Chapter Seven #2
‘She’s twelve?’ Imogen asked. ‘Surely at that age, pizza is the one staple food group.’
‘She’s ten,’ Birdie corrected. ‘How did you get on in the village, anyway? I saw you had one of Sophie’s paper bags.’ Imogen smiled. She would happily spend all evening regaling her gran with her escapades, now she’d got the necessary calls out of the way and had some chicken inside her.
After Imogen had devoured two helpings, and was so full she could barely stand, they moved to the living room and Birdie lit a fire.
The flames flickered against the homely backdrop: the pale green wallpaper with gold filigree flowers, her gran’s eclectic mix of books and trinkets, the rugs that overlapped across the dark wooden floorboards.
Birdie brought out meditation cushions from behind the sofa, and they sat facing each other, the fire crackling gently.
Her gran’s low, soothing tones encouraged Imogen to breathe deeply, and she let the words sink into her, reminding her that mistakes were moments in time, feelings were transient, forgiveness was as important for yourself as for those you’d hurt.
By the end, Imogen was on the verge of dropping off, and it was because she felt so much calmer, not because she was full of food. She didn’t know if her gran was a genuine witch, but she would happily tell anyone that Birdie was, at the very least, a little bit magical.
‘That was wonderful,’ she said, as she snuggled into the lumpy sofa, a lamp above her illuminating the paperback she’d pulled off a shelf, while Birdie picked up a bundle of knitting that didn’t yet have a definite shape but was wintry colours – blue and white and silver.
‘We could meditate every day,’ Birdie said, ‘help you sort through your thoughts and emotions. Just a few minutes can be revelatory. There are so many things I can do for you.’ Imogen looked up, because her gran’s tone had changed. ‘Let me help you, darling.’
‘You’ve always looked after me, when I’ve let you. I’m the one who hasn’t been around the last few years.’
Birdie shook her head. ‘Stella had a lot to do with that. Once she and I were at war, you became collateral damage. She did everything she could to keep us apart.’
‘What happened between you?’ Imogen had never had a straight answer from her mum; she just knew she didn’t approve of Birdie, and thought Mistingham should be avoided at all costs. Stella Rowsell could never be accused of being undramatic.
Birdie put down her knitting. ‘She was forthright and inquisitive, even when she was little, and of course those are good qualities to have – I was glad I was raising a strong, curious young woman. But when she was a teenager, she decided that it wasn’t acceptable that I had never married her father, that we weren’t a proper family.
She didn’t like that I was a hippy or that she was the result of a fling.
She couldn’t understand that I was perfectly happy – and I thought, competent – raising her as a single mum. ’
‘She missed having a father figure?’
‘It wasn’t even that,’ Birdie said. ‘She and her dad saw each other whenever he was in the country, and I encouraged them to spend time together. She thought it was improper, distasteful. You know how much tradition, family values, matter to her now.’
‘More than anything,’ Imogen agreed. ‘But she’s excluding you because you didn’t do the whole two-point-four kids thing with a loving husband? That’s so narrow-minded.’
‘It’s also because of this place. The way I live.
’ She gestured around her, at the dreamcatchers and singing bowls, the mystical paraphernalia.
‘She thinks it’s all nonsense. The last time she came back here, we had a huge argument.
She has never shied away from saying what she thinks, and I called her out on her priorities, and ever since—’
‘She’s cut you out,’ Imogen finished. She knew how rigid her mum was, how everything had to be just so, but the fact that she’d applied those ideals to her own mother, and basically disowned her because of it, was mind-boggling. ‘I’m so sorry, Gran. I think you’re wonderful.’
‘Oh, Imogen, the feeling is very much mutual. And we can’t do anything about Stella, we can only control how we respond to her, and I don’t want to undo all the good we’ve done with our meditation.’
‘Can you imagine what she’d say if she knew I’d spent today talking to a goat, then hatching a plan about how to deal with a lorry-load of mistletoe?’
Birdie chuckled. ‘Are you going to spray-paint all of it?’
‘Not all of it, I don’t think, but some of it. We can gift it to the villagers, drape Mistingham in mistletoe the way some towns only allow white Christmas lights. It’ll tie in with Sophie and Harry’s wedding.’
‘How do you feel about staying in a village consumed by wedding fever?’
‘Harry didn’t seem feverish, just irritated,’ Imogen said with a smile.
‘But Sophie apologised for talking about it when she knew what I’d done, and I don’t want to dampen anyone’s spirits.
Besides, a break from thinking about my own ruined wedding will do me good.
’ Especially after the way Edmund reacted, she thought, but didn’t say.
‘And I wonder if Lucy would like to help with the spray-painting? I’d check with Dexter first, of course. ’
‘She would love that,’ Birdie said. ‘That girl is eager to try everything.’
‘She’s amazing, considering what she’s been through.’
‘She’s made of tough stuff – and love: those two things in equal measure. Dexter has raised her so well under incredibly difficult circumstances. He’s a treasure, and all the more so because he doesn’t realize it.’
‘I can see that.’ Imogen sipped her fennel tea to clear the roughness in her throat, then almost spilled it when there was a knock at the door. ‘That’s late. Shall I go?’
Birdie’s knitting didn’t falter. ‘It’s probably some minor village emergency. Ermin has lost the keys for the village hall or Felix is somewhere he shouldn’t be.’
‘I already love Felix,’ Imogen said with a laugh. ‘And Harry seems so sensible, but he has this soft spot for a naughty goat.’
‘Everyone has a soft spot for him,’ Birdie called, as Imogen opened the door, blinking into the night.
There was nobody there.
She looked left and right, but the road was quiet, gilt-edged sketches of houses visible under the streetlamps, dark whorls of nothing in-between.
There wasn’t even the sound of footsteps, just the distant whoosh of waves against the sand, a solitary blackbird that had mistaken the artificial light for the sun singing its confused little heart out.
‘There’s nobody …’ Imogen’s foot nudged something. There was a brown paper package on the doorstep. She crouched and picked it up, feeling the solid shape beneath the paper. ‘Ooooh.’
She took it inside and handed it to Birdie, who peered at it, then lifted the tag that was tied to the brown string the package was wrapped in. ‘For Imogen,’ she read, and handed it back.
‘What? I’ve been here two days.’
‘And already made an impression, by the looks of things.’
Imogen felt a rush of excitement that was quickly consumed by dread. ‘What if it’s from Mum? Or Edmund? What if this is some kind of a trick?’
‘How would they have got it here – on a Sunday?’
‘Couriers can do that,’ Imogen whispered. ‘ delivers on the same day.’
‘Not round here, it doesn’t. Besides, if your mother or Edmund knew you were here, don’t you think they would have mentioned it when you spoke to them? Made a comment to show they were ahead of you?’
‘Yes, they would.’
‘And did they?’
‘Nope.’
‘There you go, then. Open it.’
Imogen turned it over, undoing the string and then the brown paper.
Whatever was beneath had a slightly rough texture.
As she discarded the paper, the shimmer of foil caught the light: bronze foil dandelions on a deep blue background.
It was a hardback book, slim but sturdy, its cloth cover embellished with shimmering details.
She turned it over and saw the words Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen running down the spine.
‘It’s beautiful.’ She touched all the different parts of it, the smoothness of the pages, the shine of the foil and burr of the cloth. ‘Isn’t it a gothic mystery?’
‘More a gothic parody,’ Birdie said. ‘And a love story. About a young woman who stays away from home for the first time, her head full of bookish mysteries, and when she meets a delectable young man, the stories she’s been consuming lead her to some rather outlandish assumptions and into quite a lot of trouble. It’s very funny, and romantic.’
‘I’ve never read it. We had to do Emma at school, but I’ve neglected the classics since then.’
‘Here’s your chance to make up for it. A book to read while you’re here.’
‘But why …?’ A postcard slipped out of the pages. It was a classic seaside image, a shot of a beach taken from above, a view that Imogen had been looking at earlier in the day, albeit in very different conditions. Below was the word ‘Mistingham’ in candy pink writing.
She turned it over. ‘There’s a message!’
‘What does it say?’
‘“Dear Imogen,”’ she read, ‘“welcome to the seaside. Life might feel unsettled right now, but believe that the things you want are not out of your reach. Listen to your heart, don’t worry too much about anyone else’s.
Love, The Secret Bookshop.” Oh my God!’ She laughed and leaned back on the sofa. ‘What is this?’
‘A gift from The Secret Bookshop, obviously.’
‘Do you know what that is? How do they know—?’ Her laughter faded as she reread the note. ‘How do they know?’
‘That you need a funny, gothic love story to read?’
Imogen swallowed. ‘Yes. That.’
Birdie frowned, the clack-clack of her needles relentless. ‘I seem to remember a couple of other villagers were gifted books like this last Christmas. Some sort of Secret Santa. Maybe someone starting a new tradition?’
‘I’m honoured that I’ve been given one.’ Imogen clutched the book to her chest, her nose prickling with emotion. She thought of the people she’d met: Sophie and May, Harry. Dexter and Lucy. Maybe, once she had read it, she would be able to work out who had given it to her.
She settled back in her seat, content to be with her gran and the crackling fire, and opened the first page of her beautiful new book.