Chapter 12
It was perhaps inevitable that Jules would be walking past Portneath Books on the way up to Belinda’s to meet Freya at the
exact moment Roman and Cally were coming out, deep in conversation with each other.
“Aha,” he said, spying her trying to sneak past with her head averted. “Enemy incursion.”
“I believe the pavement is generally considered to be no-man’s-land,” she countered, contemplating pushing past, but Roman
was standing solidly in her way.
“What do you think of our new window display?” he asked. “You know, you should really light your windows better.”
Jules glanced. She always knew exactly what he had in the window. Wasn’t she sneaking looks at it all day long? “One word,”
she told him scathingly, pointing at the searingly bright spotlights, “‘the planet.’”
“Actually, that’s two—”
“I know ,” she snapped.
“And it’s all low energy, to be fair,” continued Roman in an infuriatingly reasonable tone.
“No defense,” Jules replied. “Light pollution is bad. It, er, confuses the bats—which you would know, if you knew anything. Excuse me.” She pushed past on the narrow pavement. “Places to be.”
Her heart was still pounding when she got to Belinda’s, where Freya was already waiting with the owner of the eponymous shop.
“So sorry.” Jules cringed, stuffing her anger and discombobulation at seeing Roman with Cally back in their box, with difficulty.
“Am I late? Are you wanting to close?”
“I don’t mind a bit, my darling, I promised I’d stay open for Freya,” Belinda told her. She was a comfortable lady in her
mid-fifties, always impeccably polished, who did good business in pre-loved designer clothes with a sideline in dress rentals.
“I’ve found an absolute treasure,” Freya said excitedly. “I knew it was perfect as soon as I saw it.”
“Your wedding dress?” asked Jules. “Are you going full bridezilla meringue?”
Freya laughed. “No, not a meringue. I’ve got this beautiful dress that belonged to Mum. I wanted to somehow have her there,
in a sense, so it’s perfect...” She trailed off, looking sad. And then she recollected herself: “This is a dress for you.
It’s going to look so amazing, but if you don’t like it you have to say, promise?”
“Show me,” Jules said, smiling. “If you love it, I’m sure I’ll love it.”
With some ceremony, Belinda whisked out a custard-yellow dress in satin with some sort of floaty, chiffony overlayer in the
same color, holding it up reverently for the other two women to admire it.
“The color is so perfect,” Freya said breathlessly.
“I’m having a mainly yellow bouquet, did I say?
Mixed late-season daffodils from this flower farm in Cornwall—the benefit of getting married in spring.
So when I saw this... What do you think?
Try it on?” Freya looked anxiously at Jules, who had managed to plaster a sickly smile onto her face.
“Of course,” she said, allowing Belinda to wave her to a little curtained cubicle at the back of the shop.
When she put it on and looked in the mirror, Jules’s heart sank. Now the dress looked even worse than it had on the hanger.
It bagged at the waist, puffed out oddly at the widest part of Jules’s hips, and ended at just exactly the wrong length below
the knee. As a final visual insult, the egg-yolk yellow was not a color Jules, with her red hair and green eyes, would willingly
wear in a hundred years.
But this wasn’t about her.
She came out and gave Freya a twirl.
“Don’t you just love it?” Freya asked, eyes shining and hands pressed to her cheeks. “Mum...” She swallowed and stopped
for a moment. “Mum would have adored it,” she said, tipping her chin up defiantly and impatiently dabbing tears from the corners
of her eyes. “Grr, always crying ,” she told herself distractedly.
“I think it’ll be great,” said Jules, giving Freya a fierce hug. How could she say anything else? “Well found,” she added,
with all the warmth she could muster.
“What are you and Finn doing for a honeymoon?” Jules asked Freya as they walked back down the street together. The despised
yellow dress, in a polyethylene cover, now hung carefully over Jules’s arm.
“Bit of a busman’s holiday,” Freya admitted happily.
“We’re doing a tour of Ireland in this beautiful little hired camper van.
Just me, Finn, and the open road. He wants to take me on a food tour of Ireland—I’ve never been—and there’s such amazing produce out there: shellfish, cheese and butter, soda bread.
.. Some of my chef heroes run restaurants in and around Dublin, and there’s quite a few traditional recipes that the big names have refined in their menus.
Finn’s made reservations—we’re eating in all the cool places—plus Finn’s signed me up to a cookery school weekend with Declan Kelly! ” Freya’s eyes shone at the thought.
“Wow!” said Jules. She was no foodie, but even she had heard of Declan Kelly. “Won’t he be a bit daunted, having a chef from another Michelin-starred restaurant turning up
to his course?”
“God no,” Freya said, laughing. “Little me? Hardly. Plus I’m not in Paris now, and Freya’s doesn’t have a star, not surprisingly...”
“Don’t do yourself down,” Jules told her. “And make sure you drink loads of Irish whiskey while you’re there too.”
“Ooh yes, Irish coffee! Yum! Finn’s a big Murphy’s fan. I don’t like to tell him I prefer Guinness—he might decide not to
marry me.”
“Nothing’s going to make that man decide not to marry you,” Jules reassured her, giving her friend a loving squeeze on the
arm. It was so wonderful for Freya that her life was going right. Finn was an absolute treasure. And after all, Freya—like
Jules—had come home to Portneath after years trying to build a life elsewhere. Maybe being in Portneath in the longer term
was the right thing for her too. Maybe she could find her very own Finn and settle down to a new life.
Nah. Pigs might fly.
Back at the shop, where Flo was just finishing up for the day, Jules briefly filled Flo in on her little expedition. Then,
after supper together, suddenly fatigued beyond words, Jules went to curl up in bed with a book. She had a new, long-awaited
thriller by one of her favorite writers that had just come in that morning. She wasn’t allowed to put it out on sale for another
week, but there was nothing stopping her from reading it herself.
There were definite compensations to running a bookshop.
Jules was delighted, the following morning, when children’s library coordinator Jess, from the local primary schools, popped in, as she occasionally did, to look at any new children’s books that might have come in.
“Distract me!” Jules pleaded. “If you won’t sit down and have a cup of tea with me, I’ll have no excuse not to get on with
the invoices.”
When they were settled in the little office with their steaming mugs and a packet of fig rolls, Jules outlined some of her
ideas for celebrating Capelthorne’s centenary.
“I’d love to do a writer in residence or two,” she said. “I don’t suppose you happen to have links with any local writers?
Doesn’t have to be novelists—could be poets, memoirists—and self-published is fine...”
“I’ll have a think,” said Jess, “but the person who springs to mind instantly is a children’s book writer and illustrator.
Would that be any good?”
“Totally! Who?”
“Well, I mean, you probably already know—there’s Imogen Crawley just up the road.”
“ The Imogen Crawley, as in the Carnegie Medal winner? The Tango and Ruth books? I love those books.” Imogen Crawley had burst onto the scene to unprecedented success not long before. She was one of publishing’s
unicorns—a debut triumph—and the one all the other publishers wanted to beat, with rumors of a big, animated film coming out
at some point in the future too.
“Yup, that’s the one,” confirmed Jess. “She lives in Middlemass. Married to the gorgeous Gabriel Havenbury, from Middlemass
Hall? They don’t live at the Hall anymore, though, they’re in Storybook Cottage now—that’s the really pretty little house
near the gates to Middlemass Hall, do you know?”
“I do! How does a Carnegie-prizewinning children’s book illustrator live in my old childhood village, and I don’t even know about it?”
exclaimed Jules.
“She’s a blow-in like me.” Jess grinned. “I’ve lived there a little bit longer than Imo, but, yeah, she’s settled in well.
Part of the furniture up there now.”
“She must be really grand, though,” said Jules, who well remembered the handsome, intimidating Gabriel of old. There was absolutely
no chance he would ever remember her. He had been one of Roman’s mates, just like Finn—very much one of the cool crowd. Jules
was sure his new wife would be equally unapproachable. “I imagine I’d have to curtsy to her, wouldn’t I? How do you address
the partner of a lord? Is it ‘my lady’? I have no clue.”
“God, no,” said Jess. “Just call her Imo. She’s really down-to-earth. Hang on, I don’t believe it, that’s ridiculous...”
Jess had been idly looking out the office door and through the front of the shop as she spoke, and suddenly she leaped to
her feet and charged out into the street, taking by surprise a small, curly-haired woman walking past with a toddler strapped
into a stroller.
Jules watched as Jess, talking excitedly, dragged the poor woman into the shop and through to the office.
“If this isn’t kismet, I don’t know what is,” she declared. “Jules, please allow me to present the one and only Imogen Crawley,
soon to be Capelthorne’s painter-in-residence extraordinaire.”
Jules wasn’t sure how pleased she should be with Jess’s impulsive action. Fate was all very well, but the whole artist-in-residence
thing was just a germ of an idea; she would have liked longer to sort out the details before she had to pitch it to anyone.
Now Imogen would think she was hopelessly unprofessional, making stuff up as she went along.
“It’s amazing to meet you,” she told Imogen, with a smile. “Of course, I know and adore your work. I had no idea you were local until Jess told me about ten seconds ago.”
“That’s about as long as I’ve been here,” joked Imogen, springing the child from her stroller in response to protesting noises
that were increasing in volume. “It’s all been a bit of a whirlwind, what with this one.” She dropped a kiss onto the silky
black hair of the child who, having got what she wanted, nestled into Imogen’s neck and plugged her mouth with her thumb triumphantly.
“She’s adorable,” said Jules, melting. And she didn’t even like babies. As the child sucked audibly on her thumb, her eyes drooped closed, dark lashes fanning across her round pink cheeks.
“So, this is Ruth,” Imogen said, taking a tiny, starfish hand and waggling it at them in greeting. “Hah! Dead to the world
now , and well she might be, after keeping me and Gabriel up half the night.”
“What? You mean your baby’s called Ruth, like the character in your books?” said Jules, enchanted. “Don’t tell me Tango is
a real cat too?”
“Sorry. Staggering lack of imagination on my part,” admitted Imogen. “Although, in my defense, the baby came after the book character, but I admit, I already had the cat in real life.”
“And is the real Tango a bit of an egotist like the one in the books?” probed Jules.
“Worse,” Imogen divulged. “In mitigation, he does adore the baby, though. She takes every opportunity to pull his tail, and
he keeps his claws to himself in the face of impossible provocation. So, are you really looking for an artist-in-residence?”
Imogen looked around the little shop, as if she expected to already see someone quietly painting away in the corner.
“I thought I might be,” said Jules, screwing up her face, “but I hadn’t really got any further than that. Would you seriously
even consider it? I’d be blown away if you said yes.”
“I do love this shop,” Imogen said. “And I know you’ve got competition from Roman now, which must be tough.
I remember coming in here a lot when I was expecting Ruth.
That was just before my first book came out, and well, my feet haven’t touched the ground since.
” She shook her head in disbelief. “I’d love to help.
.. to give something back to the industry that’s been so kind to me. I know I’m incredibly lucky.”
“You must be too busy, though, no?” Why am I talking her out of it? thought Jules.
“To be honest, it could help me,” insisted Imogen. “I’ve got Gabriel working downstairs below my studio at the Hall, and he’s
always coming up for a chat. We’re shockingly bad about not interrupting each other. Gabe’s productivity’s gone right down
too. I’m working on a new book at the moment,” she went on, “and it would be great to come here and find a bit of focus. Have
easel and paints, will travel, but”—she grimaced—“I could only do a couple of days a week, when Ruth’s in nursery—would that
be any good?”
“It would be fantastic!” said Jules, hardly able to believe her ears. “Maybe if you just do two weeks? I’d make sure we had
loads of your books in stock, naturally, and you could maybe sign them for customers? We’ll promote you like mad, get you
on the local radio, all that stuff...”
“Sure,” said Imogen. “I’ve been on South Devon Sound a fair bit, I know one of the presenters there, so that should be okay.”
“Oh, and maybe...” Jules stopped. It would be a cheek to ask.
“Maybe I could even do, like, a talk or a workshop thing or something?” Imogen ventured.
“Yes!” said Jules, mind whirling with possibilities. “We could sell tickets with refreshments and a signed copy of a book
priced in?”
“Ooh!” said Jess. “If you’re doing workshops, I want in, please!
I’ve got some amazing artistic children in my schools locally.
This could be the most incredible enrichment activity for them—really inspiring.
I’ve got one kid—my stepdaughter, if I’m honest—who is the most extraordinarily talented manga artist. She would simply fly with a bit of encouragement from a real-life illustrator. ”
“Done,” said Imogen.
“This is going to be great,” said Jules happily.
Ha. There was no way Roman was going to match this.