Chapter Thirty-one
I manage to stand through Declan’s entire speech without bursting into tears. There’s no sign of either Bri or whoever threw the apple, but my nerves still feel strung like an out-of-tune guitar. Declan finishes to rapturous applause, and steps down off the table.
He glances at me, and for a moment I think he’s going to ask if I want someone else to sell books, but he doesn’t and, somehow, that helps. Instead, he just picks up the copies he knocked off earlier and places them carefully back on the table.
I take a small, steadying breath, then make myself turn and face the first customer who tentatively approaches. This is my job. An elderly man stands in front of me, holding the hand of a woman I presume is his wife, and my first thought is to wonder if they seriously walked all the way in here.
‘I’m so sorry about what happened,’ the elderly man says, his face all warm concern.
‘Thank you,’ I tell him automatically, trying to smile at both of them, and the desire to not just cope but to do something pulses through me. ‘It felt a bit more like a rock concert than a book signing, didn’t it?’
The man laughs, a deep, vibrant chuckle that seems at odds with his wiry frame, and for a second he reminds me of Alistair from Knit, Stitch and Yarn.
‘I could tell you some rock concert stories that would make your toes curl,’ confides the man.
‘You could tell stories from anywhere in your twenties to your seventies that would make her toes curl,’ says the woman next to him. She turns towards me. ‘I can barely wear shoes any more my toes are so curly,’ she confides.
It startles an unexpected laugh out of me, and from the corner of my eye I see Declan pause his signing. I lean forward to look at the woman’s shoes. They’re gorgeous, blue with neat white bows.
‘You wear them well, in any case,’ I manage, and she winks.
It gets both easier and harder after that.
As though they’ve all taken Declan seriously, no one hassles me about the dedication, but every few customers someone offers me their support.
A young woman gives me a whole apple, which I think is either symbolic or in case I need to return fire.
Never in my life have I had my hand squeezed so many times, or so many people tell me that I’m so brave to sell books after what happened.
I can feel tears prickling behind my eyes, and a tingle in my nose that makes me have to sniff every minute, but I manage to hold it together. I listen and I talk, and when it gets to be too much I direct people to Jed for a bird fact.
Declan signs more quickly than he has previously, and it’s much earlier than anticipated that Jed starts gathering people to walk everyone back down the path.
Bri arrives just before they set off, and she talks quickly to Jed before striding over to Declan and me. Her face is set; her eyes serious. For the first time, it’s like Bri has dimmed her lights.
‘Are you okay?’ she asks me immediately.
‘I think so,’ I say, surprised to find that it’s true. I don’t feel quite as on edge any more – the other people in the crowd went a long way to easing that feeling in my chest – but there’s a lingering anger, and confusion.
‘What happened, Bri?’ asks Declan.
‘Tessa,’ says Bri, and Declan exhales loudly.
‘What did she do?’ he asks.
‘She wrote another article,’ says Bri, pinching the bridge of her nose.
‘The Behind the Books piece comes out tomorrow, so I suspect she was just trying to play off that. But it was a bit of her own version of . . . behind the scenes. Of how she imagined your interaction in the bookshop with Clarrie might have gone.’
Apprehension knots itself in the pit of my stomach. What the hell? What did she say? And why would she even do that?
‘It’s pretty ridiculous, really, but apparently it was enough to convince a few of your fans that Clarrie was your enemy.’
‘I’m sorry,’ says Declan, his voice heavy. And it’s a crappy, crappy thing, but it’s not his fault. I half smile at him, but his expression doesn’t change.
‘I’ll see if I can do anything about it,’ says Bri.
‘I can speak to her if that helps,’ says Declan.
Bri nods. ‘Thank you.’
Silence falls in the clearing, and it suddenly occurs to me that this is officially the end of the tour. It feels both intense and anti-climactic, and all I want to do is curl up in bed. I don’t know how I imagined this going, but . . . it wasn’t like this.
I’m sure the walk back down the path is the same distance as it was on the way in, but it feels infinitely shorter, like time is speeding up, racing us home, and before long we’re back at the cars.
We still have to drive three hours to get to the airport hotel we’re staying in tonight; then we fly home tomorrow morning. Back to reality.
Finally, the trees thin and we arrive back at the cars.
Jed is leaning against the side of the van, listening to a bird call on his phone.
Declan looks up at the sound, but doesn’t comment, and somehow the lack of conversation about birds indicates more starkly that it’s all ending than anything else.
I’m about to turn towards Declan to say – I don’t know what – but then everyone’s phones start beeping with messages, bringing the world to the edge of the forest.
I glance down at my phone to see I have three missed calls from Ruth.
My blood goes cold.
It might be nothing; she could’ve called me once and then redialled twice by accident. But my fingers are shaking as I scroll to her name.
The dial tone feels loud in my ear and the long, slow breaths I’m trying to take keep catching in my chest. Then the ringing stops, and Ruth’s warm voice comes down the line.
‘Clarrie?’
‘Hi, Ruth,’ I manage to push out. ‘What’s happening?’
‘It’s your gran,’ says Ruth gently, and my heart stops. ‘She’s had a fall.’
Ruth keeps talking, and I’m vaguely aware of her telling me that Gran has fractured her hip, that she’s going into surgery.
She’s giving details and information that is probably important.
But I only hear snatches of it. And I don’t know if it’s because it’s so unexpected, or because I’m already feeling bruised, but darkness prickles at the edges of my vision, and when I try to breathe it catches in my throat.
Then Declan is there. His voice sounds like it’s coming down a tunnel, but I hold on to it. And when I don’t answer his gentle questions he doesn’t keep pushing.
‘Do you want me to talk to her?’ he asks, and I somehow manage to nod. He takes the phone that’s slipping from my fingers and I hear him speaking calmly and quickly to Ruth. Then he slides my phone into his pocket, wraps his arms round me and holds me while I sob against his chest.