Chapter Three
As she walked through Covent Garden, Tess read the email again.
Or rather for the twenty-third time.
From Ella@
To Tess.Hardy@
Dear Tess
I really enjoyed your piece in The Sunday Sentinel on the travails of modern dating. I’m sure it struck a chord with the thousands of women who’ve read it.
This is why I’d love to offer you the perfect date courtesy of The Love Library, an exclusive new dating service where we will match you with your perfect partner from literature.
Do you want to rollerblade with Romeo? Shimmy with Sherlock Holmes? Dinner date with D’Artagnan?
Now you can bag yourself the book boyfriend (or girlfriend) of your dreams. A happy ever after* is only a page away.
If you want to know more and are up for a new adventure, please come to The Love Library at 8 p.m. this Wednesday.
I can’t wait to meet you!
Yours in anticipation
Ella Sharma-Banarjee (Joint Head Librarian)
*While we at The Love Library sincerely hope you enjoy your date, all loans must be returned by midnight, so when we say Happy Ever After, it’s more of a metaphorical Happy Ever After.
It was very intriguing but also annoyingly vague. When Tess had clicked on the words The Love Library, it had linked to a spot deep in Soho on Google Maps.
Tess tucked her phone back in her bag as she reached Covent Garden’s piazza.
It was a warm evening at the beginning of May after a long and very soggy April.
Spring had very definitely sprung and Tess could literally feel the sap rising, even though there weren’t many trees to be found in Covent Garden.
Like The Love Library’s happy ever after it was more of a metaphorical sap.
Outside every pub and bar were huge crowds of people spilling off the pavements and into the road, clutching drinks and laughing and chatting. There was a tangible sense of expectation; a flirty feeling like anything could happen.
Tess really needed something to happen. In her life.
To her. Something exciting, so, against her better judgement, she was once again channelling Elizabeth Bennet, and answering the email summons even though she suspected that it would turn out to be a weird role-playing thing.
Probably involving out-of-work actors and improv; two of her least favourite activities.
It was a price that Tess was willing to pay if this Love Library experience provided inspiration for another article. Although if Claire was right and Sarah had only commissioned Tess because she’d worn her down, then did she dare pitch her again?
That was something to worry about after her ‘date’.
Tess crossed over Charing Cross Road and headed down Old Compton Street.
The crowds of pavement drinkers had reached critical mass on the narrow and thronged streets of Soho.
Again, there seemed to be something heady and intoxicating in the atmosphere.
Tess could be mere moments away from her life changing for ever. At least she bloody hoped so.
No wonder then that excitement pin-pricked at Tess with every step as she pulled out her phone again and followed the little blue arrow on Google Maps, until she came to an alley halfway down Wardour Street, just opposite her favourite Italian restaurant.
Maybe if the date went well, then she and the actor masquerading as a character out of a book could see if they had a table free and grab a pizza.
She walked down the alley with some caution as it was dusk and it wasn’t particularly well lit. Then Tess stopped in her tracks. She’d arrived at her destination. An even tinier alley off the already tiny alley.
So odd.
Tess must have passed along the alley hundreds of times, yet she’d never once noticed the archway and passage, wedged between two buildings.
It was a squeeze. So tight that if someone was coming the other way, then either they or Tess would have to back up.
High brick walls towered on either side of her.
Excitement was transitioning to an unpleasant, clammy sensation.
Might this all be a deeply dodgy scam? Someone could easily jump out, stab her in the neck with a syringe, and she’d come round hours later in a bath of ice with both her kidneys missing. Maybe even her liver too.
She was being ridiculous. As her mother always said, nothing good came from having an overactive imagination. No one was planning on harvesting Tess’s organs. The alley curved, then curved again and there at the end was a building. The soft lights in its many windows beckoned Tess closer.
The dark grey brick structure was fiddly and gothic and architectural. There were a lot of flourishes. Fluted columns and fussy arches. Casement windows, leaded glass, ornate carvings etched into the lintels.
This had to be the library, but as Tess climbed up a short set of steps and reached the solid wood double doors, the brass sign fixed to the wall claimed that it was Sharma’s Academic Library and Book Depository. (Admission strictly by appointment only.)
Tess looked at the email again. Then she googled Sharma’s Academic Library. Same postcode.
Perhaps it was an offshoot of the academic library. A library within a library.
There was an ornate door knocker but also, Tess was relieved to see, a modern intercom.
She took a deep breath and pressed the buzzer, poised to push the door as soon as she heard the buzz. It looked heavy.
There was a long, long wait. Then the door didn’t buzz but a voice leaked out of the intercom.
‘Yes?’ It was quite an annoyed-sounding voice.
‘I have an appointment at eight,’ Tess reported. She tried to sound firm. Like her appointment was a fact. Not a question.
‘Name?’
The very abrupt, very monosyllabic, very bad-tempered-sounding man was making Tess’s spider sense tingle.
‘Tess Hardy?’
For goodness’ sake! Her name was definitely a fact.
‘There’s no one of that name in the appointments book,’ he said like that was that. As if he was already walking away from the intercom to lose himself in some very important library business and not concern himself with Tess’s very definite appointment.
Elizabeth Bennet would not stand for that. Tess pressed the buzzer again. Kept her finger on it for a count of five. ‘Excuse me, but I have the email confirmation. And it’s starting to rain!’
Out of nowhere, a fine mist of drizzle had descended. Tess’s hair would become a triangle of frizz within seconds.
‘God give me strength,’ said the absolutely horrible man, who really shouldn’t be in a customer-facing role. Then he actually harrumphed – Tess had thought that people only harrumphed in books – and buzzed her in.
She’d been right, the door was heavy. And creaky. She really had to put her back into it, even as she was steeling herself for a confrontation.
But as she stepped over the threshold, all she could do was gasp.
The entrance hall was absolutely beautiful. In fact, it was far too grand to be anything as mundane as a hall. It was a foyer. A vestibule. An imposing yet also welcoming gateway to the library beyond it.
Tess looked down at the black-and-white tessellated tiles on the floor.
Their pattern interrupted at intervals by larger picture tiles depicting The Four Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Virtue and Temperance.
Not that Tess knew much about virtue or the Virtues but accompanying each portrait of a beautiful women in draped robes, very on trend for Spring/Summer, was their name.
Tess looked up and around in continued wonder.
There were glass-fronted bookcases lining one wall, a row of wooden benches against the opposite wall, their backs and arms featuring ornate carvings of what looked like trailing vines.
Above her head at regular intervals was delicate wooden fretwork and more carvings.
Even better, the whole place smelt divine.
Of beeswax and the musty fragrance of old books.
If that smell could be contained then made into a scented candle with a pretentious name like Whispers from the Library, Tess would buy a job lot of them.
The hallway led through to an arch and beyond that Tess could just glimpse a cavernous, softly lit room furnished with books, their spines exerting a mysterious pull on her as she drew nearer.
Until a shadowy figure emerged from the room and stood there in the archway.
It was amazing that a shadowy figure could give off such an air of disapproval. Tess no longer felt as if she wanted to step closer, but she was here now, wasn’t she?
Committed.
She stepped closer so that the figure was no longer in shadow, but revealed himself to be a tall man a few years older than herself.
Even his tweedy jacket, big black glasses beloved of Creative Types the world over and pinched expression couldn’t hide how hot he was.
In a nerdy way. In a sexy way. In a really nerdy, sexy hot way.
‘… and I can’t find any email from a Tessa Harding. Which university did you say you’re affiliated with?’
He had a beautiful voice. Deep, dark, complex like a sinfully expensive single-origin chocolate bar that you could only have two squares of because it was so rich, although Tess had never met a chocolate bar that she couldn’t demolish in one sitting.
‘It’s Tess Hardy and I’m not from a university. You see …’
This man even managed to look hot while he was frowning quite ferociously.
‘We’re an academic library. Our members have to be affiliated with a university. It does state that very clearly in our terms and conditions,’ he said with a sigh as if this whole exchange was causing him deep emotional pain.
It was certainly causing Tess a teeth-gritting irritation. Even his hotness couldn’t make up for how deeply condescending he was.
‘I’m not here for the academic library,’ she said patiently, even though it was a quality that she usually had in very short supply. ‘I’m here for The Love Library.’
‘The Love Library?’ He had beautiful lips. Full and sensuous. The kind of lips that should be set in a smile that was flirty, smirky, dark with intent. Instead, his top lip was curled into a sneer.
‘Yes, The Love Library! I got an email from the head librarian …’
‘Oh you did, did you? The head librarian?’
The way he kept repeating everything Tess said with an incredulous tone was taking away a good seventy-three per cent of his hotness.
‘I have the email,’ Tess said, waving her phone at him.
He stepped nearer. Much nearer, so Tess could see the way that his lip curled even further at the sight of her pink sparkly phone case and matching pink sparkly nails.
He took the phone from her. Was it Tess’s imagination that he took great care to make sure that he didn’t brush his hand against hers? Like she had girl cooties.
His mouth stayed in sneer setting, his brow deeply furrowed as he read the email.
‘Of course,’ he murmured, as if he was talking to himself.
Then he raised his head so he could fix Tess with another disapproving stare.
‘I understand what’s happened here. I’m afraid you’ve had a wasted journey.
’ He made a shooing motion with his lovely long fingers.
So many hot physical characteristics that were wasted on this rude, utterly charmless man.
‘If you wait a minute, I’ll buzz you out. ’
Part of Tess wanted to meekly follow orders. Maybe even click her heels together and salute.
But the other part of her, the part that always argued with Claire, the part of her that was apparently so relentless that she’d browbeat a features editor into commissioning her, the part of her that was now asking not what Elizabeth Bennet would do, but what would the most terrifying woman that she knew, her mother, do, wasn’t going anywhere.
‘I don’t even know who you are,’ she said, drawing herself up to full height, though he still loomed over her. ‘I want to speak to the manager.’