Book People

Chapter Four

Of course you can tell me these things. You can tell me anything you like.

H

SEBASTIAN

She’s leaving and that’s a good thing. I definitely don’t want her sitting at this table in that extraordinarily sexy dress I can see right through. She’s wearing purple knickers and a red bra, and both of them are as lacy as that dress.

I don’t want to talk about my shop and I don’t want to hear her explanations as to why she stole my customers. I don’t want to hear any excuses from her at all.

Yet the moment she came into the pub, I couldn’t concentrate on my book and I know I won’t be able to until she leaves. Her presence prickles over my skin, then creeps underneath it, needling me.

I can’t think why it does, because she’s nothing I want, yet she needles me all the same.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her since that moment in her shop, when I leaned in and caught her scent and saw the crystalline glint in her eyes. Which was when I realised this dance we were doing was dangerous and that I needed to stop before one of us pushed too far, and everything came crashing down.

So when she changed her front window, I didn’t change mine. I left it and tried to ignore her looking in my direction every time she came out of her shop, as if she was waiting for me to respond. Waiting for me to change my window too.

I didn’t give her the satisfaction.

I put her out of my head.

And I thought I’d succeeded.

So I don’t know why I now say, ‘Wait.’ Because I can’t seriously want to tell her about Blackwood Books, can I?

Her hair is loose around her shoulders, all golden curls, and in her dress with its wide belt around her hips, she looks like a Woodstock escapee. I want to touch that hair, bury my hands in it.

Christ, what a bloody cliché I am.

She hesitates, her drink in her hand.

I don’t want her to sit, I don’t. And I can’t tell her I’m also angry because she’s beautiful. I can’t tell her that she’s ruining my business, that her fiery temper and her bright, pretty smiles make me want to take her to bed and keep both of those things all to myself, and I’m furious about it.

I’m furious with myself for being such a basic male animal.

I’m furious with how out of control I feel around her, because if there’s one thing I hate it’s being out of control. I felt the same way when Dad told me that Mum was very sick and that there was nothing the doctors could do.

But I have to get some control somehow, because even I don’t like my own behaviour. Being repeatedly rude to her isn’t the way, especially not when the rest of the village think she’s some kind of goddess descended from the heavens to dispense joy and sunbeams to the population at large.

They already think I’m aloof and distant, and since that’s better than them feeling sorry for me, the poor little mite who lost his mother so early, I let them think that. But I can’t have them also thinking I’m rude. That would be a killer for the business.

‘My great-grandfather first opened the shop,’ I say, giving her a grain of truth. ‘He opened it in the thirties, so it’s been in the village for over eighty years.’

Her fair brows draw together and she’s still for a second, clearly weighing up whether to stay or go. And I want her to go. Yes, very definitely I want her to go.

But she doesn’t.

She continues to sit at my table and she puts her drink back down. ‘My great-grandmother used to live here. She probably knew him.’

‘Kathryn Jones,’ I say. That’s well-known history here. ‘They say she did not like my great-grandfather.’

Kate leans back in her chair and a spark of amusement glitters in her eyes. ‘Can’t say I blame her. If he was anything like you.’

My muscles tighten at her humour, at the way she looks at me, but I fight my physical reaction and ignore the comment. ‘So are you Kate or Kathryn?’ I ask, mystified at myself and why I even care.

‘Kathryn,’ she says. ‘But everyone calls me Kate.’

It’s not lost on me, the significance of being named after our feuding great-grandparents.

‘You didn’t know anything about Wychtree, then?’ I pick up my scotch and take a healthy sip. I can’t believe I’m actually having a somewhat normal conversation with her, not when everything inside me feels so tight and hot.

‘No. Mum never talked about it. The first I knew of it was after she died and I inherited the shop here. Apparently my grandmother owned it before that, and she died in 2018, so Mum only had it a few years herself. She didn’t do anything with it, just let it stand empty.’

‘Yes, I remember. That shop has had various incarnations over the years, but nothing ever stuck.’

Anyway, it appears we have something in common. We both lost our mothers. I feel an odd tug at that, but ignore it.

‘Why books?’ I’m unable to sound anything but challenging.

‘Because I’ve always loved reading.’ She gives me a little half-smile, as if she wants me to share in something, but I don’t know what she wants me to share in and smiling at her is dangerous, so I don’t. ‘It was actually a dream of mine to open my own bookshop, but I never got around to it. I had a publishing job in London as an assistant editor instead.’

Books were never anything as insubstantial as a dream for me. Books are part of me, they’re in my blood. So many people have these fantasies of what owning a bookshop is like, where they sit there all day reading and there’s a cat on the counter and tea and lots of people browsing. They can’t conceive of the mundane reality of stock control and ordering, and updating computer systems, doing business plans and taxes and managing debts. Of watching your orders go down because of online bookshops and e-books, and losing readers to computer games, streaming services and doomscrolling on their phones.

She was one of those people, I just know it. Building little castles in the air. Dreaming of little bookshops that look like someone’s Instagram feed, created from AI . Little bookshops made of pretty pink smoke. Pipe dreams.

‘Bookselling is more than just pretty shelves,’ I say, knowing I sound like the snob she thinks I am and not caring. ‘Bookselling is bloody hard work. It’s spreadsheets and debt and knowing your customers better than they do themselves.’

‘I didn’t think it was easy, if that’s what you’re implying.’ There it is, that flicker of temper in her eyes. A glitter of sparks. ‘I inherited the building from Mum, but I didn’t have a lot of money when I came here. I had to take on some debt to get the building up to standard. I was going to give myself a year to see if I could make it work.’

Ah. So she has a time limit, has she?

I should feel some modicum of relief at this, that if her business tanks she’ll leave. But I’m not relieved. I feel even more tense.

‘What? And then you’ll leave Wychtree?’ I ask.

She lifts a shoulder. ‘I’m not sure. I haven’t thought that far ahead.’ Her fingers tighten around her glass. ‘You’d like that, though, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I say bluntly.

‘Why? Is it me or the bookshop you don’t like?’

There isn’t any reason for me to lie, so I don’t. ‘Both.’

Colour creeps into her cheeks. ‘I can understand you not liking the bookshop, but why me? What have I ever done to you?’

‘You exist, Miss Jones,’ I say succinctly, because I’m not going to explain to her why her presence annoys me so much. ‘That’s all you need to do.’

Her mouth firms and another silence falls.

‘So why books?’ she asks, throwing my question back at me.

‘Because it was never going to be anything else. Books are not my “side hustle”. They’re my livelihood. My history. My legacy.’ I sound pompous and probably ridiculous, and far too fierce, yet I can’t help myself. She should know that her bookshop threatens not only my business but the very core of who I am. I can’t take it lightly and I never will.

After my mother died, Dad wanted me to become a doctor, and to please him, I tried. I even got into medical school, but when that acceptance came, every ounce of my being rebelled.

He didn’t care about the bookshop. He was running it into the ground, and, while me being a doctor would have been his dream for me, it wasn’t my dream for myself. The only dream I ever had was my mother being still alive, and the only way for me to get anywhere close to that was to keep running the bookshop, the bookshop she loved far more than my father ever did.

Kate Jones’s eyes get very wide as I hear the pompous words come out of my mouth, and her gaze intensifies. It’s as if she’s seeing me for the first time, and I don’t like it. I’ve revealed too much.

I should go, so I pick up my whisky and drain the rest of it, preparing to leave, when Mrs Abbot approaches. She’s one of the customers who stopped ordering from me when Miss Jones arrived, despite the fact that I’d never poured scorn on her reading material, not once.

She smiles at the both of us. ‘Well, look at our two rival booksellers sharing a friendly drink.’

Miss Jones gives her back one of her own warm smiles, and watching it makes me feel restless. ‘Just talking to Sebastian about his festival.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Mrs Abbot turns a faintly judgemental look on me. ‘I wondered if you knew about it. I’m glad he’s finally bringing you on board.’

Right. So it was her who told Miss Jones about my festival.

If I say I’m not bringing her on board anywhere then I’m going to look like an arsehole to a woman who already doesn’t think much of my bookshop. And if I agree that I’m bringing Miss Jones on board, then I actually have to bring Miss Jones on board, which will defeat the purpose of my festival.

Either way I’m fucked. I’m going to look like an arsehole and I probably deserve it, but still, as ever, I’m furious.

Then Miss Jones says, ‘Oh, yes, Sebastian’s been lovely about it. We’re just in the middle of organising a few events.’ Her eyes sparkle like crystals in the sun. ‘I thought we could have a romance panel and extend our book club night to guests. And I’d love to have a cosy mystery evening where everyone can bring their dogs.’

Hell. On. Earth.

Yet Mrs Abbot is smiling. ‘What a wonderful idea,’ she says, then turns to me, still smiling. ‘That’s wonderful, Sebastian. I’m so pleased. I’ll get my ticket tomorrow. I’ll mention it in the romance book club chat, Kate.’

‘Oh, please do,’ Miss Jones says.

Mrs Abbot, looking extremely satisfied, exchanges a few more words with her before excusing herself and heading to the bar.

‘You can thank me later,’ Miss Jones murmurs, as she sips at her drink. ‘We have twenty people in our book club and they’ll all want to buy tickets.’

‘I am not having a romance panel,’ I force out from between gritted teeth. ‘And I am definitely not having bloody dogs in my shop.’

‘They won’t be at your bloody shop,’ she says. ‘They’ll be in mine. And so will the romance panel. And if you don’t want them, then you’ll have twenty less tickets for your festival, and twenty more for mine.’

She’s incorrigible.

She’s impossible.

I want to get up and walk away and never speak to her again.

I want to reach over the table, drag her into my lap, and kiss her senseless.

The two desires are so entirely at odds that I’m left paralysed, so I do nothing but sit there like a bloody idiot instead.

Then she does something even more egregious.

She leans forward, elbows on the table, her expression full of entreaty. ‘Look. We both want more customers and arguing about who stole what from whom and throwing accusations around isn’t helping either of us. We don’t like each other, fine, but we’re both adults. We’re both professionals. We could be helping each other’s businesses instead.’

She’s so very honest. There’s no guile to her, no guardedness. Nothing I can use as an excuse to push her away or rebuff her. If I told her to piss off now, which every part of me wants to do, I would definitely be the bad guy.

I would be the petulant child having a tantrum to her calm, measured adult. She is being the bigger person and I hate it.

It costs me to say it, but I know she’s right, so I force it out. ‘How?’

This time it’s worse, because this time the sparkle in her eyes isn’t for Mrs Abbot or one of her other customers that she charms the pants off.

This time the sparkle is for me.

‘We can have separate events,’ she says, glittering like a diamond. ‘I’ll do all the genre stuff and you do all the literary high-brow stuff. But we’ll get both kinds of readers coming to the event, and all the literary orders can go through you, and I’ll do the genre orders. I’d love to be involved in this and I don’t have the reach that you do, or the history. And, you know, genre readers do read literary books too. I can send them your way, and you can send literary readers who enjoy a good thriller or romance to me.’

It hits me right in the chest, that sparkle. Like a bullet.

She loves what she’s doing, I can see it in her eyes. It might have started as a dream she’s been chasing, but it means something to her and I have to concede that she’s put her all into her shop.

She’s drawn people to her and they like her; they like her books.

It’s a tough business, bookselling in general, and even tougher coming into a small village as a relative outsider. And I haven’t been welcoming. I’ve been actively hostile towards her, which isn’t fair of me.

Yes, she’s taken away some of my customers and I’m angry about it, but now she’s offering me an olive branch, and while part of me wants to refuse, I’d be a fool not to take it.

What she says about a shared festival sounds . . . good. For both of us.

How extremely irritating.

‘Fine.’ I hear the petulant note in my voice and don’t like it one bit. ‘But there will still be no dogs in my shop.’

She gives me a smile, a real one. Like the one she gave that adolescent boy in her ridiculous shop. Like the one she gives to her customers, as if she’s pleased to see them and couldn’t think of anything better than to have them in her place of business. Like I’ve given her a gift she hadn’t expected.

That hits me straight in the chest too.

‘Okay,’ she says. ‘No dogs for Mr Blackwood. So noted.’ She picks up her gin and tonic, sparkling away like a little star. ‘This is great. Let’s chat tomorrow about it and we can start to put some more plans in place.’

Her excitement should be infectious but all I feel now is hungry and it isn’t for food. I should be able to put it to one side the way I’ve always done, but it’s difficult with her. It’s going to be especially difficult if she’s going to involve herself in my festival.

I never dip my pen in the company ink – or the village ink, to be precise. It’s too difficult here. Especially when everyone knows that Blackwood men can’t keep a woman to save their lives. My great-grandfather’s wife left him. My grandfather’s wife also left him. And I’m sure it was only pure chance that my mother died before she had the opportunity to leave my father.

Luck with the ladies does not run in my family and I have no desire to test that luck anyway. So I take my appetites elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the object of that appetite is sitting opposite me and calmly talking about the two of us working together as if I was a plank of wood with no sexual interest in her whatsoever.

I fucking wish I were a plank of wood.

‘Excellent,’ I say, meaning the opposite and deciding that now is a good time to leave, since I can’t bear sitting here with her any longer.

But then, much to my horror, she reaches out and pushes aside the menu that I used to cover the book I was reading when she came into the pub, and glances at it. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I wondered.’ Her eyes sparkle even more. ‘I didn’t spot you for being a science fiction fan.’

I’m appalled at myself for letting slip such a basic secret and even more appalled at my own embarrassment that she found out what I was reading.

Because I meant what I said: I’m not a literary snob. After my mother died I started reading science fiction and dystopian books, because they took me right out of my reality and put me into a completely different one. Where I could forget about my grief at losing not only my mother to cancer but also my father to the bottle that he fell headfirst into after her death.

I still read those books when I need to escape, but it’s been my little secret for years. Not that anyone else would care, but I knew Miss Jones would and, sure enough, I can see that she’s pleased, as if she’s scored a point off me.

I want to show her I could score a point off her too, and maybe in a way that we’d both enjoy, but I’m not going down that path.

Instead, I calmly pick up my book. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Sometimes I like to read something different.’

I don’t say goodbye.

I get to my feet and stroll out.