Chapter 5 #2
He lets out a chuckle that slowly builds into a full-blown burst of laughter, and he shakes his head, but there’s definite progress because it’s in a fond, despairing way this time rather than a ‘this woman is a lost cause’ way. ‘What’s your story, anyway? You have all these stories for every item in your shop, but what about your own?’
‘I’m the one thing in my shop that doesn’t have a story.’ I sound too abrupt because the thought of sharing it makes a prickly feeling break out across my skin. I’d rather make up a thousand stories than talk about my own, even once.
‘I find that very hard to believe.’ His blue eyes are intense and my face has heated up, but it’s impossible to look away even though I find myself squirming under his watchful gaze, and I’m strangely tempted to spill out my entire life story in one cringeworthy fell swoop, despite my usual misgivings. If no one ever sees behind the bright and sunny mask, no one ever asks, and I’ve always preferred it that way. ‘How long have you been in the curiosity shop business?’
‘My dad opened The Mermaid’s Treasure Trove nearly thirty years ago,’ I tell him. ‘He was one of the first businesses on Ever After Street. I’ve helped him out since I was really young. I lived away for a while with an ex, did a mind-numbingly boring corporate job that paid the bills and crushed my soul, and when the relationship ended, I came back home.’
‘And your dad, he…?’
‘Died, a couple of years ago now,’ I finish the leading question for him. ‘I took over while he was ill, and then the shop became mine when he passed.’
‘I’m sorry.’ His fingers twitch where his hand is resting on the table, and I wonder if he had to stop himself reaching out to touch my hand like I’ve had to do a couple of times so far today too. ‘Wait, so the mermaid theme was your dad’s doing? Not just your whimsical touch?’
‘No, that was him. My mum loved mermaids and it was in her honour.’ His questions have caught me off-guard because I wasn’t expecting him to ask anything about me. He thinks I’m a younger, battier version of Auntie Wainwright from Last of the Summer Wine , I’m sure he’s not really interested in my shop’s origins and my parents’ backstory.
‘Is that why you’re so determined this diary has to be real? You think it would… bring you closer to your parents?’
I reach inside the neck of my top and pull out Mum’s tiny gold mermaid tail necklace and show him. ‘She drowned when I was five, and afterwards, my dad told me that she’d turned into a mermaid and gone home to the sea, and even though I knew that wasn’t what happened, it was a nice thought – a comforting thought. I grew up feeling as though she was still out there in the ocean somewhere. Every time we went to the beach, we picked up those conch shells that you can put to your ear and hear the ocean, and we’d both speak into them and then throw them back into the sea, and it was like a way of communicating with her.’ I stop and take a deep, shaky breath. I’ve never shared that with anyone except Lissa, and my ex-boyfriend, before now and I don’t know why it’s suddenly popped out with this relative stranger who will definitely disapprove of something so whimsical. ‘I still do it even now, and I really don’t care if you think that’s childish or silly or?—’
‘I think that’s really nice,’ he interrupts me quickly. ‘Both my parents are gone too, so don’t think I don’t understand.’
I meet his eyes again, softer and kinder now than the usual suspicious apprehension that seems to cloud them, and I can feel how easy it would be to let my walls down and open up to him, and I blink and look away. Maybe there is something in this chocolate cake. I don’t intend to ever let a man in again, especially one who clearly has a lot of baggage and past hurt. ‘This is the only thing I still have of my mum’s. I haven’t taken it off since the day my dad found it again. She loved mermaids and she was convinced they really existed. Her whole life, she felt a pull to the ocean and thought she’d been a mermaid in a previous life or something. The diary being real would make her so happy.’
‘Found it again?’
‘It’s how the shop came about…’ I hesitate. ‘Are you sure you want to hear this? You don’t need to be polite or pretend to be interested. I prefer blunt, unsugarcoated honesty and you’re good at that.’
He reaches out and covers my hand with his warm fingers, effectively ending my sentence. ‘I want to hear it. I’ve never met anyone like you. There has to be some kind of superhero origin story and right now, I’ve never wanted to hear anything more. Tell me, please.’
His voice is so quiet but full of gentle steel, his accent perfectly polished, polite and sophisticated, like he’s been taught how to speak properly, and it’s impossible not to tell him.
‘My mum died a hero. We were on holiday on the beach, it was the Easter holidays, right before lifeguard season began. There were these two little boys messing about on an inflatable dinghy, and there was a sudden… I don’t know, a riptide or a current or something, and they were swept out to sea. I don’t even know if I remember it or if I only remember what my dad told me and the newspaper cuttings my grandparents kept afterwards, but my mum was a strong swimmer, her childhood home was on the seafront and she’d swum in the ocean her whole life, and she went in after them. She thought… I don’t know, I guess she didn’t think at all, she just acted on instinct and tried to save them. And she did. She managed to get a rope to them so the others on the beach were able to pull them back in, but she didn’t… she couldn’t…’ My voice is breaking and I’m focusing on the cup of tea in front of me rather than looking at him.
I don’t realise how long it’s been since I told this story. I don’t meet many new people who I want to open up to, and everyone else in my life already knows what happened to my mum and don’t bring it up for fear of upsetting me.
‘The current was too strong. She disappeared. A kindly old man on the beach with his grandson offered to take me round the corner to get ice cream so I didn’t have to witness what was about to happen when the coastguard arrived and pulled her body from the water. All I can remember is it was the worst ice cream I’d ever eaten because I knew something bad was happening and could hear all these sirens and the coastguard helicopter overhead, and this poor old man was trying to distract me by asking about school and things I liked, and we stayed there for hours, he got us chips and two more ice creams, and eventually my dad came, he had a policewoman with him, and we went back to the hotel we were staying at… and life was changed forever.’
There are tears streaming down my face, and when I realise, I swear under my breath, and grab a napkin from the table and turn away, trying to compose myself. I don’t dig up these old traumas very often, but even so many years later, that day and the difficult years that followed it are back in sharp focus and it’s impossible to pretend it hasn’t made me emotional.
Ren’s chair scrapes against the floor, and before I realise what’s happening, he’s crouched down beside my chair and leant up to put his arms around me. The hug is so unexpected, even more so because it’s him that it’s enough of a shock to stop my tears in their tracks. Probably like when people say being startled can stop a case of hiccups. He’s quite possibly the least touchy-feely person I’ve ever met, and I didn’t expect him to squeeze my hand like he did just now, never mind a proper hug like this.
His arms wrap around me and pull me close, his chin hooks over my shoulder, and my senses are instantly filled by the softness of his sensible shirt, the strength of the arms that hold me so tightly, and the scent of his hair product. The feeling of being held and the sense that he cared enough to push himself so far outside of his comfort zone just to console me makes me bite my lip and slip my arms around his shoulders and squeeze him back just as tight. I press my chin into his shoulder and turn my head slightly, so my cheek brushes against his dark hair, and I feel him let out a long exhale that makes his shoulders sag and his spine curve towards me, and we hold each other tightly for a few long minutes, oblivious to any potential looks from other diners. Between us, we’ve given them quite a spectacle today.
Eventually Ren grunts and pulls away. ‘Sorry, pins and needles.’ He gets up and stamps his feet a few times to get feeling back into his legs and then shuffles back to his chair and slumps down in it.
I watch him for a few moments, but he’s focused intently on the pattern of the tablecloth rather than meeting my eyes.
‘Sorry,’ I say eventually. ‘This is why no one should ever ask me about myself. I’m an embarrassment who should never be allowed out in public.’
‘That’s the first time I’ve hugged someone in years.’
‘What?’ I blink in surprise. ‘Seriously? Not even Ava?’
‘Ava’s “too old” for hugs now. Hugs are “for babies ” and if I try, she pushes me away with a “Don’t be so embarrassing, Daa-ad!”’ He mimics her young voice perfectly and I see a hint of someone who was once much more smiley and less uptight than he is now. ‘And other than that, do I strike you as someone who welcomes hugs?’
Considering he’s more bristly than a pincushion modelled after a porcupine… ‘No, you don’t.’
‘No, I don’t.’
It was probably intended to be a joke, but his voice takes on a downbeat tone that suggests it isn’t something he’s happy about.
This has got unexpectedly intense, and I try to use a lighter-hearted tone when I respond. ‘Well, thank you for giving me your hug revirginity.’
‘Hug revirginity,’ he repeats, shaking his head in a bemused way as he looks at me, his smile getting significantly bigger with every passing second. ‘I don’t think you can use a phrase like that without chocolate. This calls for that second slice, yes?’
I nod because I’m never going to say no to cake, and he grins in response. ‘Be right back.’
I let out a sigh as he goes back to the counter, like he knew I needed a minute to compose myself. I blow my nose and scrub a napkin over my face, and try not to think about how good that hug felt or what happens to make someone go for years without a hug. No wonder he’s so grouchy.
I’m still lost in thought when another slice of chocolate cake is placed on the table in front of me, and Ren sits back down in the chair opposite. ‘Okay, riddle me this. I don’t understand how that led to the shop opening… but if you want to leave it there for today, rest assured that I will question you mercilessly about it on another day.’
It makes me smile again, and I realise I never got as far as the part about the shop’s origins. ‘Afterwards, my dad was so angry at my mum. He thought she’d done it unnecessarily. Yeah, she’d rescued those boys, but she didn’t need to. They were screaming, panicking, but they were safe-ish, you know? They were on a dinghy, not in the water. The coastguard had been called. A lifeboat had been launched. They would likely have been okay, and he was so angry that she’d dived into dangerous water without thinking about the consequences. He thought she should have put her own safety and her own family first. She’d helped someone else’s kids at the cost of ripping a hole through our family. He always said that you have to be selfish when you have kids. You have to do everything you can to ensure you’re okay for them, and he was distraught, and grieving, and so, so, so angry at her for doing something so dangerous and impulsive, and paying the worst price. I stayed with my grandparents for about a week, and when I went home, he’d taken his frustration out on her belongings. It was like he’d tried to erase every hint of her from our lives. Photographs were torn up, wallpaper she’d chosen was ripped down, and he’d gathered up all her things and dumped them at charity shops.’
Ren looks horrified and I quickly defend my dad. ‘He was lost in a haze of grief. He didn’t know what he was doing. He didn’t think about me, or her parents, wanting things to remember her by, he just acted out his rage when he didn’t know what else to do with it. A couple of months later, he realised what he’d done, and he tried to get everything he’d thrown away back. He trawled the charity shops looking for things that hadn’t been sold yet. He begged them for info about the customers who’d bought things, but nothing was traceable. No one at the shops knew there was anything different about that donation, and everything had been put out and sold as normal. He could barely remember the shops he’d taken boxes to, so he trawled every charity shop and second-hand shop in the area. He managed to find a few bits of clothing that he knew were hers, and this necklace.’ I’m still holding the tiny gold mermaid’s tail in my fingers and I show it to him again. ‘By some miracle, it had fallen down the side of a workbench in the sorting room and only been found and put out that morning. He knew it was hers because it has this line where she bent it with her fingernail while she was sitting on the beachfront years earlier, waiting while he paced up and down, trying to build himself up to proposing, and after she’d bent her necklace, she got so annoyed at his dithering that she got up and proposed to him instead.’
Ren laughs. ‘She sounds like a special person.’
‘She was, I guess. I was too young to remember more than snapshots, but my dad filled my childhood with stories about her, the things she’d loved, things she’d done. He tried to make up for the photographs he’d ruined with mental images and tales of her escapades, and he never stopped searching charity shops. Every time we passed one, he went in and rooted through, but we never found anything else. But in all his searching, he realised something – that second-hand shops were full of treasures that someone had once loved. He came across so many things that had clearly meant something to someone once. He started buying things that he felt had a story behind them. A well-loved teddy bear. A dog-eared Judy Blume book with significant paragraphs highlighted. A battered doll from the 1950s.
‘I don’t know what he initially thought he was going to do with them, but he felt they deserved better than being thrown in a charity shop’s “reduced price” basket. He feared that they’d ended up there by mistake and their owner might be frantically looking for them, like he was for Mum’s things, and when he happened upon Ever After Street in its early days and saw an empty shop there, waiting for an owner, it was like something clicked into place for him, and he found a way of showcasing these wonderful treasures. His advertisements were on the basis of, “Are you looking for something you thought you’d never see again? You might be in luck!” and it struck a chord with people. He realised he was never going to get things back to their original owners, but he could sell them on to other people who saw the value in the history behind them as much as he did, who would look after them and give them the new home he thought they deserved.’
‘That explains so much.’ Ren’s voice is soft and he sounds mesmerised by what I’m saying, and neither of us have even taken a forkful of our second cake slice yet.
For once, it doesn’t sound like a bad thing, so I carry on. ‘At first, the shop was just a little weekend side project, but pretty soon he was taking time off from his day job because customers couldn’t get enough of his treasures. His shop was a living tribute to times gone by. Antiques but with a story behind them, a story that was more valuable than their monetary value, and customers appreciated that.’
‘You’re making me feel bad about my initial aversion now.’ Ren’s eyes flick down to the table and then back up to mine. ‘Can we call it a misunderstanding and move on? I’m sorry I was so callous about your shop.’
I could accept his apology and call it a day. I like the fact he’s willing to apologise and own his mistakes, and this is the perfect opportunity to prove that I know what I’m doing with my shop and he doesn’t, but no matter how brutally his opinions were voiced, he had a point, and it feels wrong to pretend he didn’t. ‘No.’
I glance at him and a look of disappointment clouds his face, and I clarify my point. ‘Because you were right, Ren. My shop is a hellhole. It’s crowded and cluttered and anything of real value in there is lost beneath quirky nonsense items that I’ve made up a story behind rather than stocking things with actual stories, like my father did. I’m losing customers daily, and it’s probably a matter of time until I actually lose one when someone wanders in and is never seen again or bumps into something and gets crushed by an avalanche of bric-a-brac. You were right, and you’re the only person who’s been honest with me since my dad died. He left some money in the business account, enough that I haven’t had to worry about expenses for the past couple of years, but now it’s running out, and it matters that I’m not earning much of an income. I need to change. Take it back to what it was years ago. I’ve been trying so hard to make him proud that I’ve lost sight of what he wanted to do in the first place.’
Ren’s finger traces a floral pattern on the tablecloth as he thinks about it. ‘Surely there’s room for both him and you ? Your shop is totally unique, and you are the strength behind that because you’re totally unique too.’
Just when I thought I couldn’t melt any more today. I don’t know whether it was intended as a compliment, but that’s the nicest, warmest thing to say, and it makes my heart glow inside my chest, almost as red as his cheeks are glowing.
‘At the moment, both me and the shop are overcrowded and cluttered, and I think people are going to buy things like dragon fruit tables.’
He laughs, but I continue. ‘I need to get rid of stuff. The trash that’s wormed its way in, the stuff that no one is ever going to buy, and I need to be honest with myself. I need to admit that I’ve got too caught up in fantasy tales as a way of avoiding the reality of running my dad’s shop without my dad. I need to admit that I still live in the hopes that, one day, something that belonged to my mum will cross my path, and the clutter is a misguided way of clinging on to both my parents, and maybe it’s time to let it go and focus on the important things.’
‘You’re off to a good start. Admitting it,’ he clarifies quickly. ‘Not of decluttering. Yet.’
‘I’m only admitting it to you. I haven’t got as far as admitting it to myself yet.’
He smiles, that understanding smile of solidarity again. ‘It’s often easier to admit things to other people rather than to yourself.’
I never thought someone who was so harsh at first could be so emotionally intelligent, and it makes me think again about what Ava overshared on the first day, and what he’s been through to make someone with so much inner sensitivity be so prickly on the outside.
‘Do you want help?’
I would probably have been less surprised if he’d asked me to accompany him for lunch on the moon. ‘From… you?’
‘Yeah, why not? Someone sensible, practical, who doesn’t believe in fairytales and knows enough about history to possibly recognise some truth behind the fantasies you concoct…’
I can feel an eyebrow rising. ‘High opinion of yourself there.’
‘The opposite, actually.’ He pauses and I see that flicker of something in his eyes again. Shyness or lack of confidence or something. Whatever it is, I want to know more about it and what put it there. ‘Seriously, Mickey. Next weekend. Ava’s at her grandparents’ all day on Sunday – my ex’s parents – and well, I could catch up on the housework, but helping you sounds like the more interesting option.’
Instinctively, I go to refuse, but I stop myself and think it over. On the one hand, this is a terrible idea. I will surely murder him within ten minutes, if we make it that long. On the other hand, he’s the only person who’s been honest about my shop in recent months, and a few of his barbs have hit closer to home than I would’ve liked. Who else would be a better choice? Lissa doesn’t want to upset me and there’s no one else I could ask for help, and honestly, I don’t know where to start on my own and the thought of trying to throw things away feels overwhelmingly impossible. And I’m touched by his offer. He’s objective, he’s not sentimental, and he has no qualms about upsetting me. And after today, the idea of spending more time with him isn’t an altogether bad one… ‘You take your life in your hands.’
He grins, a wide smile that reaches his eyes and changes his sharp features into much softer ones. ‘Duly noted.’
‘I’m not a declutterer by nature.’ Thank God he’s not an English teacher, he’d probably have me arrested for butchery of that word. ‘It’s unlikely to end well for either of us.’
‘Oh, are you not? I hadn’t noticed.’ His lips twitch like he’s trying not to smile any wider than he’s already smiling. ‘Do you honestly think any person has ever walked into your shop and thought, “Ah, yes, now this is the lair of a minimalist!”’
The laugh that bursts out of me takes me by surprise. He’s unintentionally much funnier than he realises, and there’s something about his bluntness, how he says whatever pops into his head without second-guessing it, whether it’s good or bad or kind or insulting, and for just a moment, the thrill of getting to know him better outshines the fear of any potential decluttering.