Chapter 2
Chapter Two
I tried to forget about the contents of the crisp white envelope as I carried on with the rest of my day, but terrifying words such as ‘failure’ kept leaping out from the pages of the book I was attempting to distract myself with, and even Hilda’s tail seemed to be beating in rhythmic clusters of four and a half thuds reminding me I had to somehow find a thousand times that amount by the end of the summer.
If only I were a pampered pooch whose biggest worry was how long it was until my next walk.
‘Maybe I should set you up as a doggy influencer? The Hildabeast does Only Paws, what do you reckon?’ I suggested to her. Her unimpressed response was to unleash a silent but deadly protest fart and go to stand staring pointedly at the door which led through to the private part of the boat.
‘You’re right. I should probably shut up shop.
I reckon we’ve had our quota of business for the day, sadly.
A watched-for customer never arrives and all that.
Maybe that’s where I’ve been going wrong.
’ Hilda made a low rumbling noise. ‘Okay, okay, I know there are far more important things to consider at this moment in time, like sorting your dinner. Is that what you’re after by any chance? ’
Hilda blinked at me, doing her best impression of a mournful, deprived hound.
‘I’ll take that as a yes then. A much more sensible option than trying to pimp you out on the internet. I’m not going to lie, it would save me a fortune in dog food if we could get you a sponsorship deal. But I wouldn’t be without you for the world.’
I rescued Hilda from a shelter eighteen months ago, although as many other pet parents have discovered, it was fair to say that in reality, she was the one to rescue me.
I was stuck in yet another soul-destroying admin job, lacking direction and desperate to get off the treadmill of mundanity, but equal parts terrified and clueless about how to do it.
Hilda’s picture had popped up on one of my social media feeds, an underdog at the local rescue centre, constantly passed over because of her size.
As someone who was six foot and gangling rather than gorgeous with it, I could empathise with her situation.
I’d taken one look at her scruffy features and the description of her as a ‘bundle of intelligence’ and fallen in love.
And when I first met her, miraculously, she’d seemed to feel the same way about me.
Hilda’s expression of utterly devoted admiration as we’d finally walked away from the shelter together had made me feel invincible for the first time in my life.
So when Nana Rose admitted a few weeks later that life afloat was becoming too hard and she might be forced to sell her beloved canal boat, bolstered by new-found confidence from the unquestioning faith of my four-legged best friend, I’d come up with a plan which would make my grandmother happy again and allow me to fulfil a dream I’d harboured ever since I could remember.
I battled the banks to get every loan going and bought the boat from Nana Rose, so I could transform it into the cosy bookshop I’d always fantasised about opening.
In my head, it would become a magnet for book lovers, the floating hub of Oxford’s thriving literary scene, and I’d spend my days chatting about the stories I loved with fellow enthusiasts who would all leave the boat laden down with dozens of purchases apiece.
Instead, I spent more time talking aloud to Hilda in lieu of the elusive customers, read more books than I sold and spent an inordinate number of hours staring helplessly at spreadsheets detailing my financial nightmare.
It would have been much safer to stick to the daydreams. And now I had a deadline of September to turn it all around somehow or…
No, I wasn’t going to allow myself to think of the alternative.
I had to make this work. Despite the stresses of running my own business, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else now that I’d had a taste of being my own boss.
And I definitely couldn’t let Nana Rose down.
I took one last wistful look down the empty towpath, then went through the motions of bringing the Oxford Bookship sign in, locking up and checking through the day’s accounts.
It wasn’t the worst day I’d ever had, but at this rate the only way I was going to be able to cover the mooring fees would be if I won the lottery, which wasn’t going to happen as I never bought tickets, warned off by Nana Rose’s declaration that it was a ‘tax on hope’.
Nevertheless, I could do with a bit of hope at the moment.
Hilda made another low grumbling noise, a gentle reminder that she was practically starving to death while I dawdled my way through closing up.
‘Okay, you win. Work is officially over for the day, and it’s dinner time for my bestest girl,’ I said.
She shoved the door open with her nose, clattered through the boat’s tiny bathroom and then let out a sonorous woof next to the cupboard in our living space where I stored her food.
I pushed my way past her and prepared the meal under her close supervision.
As soon as it was ready, she nudged open the rear door of the barge and leapt gracefully onto the towpath, doing a few celebratory spins in the little garden as I followed and set up her bowl on the raised platform I’d created out of an old packing crate so she didn’t have to bend the significant distance down to the ground.
She’d dropped a few hints about preferring to eat off the table in my galley-cum-living-room-cum-bedroom, but I had to maintain some standards.
While Hilda feasted on her luxury grain-free dog food specially formulated at great expense to suit her delicate stomach, I stared at the uninspiring contents of my tiny fridge.
In the Oxford Bookship, the bulk of the food budget went on the four-legged resident, while I made do with whatever yellow-sticker items I could pick up.
I really needed to do a shop at some point, although it would be better for my bank balance if I could delay it for as long as possible.
On-the-turn cheese on toast it was. Again.
But on-the-turn cheese on toast prepared on board my very own canal boat was still better than any high-end landlocked version, I reminded myself.
As I chomped my way through my meal, I considered the problem facing me.
September was only three months away. That gave me approximately ninety days, which was over 2,100 hours.
I forced myself to stop before my brain descended into the minutes and seconds calculations.
The point to hang on to was that I had time, not a huge chunk of it, but time nevertheless.
All I needed to do was apply myself to the problem and come up with a sensible and achievable plan of action to save my beloved boat bookshop. Simple. If only.
‘We will not be defeated,’ I said determinedly to Hilda who had returned on board to lounge at my feet and dream peacefully of her next meal.
I looked around my modest living space and marvelled once again that I got to call it my home.
From the wood-burning stove in the corner of the tiny kitchen area to the comfy sofa bench which transformed into my bed at night, every carefully chosen feature was a feat of clever design that made the most of each inch of space.
As a small child I’d played house on board this boat during the school holidays when Nana Rose looked after me while my parents were at work, never thinking that one day it would actually become my home.
The Oxford Bookship looked very different from when I was little, thanks to the months of renovation work I’d put in to transform the place from a boat that had barely changed since the mid-twentieth century when it was built, to the welcoming bookshop and snug home it was now.
To keep the costs to a minimum, I’d learnt how to build bookshelves, strip down an engine and even fix a broken toilet pump-out system, thanks to a combination of trial and error, and YouTube tutorials.
I was proud of what I had accomplished. Teachers at school and employers in the series of dead-end jobs I’d taken for most of my twenties had said I was too much of an impractical daydreamer to make a success of myself, but in establishing my business and setting up my canal boat home, I was determined to prove them all wrong.
The gleaming Oxford Bookship was a floating representation of what I could achieve when I put my mind to it.
And I was blowed if I was going to let the matter of expensive mooring fees bring my dreams to a premature end.
I stood up decisively. Instead of brooding for the rest of the night, I was going to carry on as normal. Solutions were more likely to present themselves if I wasn’t bogged down in panic.
‘Come on, Hilda, time for an evening stroll.’
Hilda was never one to say no to a walk.
She made a token protest against putting her harness on, being, like me, a creature who preferred freedom, but we were soon strolling down the towpath away from Isis Lock and towards the streets of Jericho.
It was peaceful alongside the canal at this time of the evening.
The mooring next to the Oxford Bookship had lain empty ever since I moved in, and the owners of the berths closer to civilisation were still out at work, or busy below deck getting their tea on, judging by the variety of tantalising cooking smells wafting on the breeze.