Chapter 19
I spent the next few days in a flurry of pumpkin-making madness.
Leaford had entered into its countdown to the harvest festivities and every shop window was a riot of orange – the gift shop had orange candles, money banks, soft-toy clownfish and pumpkins, and the sweet-shop display jars were all stuffed with orange slices, gobstoppers and lollies.
Even Gilly’s Gallery had obliged the yearly trend with a series of fox paintings.
Emma and I had moved all the yarn in shades from coral to neon orange into the window, flanked by jars of buttons.
Even the butcher had exchanged his plastic parsley with faux orange wedges.
The final deadline for the library’s harvest window display was looming and I had serious amounts of décor to make.
Maeve’s salt-dough cornucopia was already sitting pretty in the window, along with most of the other contributions.
I was way behind. The felt-leaf garlands were mostly just cutting and a tiny amount of sewing but the crochet pumpkins were another matter entirely.
I’d committed to at least ten in multiple sizes and, although the pattern was fairly simple, the larger ones took some time to work up.
Sitting in front of old Charmed episodes, surrounded by tumbleweeds of hollow fibre filling, I worked for hours on my pumpkins.
My fingernails were permanently speckled with fabric glue from doing the stems and velvet fibres from the chenille yarn.
I was seeing pumpkins in my dreams – laughing at me.
But I managed to get them all finished in time, though one was slightly wonky where I’d run out of stuffing.
That was fine, he could go at the back. If anyone asked, I’d say he was a butternut squash.
Thursday afternoon we had early closing, so I went to drop everything off. It was a bright day with just a hint of autumnal chill. A light breeze caught the bat bunting and the orange lights strung down the high street. Battery-powered candles huddled in the hedgerows, their timers set to dusk.
As I walked through the market square, being careful of the cobbles in my Mary Janes and admiring the straw bales and seating being set up for the pumpkin competition, I wondered if Cooper was warm enough on the boat.
I then stumbled after accidentally picturing him in bed, bare-chested with one of my blankets slung low over his hips.
It would be just my luck to get my libido back and then break my ankle.
I still hadn’t heard anything about the dog. I guessed Cooper was going to have to keep him for a while. Though I could always offer to drive him to the vet to get his chip checked, presuming he had one.
I’d worked at the library for years before leaving to start my own business.
It was my favourite building in the town centre and I’d loved having a claim to it.
The red-brick building with its brass clock and steepled roof had once been the town hall, before the modern one was built over the river, and was subsequently closed due to asbestos.
Inside it was gloomy, with high ceilings and narrow leaded-glass windows.
The dusty shadows added to the ambience, as did the creaking wooden stairs, which popped and cracked underfoot as they were climbed.
The air still smelled of instant coffee, dusty radiators and yellowing paper.
Even the front desk, trimmed in brass rails and with a leather blotter, was a work of art.
Dan was manning the desk that afternoon.
Or, at least, he was sitting at it whilst reading a Sherlock Holmes puzzle book and making notes on a jotter.
I gave him a wave as I walked past, and he nodded at me.
We’d never really been close as colleagues and, to be honest, I hadn’t really made that many work friends.
It was the building and the job that I loved more than the people I worked with.
I walked through to the back, where the children’s library was.
Vintage teddy bears and work from the local school competed with World Book Day posters and beanbags for space.
The tiny Wendy house was neatly put to rights and I checked my watch, smiling slightly when I thought of the chaos that would be wreaked in here when the school emptied for the day.
On week days the library was usually quite quiet – we had a few old boys in reading the newspapers, ladies exchanging one pile of Mills and Boons for another, mums attending toddler story-time and the occasional student on a free period, checking out comics or just using our free Wi-Fi.
But, come the afternoon, at least twenty kids would come in straight after school, dragging PE kits and lunch boxes, all of them competing for the best beanbag and reading-challenge bragging rights.
Mostly because the bus back to Fenlowe didn’t come until four, and the stop was right behind us.
That was my favourite part of the day, to be honest. I’d accepted more than my share of underbaked Food Technology cookies and handed out many a reading badge.
The window display was in the big bay window off the children’s area, protruding onto the pavement outside.
The main thoroughfare to the bus stop. Everyone would be able to see it as they walked to the school or the shops and classes came on little trips to put their items into the window and take pictures with them.
It was already quite full. The butchers had donated a vase of pheasant tail-feathers and several antlers.
Maeve’s cornucopia sat beside it, the florists had made garlands of faux leaves, acorns and squashes.
There was Gilly’s chosen painting – the hedgehogs celebrating with pumpkin punch.
Sally had filled a pumpkin-shaped jar with Irn-Bru jelly babies and set it in a nest of lollies.
My crochet offerings and bunting would fit right in.
Space had been taped off for the children’s remaining town models and clay animals in pride of place.
The boat-turned-clock-tower had already been delivered.
You had to look really closely to see that it used to have a stern.
The stillness in the library was as restorative as I remembered it being.
The ancient radiators were rattling away to chase the chill from the air and I could hear the book cart with the wonky wheel moving about upstairs.
The turning of a page was loud in the silence and yet it took me a while to realise I wasn’t alone back there. Someone else was in the stacks.
Between the front desk and the children’s library was the non-fiction section.
The adults’ fiction area took up the entire first floor, so everything else had to be squeezed in downstairs.
I heard pages turning and at first thought it was Dan doing his puzzle book, but I realised after a moment that it was closer than that.
Then I heard the scuff of a boot on the polished parquet floor.
I absorbed all this at the back of my mind, until I heard someone muttering under their breath.
‘Come on, I cannot be the only person that needs to know this…’ followed by the thump of a book being set back on the shelf.
I knew that voice. It sent a thrill through me and drew me closer.
Before I knew it, I was setting my last pumpkins down at random.
I ducked through the stacks and found Cooper there, glaring at the spines of the books.
He was in front of a shelf with three subjects, ordered by code instead of alphabetically, so ‘organised religion’, ‘reptiles’ and ‘vehicle maintenance’ were packed in together.
I had tried to change this ‘system’ but Laurel, our head librarian, had put her foot down.
She’d worked at the library since it opened, and we were all a little scared of her.
‘Starting a church or adopting a python?’ I asked, as he scanned the titles.
He jumped and I realised it was the second time I’d made him do so. He was a little twitchy for a devil-may-care drifter. He recovered quickly but still looked a bit uncomfortable.
‘Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,’ I said, and then, feeling that I should try to make up for accidentally jump-scaring him, I added, ‘I used to work here. I can probably help you find what you’re looking for.’
‘Oh, right…’ He gave the books a bewildered look and raised a hand to push his unruly hair out of his eyes. ‘I was trying to find literally anything about engine maintenance for boats. The uh, Lady Di conked out as soon as I got her here. Haven’t been able to get her started since.’
‘Really?’ I felt an unpleasant little jolt. ‘Is that why you’re still here then? You just can’t get away?’
‘Something like that.’ He shrugged. ‘To be honest I don’t really have anywhere I need to be, but if the local council of busybodies get their way, I might have to shove off.
I’m having visions of trying to row downstream while a bunch of pensioners and school-gate mums chase me with rotten vegetables.
’ There, his twinkle was back, and he graced me with a sighting of the cutely crooked tooth as he smiled.
I laughed. ‘Can’t have that. I’m not sure there’s much on boats unfortunately…’ I scanned the titles on offer and nibbled my lip. ‘If you look something up in the online catalogue, you can request it.’
Cooper scratched the back of his neck. ‘I actually don’t have a card – I was just going to read it here and take notes.’
‘No problem. You can sign up for free – government didn’t get that one yet.’
That startled a little huff of laughter out of him. ‘Good to know, but I don’t really have an address, so it’s just really complicated…’
‘Just use the shop.’