Chapter 23
MAGGIE
What am I doing? I take a seat on the bench opposite the shop.
The bell rings above the door and I’m hit deep in my solar plexus at how beautiful he is, such a cliché. He’s looking along the street. The open door frames him in a lozenge of warm light, wind ruffling his hair. A smile stretches across his face as I turn my head.
Oh, who am I kidding? I was never going to walk away from him. I’ll tell him I can hear thoughts at the end of the night. Who knows? Maybe he won’t think I’m insane and leg it as far as he can from me.
The moment is broken as a woman steps by his side. Nell, I gather. I stand and cross the road. Jack moves slightly in front of her as though he’s ready to tackle her to the ground if he has to.
‘You must be Nell?’ I ask.
‘And you are the woman who has made this miserable pillock slightly more bearable.’
I pause before replying. ‘Miserable?’ I question, a touch defensively.
‘I should clarify that he’s only miserable around me. I’m sure around you he is a positively bouncing beam of rainbowy unicorn farts.’
I laugh. I like her.
‘Great,’ Jack interrupts. ‘So now you’ve both met, Nell, you can go back inside and—’
A group of people are now on the kerb. Various ages, genders, all relaxed yet excited at the spectacle that is me.
Jack gestures to the group chatting under their breath. ‘Maggie, this is the Friday night book club gang, and they were going back inside.’
They chatter in one stream of noise like a gaggle of geese flying overhead.
Nell is appraising me. I look away, focusing instead on rolling up the cuff of Jack’s jacket. ‘It’s good to meet you, Maggie,’ Nell says.
‘You too,’ I reply brightly.
‘Right, you lot, back inside.’ Nell ushers the group towards the doorway, fairy lights framing the glass windows. ‘I think Jack can take it from here.’ She gives Jack a wink. ‘Take care of our boy?’ Nell adds over her shoulder. Her smile is relaxed but there is something pointed in her words.
‘Nell…’ Jack gives her a warning.
‘Of course,’ I say, looking away from her gaze.
‘Sorry about that.’ Jack looks over his shoulder as if he expects the book clubbers to be watching on.
‘Nell is protective of you.’ I look up at him. ‘Have you two ever…?’
‘Me and Nell?’ He laughs slowly. ‘No. Me and Nell as a couple?’ He lets out a long plume of air. ‘We’d kill each other. Also, I don’t have boobs. This way,’ he says leading us further along the road, heading towards the park from the main entrance.
‘First you give me your jacket to shield me from the cold, then you suggest a moonlight walk.’ I look up at him. If I was normal, I would nudge him with my shoulder. ‘The romantic hero looks good on you, Jack Chadwick.’
‘I’m no Hugh Grant.’
‘No, you’re not. You’re more of a—’ I turn my head to him, stopping my steps. I step back assessing him. ‘Theo James.’ His eyebrows rise quizzically. ‘It’s the whole Greek descendant vibe, I think, dark hair, dark eyes, high cheekbones… and you’re, well…’
‘What?’
‘A bit posh.’
He laughs and shakes his head.
‘Actually it’s Italian. My great-grandad on my mum’s side was from Sicily.’
We continue walking. ‘Do you still have family over there?’
‘Some, but I haven’t been over since…’ He gives me a look that reads ‘my stroke’.
‘So where are we going?’ I lighten the conversation.
‘Linton Park, if that’s OK?’
‘Sure.’
We continue walking. ‘The book club people seem like a fun bunch.’
‘They can be.’ He hesitates. ‘I’ve mostly avoided them for the past year.’
Both of our heads turn to the sound of steps behind us, an owner being walked by their dog, the lead straining against his gloved hands. I step onto the empty road, letting them pass. The flustered man gives out a ‘sorry!’ as he narrowly avoids bumping into my shoulder. I hop back up onto the kerb.
‘Did you always want to own a bookshop?’ I ask.
‘Honestly? I used to want to be a writer. Apart from reading in stairwells, it was all I did in my spare time when I was a teenager. I was a bit of a nerd. Never quite fit in with the popular crowd.’
‘I find that hard to believe. I bet there was a bevy of hormonal teenagers slapping on watermelon lip gloss and straightening their hair before class.’
‘Well if socially awkward, gangly boys with bottle-top glasses, braces and a lisp are your stereotypical teen crush.’
‘Bottle-top glasses?’
‘Yeah. I was always losing mine and after the third pair of thinned lenses Mum decided to put her foot down. And I couldn’t afford to replace them. As soon as I was old enough I had laser surgery.’
‘Oh, she’s a tough-love mum?’
‘More of a learn the value of money because she comes from a working-class background kind of mum. We grew up with a pretty privileged upbringing. Dad comes from what Mum calls “old money”. Our family home, Chadders, is… it’s kind of a big house.
Not that grand or anything but it’s been in our family for over a century.
Both my parents were keen to correct our heritage by making us pay our own way with pocket money we earned through chores.
And if we asked to borrow money, we had to pay interest. But they also gave us complete autonomy, let us learn from our mistakes and supported us if things went wrong. ’
‘They sound great.’
‘They are. They’d like you,’ he adds. ‘Sorry, that sounded like I’m already inviting you to meet the parents.’
‘They sound great,’ I repeat, redundantly, avoiding the fact that when I tell him about me, the last thing he will want is to introduce me to his parents.
‘So, what happened to the Jack Chadwick novel?’
He nods towards the right and we cross the road as he points towards the entrance to Linton Park. ‘My dad is Tom Ridgeway.’
I frown.
‘Midnight Runaway?’ he adds, knowing I would have seen the film.
‘No way?!’
‘Yep.’
I let out a low whistle. ‘So have you, like, met Henry Cavill?’
He adjusts the shoulder of his backpack, ducking as we head under the stone archway leading into the park. ‘Once. He’s nice. Normal. Huge.’
‘Wow.’ I shake my head. ‘We lead very different lives. How come your dad’s not Tom Chadwick?’
‘Pen name. In case it all went horribly wrong.’
‘So why did you stop writing? There’s space for more than one family member to be a writer?’
‘I, well, I wasn’t good enough. As a kid I thought it was the coolest job in the world.
Dad would wear pyjamas until lunchtime. He didn’t have to “go to work”.
But as I got older, I could see the reality of being a writer, the deadlines, the stress when Dad struggled with the next book; I knew it wasn’t for me. Recommending books is easier.’
I scan the pathway beneath the Victorian-style street lamps towards the main courtyard of the park.
The path is low-lit, swaths of fir trees lining the ribbon of pathway.
The moon is high as we approach the small courtyard, casting a pale blue glow over the large and imposing circular fountain.
In the centre is a sculpture of a woman, her body braced for battle, hair blown back from her face by a wind long gone.
In the summer, the fountain can be heard gushing from where we are, but tonight, the warrior remains silent.
‘We’re here,’ he says.
‘You’ve brought me to see a fountain that’s not fountaining?’ He smiles and drops the bag off his shoulder.
‘We missed the end of Notting Hill.’ He climbs over the ridge of the fountain, automatically turning and offering me a hand.
I give my head a little shake; he looks like he wants to kick himself.
I climb over the ridge and drop down into the basin.
He takes out his laptop, opens it and props it up next to the base of the horse, the ta-dum of the Netflix logo playing into the cold night air.
I laugh, my cheeks warming. He lays out two yoga mats, with a wide enough space between them to keep us from accidentally touching and unfolds two blankets.
‘Wow. I…’ I swallow hard and clutch the tops of my arms. ‘Thank you, Jack.’
‘I thought I’d better make scene two special.’
‘Well, you’ve nailed it.’ I sit down as he pours hot chocolate into two takeaway cups, placing them on the ground before leaning over the laptop and selecting Notting Hill.
‘What, no whipped cream and marshmallows?’ I tease.
‘One step ahead.’ He pulls out a bag of marshmallows and a battery-operated church candle, placing it further around the bowl of the fountain.
‘No fairy lights hidden in there? Dry ice machine?’
‘Sorry to disappoint.’
‘I doubt you ever do.’ My eyes meet his. There is a buzz of connection between us: that spark that was there earlier and is so often shown in romance films.
For my whole life I’ve come to accept that I will never be as happy as the couples on the screen, as the people I see from outside a restaurant window, holding hands across a table.
But while the film plays and we talk through it, while I laugh and tease him, and while I tell him about Hellie; my pet goldfish, Bruce; and he explains about the time his siblings pretended he was invisible for two whole weeks, I realise that this is possibly the happiest day of my life.
But then the film ends and I realise it’s time.
I turn to him.
‘Jack? There is something I need to tell you.’