EPILOGUE
TWENTY MONTHS LATER, CAMbrIDGESHIRE, ENGLAND, AND LERWICK, SCOTLAND
I am at my best today. The colourful spines of old books always add warmth to counteract the shadows, but today there are no shadows.
The book tables, usually piled high with old tomes, have been pushed to the sides.
Crystal glasses and a silver ice bucket sit atop a white linen tablecloth, awaiting the addition of champagne.
A dining table has been brought in and set for twelve with exquisite silverware.
Antique crystal vases filled with colourful summer blooms sit at intervals along the table.
A huge arrangement of pink lilies has been placed next to the old cash register. Today, I sparkle.
Ellery Thistlethwaite hovers, more anxious than she would like.
She feels the anticipation, the hum of promise.
Something big is going to happen today, and it’s more than just the wedding.
For years she has wanted to leave here, to travel the world, to join the Born Free Foundation and advocate against the poaching of wild animals.
Something in the gleaming glass and silverware signals her new beginning.
Today she will take steps, she thinks. She will be brave.
And she is right, by day’s end she will have a handshake deal to sell the business.
Today is her lucky day. She is about to meet an old woman, and afterwards she will understand she must not live her life for others; that her father’s desires are not hers to fulfil; that the books will find their own readers.
She must simply set them free. The old woman will tell her of a lesson she recently learned: that letting go is where freedom lies. Destiny will carry the rest.
At the rear of the counter, pretty books are on display stands.
Ellery straightens one of the series of cloth-bound Batsford Books she and the groom had gleefully agreed on for the sweet pastels of their colour scheme.
Ellery will be lucky to sell them for twenty pounds a-piece, but cheap and cheerful still improves the room.
She is honoured Francis Fitzhenry wants to marry in her shop.
Ellery’s mother is apoplectic with jealousy at it, because she’s obsessed with the man.
She is a devotee of the titled upper classes; keeps a copy of Debrett’s Correct Form on her bedside table.
It irritates Ellery’s mother that Ellery is so unfazed about the whole thing.
(She’s not unfazed. She only pretends to be to annoy her mother.)
The doorbell tinkles and there stands the viscount himself. Francis Fitzhenry is elegant in shades of sage and eucalyptus, with a pale pink pocket square.
‘Darling!’ says Francis, peering around the shop with a luminous smile. ‘It looks perfect!’
Ellery returns the smile. ‘You’re a talent, Frankie Fitzhenry. You should open a decorating business.’
Francis looks up at the flowers he attached to the ceiling rafters yesterday.
‘Still looking fresh,’ she says.
He leans across the mahogany map chest to turn on a lamp that has been brought in for ambient light and colour. ‘Did the champagne arrive?’
‘It’s in the fridge. And the caterer is out the back, setting up the platters. Everything is completely under control.’
Ellery reminds herself to be calm. I am proud of her. I cannot wait for her to go out and experience life outside my walls; to explore the secrets of her heart. To really live.
‘So, you want everyone to settle in first, then I make the announcement to start the ceremony when they have a drink in hand?’ she asks.
‘Yes. Give them half an hour to chat first. Lubricating bubbles before the “I do’s” will enhance the fun.’ Francis frowns. ‘One doesn’t need to stand on ceremony, surely, if one marries in one’s sixties?’
They chat and fuss with the decor until guests begin to arrive.
First is a middle-aged woman and a teenage girl.
The girl seems unruffled by her invitation to what locals are calling the hottest ticket in town.
‘The Reclusive Right Honourable’—as they call Francis in the village—may be a man of mystery who rarely goes anywhere else in the village except here, but he manages to fuel the gossip train on mere wisps of sightings. Ellery and I are big news today.
The girl has pointed features, hair pulled back in a high ponytail. She looks around with a proprietary air.
‘Sienna! Donna!’ says Francis, kissing them on both cheeks.
The girl, Sienna, is wearing a short skirt, high-top sandshoes and a blousy top.
She pulls at the hem of her skirt, hiding the homemade tattoo still healing on her upper thigh; it is a crescent moon within a circle, the first of many she will create, though not so many as the books she will read.
She peers through the glass of the rare-book cabinet and reads the lettering on the leather bindings.
She will have a long and successful career as an illustrator of book covers, with a sideline in tattoos.
The girl’s mother is effusive, excited. She says I remind her of the bookshop her daughter works in at home, back in Australia, right down to the shade of Hague Blue from Farrow understands that nothing remains the same, and that I, just like her, have changed these past decades.
She wears her wisdom lightly; and yet I feel it solidifying all around me, into the creased pages and cracked spines, into the book boxes and antique maps, the umbrella stand and the Persian rugs.
I am not her beginning, or her end, but something in between. She has further to go.
Araminta Penry-Jones pulls up in her Range Rover and parks illegally. She steps out, resplendent in a mid-length shift dress in crepe silk and a collarless coat. (Vintage Herrera, I suspect. There’s a book on my shelves about her creations.) Francis hugs her and exclaims over the outfit.
The music is turned up and Francis wanders towards Ellery. They clink champagne glasses. ‘Well done, you. Splendid show so far,’ he says.
‘Is that Lottie’s grandmother?’ Ellery gestures across the room.
‘Yes, that’s our lovely Phyllida. She loved working in this shop.’
‘She worked here?’ Ellery frowns, no doubt thinking of past staff.
Not many had ever been employed outside the family.
I can see her mind ticking over: There were a few casual staff over the years, mostly men, and there was Francis’s fugitive nanny, of course, the infamous Dorothea Stewart whom Francis has never stopped looking for.
‘No, no,’ Francis stutters. ‘I meant she loves working in her shop, which is like this. In Australia.’
‘Oh. A bookseller.’
Phyllida appears in front of them. Beneath the wrinkles she is the same Dorothea I once knew. The same joie de vivre and playful glint in her eye. Francis introduces her to Ellery. When Phyllida takes her hand, I can see Ellery’s floaty, nervous feeling disappearing, as if she now feels safe.
Outside, a convertible vintage Fiat Spider Frua pulls up in the reserved space.
Lottie is driving. Roddy alights from the passenger seat, smartly dressed in a navy suit.
He pats the car, thrilled with his wedding gift from Francis.
As they enter, a cheer erupts. Francis strides across the room and takes Roddy into his arms. They kiss, and the look of joy that passes between them brings a tear to every eye in the room.
They turn to the gathered friends and family, hand in hand.
Ellery has spent months completing a course to be their marriage celebrant today.
In the future, when she is working for a pittance at an animal charity, the qualification will be welcome as a secondary source of income.
That, and her rummaging at car boot sales where she will occasionally find valuable books to on-sell to Roddy, my next owner.
Lottie watches from the sidelines, beaming.
She continues to burrow happily down the various rabbit holes revealed by her DNA results.
She was delighted to discover a connection to Vikings on her father’s side.
Lars Olafsson, her biological father, descended from Norse settlers thought to have crossed from Norway to Shetland around the twelfth century.
She then discovered that on her mother’s side, her four-times-great-grandfather, Captain Samuel Tulloch, sailed from Northmavine, also in Shetland, to Launceston in Tasmania in the 1800s.
The dual family connections to that cold, Scottish archipelago of Shetland awakened a fierce longing in Lottie to know her lineage.
She will discover a connection to Barbara Tulloch, a herbalist. She and her daughter, Ellen King, were the last two women executed for witchcraft in Shetland.
At Phyllida’s urging, Lottie will return to university and complete a PhD on Celtic myths about shapeshifting goddesses and their links to witch trials of the seventeenth century.
Eight years from now, she will become Professor Charlotte Peters-Banks, renowned for her expertise in Scottish folklore, the Goddess Morrigan and the legend of the Cailleach—the wise old crone of winter, the shaper of land and the timeless rhythms of nature.
She will accrue a valuable collection of books about Celtic myth and legend, and one day, like her dear friend Roddy and her grandmother before her, she will own an antiquarian bookshop.
It will be in Shetland; on the windy waterfront in Lerwick, just six miles from Gallow Hill where her female forebears burned for their herbal wisdom.
Lottie’s beloved grandmother will visit her in Lerwick in her ninetieth year, so that Lottie can proudly show her new shop.
It will take up the lower level of Lottie’s weather-worn stone cottage, with views over the rugged North Sea.
The ground floor seems carved into the shoreline, the pewter hue of its stones following the natural curve of the bay.
On the third morning of her visit, Phyllida will feel the pull of something.
She will be standing at the window, the day unusually sunny and still.
Rare that there is no wind. The ocean sways gently against the rock wall and Phyllida notices the Morrigan on the cobbles further along.
Its head twitches and flicks, black feathers gleaming in the morning sun.
Its eyes follow Lottie as she carries the signboard to the street.
For no reason that Phyllida can see, when Lottie puts the board down, it teeters and falls.
It is then that a great exhaustion sweeps through Phyllida, and she lies down on the bed.
She knows that she is closing her eyes for the final time.
Below, Lottie sees the raven hopping towards her, watching.
Her mind hums a distant, discordant tune.
She wonders; then thinks, surely, no. And yet, she does not hurry.
The wind picks up, blows a tuft of hair across her face; the bird flies away.
Before she goes upstairs, she stands the signboard to rights, so that passers-by can see the gilt lettering that announces the hushed, blue-hued emporium that holds the collections of her heart:
The Bookshop of Buried Pasts.