Blind Date with a Book

Chapter 1

Chapter One

‘Oh my days, this place is the absolute cutest. It’s like a doll house, but on water.’

I smiled proudly as the excitable tourist bounced around the shop, cooing at my hand-painted bookshelves and gazing in awe at the hundreds of volumes sitting on them.

‘Let me know if you need any help,’ I said, already itching to steer her towards the corner with the Jane Austen books.

There was a brand-new edition of Emma which I had a strong feeling would be the perfect match for her, with its frustrating but ultimately endearing heroine.

Call it my bookseller sixth sense, but somehow I had a knack for uniting the right book with the right person, and nothing gave me more of a thrill.

When she next glanced in my direction, I’d make the recommendation, I decided, already picturing her expression of eager anticipation when she read the blurb and realised that this was the perfect novel for her current mood.

‘Can you take my picture?’ she asked instead, sending me crashing back to depressing reality.

‘No problem,’ I said, studiously polite. ‘Are you ready? Say cheese.’

I sighed inwardly as she draped herself against a bookshelf in a practised pose. Yet another of those visitors who somehow never converted their love for the shop’s aesthetics into becoming actual customers of its wares. They never failed to disappoint me.

‘Hold on, I need a prop.’

Before I could respond, she’d grabbed a brand-new paperback at random from the central display.

I winced as she audibly cracked its spine, then peeked coyly over the top of the open book and gestured impatiently for me to take the snap.

Being an old hand at this kind of thing (unfortunately), I took half a dozen, zooming in for a couple, then passed the phone back.

She discarded the paperback and scrolled through the pictures, frowning as she quickly added filters to her chosen image.

‘Don’t forget to tag the Oxford Bookship when you post it online,’ I said, but it was already too late as she was out of the door and heading down the towpath without a backwards glance.

‘Maybe I should pivot to being a professional photographer rather than a bookseller, what do you think, Hilda?’ I pondered glumly as I tidied up the display, running my finger down the now-tarnished paperback and silently apologising to it for the way it had been mistreated.

If the tourist had shown a genuine interest in the book’s contents, I wouldn’t have minded so much, but I couldn’t forgive her casual carelessness all for the sake of the ’gram.

Hilda beat her tail sympathetically from her usual position sprawled out on the well deck, which set the boat gently rocking.

If visitors to the Oxford Bookship didn’t ask me to take pictures for their socials, they generally instead quizzed me about the wisdom of living on a narrowboat with an Irish wolfhound, one of the largest dog breeds in the world.

Sadly, what they rarely did was actually purchase one of the books which filled my canal boat’s main cabin.

When I first started trading just over a year ago, I’d rationalised the sluggish sales as being due to the newness of my boat bookshop venture, then as time wore on, the poor weather over autumn and winter had seemed like the obvious reason why would-be customers weren’t wandering along the towpath to spend their wages on my lovingly curated stock.

But Oxford was now basking in early summer, the streets thronging with visitors as well as the usual students and locals, and still my card machine spent more time gathering dust than processing payments.

I pushed the negative thought to the back of my mind, and went to join Hilda outside, taking a book with me.

As she took up a good chunk of the deck area at the front of the boat, I clambered onto the roof instead and stretched out on a sun lounger next to my beautiful hand-painted Oxford Bookship sign to await more customers.

Things would get better, I told myself fiercely, and I might as well enjoy the bookseller benefits of having a vast array of reading material at my fingertips.

‘Ahoy there, Ms Bramble. Permission to come aboard.’

The voice dragged me away from Jane Eyre’s bleak childhood experiences and back to reality. I blinked and gazed around in confusion, trying to pull myself out of the jet lag-like disconnect I always experienced when interrupted mid reading flow.

‘Oh, hi, Eric, nice to see you,’ I said, although in truth, I would much rather he hadn’t turned up until I was at least at the end of a chapter.

I was also slightly perturbed by his formal manner of address.

Whenever he Ms Brambled me rather than using plain old Molly, it was usually followed by bad news.

I sat up straighter and self-consciously tried to smooth my always unruly hair, aware that I’d been anxiously twirling it around my fingers as Jane endured the horrors of being locked in the Red Room by her cruel aunt.

‘Do hop on. If Hilda’s in the way, just give her a gentle shove. She won’t mind,’ I added.

Eric Sanderson, retired academic turned extremely diligent chairman of the Oxford Boating Association, adjusted the knot of his tie and shuffled awkwardly.

Yep, the formal outfit confirmed it. He was definitely here on official business.

Eric led the organisation, which made sure the Oxford Canal and all who used it were kept in order.

The ducks couldn’t even quack without Eric and his colleagues in the Association knowing about it or having an opinion on the acceptable decibel level they should be communicating at.

My Nana Rose claimed that when Eric was off duty, he could be a right laugh, but the trouble was that since I’d opened the Bookship, I’d mostly encountered him in managing mode.

Eric tentatively picked his way over Hilda’s limbs as she watched him benevolently.

I hoped she was feeling too lazy today to sit up and sniff his crotch, which had been her mortifying trick last time he’d stopped by.

She was normally impeccably polite with visitors, but her cheeky side had a tendency to emerge at the most inopportune moments, and generally with the most inappropriate of people.

Thankfully on this occasion she restricted herself to a single twitch of the tail and a pointed yawn, before rolling over and going back to sleep.

I waited a moment or two for the subsequent Hilda-induced rocking to subside, then slid down from the roof and joined Eric in the cabin.

Maybe I could distract him from whatever blow he was about to deliver by steering him towards the second-hand book I’d recently acquired on the history of time, which I reckoned would appeal to his love of order and precision.

‘Trade good today?’ he asked, nodding his head towards the jam-packed shelves.

Space is at a premium on a narrowboat, so I made use of every available nook and cranny to display my stock.

When Eric had first visited to check out my new venture, he’d raised an eyebrow and muttered about the ‘chaotic atmosphere’ which I knew was the complete antithesis of the ultra-modern hybrid narrowboat with sleek Scandi-inspired interiors he lived aboard during the summer months.

But even he couldn’t deny that the Oxford Bookship was a bibliophile’s paradise, a treasure trove of volumes both new and second-hand stacked from floor to ceiling, every one of them carefully chosen, waiting to be united by me with their perfect reader.

If only more readers would turn up and actually make a purchase.

‘Couldn’t be better,’ I lied cheerily, and tried not to think about the ￡21.

73 which was the sum total of my takings so far today, a meagre figure which sadly wasn’t an anomaly.

The community on and around the Oxford Canal was a close-knit one, and news travelled fast along the towpath.

I didn’t want to run the risk of any of my business worries reaching Nana Rose in her care home.

As far as she was concerned, I was living out my dreams and enjoying the perfect existence working on her old canal boat.

And I was – I really was – as long as I managed to suppress the terrifying worries about my paltry turnover and the rapidly dwindling savings I barely scraped by on.

I couldn’t bear the thought of the Oxford Bookship, the embodiment of everything I’d ever hoped for, becoming the latest in my string of life failures, consequently proving my horrid ex right in his damning assessment that I was ‘too wedded to made-up stuff in books’ to be able to succeed in the real world.

‘Excellent news, that’s really good to hear,’ said Eric. ‘That makes me feel less concerned about delivering this.’

He took a crisp white envelope out of his jacket pocket and a pit opened in my stomach.

I had a horrible feeling I knew exactly what that envelope contained, and I’d rather he put it straight back in his pocket and let me retreat to the safety of fictional jeopardy.

Sadly, he held it out to me, and I had no choice but to take it.

I glanced down at the neatly typed label.

Ms Molly Bramble

The Oxford Bookship

Oxford Canal