Chapter 5
Thursday was going well. It was nearly lunchtime, and Flo was doing a great job reading to her second set of six-year-olds,
with all the appropriate voices and as much arm-waving and drama as her injuries would allow.
Jules and Jess, the school library coordinator for the district, stood to one side, watching in admiration as Flo gave it
her all. The children—each dressed as their favorite character from a book—were spellbound and motionless, all of them wide-eyed
and some open-mouthed.
“You’re so kind to do this,” whispered Jess, a curly-haired woman of Jules’s age whom she had instantly warmed to. “Capelthorne’s
has always been brilliantly supportive of the schools around here. I’m incredibly grateful.”
“Happy to help. We know how important it is to get them into the reading habit as young as possible,” whispered Jules, but
then she noticed Jess was looking past her, right over at The Portneath Bookshop across the road.
“Ha!” whispered Jules in triumph. “You won’t catch that lot hosting story time. They’re all about the bottom line.”
“Hmm,” Jess murmured noncommittally, not meeting Jules’s eye.
“Okay, tell me... what?” Jules sighed. Whatever it was, it would be bad, and Roman would definitely be behind it.
“It’s just that, well, it’s amazing of them really—they’ve donated a big box of books to each of the primary schools in the
district,” admitted Jess, shiny-eyed at the memory. “I say ‘they,’ but I mean, I actually met that Roman guy who’s taken it
over. It was his idea. My partner, Aiden, and Roman are old friends from ages ago, but I didn’t meet him until he came back
from New York last year, and I’ve not lived here long. Anyhow, not that I’m looking, because me and Aiden, but... wow,
just wow—handsome or what?” Jess pressed her hands to her flaming cheeks at the thought.
“The books?” Jules reminded her tartly. She was now officially over hearing how handsome and swoon-worthy Portneath’s very
own Jeff Bezos was.
“The books!” replied Jess, chastised. “And not just remainders either, but recent bestsellers, all formats, all ages, audio,
the lot!” And then she caught Jules’s expression. “Sorry,” she added. “Obviously we don’t expect Capelthorne’s to...”
And that was the point, wasn’t it? Jules pondered, patting Jess on the arm in a display of forgiveness, dredging up a smile
with difficulty. Capelthorne’s just didn’t have the budget to make grand gestures like that, but Portneath Books did. Of course
it did, and how could Capelthorne’s compete? Jules could only hope the Portneath Books marketing budget ran dry before Capelthorne’s
folded. She was pretty sure it was well funded, though, what with Roman’s bright and shiny shop refit and his family’s deep
pockets. He had opened that bookshop on a whim, she fumed silently—a rich man’s plaything—and one-hundred-year-old Capelthorne’s
was going to be the one paying the price.
Or was it? Not if she had her way, she decided, catching Jess’s anxious look in her direction and trying to consciously wipe the frown off her face. Poor Jess, who was sweetness itself, was obviously mortified at having said anything to offend.
The children, with a tiny prompt from Jess, gave Flo a round of applause when she got to the end of her story, and then they
got up excitedly to spend the book vouchers each had clutched in a sticky hand. Some had extra money provided by their parents—five-,
ten-, and even twenty-pound notes—but most were happy to choose from the World Book Day one-pound deals. Finally, each child
had solemnly transacted at the till with Flo, who was still wearing her witch’s hat, and had been handed their precious choice
of book in a brown paper bag with the Capelthorne’s logo printed on it.
Flo breathed a sigh of relief when the doorbell dinged to signify the exit of the final child—at least until the next consignment
arrived.
“This is great stuff,” said Jules encouragingly, deciding not to tell Flo about the enemy’s grand book giveaway gesture.
“It’s exhausting, but it’s all good,” agreed Flo. “We should have more things like this in the schedule. I might have let
the promotion side of things slip a bit in the last few years...”
“That’s understandable,” Jules said quickly. “You’ve got me to help you now. I thought I’d put together a marketing plan,
a calendar of events for the next few months, seeing as I’m going to be around—there’s the hundred-year anniversary for one
thing. That can be the theme for the whole year.”
“Ah, yes, that,” said Flo, without energy. “Which reminds me, I have to do something about this lease thing running out, if
it even does. I’ll dig out the file and make an appointment with our solicitor to see what’s what.”
“I am sooo glad you’re staying,” Freya announced happily for the umpteenth time.
“Yeah, well... Aunt Flo needs me, plus—let’s face it—I don’t have a career anymore. So, I may as well.”
“You mean your boss would refuse to give you a reference or something?” Freya looked world-weary at the thought.
“I mean my boss will already have bad-mouthed me everywhere. It’s a small world.”
“Same with French restaurants,” admitted Freya. “Youch. Bad luck.”
The two women were stretched out full length on Freya and Finn’s bed, watching Friends on Netflix and eating pizza that, slightly surprisingly, Freya had stashed in the freezer. It was Freya’s one night off from
the restaurant, and Finn was up at Hollytree Farm, helping his brother, Ciaran, give the milking parlor its yearly clean.
“God, this is good,” Freya went on, licking her fingers and reaching for another slice. “I’m starving.”
“I thought you’d be above frozen pizza with all your fancy French ways,” teased Jules. “Remember when we used to do this?”
She waved her pizza slice. “Saturday nights at your house in Middlemass? Your mum used to make us popcorn and let us watch
films in her bedroom.”
“I remember eating chocolate flakes in her bed with you,” reminisced Freya. “We got chocolate crumbs everywhere! She made
me change her sheets the next day. It was that time we were watching Mean Girls .”
“ Which time?” Jules asked, laughing. “We were always watching Mean Girls .”
They both fell silent. The Mean Girls film had been a seminal experience for both of them. It had made the bullying from the real-life mean girls at Portneath
High just a little bit more bearable.
Freya’s mum had been so kind, Jules remembered.
She would solemnly sit both of them down at the kitchen table with tea and homemade cake, letting the two of them witter on endlessly about all the things that preoccupied all teenage girls who weren’t at the top of their particular food chain.
It had seemed so important at the time, who kissed who, what so-and-so said to so-and-so.
.. She would give them a patient adult ear and wise counsel whenever they were open to hearing it.
Jules’s mum, by contrast, couldn’t have been less interested.
Even with that patient listening ear, Jules remembered, she had felt too hotly humiliated to tell Freya’s mum the sorry tale
of the stuck, trailing loo paper and the hilarity of Roman and his little gang. Even now, it had the power to turn her cheeks
pink. Why, after all these years, did she still even mind? Old scars went deep, it seemed.
“But seriously, doesn’t coming back to Portneath feel weird?” insisted Freya, bringing Jules back to the present. “Neither
of us could wait to get away, remember?”
“I do,” agreed Jules. She had counted down the days until she left for uni, even though it had been devastating to leave Flo
and the bookshop. Leaving her mum and the little Middlemass cottage? Not so much.
“But that was then,” said Freya, contentedly rolling onto her back and splaying out her arms. “I was like you, I was forced
to come back. But then, when I got here, I thought, Yeah, this could be good .”
“Plus, you hooked up with Finn pretty quick, from what I understand,” teased Jules, shoving her in the ribs.
“I did, didn’t I?” agreed Freya happily. Then, suddenly, she looked anxious. “We’re okay, right? About Finn I mean?”
“What are you talking about? Of course, we’re okay.”
“But you remember...?”
Jules sighed and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “That was then,” she said, turning to pull a face at Freya. “I mean, the preposterous ness of the idea anyhow! Me calling dibs on Finn, and you promising not to go near him? Ridiculous. Like he even took a second glance at either of us then. Ha!”
“And, in any case, you refused to admit it, but I always thought that Roman was the object of your unquenchable lust,” said Freya happily, not seeing Jules’s expression.
“We were both kind of ridiculous,” agreed Jules, keen to change the subject. “So, you and Finn, then? Give?”
“Well, it’s all amazing, obviously.” Freya sighed, gazing adoringly at the ceiling as if Finn’s face were floating directly
above her. “Just so right , you know? As soon as I saw him again, it just felt totally incredible, and thank goodness, he felt the same... although
it was a horrible time.” Freya’s face clouded.
“Your mum dying,” said Jules. “I can’t imagine... What a terrible reason to have to come home.”
“Yeah, so... it was a lot,” said Freya, dabbing sudden tears and sniffing, “and Finn was pretty much the first person I
bumped into. I was surprised he remembered me,” she reminisced with a smile. “I mean, ten years! And obviously, as you have
seen, he is now even hotter. And”—she gave Jules a cunning, sideways look—“I’ll tell you who else is looking even hotter, now that he’s back...”
“Go on then, who?” Jules sighed, knowing perfectly well and wondering what she had to do to get Freya off the subject of Roman.
“Roman Montbeau. Oh. My. God,” Freya opined, her eyes closed in ecstasy, and then her eyes snapped open and her face fell.
“I can’t believe I just said that,” she gabbled. “I completely forgot—the bookshop...”