Chapter Thirteen
Gabe Sharma was a very busy man. Some might even say a very important man. After all, The Times Literary Supplement had called him ‘one of the country’s most eminent philosophical thinkers’, though whenever anyone mentioned that, Gabe would protest and duck his head because no one liked a show-off.
However, it was fair to say that as a very busy, very important person, at any one time he had lots of things on his mind.
For instance, the library, which, rather than being a collection of books with mystical properties, Gabe now regarded as a collection of problems, only solvable by throwing huge quantities of money at them.
His academic work was also all-consuming.
Gabe was currently rather peeved that the last article he’d published in Philosophy Now and Then had had a bracing rebuttal from a young upstart who lived to write bracing rebuttals to any work Gabe published.
Just because Gabe had sat on the dissertation committee when the little toad had defended his thesis.
Defended it very poorly with specious arguments and a distinct lack of verifiable sources.
He should also spend time sitting with his disappointment. No, that wasn’t the right word … his dismay that one of his brightest and most promising PhD students had recently had a Damascene epiphany and was leaving academia for an obscenely well-paid job at a private bank.
Yes, there were so many things that should be occupying Gabe’s mind and yet all he could think about was Tess Hardy.
It was almost four days since Tess had exited stage left from the library, gone, never to return.
Three days, nineteen hours and twenty-seven minutes to be exact.
Yet Gabe fancied that lingering traces of her perfume still remained.
The soft scent of blowsy roses and something tart yet sweet like rhubarb or blackcurrants.
It wasn’t just the echo of her fragrance, it was as if her ghost haunted the library even though Gabe categorically didn’t believe in ghosts.
An afterlife, perhaps. The metaphysical presence of memory and trauma on a geographical location, possibly.
Yet he had no explanation for why whenever he approached the Loans Desk he could see Tess leaning back against it as Rochester was banished, elbows braced, the relief palpable.
On this particular May morning, it had rained on the walk from his flat in Bermondsey to the library and when Gabe opened his big black umbrella, he realised that it had lost its rain-repelling qualities thanks to Tess upending it into a puddle.
Realised and wasn’t even cross about it. Not even a little bit cross.
Who was this man that Gabe had suddenly become?
The kind of man who couldn’t even enjoy a post-work beer without thinking about Tess Hardy’s mouth.
The way her lips had pursed as she’d taken a sip of small batch-brewed beer from a brightly coloured can, her throat so soft and white as she’d swallowed.
He was even having trouble sleeping lately even though he always practised a simple five-minute cognitive shuffling technique, which usually sent him straight to sleep.
Now he lay in the dark, thinking of nothing else but watching Tess across a crowded dim sum restaurant in the company of another man, that absolute villain, Rochester.
Even though he hadn’t been fit to kiss the hem of Tess’s quirky black dress adorned with books, she’d given him the full weight of her attention.
Her smiles. Her sparkling blue eyes fixed on him.
The nod of her head. The touch of her hands as she’d given him a chopstick tutorial.
She really had given the date, that awful man, everything and …
And.
And.
It was an uncomfortable thought. One that Gabe really didn’t want to sit with for long, but he hadn’t ever given his dates everything. Probably, at best, if he really liked them, sixty per cent. It wouldn’t even have occurred to him to have given them any more than that.
His attitude to dating, to relationships, had always been that if they were both consenting adults who wanted to be in each other’s company, why put in much effort that could be put to better use in other aspects of his life?
Love wasn’t too high on his personal agenda. In fact, it wasn’t on his personal agenda at all. Not even as an addendum or a footnote. After all, didn’t Nietzsche say that the thing people call love ‘may be the most ingenuous expression of egoism’?
However, Ella begged to differ. Not that Gabe was in the habit of taking advice or philosophical counsel from his younger/older sister. Especially when its essence could be boiled down to one pithy and actually quite character-assassinating speech.
‘Falling in love would be the making of you,’ she’d once said, eyes narrowed when Gabe turned up for the Sharma family Sunday lunch on his own, as per usual.
‘And getting your heart broken, properly broken, would be the best thing that could ever happen to you. It’s all very well reading other people’s theories on how to live, but until you’ve experienced the highs and lows of love, you’re just existing. ’
‘Sounds tiresome. I think I’ll pass,’ Gabe had said with the lofty smile which always got a rise out of his sister.
In all honesty, he couldn’t see the point of having his heart broken. He liked his heart as it was, in perfect working order. Beating out a steady fifty-five beats a minute. Slightly lower than average because Gabe was in peak physical fitness for a man his age.
Whereas it sounded as if Tess had had her heart broken at least once.
She’d talked about bad dates, but there had to have been a couple of more serious relationships in her past. She was pretty, if you liked that soft, pre-Raphaelite, Rubenesque kind of thing.
She was well read, if one could be well read if you only ever read novels.
Funny too. A fifty-fifty split of funny haha and funny peculiar.
So, yes, there must have been a good handful of men who had fallen in love with Tess Hardy. Then gone on to break her heart or vice versa. The heart breaking clearly hadn’t been the making of her because she seemed sad, unfulfilled.
As they were now inclined to do, Gabe’s thoughts had drifted back to Tess.
He was ensconced in the back office, the scene of their last meeting.
He was supposed to be going through the estimates they’d had for repairing the roof.
Instead, he was gazing into space, or rather, looking at the spot where Tess had sat on the sofa, unhappiness making her voice tight and her body curl in on itself.
Then Gabe remembered what had happened ten minutes after that.
His hands on Tess’s shoulders, his thumb making contact with the hollow of her clavicle.
A tiny patch of skin, usually hidden. His expression grew pensive, his breath caught, as he also recalled the way she’d talked about getting fucked.
Or unfucked. Either way she’d used the root word ‘fuck’ twice.
Now, the memory of it made Gabe shut his eyes as he felt his groin tighten.
He really had to stop thinking about her.
She’d caused quite enough distraction as it was.
His focus, his attention was needed for very boring, stressful things like the leaking roof and the tens of thousands of pounds needed to mend it. Not to mention the scaffolding. Clearly, he’d chosen the wrong career path. The average scaffolder had to be a multi-millionaire.
He heard footsteps outside, then the door opened. ‘I wanted to pop in and see how Tess’s date went the other night.’ Ella stood there looking oddly fragile without her gigantic son clinging to her. ‘Good, I hope. Who did she pick?’
‘Where’s the little fat baby?’ Gabe asked, which was how all the Sharmas affectionally referred to Avi, who was in the top 95th percentile for his age.
‘You do know that I’m still a person in my own right. I’m not just a mother!’ Ella snapped. She looked tired and was clearly in a temper. He needed to tread very carefully.
‘I do know that. Sleep regression still a thing?’ he asked as Ella plopped onto the sofa.
‘Even the Greeks couldn’t write a worse tragedy than last night’s sleep cycle on my Apple watch,’ came the mournful reply. ‘So, who did she go for? Someone lovely, I hope, like John Thornton from North and South.’
‘No, not him … if you wanted to have a little nap, I could make myself scarce,’ Gabe suggested, but sadly, it was hard, almost impossible, to fool someone you’d shared a womb with for nine very formative months.
‘Tell me now or I will smack you,’ Ella said even though it was obvious that she wasn’t moving off the sofa anytime soon.
‘Roch––’
‘Nooooooo!’ It was an anguished wail. ‘Don’t say his name!’
‘I won’t,’ Gabe said quickly. ‘Maybe if you shut your eyes, you might be able to get some …’
‘How could you let her pick that mansplaining, gaslighting git?’ Ella demanded, struggling up on her elbows all the better to glare at him. Her glare lacked its usual precision as her eyes were red and swollen.
‘I didn’t know what he was really like. Stuffy, yes, from my previous encounters with him, but I hadn’t realised the full extent of his personality defects until I googled him during the date.
I did manage to warn her off any Russians though,’ Gabe pointed out, but Ella was not handing out any brownie points. Not today.
‘You must start reading some novels. I need you to be fully on board with The Love Library, which means you’re going to have to swot up on your romantic heroes and heroines,’ she said crossly as a message flashed up on Gabe’s phone.
‘I feel like I’m carrying the whole load here even though I’m meant to be on maternity leave.
My team at my other job keep emailing though they’re not meant to do that.
They pretend that it’s to invite me out for brunch but … ’
Ella wasn’t going to be done with her rant anytime soon, so Gabe read the message from their mother.
I’m looking after the little fat baby for the afternoon. Try and get your sister to have a sleep. Do NOT do anything to antagonise her!
Even breathing too loudly near Ella was dangerous.
At least she’d now finished complaining about her colleagues at the sustainable fashion company who sounded as if they genuinely wanted to see her and Avi, rather than going over the Q2 results.
Not that Gabe was going to point that out. After all, he didn’t have a deathwish.
‘Are those the roofing estimates?’ she asked now, levering herself up again to survey the pile of paper on the desk.
‘No!’ Gabe said, slamming a copy of Roget’s Thesaurus down on them. ‘I’ve got all that in hand. Nothing for you to worry about.’
They both knew he was lying but they also both knew that Ella didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to deal with roofing estimates at this point in her life. The cost of the scaffolding would finish her off altogether.
‘So, the date with Rochester,’ she said as if she wanted to be aggravated and never sleep again. ‘Was Tess furious?’
She’d certainly been furious when she’d thrown the water over Rochester.
Although after that she’d been a good sport about it and had readily admitted that the whole debacle was down to her own poor decision-making and lack of research.
‘Not furious,’ Gabe could say truthfully.
He’d rather think about the roof than Tess as she’d looked a few nights ago in the same spot where Ella was now reclining, a cushion clutched to her.
‘Sad, maybe. But that was more about the modern dating scene than Rochester asking her if she fancied being his mistress.’
‘We are doomed!’ Ella intoned darkly. She sat up again. ‘Be honest with me, do you think The Love Library is a non-starter? An absolute lemon?’
Of course it was. For all the reasons that they’d already discussed and a thousand other reasons that they hadn’t even covered yet. ‘Well …’
‘I’m not stupid, Gabe. I know that no one’s going to find their true love by having a date with a character from a book.
It’s not like they could even go on holiday or set up a home together, but they could still have some fun.
’ Ella sniffed tearfully. ‘I loved dating Sanjay. Flirting and crushing and having a laugh with him. Now imagine you could do that for a couple of hours with your favourite fictional character.’
‘Yes, but …’
‘It’s just meant to be fun! Light-hearted! A giggle! Why does she keep picking these difficult, brooding types? Now she’s going to write a savage piece and …’
‘She’s not. She said that she wouldn’t.’
Ella was trying to glare at him again through the piggy slits where her eyes used to be. ‘I hope you weren’t mean to her to make her agree to that. Did you do the thing with your eyebrows?’
‘I did not,’ Gabe said, even as he felt his brows pulling together in annoyance. ‘She volunteered not to write it of her own volition. It was all perfectly cordial.’
‘So we’re not even going to get any publicity out of it!’ Ella flung herself back on the cushions with great force. She was never going to nap at this rate. Or be in a good mood ever again.
Gabe himself was hanging on to his own good cheer by the thinnest, most frayed of threads. ‘I thought you’d be relieved that she wasn’t going to write a tell-all about Rochester.’
‘All publicity is good publicity,’ Ella said just before she burst into tears.
It took a lot to calm her down. Even more to settle her on the sofa with an ancient blanket tucked around her and promises extracted from Gabe before her eyelids finally drooped.
Gabe had to agree to babysit on two separate occasions to be redeemed at a future date.
He’d also conceded that he would read some novels so that the full responsibility for The Love Library didn’t rest solely on Ella’s overburdened shoulders.
‘Of course it’s a good idea. It’s a great idea. We’re only in beta mode now. We’ll iron out the wrinkles and it will all come good,’ Gabe assured Ella, as he patted her shoulder with slow, steady strokes.
‘And you’ll make things right with Tess?’ Ella mumbled. ‘I know you don’t like her.’
‘I don’t not like her. She has lots of … quite endearing qualities once you get to know her,’ Gabe said, swallowing hard.
‘Make her have some fun, Gabe. Give her some swoony moments. How hard can it be?’
Probably not that hard at all unless Tess was still adamant that she wanted nothing to do with the library, or Gabe, ever again.