Chapter Fourteen
“Oh, and don’t forget Black Beauty,” declared Petra, advising a woman who was buying birthday books for her soon-to-be-ten-year-old, pony-mad granddaughter.
“We’ve got a beautiful new edition, just came in last week, hang on.” Petra scurried off and came back triumphantly with a
clothbound hardbacked book, flicking through to show her customer the lovely color plates. “Only—trigger warning—you know
it’s seriously sad, don’t you?”
“Gosh, it really is,” said the lady, handling the book reverently. “I remember sobbing over it myself as a child. Such a wonderful
book, but I don’t like the thought of her reading it alone. We’ve always got a book on the go that we read together, and this
can be that one. I’ll have a second copy, if you have it?”
“Talking of sobbing, she’s read War Horse?” queried Petra over her shoulder, fetching another copy of Black Beauty and adding it to the stack. There was a substantial pile of books building up on the checkout table now.
“Ah, War Horse,” reminisced the lady. “We read it, and we saw the stage show with the puppets! Magical . . .”
“It was,” said Petra, tearing up at the memory. “What a story.”
“And then, of course, there are the endless pink, little girl pony series books, which all look the same to me,” admitted
the lady. “I think it’s so important to have something undemanding to read along with the challenging stuff.”
“I totally agree,” said Petra, positively adoring this woman and thinking what she wouldn’t have done to have a grandmother like this.
“So . . .” Petra thought a moment. “We risk giving her something she’s already read, but has she had the Katie Price books?”
“That woman with the boobs?” queried the lady. “I think her mother vetoed those.”
“Oh no, honestly, they’re fine,” Petra reassured her. “I mean, she is genuinely keen on horses, Katie Price. She might not
have written them herself, of course. I couldn’t possibly say,” she added with a wink.
“Go on, then,” said the lady. “I think it’s important for the child to see her grandmother subvert her parents’ wishes occasionally.”
Petra giggled.
Fat chance she would ever become a naughty grandmother, Petra thought with fleeting sadness as she went to collect the Katie Price books,
or even that her own mother would take the slightest interest if she ever had a daughter of her own. And that was equally
unlikely, she told herself, momentarily subdued, although she perked up when she saw the total, after whizzing the lady’s
books through the scanner.
“You are so good at this,” Flo told Petra, when the customer had left. “And I consider myself pretty decent at recommendations myself.”
Petra flushed, pleased to have impressed Flo, who she increasingly regarded with awe. What with Jess making her feel important earlier and Flo bigging her up now, she was going to have a head the size of a planet by the end of the weekend.
It felt good. All she wanted to do was share her minor triumphs with Ross, but he was still absent.
She could message him, of course, but pride stopped her.
“By the way,” Petra said to Flo, remembering Jess’s comments about storytelling, “tell me about the Saturday Stories thing?”
“Ah,” said Flo. “I regret we haven’t done that for a while. It used to be me, when I had Jules helping to run the shop.”
“I could do that!” piped up Petra. “By which I mean, I could run the shop, not that I could read the stories . . .” she added
hastily.
“The thing is, my eyesight really isn’t up to it anymore,” said Flo sadly. “When I read for myself, I do it either on Kindle
with the font size up high or—at a stretch—with the large-print books. Reading aloud, and not knowing whether I am going to
read something wrong, or not be able to make it out at all? Too stressful, my dear, I’m sorry.”
Flo looked very sorry, Petra saw, and not just because she was letting Petra down. Getting old must be brutal, even though
Flo made it look easy most of the time.
“I loved it, though,” Flo went on, smiling at the memories. “Doing all the voices, acting it out . . . the best fun in the
world.”
That set Petra thinking. Who was it who was producing all the silly voices the other day . . . ? And then she realized. It
was Ross, playing their daft “opening lines of books” game. Now he would be a brilliant children’s story reader. And he needed something to do. She would ask him.
If she ever saw him again.
Throughout the following two weeks, four days, and sixteen hours—if anyone was counting, and she was—Petra was checking her phone obsessively.
Now that she had deleted all her social media apps, drifted away from all her friends, and essentially “estranged” herself from family, as her mother liked to point out in her rare texts to her daughter, there was no one who would be contacting her.
This left Petra feeling anxious, lonely, and adrift. She played over in her mind her last conversations with Ross and remembered
the lost look in his eye when he sought, with brutal honesty, to articulate his position: He was a writer who—like Icarus—had
flown too high and come crashing down to earth. He had carefully skirted the specifics—precisely what had happened between
him and his editor, for a start—and concentrated instead on how the hideous unraveling had made him feel. And she had struggled
to know how to react. She had let him down. Despite her own experience of failure, she had been unable to comfort him, rally
him, or even let him believe she understood him.
She had failed him.
And then, one Saturday, when she had Flo helping in the shop, her phone pinged just as the last customer had left the shop
for the day. Far too quickly, Petra reached over to check, trying to give the impression to Flo that it was no big deal. She
was fooling no one, especially not that particular sharp-minded old woman.
It was Ross.
Fancy a beer after closing? the message said.
What? Radio silence for more than two weeks, and then a five-word text? What the hell? Trying to be affronted, Petra felt
a tremulous smile spread across her face. She was going to see him. And soon.
“Thank goodness,” said Flo drily. “I take it that’s what you’ve been waiting for?”
“Yeah . . . just a friend,” Petra admitted, trying to sound airy and casual. “Wondering if I fancy meeting up for a drink,
that’s all.”
“Well, say yes, for God’s sake,” Flo shot back, pulling on her coat and leaning down to clip on Digger’s lead. “And I think we’re all jolly relieved
he—or she?—has finally contacted you. There we are, old boy,” she murmured to Digger. “Walkies and din-dins at last, you will
be relieved to know . . .”
As Flo closed the door behind her, Petra’s phone dinged again. Clearly Ross felt his first text had been insufficiently compelling.
I have snacks???? ??
Petra went and peered out of the door, into the rain-glossed street. Then she saw him. Standing on the street corner with
a bulging bag from Finn’s delicatessen in one hand and his phone in the other. He was wearing the khaki coat she first saw
him in and an embarrassed grin. And he was soaked.
She gave him a lopsided smile and held the door open.
“Thanks,” he said, coming in and heading straight for the stairs to the flat.
It was only when he was kneeling, lighting the fire, and she was returning from the kitchen with the bottle opener that either
of them spoke again.
“Where have you been?” she said. “I thought you’d died.”
He leaned back on his heels. “I’ve been a complete jerk,” he admitted. “A drama queen, a self-obsessed brat, and—worst of
all—a crappy friend.”
“Yeah, well,” mumbled Petra, “I’m still a little bit pleased to see you.”
“Tell me that’s not just because of the snacks,” Ross teased, laying out his wares on the coffee table. There was a little
pot of fat kalamata olives, each one stuffed with a whole almond, Roquefort cheese straws, thick-cut potato chips liberally
dusted with smoked paprika, and some glistening scarlet sweet mini-peppers filled with goat’s cheese. They were Petra’s favorite.
She would eat them every day, if she could afford to.
“It is mainly the snacks, to be honest,” she replied, reaching for an olive. “So what have you been up to all this time? Writing?” As soon
as she said it, she was metaphorically beating herself over the head. Of all the things to say! Would she ever train herself
out of opening her big mouth? Probably not, realistically . . .
“I actually have been writing,” Ross said, leaning back and taking a long drag of his beer before crossing one leg over the other at the knee
and relaxing, beer bottle swinging between fingers and thumb, that familiar lock of dark hair hanging over one eye. He was
the image of the handsome bohemian intellectual at play.
“Care to tell me more?” said Petra, raising an eyebrow in what she fondly imagined was a mirror of his own insouciance.
“What do you want to know?”
Ooh, this was promising. Unless he was just reeling her in, for fun.
“First line?”
“The cat . . .” He paused, with a faraway look on his face.
Petra leaned in, unconsciously.
“. . . sat on the mat.”
He was reeling her in for fun. Of course he was.
“You’re supposed to be feeling penitent, remember,” she reminded him sternly. “I didn’t let you in just so you could yank my chain.”
“Okay, okay, for real this time?”
Petra waited.
“It was a dark and stormy night—” he declaimed, tipping his head back and looking down his nose at a point on the far wall.
“Yeah, fine, whatever,” snapped Petra. She had forgotten how annoying he could be. When was he going to stop teasing her like
a kid brother? It was getting old. She was done.
There was a stiff silence.
“Look,” Ross said seriously—or was he? “I know I deflect. That’s all it is. I’m working on it, but it’s hard, you know? I
value your opinion more than anyone else I know.”
“Okay—so—I’m also the only person you appear to know,” Petra pointed out.
“True,” he admitted. “But I’ve been working. I’ve been writing. That’s why I haven’t been around. I just needed to get into