Chapter 5 #2
“I wish I could forget,” said Jules wryly.
“And yeah, he’s objectively hot. But he’s also a horrible, horrible person, remember?
He was an arrogant twat then, and how about what he is doing now?
It doesn’t matter what he says, he didn’t have to open a bookshop opposite Capelthorne’s.
That’s a declaration of war. But then he’s a Montbeau.
They’re a greedy, ruthless, entitled family, and he’s no exception.
If he had a portrait in the attic, it would be looking pretty terrible by now. ”
“So, you would never...?” Freya teased.
Jules’s expression gave her the answer.
Next morning, in recognition of her London life collapsing so disastrously into a pile of rubble, Jules summoned up her resolve
and messaged the house WhatsApp to let people know she was detained in Devon for the foreseeable. The housemates, whom she
had never really got to know well, rallied around touchingly, commiserating and promising to pack up her few belongings to
move them from her little box-room to the attic as soon as a new housemate could be found. Thankfully, this was achieved within
the following twenty-four hours, with her replacement taking over the rent. That only left her belongings to collect at some
point. With such a tiny room, Jules lived with as few possessions as possible, so a trip up to London with an average-sized
car would do it. Not that Jules had a car. Anyhow, it was a problem to deal with another time, she decided. The last thing
she needed in Portneath was her basic wardrobe of work-smart suits and her carefully curated book collection. Books, she definitely
wasn’t short of in her new life.
Okay, so Jules might be washing the windows in the door a little more than strictly necessary, i.e., every morning for the
last week. And so what if she was rubbing harder than she needed to, possibly out of the fury she felt whenever her gaze fell
on The Portneath Bookshop across the road. Which it did. Quite a lot. And who was that irritatingly immaculate blond girl
who was turning the sign on the door to “Open” on the dot of nine o’clock? Who swished their perfect, straight, shiny blond
hair that much anyhow? Was it some kind of physical tic? What was with all the swishing?
“Stop glaring at the enemy!” Aunt Flo called out, laughing, from her perch behind the till. “That’s authentic Georgian glass you’re polishing. You’ll wear it clean through if you’re not careful.”
Jules summoned up an answering chuckle with difficulty. “I was just thinking,” she said, “maybe we should be opening the shop
at nine o’clock rather than nine thirty? What do you reckon?”
“You mean, like The Portneath Bookshop does?”
“Do they?” Jules replied, unconvincingly vague. “Well, it wouldn’t do any harm.”
“It would do me harm,” Flo protested. “It takes an age to get washed and dress with all this clobber on me.” She waved a plastered arm. “Nine
thirty opening suits me very well, thank you. And anyhow, can you honestly say they’ve actually had any customers in during
that half hour? I ask because if anyone knows, you do, standing right at the front of the shop...”
“Fine, point taken,” admitted Jules, turning away from the window reluctantly. “Just a thought.”
Flo was right, she was hyperalert to any commercial advantage the loathsome Roman might be gaining on her. Without her busy,
stressful London job to think about, Jules’s mind was brimming—day and night—with ways to transform Capelthorne’s fortunes.
It was helpful that Jules had experience of the little shop’s systems from her Saturday job there as a teenager, but it was
alarming to see that nothing much had changed in all the years since. The book ordering and stock system was on its knees
and crashed routinely several times a day. And there was a huge backlog of unsold stock that should have been returned to
the publishers long ago. Jules had been slowly working her way through the online stock system, packing and returning books
they couldn’t hope to shift before it was too late to claim a refund.
And that wasn’t even the worst of it. The more she looked into things, the worse they seemed to have become.
It was clear Flo was rarely troubled by sales reps nowadays, but that was less of a blessing than it sounded.
It meant the little shop’s relevance and visibility was dwindling among book distributors and wholesalers.
To address this, Jules spent a fair bit of time on the phone to the main distributors and publishers, sucking up and generally reminding them of the presence of Capelthorne’s, but the mood music was obvious: Capelthorne’s was not a big player and couldn’t compete with the major chains, with their paid promotional slots and outlets in all the big cities.
All the big publishers and distributors talked the talk, of course—independent bookshops were lauded extravagantly—but a lot
of it was just that. Talk. Portneath, being on the coast, was at the end of the line, too far from Exeter to make it onto
the sales rep routes, let alone the itineraries of the major writers out on their book tours. It seemed that Capelthorne’s—which
used to have its reputation go before it, in a modest way—was now an irrelevance. Jules even called an old mate in the marketing
department of Farquarson and Trimble who—once she had got past the breathless, sotto voce imprecation to dish the dirt on
what had precipitated her sudden departure—promised to bear Capelthorne’s in mind when planning marketing activities. Time
would tell whether she would stick to her promises. Jules wasn’t holding her breath.
“You work too hard,” Flo told her, but a continuation of her gentle telling off was interrupted by the bell announcing a new
customer. Jules saw Flo’s face light up in recognition and pleasure and turned to see who it was.
A tall, distinguished-looking man, stooping slightly with age, was smiling shyly at Flo, tipping his hat in old-world greeting.
“Good morning,” he said, looking from Jules to Flo diffidently, obviously keen not to impose.
“I’m off,” announced Jules, giving them both a little wave. Even with broken limbs, Flo was more than capable of dealing with a single customer, especially one she was so obviously pleased to see.
Jules busied herself in the office, and when she next looked up to see how they were getting on, the gentleman had gone.
“Who’s lover boy, then?” she asked cheerfully as Aunt Flo made a distraction of tidying the table by the till, squaring off
stacks of books that were already perfectly straight.
“Who? Oh, him?” she said unconvincingly. “Such a nice man. I think he’s a widower; he’s been in a few times, buying recipe
books, and we’ve got chatting. Bless him, he was asking for recommendations, starting completely from scratch, so I sold him
Delia Smith’s How to Cook: Book One to start with. Had to order it in, of course.”
“I know that one!” said Jules. “It’s got instructions for boiling an egg and a lovely photograph of eggs in a bowl on the
cover. Vintage gold, but a bit basic, maybe?”
“Not a bit of it,” Aunt Flo said staunchly. She prided herself on her book recommendations for customers. “He came back in
and bought books two and three. Said they were perfect for him.”
“What did he want to buy today?”
“ Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child,” Aunt Flo said with a tiny, smug smile.
Jules gave a low whistle. “Credit to him,” she said. “That’s progress.”
“And he’s gained a few pounds, which suits him. Funny old stick,” Aunt Flo mused. “Wants to chat, or seems to, and then—I
don’t know if it’s shyness—he just grabs the book and runs.”
“Ha! He fancies you.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” retorted Flo, but she had a little secret smile that lingered on and off for the rest of the day, Jules
noticed.
Flo had never had a man friend in her life—at least she hadn’t in all the years Jules had known her. Could it finally be time?
Surely Aunt Flo had no interest in that sort of thing...?