Chapter Six
The email from Declan’s publicist comes in the next morning. I barely notice it, though, because the quote from Mike the electrician comes in at the same time.
For five minutes I can’t do anything more than lie in bed and stare at the crack in the windowsill that I haven’t fixed.
It’s bad.
So bad, that if I do rewire the shop – which I have to – I won’t be able to pay any of the other bills in the drawer. We won’t survive past the end of next month.
I try to focus on my breathing, but it keeps catching in my throat.
I want to go back three years. To curl up in the beanbag in the corner of Brooks’ and watch Gran bustling around the shop, filling it with life and energy and hope.
To remember when it was a place that felt safe and happy, instead of a place whose survival depends solely on me.
To hear Gran tell me that everything is going to be okay.
I rub my chest and reach for my phone. I have no idea what to do, but I know I need to see her today.
Can you open up this morning?
Yumi replies almost immediately.
No problem, boss. Take all the time you need.
It’s so sincere that I know she’s hacked my email again and seen the quote from Mike and I can’t even bring myself to care. Then, as though realising that she’s given herself away, Yumi sends a follow-up message.
Locking up yesterday and opening today will mean I’ve used my key three times now. You should definitely consider buying me a gift.
A calendar alert comes through a second later: a reminder from Mum about our lunch today.
I close my eyes and then push myself out of bed.
I always have mixed feelings about coming to Glenhaven.
The building itself is beautiful – an old, Queen Anne revival-style house that has been renovated just enough so that it’s not freezing in the winter, but not so much that it’s lost its heart.
It also has gardens everywhere, pockets of space where residents can be outdoors without having to talk to anyone else if they don’t want to.
But it’s also a reminder that Gran doesn’t live in her town house any more.
The one that had barely any garden but was also somehow bursting with plants.
She never had enough space, but she never cared, because the park was only a short walk away.
And if the park was full of people? Well, that was just an added bonus.
Someone buzzes me in, and I head straight to Gran’s room. She isn’t there, and it makes my heart trip with hope. Maybe she’s having a good day today.
Mary, the nurse on duty at reception, greets me with a warm smile. ‘How’s tricks today, sweetheart?’
‘I’m okay. How’s your new grandson?’
Mary’s eyes light up with a joy so bright that my chest aches again and the edges of my smile slip. ‘He’s the cleverest baby in all of Australia,’ she confides. ‘And the most handsome. Not that I am in any way biased. I’ll bring him into your bookshop one day soon to show him off.’
I breathe through my nose. ‘I’d like that.’ I don’t tell her it will have to be in the next few weeks.
Mary winks, then nods down the corridor. ‘Last I saw your Gran she was in the relaxing room.’
I hesitate for a second. ‘Is she . . .’
‘She’s doing pretty well today,’ Mary says, her eyes softening along with her smile. ‘Though knowing Margaret, I’m sure she’s telling everyone what’s what down there.’
‘Thanks, Mary.’
The relaxing room is just a classier name for the TV room. Sure enough, that’s where I find Gran, arguing with one of the other residents about changing the channel on the communal television.
‘No one wants to watch a show about cooking.’ The man is towering over Gran but she stares him down from her place on the couch. ‘Give us the handsome doctors!’ she chants. She glances at me when I walk in. ‘Tell him, Peggy, no one wants to watch a cooking show.’
A wave of guilt washes over me even as a too-familiar punch of devastation hits me in the gut. Peggy is my mum’s name. But Gran is up and alert. It’s a good day, no matter that she doesn’t recognise me. That she might never recognise me again.
‘Sometimes there are handsome chefs on the cooking shows as well,’ I tell her and the man she’s arguing with crows in delight.
He takes advantage of Gran’s momentary distraction to snatch the remote from her hand and turn the volume up.
Then he pushes his walker triumphantly back to his seat in the front row, waving the remote control around like a freaking sceptre.
Gran glares at me. ‘What did you do that for?’ she asks.
‘I wanted you all to myself,’ I tell her. It’s not even a lie. ‘If there were too many good-looking men and women on the screen, I wouldn’t get a word out of you.’
Gran looks away, and I allow myself to swallow before I gently steer her out of the relaxing room and into the living area, away from the man and his remote control.
It’s quieter in the living area, and I carefully help Gran into an armchair at one of the coffee tables on the edges. She leans back in the fading green chair and looks around, the dispute over the cooking show seemingly forgotten.
There’s a couple playing chess two tables away from us, their speed probably averaging about a move every five minutes. On the opposite side of the room, there’s a man reading a book and a woman just staring out of the window at the trees.
For a moment we sit in silence. When Gran was in the bookshop, she was perpetually in motion or in conversation with someone.
She knew everyone in the neighbourhood by name, and some days it seemed like she had more regulars than books in the store.
Some people who came in didn’t even pretend to look at the shelves. They just came for a chat.
Everyone has stories, Clarrie , she would whisper to me. They might not all have a shiny cover.
I clear my throat, trying not to let the memories choke me.
‘I brought you something,’ I tell her. I reach down into my bag and pull out a new jumper and a thriller by a debut author I read last week that I know she would love, and I put them on the table.
Gran looks at the book, but doesn’t pick it up.
‘What’s that for?’ she asks.
‘I thought maybe I could read you some,’ I tell her past the lump that perpetually lodges itself in my throat when I visit.
I shouldn’t be mourning – Gran is right here; she’s sitting right in front of me.
But every time I see her it’s like a little piece of the grandmother I remember has faded.
Like the memories I have are being rewritten into a new story that I don’t quite understand.
And every time I have that thought it’s followed by a wave of guilt because it’s so selfish , but I still haven’t found a way to stop it creeping in.
‘I have a bookshop,’ Gran tells me. ‘It has the best window displays in the city, you know. We made one for Charlotte’s Web once. Arthur will tell you.’ She looks around. ‘Where is he?’
‘He’s not here at the moment,’ I tell her softly.
She shakes her head. ‘Arthur is hopeless with crafts. I do all the displays in our bookshop. It has the best window displays in the city, you know.’
‘I can imagine.’
She looks at the table, her eyes drifting to the book again.
‘I should go. I have to pick up Clarrie from school and take her to the shop. She loves it there almost as much as I love having her there. Like two peas in a pod, we are.’ She tries to push herself up, and I should help her, should find a way to distract her, but for a second I’m frozen in place.
She loves it there almost as much as I love having her there.
She mutters in frustration when she can’t easily get up and it yanks me back to myself. I reach out a hand to steady her back into the chair, then open the first page of the book. My voice only shakes a little as I start reading and she gradually relaxes back into her seat.
I try to imagine what she would say about the shop’s wiring.
She’d probably have found six solutions already, and would want to hear about Declan Archer and the book tour instead. She’d have already read his book, laughed for hours at the dedication, then taken my hands and told me that I deserved to be the subject of a thousand dedications.
She and Yumi probably would have made a stack of posters weeks ago announcing that I was the bookseller in the dedication and conned every local business within five miles to display them in their windows.
Or maybe none of that would have happened, because I wouldn’t have been alone the day Declan Archer came in. She would have still been there with me, the way she was always meant to be.
But being here with her reminds me of one thing: she’d have fought for the bookshop with everything she had to give.
For a second, I think about the money that guaranteed extra sales on a book tour would bring in. A fleeting image of Declan Archer’s green eyes, of him arching a smug eyebrow flits through my mind, and I push it away. A loan from my parents is preferable to that.
Even if the thought is like lead in my stomach.