The Lost Bookshop

Epilogue

T he rain had eased off outside and the bank of grey clouds that had huddled over the city like a lumpy duvet was breaking apart and revealing small, irregular windows of blue sky.

‘Is all of that really true?’ asked the little boy, openly stuffing a teacake in his pocket for later.

‘Every word,’ said Martha. She began shuffling the envelopes and letters. It was time to get back to work.

‘What happened to the house and the old lady?’

‘Number 12? It’s still there. But someone else lives there now.’

He nodded his head, as though this explanation were perfectly satisfactory.

‘So the book told you that you’d become a bookseller?’

She thought for a moment. ‘I suppose it did, in a way.’

His eyebrows scrunched up in concentration.

‘What is it?’

‘I wish I could find a book that would tell me what I’m supposed to do when I’m old.’

‘Older,’ she corrected. ‘Besides, I think it’s already found you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You already know what you want to become.’

‘Do I?’

She nodded her head patiently. ‘Didn’t you feel your heart jump? At a certain point in the story, when I told you about Matthew Fitzpatrick?’

‘Oh, that .’

‘Yes. That!’

He slid off the stool and dragged his feet along the tiled floor, back to where his schoolbag was abandoned. He hefted it up on to his shoulder, as though it held all the worries of the world within it.

‘Teacher says it’s a silly notion.’

‘They’re the best kind to have, if you ask me.’

He gave her a curious look. It was almost as if she was challenging him. Grown-ups hardly ever listened to him, and when they did, they certainly didn’t encourage him to believe in silly notions.

‘The thing about books,’ she said, ‘is that they help you to imagine a life bigger and better than you could ever dream of.’

With that, the bell rang over the shop door and a tall man with hair falling into his eyes breezed into the shop. He went straight over to Martha and gave her an altogether prolonged smooch on the cheek, which the little boy thought was gross.

‘Who do we have here?’ he asked eventually.

‘Shall we tell him?’ Martha asked the little boy. ‘Shall we tell him who you really are?’

He looked a little uncertain at first, then seemed to gain some confidence and puffed out his chest.

‘I’m a magician!’ he announced.

‘Is that so?’ Henry asked.

‘Yes,’ Martha said. ‘And for his first trick, he is going to make that magic book he’s been reading all morning disappear.’ She nodded her head for him to retrieve it.

‘For free?’ the little boy asked.

‘The first one is always free,’ she replied, and within moments he had it stuffed into his schoolbag before charging out the front door with sparks at his heels and, in the strange morning light, what could have been mistaken for a cape flowing in his wake.

‘You’ve done it again,’ Henry said, sliding his arm around Martha’s waist.

‘Done what, Mr Field?’

‘Made someone, very, very happy, Mrs Field.’

This time they kissed for so long that they had to close the shop.

* * *

And that is where the story ends. Although they never did find Emily Bront?’s manuscript. To this day, it lies hidden inside the vault of an Irish bank, just waiting to become a part of someone else’s story.