Love on a Bookshelf

Prologue

Do you ever have days where you wake up and everything is great?

The sun shines through your bedroom window to gently caress your face and you can practically feel it in your soul.

Warmth spreads from your cheeks to your toes; you’re smiling before your eyes even open.

Your first-thing-in-the-morning stretch hits all the right muscles and you can almost hear somebody whisper: Today is going to be a good day .

Hell, you feel so good that it might even be you who whispers it.

You spring out of bed, ready to embrace not only the morning, but life itself.

As you enter your kitchen, the smell of freshly brewed coffee and warm bread filling the air, you make eye contact through the open window with your stupidly attractive neighbour.

He winks, but in a nice, natural, not-at-all-sleazy way, and says: I invented another new pastry for you.

And you say, Another one, Jean-Luc? but you totally manage to pull it off.

Then he says: What can I say? You inspire me .

And then there’s probably some birds singing at your window.

At the very least, there’s a rainbow or something.

Today, however, is not one of those days.

It’s the rain that wakes me. It hammers in sheets against the glass, loud and persistent, and then drips down my wall through the crack in the seal that I haven’t got around to fixing.

I keep my eyes resolutely closed.

The past few months have been some of the worst of my life, and Jamie leaving last night feels like the straw that broke the camel’s back. I have given myself permission to stay in bed as long as I need.

Apparently, the rain didn’t get the memo.

Splat. A drop on my forehead.

Splat . One on my nose.

Splat, splat, splat. Because, seriously, we would hate for my hair to miss out.

I roll over and pull the pillow over my head. It’s 5 a.m. , I want to scream into it. But the rain doesn’t give even the smallest of craps, and it keeps pounding until the side of my pillow is wet too.

I lie still for a few minutes, trying to decide whether it’s better to be wet, angry and vaguely rested, or tired and marginally less drenched.

In the end, I can’t get back to sleep anyway.

I flip onto my back and stretch my hands above my head. A muscle in my groin screams in protest. My groin. In an arm stretch.

I limp my way over to the mirror. A wet, cranky version of myself peers back at me through eyes that are rimmed with dark circles.

My nose is red and puffy, which should nicely match my new down jacket, and my short brown hair is already frizzing out at the sides in rebellion against the unprovoked rain attack.

As well as bedraggled, I look like I spent half the night crying. Which is, sadly, accurate.

I hobble into the kitchen, treading carefully in case my groin decides to just completely give up.

The tiles are icy cold under my bare feet and the sink is filled with last night’s dishes: a single plate and a butter knife.

On the plus side, there are no saucepans, frying pans or any other cutlery, which is one of the many benefits of having toast for dinner.

That, and my fancy Wolf toaster is pretty close to perfect even when nothing else is.

Still, my breath catches at the starkness of it. Dinner for one, please.

It’s still early enough that it’s dark outside, darker still because of the rain, but the light is on at Mrs Potts’ house next door.

I can see her, bustling around her kitchen, making breakfast for her husband of twenty years.

Fried tomatoes with scrambled eggs, bacon and freshly baked bread.

Same as every morning. Her kitchen is somehow both beige and happy, and the scene is so domestic that for a second it makes my heart hurt, imagining the two of them falling in love and moving into what has become their home.

They probably danced around that same kitchen, kissed against that exact fridge.

Told each other stories of their lives at their big wooden dining-room table that looks worn with love and time.

Then Mrs Potts catches me watching her. She opens her window, motioning for me to do the same. The rain spits at me as soon as I do, finding the gap with an immediate vengeance that is both impressive and affronting.

‘You left your light on again last night,’ Mrs Potts calls out her window.

After everything that happened, I did stay up late. Reading. And crying. Then reading and crying some more. One of the perks – and pitfalls – of being a bookseller is the joy of discovering new books and the necessity of doing so even when you feel like total rubbish.

‘Just reading,’ I call back, miming the action with my hands.

‘Tell someone who cares,’ yells Mrs Potts. ‘It shines directly into our bedroom, so either read in the dark or shut your effing blinds!’

Believe me, Mrs Potts, I would love to, but they are very much broken, like at least thirty per cent of the things in my apartment. And good morning to you too.

I don’t get to call this back though, because Mrs Potts has already slammed her window shut.

‘I hope your bacon is cold,’ I mutter instead, having apparently already stooped to talking to myself.

I pull my own window shut and a moment later a pigeon lands on the windowsill.

It ruffles its feathers, seemingly unbothered by the fact that they’re slick from the rain.

For a second, I forget about the pain in my groin and my angry neighbour and even my damp head.

That pigeon has braved the elements. It has made a home and a life for itself, despite the hardships, and it still has the tenacity to fix its hair when it finds a moment of shelter.

My heart lifts. Maybe today won’t completely suck.

Then the pigeon flies away, leaving a pile of crap on my windowsill. Excellent .

It’s five past nine by the time I finally make it to Brooks’ Books, the bookshop that my grandparents started with blood, sweat and tears fifty years ago. I’ve held the keys for over a month now, but I still can’t think of it as anything but theirs.

There’s a random bike sitting in front of the stoop and I’m about to shift it out of the way when there’s movement in the doorway of the antique shop next door and a moment later Ruth appears. She’s smiling with her usual perpetual warmth, and just the sight of her makes my throat burn.

‘Clarrie!’ she cries with genuine delight. My gut twists. I don’t think I can do this today.

‘Morning, Ruth.’

‘Knit, Stitch and Yarn is on tomorrow night,’ she says.

She doesn’t even blink at my lack of enthusiasm and another stab of guilt rushes through me at all the things I’m not doing.

But Knit, Stitch and Yarn was Gran’s thing, not mine, and the idea of being there without her makes me want to be sick.

‘Thanks, Ruth. I’ll keep it in mind,’ I say, even though we both know that I won’t be there.

Ruth watches me for a moment, then reaches out and briefly squeezes my hand. Her skin is soft and wrinkled, but her grip is surprisingly strong. ‘You have a good day, Clarrie,’ she says.

I blink back the tears that have suddenly sprung to the corner of my eyes. ‘You too, Ruth.’

She ducks inside and it takes me a minute to catch my breath before I can make myself move again. I shift the bike from in front of the shop and shove the key in the bookshop’s temperamental lock. Obviously, it doesn’t twist, and I reach up to jiggle the top of the door loose. But then: my groin.

I look down, like that might be able to somehow, I don’t know – will it better with my eyes? – and that’s when I notice the ladder in my stockings.

‘Of course,’ I whisper, just as someone makes a noise behind me.

My heart leaps momentarily, stupidly thinking it might be Jamie, come to win me back. Or, at the very least, a customer.

But it is, in fact, just a very irate-looking man who proceeds to yell at me for daring to touch his bike.

And as I’m standing there, trying to find the right words to tell him that a pigeon crapped on my windowsill, all I can think about is how Gran would’ve convinced him to come inside for a cup of tea by now.

She would have had him laughing in no time, joining in herself, with that bright cackle of hers – the one you could hear from down the street when the door was open.

And, it goes without saying, she would have definitely sold him a book.

But I’m not Gran. I’m not even close.

Instead, I finally manage to mumble that I’d appreciate it if he could park his bike elsewhere.

He shakes his head as he wheels it away, and a wave of directionless anger swells in my gut.

She was meant to be here. She was meant to do this with me.

And instead she’s in a nursing home that she will hate until she forgets that she hates it, and her memories of this dream that she built slowly slip through my fingers.

I shove the key in the lock like my hand isn’t trembling, daring it to fight me this time. But it doesn’t. The lock twists, and I slip inside, leaning back against the door for just a second as the smell of books hits me.

Home.

And occasional prison.

I stand there until I realise it’s so cold that I can see my breath in the air.

I sigh, then reach over to turn on the old, sad air-conditioner that will pant and puff out heat for at least two hours before the shop is a vaguely comfortable temperature.

Like most buildings in Australia, Brooks’ is not well insulated.

I make a cup of coffee and spend the next few hours unstacking the new boxes of books that almost definitely don’t fit on the shelves, figuring that the physical activity at least will keep me warm.

There are no customers, and by 11 a.m. I’m already wondering if it’s too early to go home.

I put the kettle on again instead, closing my eyes and listening to the steady, rising shriek.

But, just before it hits a crescendo, it cuts out.