Page 40 of Christmas at the Borrow a Bookshop

‘An’ wrap it up, brown paper, if you don’t mind,’ Bovis added furtively, having spied the cover, a photographic still of a handsome man with chestnut curls, a riding crop and a damp-looking frilly shirt.

‘She’ll love it. Guaranteed,’ Alex pitched in.

Bovis pulled the money from his wallet with a pained expression before turning his thick neck in the direction of the café. ‘What you cookin’ in there?’

‘Ah, let me show you.’ Alex swept him and his purchases across the room and under the low door.

Within fifteen minutes Bovis was sitting, contented as a schoolboy, tucking into a toastie and a pot of tea. Alex placed his crispy slice on his table and left him scrolling through the news sites on his phone. He, like everyone else in Clove Lore, was tracking the storm warnings.

Back in the shop Alex glanced through the glass. It was indeed growing dark, and it was only one o’clock. The palm tree in the square was bending and bobbing in the wind and the fire in the hearth struggled to fend off the cold whistling around the doorframe.

Magnús however, only topped up the logs in the hearth, turned up his music, and continued to pass Alex the strands of tinsel and the really rather wonderful vintage baubles, all a little faded and tired, but every one prompting them to fill in its imagined history.

There was a tiny silver samovar, a china bowl of cherries, blown glass clowns and clothes peg fairies. Some of the oldest ones were so shabby it was hard to tell if they had once been painted Father Christmas heads or pinecones. They’d both grimaced as they pulled out a monkey face bauble which Magnús hung round the back of the tree where it couldn’t scare any children.

‘Where do you think this one’s from?’ Alex asked, holding up a fat, iridescent teardrop. It had a round window pressed into one side and inside that concave was a picture not of Mary or the baby Jesus – not even a snowy Santa – but of Lenin himself.

‘Wow! Somebody in Minty’s family was a secret Bolshevik,’ blurted Magnús.

‘Shh!’ Alex shushed, pointing to the café where Bovis sat. ‘That’s his boss, remember?’

To keep Bovis from overhearing, they turned to whispering instead, keeping their heads together and thoroughly enjoying the cosiness of having something distracting to do whilst keeping each other company as the rain fell harder outside.

‘What’s this?’ Magnús said when he reached the bottom of the bag and pulled out a bottle. ‘Red wine?’

There was a parcel label tied around its neck. Alex reached for it and read, ‘Merry Christmas, stay out of the storm, from all at the Clove Lore Estate.’

‘Save it for later?’ Magnús asked, his brows raised, wondering whether Minty and Jowan had wagered money on Alex and him in Mrs C.’s little book.

Alex waited a long moment before answering, during which Magnús regretted asking. ‘Yeah, let’s keep it for closing time,’ she said, watching for his reaction.

When he looked away and scratched self-consciously at his beard, she grinned and stood up, pulling a long tangle of metallic paperchains from the second bag. ‘Time to do the café?’

Bovis was still sitting where Alex had left him. His notes lay on the table for her to put in the cash box, and his plates were so clean she wondered if he’d licked them.

‘More tea?’ she asked, but he didn’t reply. He was watching a news report, the screen held protectively away from them, earphones relaying the sound.

Magnús held up his end of the crumpled paperchains for Alex to fix above the counter. They bustled around Bovis, tying a gold star against the glass in the café door and running a set of fairy lights in a zigzag across the kitchen shelves.

Soon the shop bell called Magnús away to serve what turned out to be his last customers of the day, the young family from the Siren’s Tale in dripping cagoules. They told him they were increasingly worried they were going to be stuck indoors the whole time and baby Serena had a tendency to wake up and cried every time they put the telly on. He sold them a big pile of emergency paperbacks to keep them going until they checked out on Boxing Day (a Stephenie Meyer, two P.G. Wodehouses, one Arundhati Roy, and one each of the Smiths: Zadie and Dodie).

Another seventeen pounds in the till. It felt good, and the shop looked so warm and welcoming he couldn’t help surveying it from his spot by the door, arms folded, chest puffed.

He was proud of what they’d achieved, in spite of the weather and all of his reservations about the place. Still, he had to admit today wouldn’t have been anywhere near as fun without Alex here insisting that this was all worthwhile and making the place feel like a real business with real meaning.

He set about mopping the raindrops from the floor while Alex sang the same lyric she’d been stuck with all day, ‘I call to thee, boy of the shore. My pretty one, my pretty one, hear me sing my water song.’

She positioned the last of the decorations around her café. Everything was good and warm and comfortable, just how she had wanted it to be, and Bovis, seeming to have made himself a permanent fixture in the café, scrolled on.

Alex was too busy to notice him stopping abruptly on the BBC Devon and Cornwall news pages and hitting ‘play’ on a video story with the headline:Concern Grows Over Missing Port Kernou Boat Woman.

The reporter was standing on a Cornish quayside that Bovis had visited as a child. It looked inviting with its festive lights. Bovis was ready to swipe on to the next story, only something stopped him.

The reporter handed over to a young man in a zipped-up jacket. An older man, who looked like the youngster’s father, stood behind him with a protective hand on his shoulder and a furrowed brow. The man, introduced as Ben Thomas, was pleading into the lens, ‘Alex, please let us know you’re all right. We’re all missing you so much. Please, just come home for Christmas.’

‘What state of mind was Alexandra in when you last saw her?’ the reporter asked, jabbing the microphone closer to the young man’s face.

‘Well,uh, she was… fine. Happy? Looking forward to Christmas.’

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