for, Sophie could have finished. ‘I don’t get that panic.’
‘I do a big trip to Norwich the last weekend of November,’ Fiona said. ‘I have a list, and I get everything I need then – whatever I can’t get in Mistingham, of course.’
‘That’s far too organized,’ Dexter said. ‘Anyway. If I get Luce something now, then I’ll at least haveonething sorted for her. She’s angling for a Kindle, which I can get online – actually, I could do that today.’
Sophie grinned. ‘She’ll be furiouswith you if she finds out.’
‘Don’t think that gets you out of buying a scarf,’ Fiona scolded, and Dexter’s cheeks turned pink. ‘Anyway, what’s with this Kindle nonsense? When did a bit of plastic replace a gorgeous hardback with that perfect book smell and a cover you could hang on your wall?’
Sophie absent-mindedly stroked the turquoise leather notebook she had on the counter. The cover was soft, dyedleather, and she’d stitched it together with pink thread and added a pink elastic band closure. It was the perfect place to write thoughts and secrets.
‘She’s into this YA Romantasy stuff,’ Dexter said. ‘They’re huge books, so she says it would be easier to read them on a Kindle. But she’ll want the special editions as well, won’t she?’ He rubbed at his jacket cuff, suddenly looking anxious, and Sophie felt a pang of sympathy. She couldn’t imagine how hard it was for him to do all the parenting, make all those decisions, by himself.
‘I get it,’ she said gently. ‘Sometimes I type notes on my phone for convenience, but if I want a proper list, if I want the satisfaction of ticking off items I’ve completed, or it’s something I want to spend my time writing out, I use a notebook. You don’t have to commit to one or the other.’
‘You’re right, you don’t.’ Dexter’s smile flickered back into place. ‘Thanks, Sophie.’
‘If The Book Ends was still open, you’d be able to get all Lucy’s special editions there,’ Fiona said. ‘Christmas presents would be easier for everyone; Mistingham would be an entirely different village.’
‘It’s been closed for a couple of years now, hasn’t it?’ Sophie asked.
You couldn’t live in Mistingham and not know about the fabled bookshop, though Fiona’s suggestion that its loss had completely changed the village had to be pushing it. The shop still stood empty, a little way from Hartley Country Apparel on Perpendicular Street, the road that ran up from the seafront through the middle of the village. It was next to the much smaller, but also empty Ye Olde Sweete Shoppe. The Book Ends shop name was still visiblein faded yellow script above, with the suggestion ‘So Buy Another One’ in a smaller font below.
‘Nearly three years now,’ Fiona said. ‘When Bernie Anderly’s mind deserted him, and he had to move into a care home. Such a shame – an entirely avoidableone.’ She shook her head. ‘Anyone want a cuppa?’
‘I’d love one,’ Sophie said.
Dexter glanced at his watch. ‘Me too. If I’m included in that?’
‘Of course you are,’ Fiona said. ‘The longer you stay, the more likely you are to buy something.’ She disappeared amongst the stands of cashmere and Fair Isle jumpers, moleskin trousers and suede gilets.
‘She’s still angry that Bernie’s son didn’t take over the bookshop,’ Dexter said. ‘As if she can move the people in this village about like armies on a Risk board.’
Sophie didn’t want to dwell on how Fiona might react when she told her she was leaving Mistingham. But she prized her independence more than anything, and Fiona would soon get over it: she’d find someone else to fill her concession corner, and Sophie would be a lost Risk counter that would soon be forgotten about.
‘That’s Harry Anderly, isn’t it?’ she asked, pushing her unease away. ‘Harry Anderly of Mistingham Manor.’ Spoken like that it sounded grand, much grander than the reality, which was that Bernie Anderly’s son had moved back to Mistingham from London only in the final months of his father’s life, that the manor was more horror film chic than Jane Austen adaptation, and that Harry was hardly ever seen in the village, and seemed to avoid human interaction at all costs.
Sophie had got to know May – who was Harry’s housemate and, most people thought, his girlfriend – a little bit during her time in the village, but she had always been tight-lipped about him, saying only that he was in a difficult position, that he was doggedly focused on repairing the manor rather than purposefully unfriendly. But to Sophie he felt like a fairy-tale villain, someone talked about but rarely seen. May could say all the generous things she liked about him, but he was never around to prove them for himself.
‘The least likely person to ever run a bookshop,’ Dexter said. ‘He’d send customers away with his scowls and monosyllabic answers. It’s bad enough that he’s making us move the Christmas festival, that we have to have the fireworks on the beach instead of the green, all because of that bloody oak tree.’ He shook his head. ‘The modern world is becoming so much more impersonal: Kindles rather than hardbacks; online shopping instead of places like this; watching the fireworks from miles away instead of getting together on the village green. Fiona’s holding onto a dream that has already died.’
‘And yet you leave genuine wicker baskets, full of bread and cakes and milk, on your customers’ doorsteps,’ Fiona pointed out, returning with three mismatched mugs full of steaming tea.
‘Yeah, well.’ Dexter shrugged. ‘That’s how I choose to run my business, and there’s still demand for it in Mistingham, so why should I stop?’
‘Why should I give up on my dream that someone will open up that bookshop again?’ Fiona parried. ‘And as for the supposedOak Fest.’ She tutted, tapping her finger onthe counter. ‘That green has been the site of village events for centuries. The moment Harry’s back, he stopseverything.I know the land is part of the Mistingham Manor estate, but Bernie encouraged all of it, and that upstart’s vetoing it. He should go back to London – if he’s even wanted there.’
‘Come on,’ Dexter said gently. ‘I agree with you that not being able to use the green is frustrating, but we don’t really know Harry, or what he’s been through. At the very least his dad died and – well, losing someone close is never easy.’
Sophie gave him a gentle smile: Dexter knew that more than anyone.
Fiona put her mug down with a heavythunk.‘He should talk to us, instead of ripping the heart out of the village.’
Sophie hid her grin at her friend’s emotive language. She didn’t add that she would have loved the bookshop to be open, that she would have spent a good chunk of her profits on dark thrillers and sparkling romances that held endless wonder in their pages; historical novels that whisked her away to another time.
