Chapter Thirteen
Later that night, in her bed, Petra lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling. Poor Ross. Okay, so the sad, grinding, low-level
failure to thrive that the majority of published writers experienced in their careers was soul-destroying enough, but this?
This shooting-star success followed by complete disintegration? This took “messed up” to a whole new level. No wonder he was
hiding out in Portneath.
And now he was writing again? Exciting! Disillusioned as Petra was with the whole book industry, she wanted to read what Ross
was writing. A lot.
Ross was awake too. Strange, he thought, how he had felt able to be so candid with Petra tonight. He hadn’t shared much about
that period in his life, five years ago, with anyone, not even his family or his small handful of remaining childhood friends
back in Scotland. And now here he was, telling all to a woman he had known for a very short time. Though actually, perhaps
not “all.”
But Petra was a woman who was—until very recently—part of the machinery that had crushed him so totally.
And as for the woman who had been at the heart of that damage—a woman who still often haunted his dreams—she was someone very different from Petra.
He saw that increasingly clearly these days.
Henrietta had been a drug he hadn’t known existed until he was already addicted.
The process of sharing his manuscript had created an emotional intimacy that left him wide open, and Henrietta had known exactly how to move in.
Before he knew it, she had cast herself in the role of guide and mentor, someone who even replaced his agent as the facilitator to the future he so craved, as a recognized and published author.
Without her, she persuaded him, he would stray from the path and become prey to all the misfortunes that snatched defeat from the jaws of victory for all the other aspiring authors.
She had picked him up out of obscurity, and now she was his greatest fan and acolyte.
He could trust her. That was what she had told him.
And yet, when she touted him around the literary world on her arm, and as she persuaded him his work was nothing without her
input and oversight, he also slowly became aware—too late—that neither their working relationship nor their romantic relationship
was quite as it seemed: She was not the devoted acolyte to the magician creator she had told him he was. Far from being the
Ariel to his Prospero, she had made him her Caliban, her Frankenstein’s monster, being held resentfully in her thrall, while
being emotionally dismantled so—as in Stockholm syndrome—he became infatuated with his jailor.
He had become her creature.
Monday was Petra’s day to do all the shop admin: the ordering, cleaning, and decorating the shop window. Today, she was preparing her Easter window display, and she was glad Ross—not able to face more writing that day—was giving her a hand.
“How are you going to fit all these in?” he puffed good-naturedly enough as he delivered a galvanized pail of daffodils and
a tray of blooming primroses in gorgeous terracotta pots that Petra had ordered from the florist up the road.
“It has to look abundant,” Petra smiled. “I can’t do an Easter egg hunt window without spring flowers. Just keep thinking
of that coffee and pastel de nata I’m going to get you from Finn’s shop when you’re done,” she told him.
She had borrowed Flo’s lovely wicker shopping basket to fill with chocolate eggs, and she was also running an Easter bonnet
competition, with the short-listed entrances going on display in the window too. There was a danger that there wouldn’t be
room for the books.
“Do you want some moss?” asked Ross. “There’s loads on the ground in the little woods by the cottage. I can only take a little
bit, of course. And maybe some big pebbles?”
“Nice!” exclaimed Petra. “Look, I’ve got the sweetest little fluffy yellow chicks that I can dot around too. Look! So cute . . .”
She waved the basket at him, causing one of the bright yellow fluff balls to leap out and fall on the floor.
Ross rolled his eyes, picking it up, but she knew he was loving the whole endeavor, really. “We should go for a walk on the
beach later,” he told her. “It’s beautiful out there.”
“Honestly? I’m going to be so busy until this evening,” she admitted apologetically.
“Early evening walk then,” said Ross. “And if you’re good, I’ll buy you fish and chips for supper.”
“Now you’re talking,” said Petra, her mouth watering at the thought.
An hour later, Petra was satisfied with her work. There were piles of books artfully stacked around baskets of chocolate eggs
that were wrapped in jewel-bright foils. The Easter theme could be pretty broad, she had decided, mixing children’s Easter
stories with egg-focused cookbooks and a whole load of spring-themed crafts from yarn bombing to basket weaving. She wanted
them all herself, and she only hoped her customers would think the same.
Portneath really did come alive in the spring, with vacationers pouring in as soon as schools let out for the Easter holidays.
The local population—never a ghost town in the winter, but definitely quieter—must have tripled since she arrived in January.
Sales had been fine so far, she thought. Flo had been reassuring, and she would know. And as a woman who professed to have
her finger on the pulse of the publishing world as a literary agent, she herself ought to know what a provincial bookshop
should be selling. Let’s hope she was right.
“So, where’s the man in your life?” Flo asked, apropos of nothing that Saturday. The two women were just sipping tea in a
brief lull, as the shop had been pleasingly busy that morning.
“Whoa!” protested Petra. “Where did that come from? What if I said there is no man in my life?”
“Pity,” said Flo reflectively. “Beautiful, clever woman like you . . . how old?”
“Twenty-eight, why?” she shot back guardedly.
“Hmm. Not getting any younger,” continued Flo, ignoring Petra’s expression—a mixture of outrage and amusement.
“Where’s the man in your life?” Petra retaliated.
“Touché,” laughed Flo. “I’m definitely not getting any younger, and—since you ask—I left Graham in bed this morning. He’s not an early riser, bless him.”
“Does he live with you, then?”
“God, no, I couldn’t abide that. We hook up most Fridays, though, and he often stays over. But anyway, back to you.”
“Goodie,” muttered Petra, under her breath, but secretly impressed—and a little depressed—that this woman in her eighties had a more dynamic love life than she did.
“Impertinent of me, I know,” Flo went on.
“Don’t let that stop you,” breathed Petra, just loud enough for Flo to hear. She was ignored.
“It’s simply that it would be a tragedy if you weren’t a mother one day,” Flo continued, undaunted. “You’re so beautiful and
clever. Imagine how utterly amazing your children would be. That’s my only thought. You owe it to the world to reproduce.
Not that you even need a man for that nowadays, of course.”
“Do you have children?” Petra asked her, in another attempt to get the woman off her private life, which she would rather keep private,
if it was all the same to Flo.
“Yes and no,” said Flo. “I’ve raised two girls, but neither were mine. Maggie—she’s in her fifties now, was my sister’s child,
and then I ended up more or less raising Jules as well—Maggie’s daughter—because poor Maggie was not a natural parent. Mainly
because she was far too young . . .”
“That’s the Jules who owns the shop now?”
“Yes, that’s right. Jules who has just married Roman. He’s so handsome,” said Flo, starry-eyed, “and thoroughly delightful
despite being a Montbeau. Really, the whole pairing was ridiculously unlikely, and yet—when I saw them both together—I simply
couldn’t imagine any other outcome, especially after the fire.”
“Fire?”
“A fire that destroyed the bookshop opposite. Look, you can see. It’s all been repaired now, of course. Where the pharmacy
is now.”
Petra looked. It was true, there was no sign anything had ever happened. “Two bookshops right opposite each other, though,”
she said. “That can’t have been great. It wasn’t you that burned it down, I hope?” Petra teased Flo. She was only half joking.
Flo looked like one of those women who would go to any lengths if circumstances demanded it.
“It never occurred to me.” Flo laughed. “It probably should have! My point being, you never know where you are going to find
‘the one.’”
Funny how the conversation arrived back at the one topic she would rather avoid, thought Petra ruefully. “I haven’t had time
for romance,” she admitted. “Work’s been . . . intense. Plus, publishing actually is quite a woman-dominated industry, so
there’s not much talent around for people like me.”
“Good news that you’re in Portneath now then,” declared Flo. “I will have to see what I can do. I’ll ask around,” she added,
as if Petra might be in need of a secondhand bookcase rather than a life partner.
“Oh God, please don’t,” muttered Petra. She needed that kind of complication like a hole in the head. And it would be totally inappropriate to mention Ross. Whatever it was they had, it wasn’t that. Was it?
“Talking of organizing your life for you,” admitted Flo, without the slightest hint of shame, “you’re meeting Jess on Tuesday.
She wants to talk to you about the literary festival.”
“She hasn’t told me that,” replied Petra, who had been hoping—since she had raised the issue in the pub—that Jess would get
back to her about it. “And I’d love to, but I have to be in the shop on Tuesday.”
“But that’s what I’m telling you,” explained Flo patiently. “You may meet her because I’m coming in to mind the shop. She wants you in Freya’s for coffee at ten o’clock.”
“Well, that’s all organized then,” said Petra, laughing. Resistance was clearly futile. And—to be fair to Flo and Jess—she was genuinely dying to find out more about Jess’s plans.
“What’s your view on literary festivals?” Petra asked Ross that evening when they were both sitting in the flat by the fireside,