Chapter Four
Bookselling and a Summons
Harri had been awestruck as he watched her work. He’d kept a low profile, making the coffees and cutting the cake, mopping wet footprints from the floor, and generally being useful to Annie who he realised had assumed the role of bookseller-in-chief, just like in Aber.
Now the rush was over and the cafe was cleared of people, he brought Annie a sweet mint tea by the till.
‘That’ll be four pounds and forty-five pence, please,’ she was saying, her grin broadening, as yet another customer counted coins into her hand over the counter.
‘Nice to find a shop still ’cepts real money,’ the older man said, before placing his new Bill Bryson and his biography of John Denver in his raincoat pockets.
Harri hadn’t known how to respond but it was no problem to Annie, a natural at this kind of thing.
‘Sure is,’ she said, handing him one of the fiddly five-pence pieces she’d fished with some difficulty from the till drawer. ‘My grandpa always said there’s nothing realer than the cents in your pocket.’
With an approving tip of his waxed hat, the man went on his way.
‘Mind you,’ Annie said, turning to Harri with a cunning smile, ‘he also used to shoot racoons from his porch and thought the Clintons were listening to him through his toaster oven, so, you know…’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Is that for me?’ She cradled the mint tea in her hands. ‘We got busy for a spot there,’ she said, blinking like she was waking from a dream.
‘A four-hour spot!’ Harri told her. ‘I sold the entire chocolate cake.’
‘And the buns?’
‘I think you were right about needing some passion fruit filling or something. They didn’t do so well.’
‘Never mind.’ She shuffled closer to his side like she was seeking warmth.
‘Are you still freezing? Why don’t you wear my big jumper?’
He could hear her protesting, but he was already on his way to his suitcase to pull out his warmest jersey.
When he returned, he put it over Annie’s shoulders and arranged the arms in a knot. She thanked him in a quiet way that made him step back again.
They surveyed the shop in silence. The stacks were messy where browsers hadn’t reshelved books properly. Annie would love sorting that, Harri knew, while he’d empty the dishwasher, which was at that moment whirring noisily from the kitchen nook.
Annie sipped her tea. She looked contented, had been, in fact, since the arrival of their very first paying customers this morning. She’d greeted them like this had been her bookshop all along, without a hint of nerves or self-consciousness.
Within twenty minutes of those first arrivals stepping inside she’d rung up two titles on the till (for the grand total of six pounds), and had convinced them (a couple in their forties with a friendly black Labrador) that they’d better stay for coffee and one of Harri’s grandma’s buns.
They’d been unable to say no, of course, and Annie had chatted with them about their mission to walk the entire Devonshire coastal path in sections over the course of the winter. She’d discovered they were from Bristol, and that the dog, Bailey, was thirteen years old and going a little deaf, and all before Harri had ground their coffee beans.
By the time Harri had delivered up their cappuccinos they were already friends and Annie was looking at their recent wedding photos on the woman’s phone.
‘You were amazing today,’ he said now.
She curtseyed a thank you.
‘Daily totals?’ she said, like they were back in Waterstones cashing up, where every night they’d take guesses at how much they’d taken through the tills and the person who came closest didn’t have to pay for the post-work pints at the pub.
‘Two thousand pounds,’ Harri said, and Annie caught the joke. They’d easily make that on a Saturday’s trading in the big bookstore.
‘I’m saying a hundred,’ she told him.
‘All right… Sixty, no seventy-two,’ he ventured.
Annie clicked the mouse with enthusiasm.
‘Oh.’ Her shoulders dropped. ‘Forty-nine pounds, sixty-two pee.’ She overdid the English pronunciation for laughs. ‘How much did you take in the cafe?’
Harri pulled the printout from his pocket. ‘Just shy of forty quid.’
‘For a day’s work?’ Annie complained. ‘I mean, I know I wasn’t frantic, but we had a steady stream all day.’
Harri lifted Swallows and Amazons from the shelf behind him and opened the flyleaf, showing Annie the pencil marks inside. ‘I guess since about half the stock is second-hand and they’re pricing books like this at two quid a go, we’re not talking Bezos amounts of profit.’
‘I guess not,’ Annie conceded.
‘And since we’re not getting paid anyway, it doesn’t really matter,’ he said, putting the book back. ‘Anyway, wasn’t I closest? Didn’t I say seventy-two?’
‘But with the cafe takings, I was closest, so I guess you’re buying.’
‘Hey!’ Harri was ready to complain when the shop phone rang.
They both stared at it in alarm.
‘You get it,’ Harri urged.
After an exaggerated eye roll and a whispered ‘grow up’, Annie answered. ‘Borrow-A-Bookshop?’
Harri watched as she listened and nodded, and made the occasional ‘uh-huh?’ sound. She widened her eyes comically at him as the call went on. ‘Yes, we will… Okay… see you th…’
Whoever it was had hung up without letting Annie utter one full sentence. She set the phone back in its holder and turned ominously to Harri.
‘Our presence is requested up at the Big House. That was Lady Araminta Clove-Congreve.’
‘We’re invited to dinner?’ Harri said worriedly. He did not like the sound of this, not when he was so close to the promise of a pint of cider in the local pub. They’d probably have a blazing fire there too, and fish and chips, and any number of nice wintry puddings on the menu.
‘Not dinner, no,’ Annie tolled dramatically, clearly enjoying the absurdity of it all. ‘We are summoned to a village meeting.’