Chapter Ten
Petra slept well that night. It might have been from relief.
Next morning, during a lull, she shared her latest idea with Flo.
“I’m going to ask the Beach Reads Book Club for their all-time favorite romance recommendations,” she told the older woman.
“I’ve got them all coming in for cake and prosecco in a couple of days, so I can pick their brains, and then we can order
in stock for Valentine’s Day.”
“Excellent!” said Flo. “And can I just say how lovely it is to see you be so enthusiastic. Fresh ideas, that’s what this place
needs.”
Settling into her stewardship of Capelthorne’s, Petra realized she was waking with feelings of joy instead of dread most days.
She would spring out of bed, well rested and excited, looking forward to everything in her schedule, from the first cup of tea, which she allowed herself to drink in bed while looking out at the wonderful view, to her days in the bookshop, chatting to customers; she had spent another pleasant evening in the pub with Freya and friends, was enjoying her catch-ups with Flo on Saturdays, and then there were her almost daily chats with Ross after work, which filled her evenings with laughter and companionship and inspiring conversations about anything and everything.
Thankfully, she had almost stopped blushing at his ridiculous good looks too, as her understanding of him as a person deepened.
Then, by mid-evening most days, there was her retreat to bed again—pleasantly tired—usually with cocoa. This last act of the
day was fabulous for another reason too: her reading habit was starting to return. And it felt like a pleasure too. She had
started with the Jane Eyre edition Ross had given her. Its familiarity made it a brilliant gateway drug, giving her confidence to stretch her mind with
other old favorites and then—with the odd lurch of painful memories from her recent career crash—some of the books that were
the talk of the literary world. As Alistair had told her, working in Capelthorne’s provided her with “all the books she could
eat,” and that was gradually becoming more a blessing than a curse as the new titles arrived in brown cardboard boxes a couple
of times a week.
“Why did you choose Portneath?” Petra asked one evening, as she and Ross lounged in comfortable silence in front of the fire.
“Did you know it?”
“No,” he replied. “I came here because I didn’t know it. I had no memories, no friends, no family here.”
“Are they terrible people, your family, then?” This was something Petra could relate to, having no close family herself. At
least, no family she chose to keep close.
Ross considered. “No, they’re really not terrible at all. My mum’s a sweetheart, and Dad’s fine, apart from the emotional
repression, which is generational, to be fair.”
“Where are they?”
“Can you guess?” he laughed.
“Okay, well, Scotland presumably. I notice you contrive to maintain an impenetrable Scottish accent.”
“Nothing contrived about it,” he defended himself. “Although I quite like being hard to understand; it makes people think
I might be saying something profound when I’m not.”
“Or so you fondly assume,” Petra teased.
“Tell me about your family,” he said, ignoring her attempt to wind him up.
Petra shrugged. “Dad buggered off with another woman when I was little,” she told him. “He went on to marry her and have another
family. I have two half-siblings. One is less than a year younger than me, so go figure. Mum was predictably furious and devastated.
Refusing to have anything to do with him myself felt like solidarity at the time.”
Petra frowned. It was true, as a small child, she felt—and was possibly encouraged to feel—that asking to see her father was
disloyal. As far as she was aware, he had made no attempt to maintain contact with her either. Her mother had made it clear
he was doing nothing to support the two of them financially once he left. As Petra got older, she learned to despise him for
this nearly as much as her mother did.
“Mum had to work really hard to support us both,” Petra went on, staring into the flames, remembering. “It was tough for her.
I had everything I needed. She provided for me well.”
“But she wasn’t around much,” observed Ross. It wasn’t a question.
“No. I got used to letting myself into an empty house. I made my own tea. Did my homework on my own, got myself ready for bed . . .”
“You brought yourself up?”
“I did,” Petra agreed brightly. It was fine. She didn’t need pity.
“Are you close now?”
“Ha!” The exclamation escaped her, expressing more than she intended to say. “We really aren’t,” she admitted. “Mum lives
in Spain. She says I’m welcome any time, but after the first day, we’ve basically got nothing to say to each other. If we
could just meet for a quick cup of tea, we would probably do it fairly often, but—all the way to Spain . . .” Petra didn’t
finish. It occurred to her in that moment that she hadn’t told her mother what had happened, hadn’t thought for one moment
that she should escape the fallout from her smashed career in Spain. That she might flee to her remaining parent for comfort
and reassurance. The possibility hadn’t even registered as an option. Which said it all.
“What about your half-siblings?” Ross persisted.
Petra puffed out her cheeks. “I think they’re up north somewhere. We don’t know each other at all, really. Maybe one day . . .
What about you? Siblings?”
“Just me,” he told her. “Can you imagine? Their one and only child announces he wants to be a writer. Watching their little
faces . . . the hope fading that their son would ever make anything of himself . . .”
“Except that you did,” Petra reminded him. “They must have been so proud, no?”
“Yeah, yeah . . . Mum enjoyed telling all her friends when I started being talked about, winning awards . . . I’m pretty sure I didn’t come up in conversation much when I was starving in a garret for years before that.”
“Do writers still have garrets?” Petra teased.
“It’s the law,” he said. “It’s only the absence of a garret that hinders my writing now, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Petra agreed cautiously. Right from the beginning of their friendship, there had been an omertà over anything
other than the most frivolous jest touching on his writing and her agenting. “What even is a garret?” Petra mused, steering the conversation away.
“God knows,” he said. “But I think they have to be freezing, whatever they are, and it’s so cozy in here that I don’t want
to leave,” he said, getting up to poke the fire and shove another log on.
“Supper?” asked Petra, emboldened. Usually, Ross took himself off after two hours or less, being apparently reluctant to impose
on her evening routine.
Or possibly reluctant to relinquish his.
“It’s only baked potatoes with cheese and beans,” she admitted.
“My favorite,” Ross declared. “But I’m inviting myself . . . that’s not right. I should be cooking for you.”
“Then do,” said Petra. “That would be very nice. But not tonight.”
In truth, Petra thought later—when Ross had left, after a supper eaten in comfortable near silence—he had never even invited her to his rented cottage.
Instead, they invariably met in the shop, and then the little flat.
She had once proposed a coffee at Freya’s, but he declined with something approaching fear in his eyes.
Despite their easy rapport, there was still a guardedness about him, and as far as she knew, she was still his only friend around Portneath.
However repressed he might be around her, it would seem he was even more insular with everyone else he might encounter.
Petra had lined up cake and prosecco as a treat for the Beach Reads Book Club and was laying it all out when Diana, ever glamorous,
had wafted into the shop looking cool and elegant in ice blue cashmere with a matching scarf.
“Darling, I’m positively freezing,” she declared to Petra as she air-kissed. “Shall we put the kettle on?”
“Of course,” said Petra. “I was thinking the same.”
By the time the two women had made tea for themselves and laid out the wine and fresh cream gateaux, the others had arrived,
stamping their feet to warm them up and chattering about their weekend plans.
Petra and Flo, on the other hand, knew they would be working a busy Saturday in the shop, with the remains of the inventory
on Sunday. Valentine’s Week coincided with school vacation, and they were expecting to be busy as the population of Portneath
soared during the holidays, and not just during the summer as Petra had previously assumed.
“So,” declared Petra, when all had full glasses and cake plates in hand, “there is a reason for our generosity this evening.
Capelthorne’s is turning over its window and its most prime selling space in-store to the best romance stories ever, and we
want to know from you which ones they are. And,” she said, looking around the group, “we want a particular focus on commercial fiction, although,” she added hastily, “remember,
even the classics were the commercial fiction of their time, so nothing is really off limits, right?”
“Right!” they all chorused, their faces filled with eager anticipation at the task ahead. Flo, having finished distributing the cake, was now womaning the flip chart, with her marker pen at the ready.
“So who’s going to start?” prompted Petra.
“Frenchman’s Creek,” declared Diana, “and we’re in du Maurier country too, so it’s perfect. I’m fed up with du Maurier always meaning Rebecca,” she went on. “Not that I don’t love it too, obviously.”
“But Rebecca’s less of a love story,” agreed Flo. “Although I suppose you could say Max and the Girl . . .”
“Hmm,” chipped in Mungo, “not the most equal relationship. And more coercive control than love, I’ve always thought.”
“True,” said Flo, uncapping her pen ready to write. “We’ll go with Frenchman’s Creek.”
“Plus, it’s got an actual pirate king in it,” said Petra happily. She didn’t know if it was just her own personal interest
or whether she was intuiting the next big thing, but she adored a pirate.