Chapter One
Clove Lore – eight years and seven months later
Devon, even in wintertime, is a mellow, bountiful county, a place where the dark water is alive with silver fishes, a place of sodden sands picked over by keen-eyed waders, a place of fern-dripping coves, mossy woodland and blustery promontories, no less beautiful in their austere winter livery. Come February, if you’re lucky, the worst of the sea storms are over, the temperatures are sneaking towards double figures and the bulbs have pushed green shoots through spring-softening earth.
Folks up country say everything bursts back into life in the South West a good two weeks sooner than in their parts of the world, but the palm trees in the gardens are still wrapped in protective fleece, the greenhouses still require heating to spur on early seedlings, and every sleeping snail, spider and ladybird dare not rouse itself from its sequestered spot too soon because, even with the hedgerows awakening with birdsong, winter lingers on.
The chimneys all down the sloping village of Clove Lore still cough smoke right through February, and the tourists are only just beginning to think of spring minibreaks and rock-pooling in waterproofs. The dark still falls across the county as the school buses whisk kids home for dinner, and no one, but no one would dream of remarking how the light nights will soon be here for fear of tempting back the frosts or, worse, another terrifying flood, all too common at this time of year.
Harri had taken in the county with dull eyes as he made his way down towards the coast, passing shuttered arcades only open in the high season, giant plastic ice cream cones appended to roadside kiosks, signs pointlessly boasting, ‘pick your own strawberries, June–August’, and surf academy lock-ups which, come beach season, would be bustling from dawn to dusk with happy customers, salted and sun-bleached from the shore.
Thinking how this probably wasn’t the ideal time for a seaside bookselling holiday, Harri stopped now in the middle of the fairy-lit, cobbled courtyard of the Borrow-A-Bookshop, flicking at his phone screen to find the bookings manager, Jude Crawley’s, text with the keycode so he could get inside the darkened shop. It wasn’t easy with his gloves on.
No messages from Paisley, he noted. It was simultaneously a sadness and a relief.
They’d never gone this long without talking. He hoped she was okay. He hoped she was beginning to forgive him.
Half-six in the evening on the first day of February, and the Devonshire sky was black. There was no point waiting out here. In the old days, Annie was always late. If she turned up at all.
Back at uni, Annie had been the kind of person who everyone hoped would come to their party, but nobody believed would actually turn up until she rolled in three hours late, bringing friends no one else knew, and she’d be the life and soul of the place, making everyone feel special and seen. But she’d also irritate a few and invoke jealousy in others, until she slipped out without saying anything, leaving everyone wondering why it suddenly felt like the party was over. Paisley put it down to rudeness; Annie making herself hard to pin down. Harri knew it was the result of being so in demand and having to spread herself thinly around her many friends. That, and the fact she was extroverted and she adored people, collected them, in fact.
He’d witnessed first-hand how she would become strangers’ best friend on a night out, but the next day when they bumped into the same crowd on campus she’d struggle to remember their names. This turned some people off, while it made others her devoted followers.
Harri always thanked his stars he had something bigger than that with Annie. At least, he thought he had. Now they were about to see each other again for the first time in nearly a decade, he couldn’t help worrying the magic they’d had was overhyped, all in his head. That’s how Paisley had seen it, and she’d not held back letting him know.
‘She was a user, babe. A here today, gone tomorrow kind of girl. If she was a real friend she’d have been here by now, wouldn’t she?’
It was true, Annie had never come back to see him in Wales. She hadn’t crossed the Atlantic at all since uni. Mind you, neither had he.
He’d lost touch with their other flatmates, Gregor, Ioan and Catherine, along the way, and hadn’t made many new friends, other than his manager at work, and he wasn’t strictly a friend. They only saw each other at the coffee shop.
For a long time it had just been Paisley and Harri, quietly taking care of each other and sticking to their routines of work, dinner, telly, turning in early, and Toby Carvery Sundays with Paisley’s two sisters and their husbands and kids.
Annie had orbited the pair of them from a distance, a comforting satellite presence for Harri, and his only enduring friendship outside of his relationship with Paisley.
All he knew for sure right now was that Annie’s flight had left Houston on time yesterday. Then, ever since her last message, sent from the departure lounge, she’d been incommunicado.
She’d be fine, of course. Annie would be busy charming every person she encountered from Texas to Truro. He sniffed a laugh picturing this, and a plume of white vapour clouded the frigid air in front of him.
He should get inside. Yet, his feet seemed stuck to the cobbles at the foot of the bookshop steps.
He still knew her, right? Even though they hadn’t actually met in the flesh in almost nine years? He should have tried to meet up before now, but how would that have worked?
Every time their place in the queue for the bookselling holiday had come up in the past, one or both of them had been stuck with work or study commitments. Then there’d been lockdowns and skyrocketing ticket prices to contend with. When it so happened they could both get away at the same time, it felt as though they’d pushed the friendly and accommodating Jowan’s patience as far as they reasonably could. Jowan was the one who owned this whole borrowing a bookshop concept.
‘Worst thing about February in Clove Lore is the cold,’ Jowan had warned Harri when they spoke over the phone back in December when, due to a cancellation, the suggestion of a February escapade had first come up, ‘and the dark, and the ice on the slope is trech’rous, and the shops are mostly closed over winter. Apart from that ’tis lovely.’
Harri had messaged Annie right away:
The bookshop’s ours from 1st February to the 15th. Are we doing this?
What do I tell the guy?
There had followed one of Annie’s characteristic two-day silences before she responded.
Is Paisley joining?
He’d not waited two seconds before telling her she would be working. He’d held his breath for Annie’s reply, which pinged back almost immediately.
Do you reckon the Amarillo Westgate Mall sells thermal underwear?
Harri’s heart had leapt with a relief he hadn’t known he’d been waiting for, only for that relief to be struck through with panic moments later. He was going to have to tell Paisley that the bookselling holiday reunion really was happening this time.
It had not gone well.
In fact, he’d been sleeping on the sofa since Boxing Day when he’d finally had the courage to mention it, not having wanted to spoil Christmas for her, even though he’d been painfully aware of his nagging cowardice the whole time.
Now that he was here, staring at the sky-blue door of the Borrow-A-Bookshop, his feet frozen to the spot in the sheltered courtyard, he was realising Paisley had been right; he had no idea what he was letting himself in for and this was all very risky.
Even though he was proud of how well he and Annie had kept in touch over the years, two whole weeks of sleeping under the same roof, sharing meals, sharing a bathroom, living and working together twenty-four-seven could be their undoing. It was a lot to ask of their old acquaintance.
They’d Skyped when she first went back to Texas in 2016, not every other day like she’d promised, but once a week or thereabouts. Then, when Paisley had objected to surrendering those evenings to ‘some girl on the other side of the world’, they’d moved to regular messaging and exchanging occasional emails.
When work had inevitably taken over their lives, communication had reduced to holiday and birthday cards, the occasional meme or a quickly messaged update, usually sent when the time zones were against them and one of them was sleeping, so replies arrived feeling belated and their friendship out of sync.
Annie was a middle school library assistant these days while Harri had rebelled against the nine-to-five of the Port Talbot call centre (he hadn’t racked up phenomenal amounts of student debt to sit in a cubicle under strip lights selling extended warranties all his life) and he’d gone back to uni for an English Masters. Yet he still didn’t have the glittering career his dad might have hoped for him.
When he graduated the second time, Paisley told him she could get him back into his old job at the call centre, now that she was regional manager, but he’d have to interview like everyone else, and there was no guarantee he’d be the most suitable applicant.
Paisley hadn’t understood what on earth he was thinking, sticking with his postgrad stopgap barista job in the coffee chain on the high street and she’d lectured him about how a bit of gratitude wouldn’t go amiss.
He hadn’t missed Paisley’s lectures one bit since the break-up, when the touchy subject of the bookshop holiday had brought on another row and finally an ultimatum.
‘If you really must run off to England for a reunion with an ex and leave me here to pay the bills on my own, then go!’ she’d said, on the verge of tears, making him feel absolutely rotten.
‘She’s not my ex,’ he’d protested. ‘We were never together! I keep telling you. We’re just friends. And it’s only a fortnight. I’ll be back before we even have time to miss each other.’
‘ Will you miss me?’
He’d faltered instead of answering right away, and that had been enough to bring on the crying fit and the plate throwing, followed by the silent treatment and the final, dreaded heart-to-heart where they’d faced the truth. He had a decision to make: he either stayed and they worked on their relationship or he ran off with that Texan bint . The choice was his.
Paisley had elected to take their bed, laying spare sheets out for Harri in the living room.
After five weeks of bad sleep, backache and icy-cold civility, he’d finally left his key on the kitchen table this morning, stepped out the door into the February frost, ready to catch a train to Cardiff, before a change at Bristol, and a delay at Barnstaple, before finally getting in a taxi for Clove Lore an hour ago.
He’d felt more sordid with every mile put between himself and Wales. Break-ups were supposed to be awful; goodness knows he’d had plenty of experience. Paisley had broken up with him before, many times, but it had only ever lasted a few hours at most and she’d reeled him back in, all apologies, blaming her hormones, making light of the argument when she’d picked over some small fault or other of Harri’s. The last few years especially had been tumultuous ones, and now here he was in another country, barely able to process what was happening.
He had no girlfriend, no job, and no clue what the hell he was doing in Devon waiting for an old uni friend he wasn’t even sure he’d get on with after all this time.
With a hazy vision circulating in his head of Annie Luna walking towards him out of the winter darkness and grappling him in a bearhug like she used to, he absently typed in the keycode and pushed open the bookshop door.
The dry, papery, chimney-soot scent of old bookshop reached his nostrils.
He hauled his cases up the stone steps, almost his entire life’s belongings (far more than he needed for a holiday, but way too little to show for a life).
‘Should have left all this stuff at Mam and Dad’s or checked it at the station,’ he complained to himself as he made the last few feet of his journey, the tiredness setting in.
Back in Cardiff, when he’d stood staring at the big lock boxes, he’d been prevented from unburdening himself of his belongings by the curious feeling that he needed them all. Not his best idea, he told himself, stepping through the door. He’d end up carting it all home to his parents’ place in a fortnight’s time. His mum had told him only yesterday that he’d always have his childhood bedroom waiting for him back in his beautiful, familiar Neath.
But now, here he was in a darkened shop, stamping the salt off his boots on the welcome mat, on the dream holiday he’d been waiting years for and it could only be a brief reprieve. Fourteen days of playing bookseller before facing the reality of his new, single barista life. Beyond the confines of the holiday there was nothing but a blank when he tried to imagine his future when before there’d been Paisley and all her certainty and her plans.
You can’t grind coffee beans forever , he heard Paisley telling him now, as though he’d somehow conjured her up here in Devon. ‘You should think of us and our future, like I do.’ He’d heard her say it so often it played automatically in his brain like a voice memo he couldn’t delete.
He shut the door sharply behind him, and its bell jangled above his head.
Standing still in the darkness, taking it all in, the brassy resonance faded away to silence.
At his feet sat the box of barista supplies he’d ordered days ago. His favourite coffee in compact bags of beans and blends, syrups, sugars, dusting spices and sauces, all addressed to him, care of Borrow-A-Bookshop. Just the idea of working with those familiar ingredients brought him a gentle sense of comfort, no matter what the disapproving spectral Paisley was telling him.
He hadn’t realised how cold he’d been until he crouched and pulled the tape on the box, releasing the good, earthy aromas from his favourite artisan roastery. The words on the small packages alone were enough to soothe him: Mysore, Monsooned Malabar, Brazilian Bourbon Santos.
The scent of coffee, books, sea salt, winter damp and the coal fire blended together. He breathed it all in with deepening satisfaction. The Borrow-A-Bookshop seemed to breathe too, waking from its winter’s afternoon nap.
‘Lights,’ he said to himself in sudden awakening, like he’d downed a shot of espresso and kickstarted his brain. He couldn’t crouch here all night, frozen like a crashed SatNav trying to reorientate itself.
The standby light from the till point and laptop guided him round the bulky cash desk to where a jumble of cables led to a floor lamp by the window. ‘Bingo!’
The till area flooded with a soft orange glow.
‘Okay, okay,’ he nodded, taking in the spot where he’d be ringing up books and chatting with customers. His stomach turned loop-the-loop. Two tall stools behind the till reminded him Annie would soon be next to him there. He gulped hard and let his eyes roam towards the shadows where a fireplace blew a chilly draught from its spot beneath a cast iron spiral staircase, its black gloss shining.
He stooped to find the power socket on the wall and flicked both plugs on. Light filled the space beneath the stairs, revealing the children’s book area where two patchwork beanbags slumped beside a green leather armchair.
Over the fireplace a sign read, ‘Kids’ Poetry Time with Austen Archer, Wednesdays, 4–4:30 p.m.’
He took this in, not knowing who this Austen Archer was, or how the whole volunteer-helpers thing was actually going to work, but he was glad the responsibility for this place didn’t rest with just him and – if she showed up – Annie.
The book stacks loomed, a labyrinth of floor-to-ceiling shelving he’d have to familiarise himself with, but not before Annie arrived. She’d love leading the expedition.
He scanned the hand-painted signs at the head of each stack: World Travel, Languages, Poetry, The House Beautiful, Gardening, Biography , and there were others he couldn’t quite make out from here, and over by the door, running along the far wall, there spread General Fiction .
He was hit by a vivid image of those long summer afternoons manning the Aber Waterstones with Annie. That was back before their manager realised that, combined, they were trouble and started scheduling them apart on the rota.
She’d say, ‘Top three books about… snow?’, or whatever it was she had in mind that day, and they’d deliberate and debate until they’d whittled down their lists.
‘You must have read it for it to make the list,’ she’d insist when Harri came up with niche titles or intimidatingly long works of European literature, and they’d bicker and laugh during stolen snatches of conversation while they crossed paths shelving and selling, tidying and stickering.
Annie had been a hit with the customers, of course. She was chatty and friendly, talking them into taking home all kinds of books they’d had zero intention of buying when they stepped inside. He’d be behind the till, keeping an eye on stock, signing people up for the loyalty card, and while both had worn the regulation black polos, Annie would style hers until it wasn’t recognisable as uniform at all.
She’d singlehandedly increased the branch’s sales by thirteen percent, purely because people dropped in to see her, hoping she’d be in, and she’d bewilder them into buying the absolute must-read of the month. She’d been in earnest too. Her enthusiasm for the latest books (combined with her sparkling eyes and American smile) set off a fervour in her customers. No staff get-together was complete without Annie being presented with yet another ‘employee of the month’ or sales target award.
Harri awoke from the memory with a start. If Annie Luna was really on her way, this place shouldn’t be silent and lifeless when she turned up. He’d better get a move on.
Having never lit a coal fire, he wasn’t confident he was doing it right (his miner great-uncles and the Taid who’d died before he’d formed any memories of him, would not have been impressed), but after making his way through half a box of matches and two firelighters he finally got a good, crackling blaze going in the grate.
Then he’d hooked up his phone to the shop’s laptop and speakers, scrolling his Spotify playlists for something new that wouldn’t leave Annie thinking his music tastes hadn’t moved on in nine years (they hadn’t, but she didn’t need to know that; not when she’d been full of her Burning Man and Coachella exploits with her best girlfriend Cassidy, who went everywhere with her).
He’d gone for someone else’s ‘chilled bookshop’ public playlist and its soft jazziness put him in the mood for wine, so he’d rummaged in his bag for the bottle of C?tes du Rh?ne he’d bought at the general store up at the top of Clove Lore village.
After locating two glasses in the little cafe kitchen just off the shop floor, he stood by the bookshop fire, unscrewing the cap, telling himself he’d only have the one glass to settle his nerves, which were crackling harder than the flames in the grate.
No sooner had the ruby liquid hit the bottom of his glass with a satisfying glug, the shop door burst open and there on the step stood a windblown Annie Luna, his Annwyl, in a long blanket coat and a ludicrously large felted hat, under which strands of her long hair hung wildly.
‘I was gonna apologise for being late,’ she said with a grin. ‘But it looks like I got here right on time.’