Chapter Three
Annie’s Secret
Annie woke shivering, long before her alarm, and quietly set about figuring out how the heating worked. She’d forgotten about the curiously British phenomenon of under-heating their buildings in winter and leaving them airless and stuffy in summer.
She wiped the pooled condensation away from the shop’s window ledges with one of the cafe’s tea towels. The sky was still dark and starless. She let her tired eyes rest on the rain-soaked cobbles in the little square outside. The cold was getting into her bones.
She’d thought about going back to bed and trying to read but she’d been carrying the same novel around with her for weeks and still hadn’t brought herself to open it.
This was unusual for Annie whose Goodreads account charted a couple of hundred books finished every year since forever. She used to devour books like Valentine’s candy. Now though, she couldn’t get past the first page. So, she examined the contents of her suitcase instead.
Clothes always interested her, but dressing for this holiday was going to be a challenge.
She’d brought all her winter dresses, and picked out the warmest one this morning. It had a colourful book print against a black background of thick cotton. She’d worn it to work a hundred times and her sixth-grade girls had complimented her on it.
The thought of her library and her students so far away sent a pang of longing through her. It was mixed in with some anger too, reserved especially for that one parent who’d made the complaint about that one, perfectly innocent, book her kid had taken home.
She shook her head as she sharply knotted her belt. That complaint had snowballed into the whole awful thing that had sent her running to England.
This vacation could not have come at a better time.
She pulled her crocheted cardigan closed across her ribs and tried not to let the feelings of rage and shame overtake her.
This was her much-needed break; her first in years. She’d thought through her plan back at home. It would be her drawing-a-line-under-it-all trip. She’d left the past behind her and was set on beginning a new life when this excursion was done. Though how exactly her new life might look, she had no clue. If anyone had been born to be a school librarian, it was her, but how was that an option now?
No Cassidy. Possibly no job to go back to. Her community fractious and split. Ugh! She forced the thoughts away as her stomach churned and the bookshop reeled around her.
In the bedroom just off the shop floor Harri was stirring. She’d better pull herself together for his sake. She couldn’t burden him with what was happening at school. Her parents’ reactions, especially her dad’s, had been bad enough, and she’d faced it all without Cassidy too. She hadn’t reached out, even though there was no way she could have missed it on the local news stations.
She already knew what Harri would say about it anyway. He’d be indignant. He’d call that parent a ‘moaner’ and an ‘arsehole’. He’d try to make her laugh about it, say it was a molehill not a mountain. He’d encourage her to go back and face it, or to find a new job in a new school. He couldn’t understand what it’s like, being publicly shamed and shut out.
Harri had enough to worry about. She was big enough and tough enough to get through this by herself. She had got through it.
One of the worst things to come out of it was that ever since the complaint, since she saw the shock on the faces of her colleagues and the consternation on Principal Johnson’s face, she’d found she couldn’t read. Not her favourite anime, not the lightest rom coms, nothing so much as a magazine article. The reading part of her brain was blocked off to her and as much as she couldn’t understand why it was happening, she didn’t dare try to investigate it. For now, her lifelong love of escapism and imagination was bundled up in the same airless, dark place as her motivation to fight back was hiding. No. She couldn’t look at it any closer, in case it all started unravelling, taking the last of her happiness with it.
Decidedly, she jabbed at the power button on the shop’s laptop, accidentally switching it on then immediately off again. Her hands had been shaky lately, but she was determined to ignore that too. She held a firm finger to the button and breathed.
The till display and Visa card reader blinked awake. Automatically the stock system appeared onscreen.
‘All right,’ she told herself. ‘You got this.’
She set herself the challenge of mastering the whole system before Harri, who must have rolled over and fallen asleep again, appeared. Good. He needed to rest; he’d looked so worn out and pale last night.
She’d found the tech all pretty intuitive and a lot like the school library catalogue system back home. This one was designed to track sales and could be used to help any Borrower uninitiated with the shop’s holdings locate books on the shelves if a customer turned up asking for specific titles.
By eight, she had moved on and tidied the already very tidy shelves and picked out a few favourites to display in the empty wall racks behind the till, pulling Naughty Amelia Jane! , The Twins at St. Clare’s and Swallows and Amazons , just three of the beloved childhood books responsible for young Annie’s budding Anglophilia.
She’d cultivated her love of British things as a tween reading Fay Weldon, Julia Donaldson and Anne Fine, before moving on to Jane Austen and Dylan Thomas at Aberystwyth, along with all the other canonical British and Irish authors of the uni English syllabus.
Now here she was in England, surrounded by books in an adorable, quirky, little building by the sea. She had to make the most of this opportunity; it would never be open to her again. If she worked hard enough to make these two weeks a success, she might be able to get back into her own good books. She wanted to feel proud of herself; something she hadn’t felt since the ‘temporary suspension’ from library duties while her and her senior colleagues’ ‘conduct and suitability for school librarianship’ was investigated.
She’d decided to steer clear of the coffee machine until Harri got up, instead pouring orange juice from a carton that read ‘with orangey bits’. She’d smiled at the adorably English quaintness of it. Then she’d toasted the last two scones, assuming they’d been left for them by the previous Borrowers and not intended for selling in the cafe. Nobody would pay for day-old scones, surely? Not even in England. She carried it all through to the shop on a tray.
The smell had brought Harri stumbling out of his room in grey flannel pyjama trousers and an ancient Stereophonics t-shirt with a fluffy dark grey cardigan over it. She could have sworn he had the same one at Aber. He’d switched his lenses of last night for dark rimmed glasses. ‘Did I sleep in?’
‘You look so cute,’ she blurted, not once thinking she shouldn’t. He did look cute.
‘I try,’ he said, making a brief attempt at a sassy catwalk strut just to make Annie laugh.
‘You’ve got a kind of Ryan Reynolds thing going on these days, especially with the eyeglasses.’ A tiny part of her brain wanted to mention his jawline and his smile being similar too, and maybe the broadness in his shoulders, but she kept that to herself.
‘He’s at least a foot taller than I am,’ said Harri.
‘Well,’ Annie shrugged, ‘just don’t stand beside him any time soon.’
‘Got it. Hey, are these floorboards even more warped than they were last night?’ He lifted a bare foot, rubbing the sole. ‘What with the wonky beams and the wonky floors, a man could get seasick in here.’
‘I thought the place had shrunk overnight,’ joined Annie. ‘Whole place is topsy turvy .’ She overpronounced the words just to make him smile. He’d always been tickled by her accent.
She set his buttered scone and his juice on the desk by the till laptop, telling him to sit down, making sure to ruffle his bed-head hair which, she was remembering now, always stuck up in the mornings and couldn’t be brought under control other than with a shower.
‘You sleep okay?’ she asked, aware she had circles under her own eyes.
‘Better than I have in years,’ he said, before seeming to think better of it. ‘You know, after I got used to the sound of the sea.’
‘Oh yeah, the sea! What a racket!’ she mugged with a dismissive sweep of her hand, hoping Harri couldn’t see through her bravado.
Annie had lain awake listening to the distant sounds of waves breaking and retreating for a long time, willing them to lull her to sleep and to feed her gentle dreams, a lullaby soundtrack keeping at bay memories of the mess she’d left back home. She’d had no such luck and lay ruminating in the strange moonless darkness for much of the night.
‘Someone should do something about that noisy ocean,’ Harri said. ‘Shushing and splashing at all hours.’ His brown eyes twinkled in the harsh shop lights. ‘We should go for a walk later,’ he said as he started upon demolishing the scone. ‘Go see the beach for ourselves.’
‘I’m not going anywhere ’til I’ve sold some books,’ she told him, leaving her breakfast and busying herself at the circular display table by the door. It was set out with books on Perspex risers. ‘Do you know what this is?’ she asked him, knowingly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Check out page two,’ Annie told him, indicating the open binder in front of him on the cash desk.
Harri flipped to the front cover. ‘Instructions for Borrowers,’ he read.
‘That’s us,’ she smiled. ‘I’ve read the whole thing.’
‘What time did you get up?’ he remarked in what looked like genuine awe. She shrugged smugly with a laugh and he turned to page two and read aloud.
‘The shop and cafe are yours to do with as you like. Any takings belong to the Borrow-A-Bookshop community charity, although you may avail yourselves of petty cash to cover modest cafe ingredients costs, special event expenses, etcetera…’
‘Skip that bit,’ she told him.
‘Um, okay. Let’s see…’ He was scanning down the paragraphs. ‘Keep your own opening hours as you see fit… There’s a ramp over the doorstep into the cafe for better accessibility… Tie up all bin bags and cover with blanket provided to stop scavenging seabirds and wildlife… Our team of local volunteers will help out on a casual, drop-in basis… Ah-hah! ’ He pinned a fingertip to the page. ‘The display table by the door is curated by Borrowers on the last day of their holiday and left in place for the duration of the next guests’ stay. Please leave your own selection of books to reflect your reading tastes or any display on a theme close to your hearts on the day you leave. Previously, we’ve enjoyed displays on the themes of, for instance, foxes, favourite children’s books, even original handwritten poetry.’
‘Fun, right?’ She was glad to see Harri seemed happier this morning than he’d been last night. Maybe the sea air was helping.
‘Very fun. What did the people before us pick out, then?’
‘Umm,’ Annie looked at the titles. ‘It’s kinda random. Not sure what theme they were going for. There’s a Chaucer, something called The Parliament of Fowles ?; A Life of Saint Dwynwen , whoever that is; and, uh, this one looks really old…’ She inspected an antiquarian volume, reading from the frontispiece. ‘ A Young Man’s Valentine Writer …’ She shrugged, placing it gingerly back on display. ‘That one’s priced at fifty pounds.’
‘Maybe it’s all Valentine’s themed?’ said Harri, reaching for his orange juice. ‘Saint Dwynwen’s the Welsh answer to Saint Valentine, sort of.’
‘Ah, okay. The rack of Valentine’s cards should have been big enough of a clue.’ She palmed her forehead.
Their two pairs of eyes fell upon the rack of red and pink greetings cards on the display table. They were of the hippiefied, handmade variety.
Harri’s face had fallen, only a touch, but Annie noticed the change.
She shoved her hands in the pockets of her dress. ‘Does Saint Dwynwen get a day of their own too?’
‘Uh, yep,’ Harri replied, his eyes still fixed on the cards. ‘It’s only just gone actually. Twenty-fifth of January.’
Harri seemed to be lost in a memory. She wished she hadn’t asked now.
‘Everyone in Port Talbot was celebrating,’ he was saying. ‘My manager let me bake some coffee cookies iced with daffodils and love hearts to sell in return for donations to the local hospice. All gone by lunchtime, they were. Didn’t get so much as a taste.’
Annie watched him snap out of self-pity, trying to compose his face into an unbothered smile. It wasn’t going to work on her. Her friend was sad and she wouldn’t let him stay that way.
‘There’s always Valentine’s Day coming up,’ she suggested. ‘There’s no telling what Cupid’s got in store for you before then.’
Not that she wanted Paisley back in his life with her judgy, grudging ways. She’d never say it, not now, but Paisley had been a pain in Harri’s ass going way back. She’d have come to England for this bookshop holiday way sooner if she hadn’t thought Paisley might decide to come too; she didn’t want to make trouble for her friend in his relationship. But if it made Harri happy to get back together with her, she would be there for him, putting on the performance of her life in the role of Best Supporting Friend.
‘I should go get ready so we can open up,’ Harri said, hopping off the stool.
When he emerged after his shower he was in the same cardi but with a heather-grey henley underneath, and he was wearing dark cargos rolled at the ankles and thick socks showing over the same black hiking boots he’d clomped around the shop in last night. His hair had settled in damp choppy waves and he’d shaved too. In the winter morning light he didn’t look like he’d changed all that much in nine years. There was still something boyish about him. She was glad he’d kept his eyeglasses on.
After he’d unbolted the side door that led into the cafe, he came back and approached her by the shop door, his phone at the ready to capture the moment she turned the sign so it read OPEN.
Annie grinned for the picture, and then they took a selfie together. Up close, Harri smelled of moisturiser and shampoo.
Swept up in the excitement of it all, Annie went so far as to swing the door open, peering out into the dull, rainy courtyard where a raggedy palm tree stood in a huge terracotta cauldron. There wasn’t a soul out there. She immediately shut the door again and Harri caught one last picture of her grimacing as cold rain hit her face.
‘Suppose we’d better bake something to serve the hordes of tourists?’ she said, wiping the spots away with her sleeves pulled down over her chilled hands. She couldn’t help her heart lifting. This felt absolutely right. They should have done it years ago.
‘And this is the tulip,’ Harri said proudly as he shook the frothed milk into the coffee cup and handed it to Annie. ‘A latte art classic.’
Annie lifted the cup and took a considered sip. With a frothed lip she declared it a ‘masterpiece’.
‘Why, thank you!’ Harri snickered, before drinking his espresso con panna, his coffee shop favourite, made with a single shot of strong coffee and a small dollop of lusciously thick whipped fresh dairy cream on top, served in one of the demitasse glasses he’d brought from home. It was strong enough to keep him going through his ten-hour barista shifts in Port Talbot, smooth enough to gulp down on busy days. He enjoyed making elaborate drinks for the customers, enjoyed even more making sneaky off-menu speciality drinks for his favourites, but his own tastes were simple.
Annie had asked him for a latte so that’s what she got; only he knew he’d ground some of his best small batch beans for their drinks, and that it had to be up there with the best quality and freshest coffee on this side of the globe.
‘You any warmer?’ he asked.
‘Much, thanks.’
Satisfied, he opened the notes app on his phone and typed a few words.
Madagascan Robusta from the Mumbles Roastery: 2 Feb, Clove Lore.
Toasty with tobacco notes, lifted by a sharp, berryish bite. Smoky and
velvety smooth. Annie liked it, but I can tell it isn’t ‘the one’ for
her yet.
‘What’s that you’re doing?’ enquired Annie, hands wrapped around her mug.
‘Just my coffee notes.’
She lifted a brow.
‘If I try something new or come up with an idea, I write it in here. What? That’s a normal thing to do. You keep notes about the books you read, right?’
Annie didn’t say anything. She used to do that, yes. Nowadays, not so much.
‘I just happen to want to remember the good coffees and keep track of things I could do better, or…’
‘I’m not judging,’ she cut in. ‘I think it’s adorable. Is the best coffee you ever tasted in there?’
‘ Hmm ,’ he considered this for a while. ‘I’ve had my successes,’ he conceded, ‘and some failures…’
Annie tipped her head.
‘My burned banana caramel latte didn’t turn out anywhere near as good as it was in my head,’ he laughed. ‘And there was that time I tried toasting my own Kenyan peaberry beans at home in the kitchen.’ He grimaced.
‘Not good?’
‘Tasted like charcoal. You could say I’m still searching for perfection.’
‘Let me know when you find it,’ she said, sipping her latte happily.
‘You’ll be the first person I tell.’
Annie gestured at all the stuff he’d unpacked from his delivery onto the glass shelves at the back of the food prep area. ‘I knew you were into coffee, but this is a whole new level.’
‘I suppose you pick it up, working in a coffee shop.’ He lifted one shoulder, shrugging off the idea that this was anything other than a nerdy hobby, an extension of his day job. ‘Paisley always complained that I came home from work smelling of coffee, like it was in my clothes and hair. I could never smell it.’ He sniffed his sleeve now.
‘That sounds nice to me.’
‘Hmm.’ He let this go. Paisley hadn’t liked it one bit. It smelled of a lack of ambition.
Heat was radiating from the oven with its timer counting down its last few seconds. A good, sweet smell of creamed butter and sugar, eggs and self-raising flour had been blooming in the cafe for the last twenty-five minutes.
The sweetness, combined with the heady coffee aromas, and the sound of rain pelting against the cafe windows in the red lamp glow made Annie remark that the Borrow-A-Bookshop cafe must be in the running for the cosiest spot in the South West this morning.
As the timer bleeped, Harri set down his empty cup and opened the oven door to an ‘Ooh!’ of appreciation from Annie.
Twenty-three and a half simple sponge buns in paper cases (they’d run out of mixture on that last one) had turned golden brown while Harri had demonstrated his prowess with the espresso machine.
‘Just like in Aber,’ Annie said, watching him turn them out onto a cooling rack. ‘Hangover buns.’
He smiled at the shared memory of whipping up his grandma’s recipe in their flat that first time, way back during freshers’ week, and how the whole gang had made him bake the buns regularly after that, since they were so easy to stomach after a late night in the Union bar.
Harri sniffed a laugh. ‘They’re not exactly coffee shop standard though, are they?’
‘Folks like simple things, especially in winter when they can still remember their new year; new me resolutions. Half the little one with you? For taste testing purposes?’
‘Obviously.’ Harri was already tearing the bun to reveal its fluffy, golden, steaming insides, passing her half.
‘Cheers,’ Annie said, raising hers to Harri’s.
The light in her eyes told him the taste was a time machine, transporting her right back to sleepy Sundays spent under duvets in the shared lounge, sprawled with their flatmates’ feet across laps, heads on shoulders, taking tentative sips of what Harri taught her to call ‘builder’s tea’, the TV showing Friends reruns.
‘I’ve missed this,’ Annie said, and Harri nodded his agreement. ‘Maybe we can sass these up with a twist?’
‘Such as?’ Harri looked dubious.
‘Something for Valentine’s? Passion fruit filling?’ she suggested.
‘And pink frosting?’
She was laughing, white teeth gleaming. ‘That oughta do it!’
Harri pretended to lose his enthusiasm. ‘Where do you buy pink food colouring and passion fruit in Clove Lore in February?’
‘Split another one?’ She looked hungrily at their day’s wares. ‘Something tells me we won’t get twenty-three cafe customers today anyways.’
As Harri peeled the paper case from another bun, she contentedly turned to watch the raindrops tracking down the cafe’s glass door. He was making his friend happy. This was everything he could have hoped for from this trip.
‘Text it to my mam as well,’ Harri told Annie, after she sent their shop-opening pictures to her mother.
Annie didn’t expect a reply any time soon. Her mom was kind of sick of her, but she hoped putting the Atlantic between them might soften her up a little.
‘Okey-doke,’ Annie said. She’d had Mrs Griffiths’s number in her phone since uni and they always exchanged holiday greetings, so it didn’t seem strange to send the photos now. Harri’s mom was always nice to her.
She figured while she was in the messaging app she could try reaching Cassidy again. Harri was watching her, but if she was quick he wouldn’t know she still persisted in trying every few days.
No response came, other than the ‘heart eyes’ emoji from Mrs Griffiths and a ‘Have fun you 2.’ Annie turned the screen to show Harri and he broke into a grin.
She loved his smile. A tiny thought nudged into her mind, something about how lucky Harri was to not only have tawny brown Welsh eyes but a really good mouth too, with full lips and a strong Cupid’s bow.
It was then that the bookshop door opened.
The booksellers abandoned their cups on the cafe counter and bounded under the low door onto the shop floor, Annie whispering, ‘I’m serving this one!’ as she went.
‘Hi!’ she greeted the smiling woman, who was half inside the shop, shaking her umbrella into the courtyard.
She was about their age, Annie guessed, as well as small with dark hair and decked out in waterproofs like a mountaineer. Annie had her figured for a local before she even introduced herself as Jude Crawley, the bookings manager and treasurer for the Borrow-A-Bookshop community charity. She handed over a carry-container with a glossy brown cake inside.
‘Chocolate ganache gateau. Figured you might need something to sell, since the weather’s not great for nipping out to buy ingredients. I bake a wee bit.’ Jude’s accent was softly Scottish and her eyes genuinely smiling and bright.
‘I bake a wee bit sounds like an understatement to me,’ Annie cooed as she held the tub to her face like a kid examining the goldfish they’d just won at the fair. ‘Thank you! Do we owe you money?’
‘Nope.’ Jude shook her head. ‘It’s all part of the volunteer scheme. You’ll meet us all in the end, no doubt. Apologies in advance for that. Maybe you don’t know about the phenomenon of the Great British Busybody? There’s one behind every door in Clove Lore.’
This made Harri’s eyes widen. ‘Should we be worried?’
‘They’re a lovely lot, just a wee bit prone to getting overinvolved,’ Jude replied, before diplomatically clamping her lips shut.
‘I’ll look forward to meeting them,’ Annie said with conviction.
Harri didn’t look quite so sure. ‘Do the volunteers know anything about drumming up trade on a rainy day?’ he asked. ‘You’re the first person through the door this morning.’
‘Hmm.’ Jude considered her answer. ‘We’re a pretty inventive lot in Clove Lore. In quiet times we tend to put on special events to bring folk into the village.’
‘Special events?’ echoed Annie, already liking the sound of this.
‘Yeah, it’s kind of our thing, having such a small population in the village. We rely on tourists and visitors from all along the coast.’
Jude evidently noticed Harri’s brow furrowing at this, so she added quickly, ‘Like the kids’ poetry sessions every Wednesday. Austen Archer runs those, so you’ll soon meet her. It used to be a storytelling session but now she’s our resident poet, so…’ Jude’s shoulders bobbed. ‘And towards the end of summer we have a book festival kind of thing, anything to sell tickets and get people into the village, supporting local businesses.’
‘All right,’ Annie said, perfectly happy with this. ‘Should we be doing our own event?’
‘There’s nothing stopping you, if you want to. We can put word out through our channels. By which I mean Minty and Mrs Crocombe. They’re better than any Facebook ads or billboards for spreading news, I’m telling you.’
‘More volunteers?’ Harri hazarded.
Jude drew a deep breath. ‘Village matriarchs, more like, but yep, they run the whole show. You’ll see.’
Annie was deep in thought.
‘You know?’ she began. ‘Back at the middle school library where I used to… I mean, where I work…’ she corrected herself. ‘I hosted a silent reading club. Would local folks come to something like that?’
Jude nodded keenly. ‘You mean people gathering to read, here in the shop?’
‘Yep.’ Annie gripped the cake tub closer as she mulled it over. ‘Except in school we encouraged the older kids to come along, pick out a book and park themselves any place around the library. I’d make ’em turn off their cells. There’d be plenty talk, but when the bell rang, they were all talked out and ready to read. Ah, it was so fun!’ She knew she was getting swept away and tried to dampen it down. ‘Then, after, they’d talk about their books some, before their folks’d bring them home.’
Jude was impressed. ‘I wish I’d had a school librarian like you. I bet your Head loves you.’
‘You’d think.’ Without missing a beat, Annie shifted the focus away from her. ‘So, what do you reckon? The Borrow-A-Bookshop silent reading club?’ She spread a rainbow with a hand in front of her as though the words materialised in the air. ‘For one night only. Bring your own book, or buy or borrow one of ours.’
‘I’m in,’ said Jude. ‘And you could sell drinks.’
‘Hot cocoa?’ Annie enthused.
‘Well, that and a few bottles of red.’ Jude knew the Clove Lore crowd, evidently.
‘So, we’re doing this?’ Annie glanced at Harri for the go-ahead, which she knew he’d never dream of withholding. He knew it was best to let her run with her ideas.
‘When’s a good night to do it?’ She looked to Jude.
‘Sunday evenings can feel long in the winter round here, for some people,’ Jude said after some thought. ‘Week today would give us time to get the word out. You can charge for refreshments and keep the tickets free. That would be enough to cover your costs, since we’re a not-for-profit kind of place. How’s seven o’clock?’
‘Sunday at seven it is!’
That was it, decided. And all in the space of ten minutes.
Jude was soon on her way again, leaving the friends alone with a huge cake under a glass dome next to the hangover buns on the cafe counter.
Now they had an event to organise.
They were mid-way through making a poster for the window with marker pens and a big sheet of card Annie found behind the till when the deluge outside tired itself out.
They didn’t notice at first, since the sound of the rain was replaced by the sounds of the sea-swell down in the harbour, but all across the Clove Lore promontory, holidaymakers were clambering out of steamed-up cars and campervans, packing away Thermoses and pulling on hats and scarves, while the locals peered from tentatively opened doorways at the tiniest slices of watery blue sky through the cloud cover.
Soon the steep, cobbled slope that formed the spine running from the visitors’ centre at the top of the village down to the Siren’s Tail pub on the seawall was bustling with people making the most of this respite from the rain and determined to run errands and make memories before the short winter’s afternoon drew to a close and darkness fell again.
Annie and Harri suddenly found the Borrow-A-Bookshop full of people, and Annie was in her element.