Prologue #2
Now, as she sits here, she feels far from joyful.
The higgledy-piggledy stacks of books, the smell of their pages, the worlds within their covers – these are all things that she knows should bring her joy.
They are things that usually do, no matter how laid low she is.
Today? Today, Robert Burns himself could walk in here, accompanied by William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, and still not lift her spirits.
Not even lovely Jilly Cooper and her beautiful smile would be up to the task.
Robbie is bustling around the shop, intermittently appearing with books and placing them on the table.
While he does that, Moira pours herself a whisky, takes a sip, and looks at the small stack of cards she has already written.
They flowed, once she got started – the individual messages on each of them with an invitation to come and stay here in Bonnie Bay, the inspired hope that they would find their people.
Now they need to match them up to a book they will hide inside, a book that will hopefully be discovered by the right person at the right time.
‘This could work,’ Robbie says, showing her a big hardback called Hiking in the Highlands: A Journey in Pictures.
The cover shows spectacular mountains, a dramatic skyline with soaring eagles and vivid pine forests.
Moira nods her approval, and finds what she feels would be the right card for it.
The one that calls to her. He slides it inside, and slams it closed with a dramatic flourish.
‘There!’ he announces with a satisfied smile. ‘This is where the magic starts!’
She laughs gently. ‘When I first told you about this, you thought it was daft – what’s changed?’
He shrugs, gives it some thought. ‘I’m not sure.
Maybe reading the cards you’ve written, and all the beautiful things you said on them.
Maybe just imagining how happy this would have made Granddad.
I mean, I feel like we owe it to him to see this through, you know?
And the more we’ve worked on it, the more it’s felt…
right. I keep imagining how people are going to feel when they find the cards, don’t you? ’
‘Aye,’ Moira replies. ‘That I do. Confused, probably. So, come on, what’s next then?’
He produces another book – a guide to Scottish stone circles and ancient sites, which are plentiful around here.
There’s one not far away, allegedly built by witches.
Very strong witches, looking at the size of the stones.
She nods, and chooses the next card. Maybe the kind of person who is attracted to a book about prehistoric monuments will be more open to the idea of fate calling them via a card tucked away in its pages.
They work their way through the pile of nine cards, finding special homes for all of them, Robbie happily chattering away as they work.
Before long, the table has a good, solid stack of books – books containing envelopes full of hope.
Who knows what might happen with them, Moira thinks…
maybe nothing. Maybe anybody who finds them will be too cautious, too sensible, too busy with their own lives to even consider taking them up on their invitation to visit the Bookshop at the Edge of the World.
To stay in Bonnie Bay, and see this magical place.
Maybe nobody who finds one will have any belief in magic.
But all it takes, like she has written on the envelopes themselves, is for them to find the right person at the right time. They might be out there. For Angus’s memory, for hers and Robbie’s sake, she hopes they are.
‘Thanks for helping, my love,’ she tells her grandson. ‘Truth be told, I was putting it off. Finding the books. Writing this last card. I’m wondering if mebbe I simply don’t want to finish. Because once I do, then I have to leave this place, and release them into the world.’
‘And then it’ll be done… this last project with Granddad?’
‘Aye. Exactly. How did you get so perceptive?’
He shrugs, gives her a grin that makes him look like a six-year-old.
‘There’s an app for it, Granny.’ Robbie is a computer boy, loves his technology – which makes it all the more special that he still also loves something as old-fashioned as a bookshop.
‘Still, it’s going to be great. Our road trip. ’
She nods, tries to put on a brave face. The trip to take the books out into the world was all his idea, and she was grateful to see the way planning it energised him, wiped away some of his grief – but now it comes down to it, she’s scared.
Scared of not waking up in the bed she shared with Angus.
Scared of not being here, in this place they built together. Scared of so much.
‘I’m excited,’ he continues. ‘Me. You. The books. Our grand tour.’
The plan is to take the ten books out and about, and find new homes for them – as Robbie has suggested, donating some to charity shops, passing some on to other bookshops, even just sneaking them onto shelves in the right places.
‘We’ll be like the magical book fairies, spreading joy!
’ he’d said. It was his excitement that convinced her, and even enthused her, against the odds.
They’re going to visit all kinds of lovely bookish places – Charing Cross Road in London, and that pretty little town on the border between England and Wales, Hay-on-Wye, that is paradise for bookshops.
They’re going to Shakespeare country in Stratford, and to Jane Austen’s Bath, and down the coast to Whitby, with all its Bram Stoker connections…
so much to look forward to, even if she is also dreading it.
‘It’s not the worst idea you’ve ever come up with, son,’ she replies, trying to hide her doubts.
‘What was the worst idea I ever came up with?’
‘Too many to choose from, darlin’, but I’d probably say that time you went to the Stuart farm one night when you were a wee bit pickled, and tried to ride one of the Highland cattle like it was a horse…’
Robbie nods, and rubs his chest at the memory. ‘Aye. I suppose that was pretty dumb. Two broken ribs to prove it. Anyway. We’re done, aren’t we, apart from that last card?’
‘Aye. Apart from that last card. I’m struggling to find the right words.’
‘How did you manage the others? Because they were perfect…’
Moira is reluctant to tell him the truth – that she imagined up a version of his dead granddad, and had a whole conversation with him while she was sitting at this exact same table.
He’d told her to write ‘from the heart’, and it had worked – Angus was still inspiring her from beyond the grave.
It’s a hard thing to explain without sounding a wee bit nutty though, so she doesn’t mention it.
‘They just seemed to flow. This one is being stubborn.’
She looks at the picture on the front of the card.
A mountainous landscape, filled with heather-covered Munros, all vivid shades of green and purple.
It was Angus who took that photo, as he did all of them.
He hadn’t planned on using them for the cards, he’d think of it as arrogant, but as she now finds herself doing this without him, she got the final say.
She always loved his pictures, the way he had of finding a moment – a beam of light, a hare poised before flight, a stag between the tree trunks.
If anybody could capture the essence of this place, then it was Angus – and if his pictures and her words combined can’t tempt anybody to come and visit the bookshop, then so be it.
It simply means the card hasn’t found the right person, at the right time.
Moira picks up her pen, and chews at her lip.
She can’t start writing until she knows what to say, and for some reason she is totally blocked.
Here, in this room full of books and stories and wonderful words, she simply cannot string together the right flow of sentences.
Cannot dig deep enough inside, and access the heartfelt sentiment she knows she needs to find.
She toys with the idea of giving up. There are nine cards already done, what difference would this one make?
She stares at the picture, and remembers the day it was taken.
It was the week that Robbie had started uni in Edinburgh, and they’d both been sad to see him go.
They hid it, of course, not wanting to spoil his pleasure at setting off to the big city, but still…
she in particular had been emotional. Seeing him wave goodbye at his halls near the Royal Mile, starting this new phase of his life without them, had moved her in unexpected ways.
They’d lost Robbie’s mum, their Isobel, when he was only a wee bairn, and he’d been with them ever since.
He arrived scared and lost, barely knowing them, and it seemed like in the blink of an eye he was gone again – all lanky long legs and baggy jeans and cheeky grin.
Robbie grew up in Bonnie Bay, in this bookshop, and when he left, everything felt so quiet and calm.
Quiet and calm, Moira felt, was overrated, especially when compared to the noise and chaos of having a young one around the house.
She’d tried to hide it, crying in the bathroom or when nobody was around, almost embarrassed at the torrent of raw emotion that threatened to engulf her.
Of course, she’d been fooling herself – Angus knew.
He knew, he understood, and he responded by booking them a spontaneous trip to Loch Lomond.
‘Yomping up and down a few hills will cure you,’ he’d said, when she tried to argue.
‘No amount of blues that the view from a mountain can’t chase away. ’
He’d been right. He was always right. And now Robbie is back here, for the time being at least, and Angus himself is not. Moira feels a rush of tears sting her eyes, and swipes at her own face, annoyed with herself.