Chapter 26
I t had been a few days since Daisy had got back from London and the news from the hospital hadn’t changed much.
Miles had stayed with his mum, his brother had been delayed in Tokyo because of ash from fires affecting flights and Daisy had been checking her phone every ten minutes to keep abreast of everything.
She’d replayed phone conversations from hospital corridors in her head, and was trying to figure out how she was supposed to act in the middle of the whole messy thing.
She’d told Miles that if he needed her, she’d be there.
Really, though, both of them had worked out that there was little to no point in her being in the thick of things.
A funny thing had happened because of the mugging: Daisy Henley had realised that she wanted to be with Miles full time.
Since he was no longer a five-minute walk away, she was feeling his absence monumentally.
She’d gone from not having anyone in her life to feeling as if she was part of something and then being shown how quickly it could be whipped away.
She didn’t like how it made her feel at all.
She’d berated herself for her selfish navel-gazing and had tried to help and support Miles and his mum as much as she could.
Mostly she felt useless but at least she was a useless person listening and giving sympathy from a screen on a phone.
She also felt obsolete and redundant about the impending threat to the bookshop.
There had been a lot of talk on the Pretty Beach grapevine about it and a town meeting had been called.
People were whispering, there’d been mention of a petition and Lotta had been in and suggested designing a flyer.
Overall, though, the situation was a bit in limbo.
Daisy also felt unhinged about that, not just the Miles thing.
Feeling quite helpless about both things, therefore, in true Daisy fashion, she threw herself into a project that had been nudging at the back of her mind for weeks.
A little corner of the bookshop that had never quite worked.
Situated at the back far left, just near where one of the library ladders sat, the area had niggled at her every single time she’d looked at it.
It wasn’t that it was awful, but from day one, she’d been aware that it wasn’t spot on and needed some effort.
It needed a bit of faffing because it hadn’t taken her long to work out that if an area of the shop got snapped by someone’s phone and put on a story, her customers, emails and enquiries went up.
It really was quite as simple and straightforward as that.
Any little area she could create that would be loved enough to end up on social media was only going to help her business to grow and for sure she needed that.
With the incoming GayesBooks threat she needed to scrape the barrel and do every little thing she could to keep the bookshop special, unique and as far away from a generic corporation style retail experience as could be.
So, a little plan had formed in her head that she would continue to invent, create and rotate corners in the shop.
Which was not only an anti GayesBooks project but also a very good distraction from the problem with Miles.
The corner in question needed some serious Daisy love.
She wanted more than just an odd chair and a lamp, but something that made people stop, drop their jaws, raise their eyebrows and hopefully Instagram the life out of it.
Plus, in real time, she wanted something that felt like you could sit down and never want to get up again.
So, just after the twins had gone off to school, she’d started work as a woman on a mission like a bat out of hell, hoping it would take her mind off the Miles situation.
It was a grey morning in Pretty Beach which suited her mind and mental state well.
The Bookshop was a bit damp around the edges and the sky outside the front window had definitely warranted staying inside and getting jobs done.
Pulling her sleeves up, she tied her hair up in one of Annabelle’s old Liberty print scarves, put her head down and got to work.
The corner in question was near the back left of the shop and had lovely bones with a tall arched sash window with slightly rippled glass and a section of alcove shelving on one side that was crying out for attention.
The shelves had been fine filled with some of Dennis’s botanical book collection, but fine didn’t cut it in the book-fluencer world that Daisy Henley had quickly ascertained and taken on board.
Every corner of the bookshop needed to earn its keep and Daisy was determined to make it happen.
Clearing it all out first, she hustled, taking everything down from the walls and dragged a battered display unit, lovely as it was, over towards the desk area.
Having a proper shuffle-around, she bruised her shin on the edge of a table and once the space was bare, stood back and had a look at what she had to work with.
Wrestling with that sinking feeling that she’d bitten off more than she could chew, she half-wished she hadn’t started because she’d created a right old mess.
The little corner for sure had charm, buckets of the stuff in fact, she just needed to optimise it, somehow.
After giving the area a really good vacuum and cleaning the window, she went out to the lean-to beside the kitchen where a pile of bits and bobs, mostly from Maggie, Susannah and Annabelle’s interior shopping habits, was lodged messily in the corner.
Pulling out a thick wool muted stripe green and cream rug, Annabelle had found in an antique shop, she nodded.
It could work and well. Taking it back to the corner as soon as it went down, she loved it.
Faffing a bit, she spread and smoothed it out with her foot and then by getting down on all fours.
Fabulous, the little corner immediately improved.
Next came a new-old armchair that Maggie had decided she didn’t like.
It had taken up residence in Daisy’s lean-to, waiting for the right spot.
Low and wide and upholstered in faded moss-green velvet with a bit of a sagging cushion, Daisy had taken the donation gratefully and then left it precisely where it was doing nothing.
Heaving that out and through the kitchen, huffing and puffing as she did so, Daisy slid and shoved it across the bookshop floor and hoped for the best. Pushing it back against the wall, she tilted it slightly so it faced the window and the room and the little angle made all the difference.
A small round table followed, one of her mum’s old bedside tables she’d painted in chalk white and lightly distressed, which was now showing time and age and not in a trendy way, more a this-has-been-used-for-years sort of way.
She placed it to the right of the chair and added one of her favourite lamps on top; tall, with a cream linen shade and a ceramic base in soft blue and worn in places.
The switch was temperamental, but the light it gave off was soft and golden.
Stacking three wooden crates she’d rescued from Uncle Dennis’s storeroom to the left of the chair, she filled them with seasonal reads and popular titles.
On the top crate, she placed a folded wool throw in caramel and cream checks and a vintage Penguin mug, also from Dennis, for effect.
Above, she strung a line of fairy lights in copper wire, hung a few old postcards and quotes with tiny wooden pegs and plonked a vase of dried hydrangeas on the windowsill beside a small wooden box of bookmarks she’d made from old book pages and ribbon.
After making a cup of tea, she sat down in the armchair, looked out at the laneway and shook her head.
Despite the nice light over the gorgeous rug, it still wasn’t quite wow enough.
Nice, pretty, in fact, and definitely comfy, but also missing something.
For the life of her Daisy couldn’t think what.
Looking out at a darkening sky, she balanced her phone on the windowsill and scrolled aimlessly through Facebook Marketplace seeing if anything would take her fancy.
She wasn’t looking for anything in particular and didn’t know what she wanted or might find.
Just a little window-shopping for a bookshop, really, and the odd hope of finding something unusual that was also a bargain.
Scrolling, she nearly jumped when an image hit her screen. There it was; just what she’d had in her mind but hadn’t quite been able to articulate.
Vintage wooden library trolley, busted wheel. FREE. Pretty Beach (Old Town)
The photo was a bit grainy, but even in the blur, she could make out the curved edge of a lovely handle and three long shelves, each with a slight lip at the end.
The trolley was painted a faded sort of moss green, like someone had once tried to match a Farrow & Ball shade and pulled it off quite nicely.
One of the wheels was visibly crooked and the top shelf had a few marks, but that only made it more perfect.
She clicked on the listing and sent a message.
Daisy: Hello! Is this still available, please? Thx.
By way of a little ding on her phone, a reply came about fifteen minutes later, while Daisy was halfway through loading the dishwasher.
Sue: Yes, it is! I’ve had it forever. It was in the old school library originally, I think. You’re welcome to come and have a look. We’re in the Old Town, behind the church hall.
Daisy dried her hands on a tea towel and fired off a reply.
Daisy: Yes, please, I’d love to! When are you available? I have to do school pick up over that side so…
Sue: I’m here all afternoon…
Half an hour later, with her navy Barbour jacket over jeans and a floral shirt, Daisy headed over towards the Old Town.
Having grown up in the Old Town, Daisy knew the back roads, little alleyways and shortcuts and loved the houses.
Some of the streets and pavements were cobbled streets and uneven.
There were tall Victorian villas, old brick cottages with white-painted sash windows and iron boot scrapers still fixed to the stone steps.
Front doors in every shade of muted pastel and the odd brave cornflower blue.
Window boxes overflowed with trailing ivy and dusty pink flowers and huge old trees towered here and there.
Passing the church with the crooked bell tower and a noticeboard full of handwritten flyers, Daisy followed a short, narrow lane behind the church hall and wished as soon as she was down the end that she’d left her car out by the church car park.
The lane was dappled with fallen leaves, lined with tall hedges and Daisy could faintly smell woodsmoke in the air.
Sue’s house was the second in from the end, a sweet terraced cottage with a wide stone step and a cat watching from the front window.
The front garden was a riot of late autumn colour, a last few scraggly roses, and a huge old tree with burnt-orange leaves that reminded Daisy of walking home from school.
She knocked and waited, then heard the sound of a latch lifting.
Sue, a woman in her late seventies wearing a fleece gilet and gardening gloves, opened the door. Daisy was surprised not to recognise her. ‘Daisy? Come in, love. It’s just through here.’
The cottage smelled of beeswax and ginger biscuits, and Daisy followed her through the narrow hallway to a little back room that had clearly once been a dining room and now seemed to serve as both office and storage space.
There, against the wall, stood the trolley, which made Daisy gasp because it was even better in person than the images.
Sturdy despite its wobbly wheel, the wood was scratched and the paint flaking was just right.
There was still an old label stuck to the side that said Fiction Y–Z, and Daisy thought her heart might burst. She could see it in her shop and in her stories as if it had been meant to be.
She crouched down and gave it a little nudge to test the wheel. ‘Ooh! It’s gorgeous! Absolutely perfect for what I had in mind.’
‘Oh, I’m glad. Everyone said I should chuck it years ago, but I always thought it had a bit of character.’
‘I’ve got just the spot for it. I own the bookshop - do you know it? I’m doing up a reading corner.’ Daisy pushed down a horrible feeling that her little bookshop was being threatened by the likes of GayesBooks.
Sue clapped her hands lightly. ‘Yes, I do! Well, that’s marvellous. I can’t think of a better second life for it.’
Daisy smiled and hugged herself. The trolley was perfect and it wasn’t the only thing that felt as if it had a second life.
A fter struggling with the trolley, Daisy was reminded of when Miles had helped her with the chairs when she’d first been opening the shop.
Once inside, she wheeled it into place on top of the striped rug, gave it a really thorough clean, and started to fill it with paperbacks, seasonal picks, a basket of bookmarks and an old enamel jug filled with dried flowers.
By the time she’d finished, it looked like it had always been there and just right for the corner.
It was old, shabby, useful, and something she hadn’t known she’d been looking for until she found it.
Stepping back, she looked at it having its second life appearing as if it was beaming and settling in nicely.
A little bit like her but without the life problems of muggings and swooping corporations.
Just as she was pondering what else to add to the corner, her phone pinged.
Holly: Just wondering if you can come to the meeting tomorrow a bit early to help with the tea? Nel will be there but she’ll probs need a hand. We’ll be coming back from Darling Island.
Daisy: Of course. I’ll message Nel.
Holly: Thx. See you there. So many people are coming.
Daisy: Good.
Holly: We’re going to stop those ***** getting a hold of our town.
Daisy: Hope so. I really do.