Chapter 9
JOSIE
‘Hang on, Rupert,’ I exclaim. ‘You’re not making any sense. What’s happened exactly?’
Oh God. Here comes Shane. I do a silly little wave and grimace apologetically. He makes a glass-raising motion – want a drink? – and I shake my head quickly as he heads for the bar. ‘You know the value of these books,’ Rupert announces. ‘We can’t afford this to happen.’
‘Can’t afford what to happen?’
Of course I know their value. The bulk of our business is online sales – all handled by me.
Rupert isn’t interested in the tiresome business of taking payments, packaging up our valuable tomes and ensuring they reach their buyers promptly.
His role is to occupy the front desk, bantering with friends and unwittingly intimidating potential customers.
‘Remember that numbered limited edition on Picasso ceramics?’ he snaps.
‘Yes, of course—’
‘The customer’s been in touch. The book turned up in an appalling condition—’
‘What?’ I exclaim. ‘It can’t have! You know how careful I am. If it’s been damaged in transit, we’re covered for that. We just need to—’
‘I don’t think this happened in transit!’
I flinch and glance over at Shane, who’s sipping his beer at the bar. Won’t be a minute, I mouth at him.
‘Rupert, can we please deal with this on Monday?’ I say, but he carries on talking regardless.
He knows I’m away, that an old friend has died, and that I’m back in my home town to pay my respects.
‘Good luck up there!’ he’d said with an alarmed expression, as if a trip to Yorkshire were on a par with traversing the Arctic.
‘What happened exactly?’ I ask.
‘I’ve already told you.’
‘Yes, but I didn’t catch it.’ I can’t possibly have heard him right. ‘Something about cheese?’
‘I said, someone put a cheese slice between the pages of that book. I don’t think that happened in transit, do you?’
I gaze around the soulless bar, trying to take this in. ‘Processed cheese,’ he adds hotly.
‘You mean… like a Dairylea slice?’
‘I s’pose so, yes!’
‘Put in between the pages? Like a bookmark or something—’
‘I’m not finding this funny, Josie.’
‘Neither am I! So are you…’ My heart is rattling and I’m finding it hard to form the right words. ‘You mean you’re actually accusing me of doing this?’
‘You packaged the order,’ Rupert announces. ‘No one else touched it—’
‘Why on earth d’you think I’d do something like that?’
‘I have no idea!’
Without warning, tears flood my eyes. ‘You think – you mean, you really think—’ My voice wobbles and I break off, aware that my tears are about to spill over. Furiously, I will my body to suck them back in.
‘I can’t talk about this now,’ I mutter. ‘I’ll see you on Monday.’ With that, I finish the call and beckon Shane to come over and join me.
He takes a seat and gives me a concerned look. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Just a work thing.’ I place my phone face down on the table. ‘My boss can be an idiot sometimes.’
I’m aware of him scanning my face, as if trying to figure out whether I want to talk about it. ‘It’s nothing,’ I say firmly. ‘Anyway, I, erm… I realised I wasn’t remotely tired any more and wouldn’t be able to sleep, so—’
‘Me too.’ He smiles, looking sheepish, as if acknowledging that we’ve caught each other out. ‘I need this, to be honest,’ he says, lifting his glass.
‘Same.’ I smile and sip my wine, which is bland and acidic – a step down, if that were possible, from the cheap stuff I usually drink at home, but somehow weirdly delicious.
‘I’m sorry,’ Shane starts, ‘but I haven’t even asked what you do.’
‘My job?’ I bite my lip, conscious of my heartbeat returning to something like normal. ‘I work in a bookshop just off Piccadilly. A little independent place specialising in art books.’
‘Oh, lovely!’
I make a spluttery noise and he looks at me quizzically.
And then – because he suggests another drink, and I can’t think of a reason not to – I splurge it all out: about Rupert, the cheese, his accusation.
‘You’re kidding!’ Shane exclaims. ‘As if you’d do something like that.
’ And somehow this breaks the ice and conversation starts to flow.
He asks about other jobs I’ve had – temping, bar work, whatever I could fit around Cora’s school hours – and tells me about his shop.
‘Musical instruments?’ I marvel. ‘Wow. That’s brilliant.’
I look across the table at him, at the clearly sorted man he’s become.
The kind of man who’s ‘totally amicable’ with his ex.
It wasn’t like that with Dale – Cora’s dad – and me.
I’d tumbled into a relationship with him off the back of the whole Shane/Ravi/band debacle.
Here was something I could throw myself into, I’d thought.
With no real prospects, I’d jumped at the chance to move to London together because, well, wouldn’t that be fun?
London had everything, we reckoned. Endless opportunities for adventure and larks.
Dale knew of a room going in a house share in Camden, so we moved into that.
This could have been written off as a youthful error but somehow, punctuated by many break-ups and reconciliations, at twenty-nine, I had our baby.
The pregnancy hadn’t been planned but it surprised me how delighted I was.
However, within six months of Cora being born, I could no longer handle Dale and his stoner mates getting off their heads around her – and we were over for good.
Reluctantly, he moved in with a friend, and for weeks afterwards, he’d turn up drunk, trying to barge his way into the flat.
Crazed letters were pushed through my letterbox and once, two enormous Hawaiian pizzas were sent round by him, which I took as his way of trying to ‘help’.
Shane sips his beer and looks thoughtful. ‘I feel really bad about losing touch,’ he says.
‘With Ravi?’ I ask. ‘Yes, me too. It’s awful, really. It shouldn’t have happened.’
He sighs, nodding. ‘Why d’you think she wanted us to do this?’
‘The tour?’ I shrug. ‘Honestly, I’ve no idea. But maybe she felt it was… kind of unfinished?’
‘Because we never did that last gig? The Huddersfield one?’
I cringe inwardly. ‘Exactly, yes. But I still can’t understand why that would have mattered to her, after all this time.’
‘I guess it really did though, didn’t it?’ he suggests.
‘Seems like it, yes.’ A small silence hovers.
‘But obviously,’ he starts, ‘it’d be really difficult for us to do it…’
‘Yes, of course,’ I say quickly. ‘I mean, you have your shop, right?’
‘Yeah, that’s right.’
‘And Rupert always insists that I book time off way in advance…’
‘And there’s your family too,’ he adds. ‘Your granddaughter—’
‘Oh, yes.’ The family who leans on me so heavily!
‘Although,’ Shane says thoughtfully, scratching at an eyebrow, ‘it would only be a few days.’
‘A few days up here,’ I remind him. ‘And how on earth would we get around?’ Because obviously, travelling from one entirely well-connected town to the next would be logistically impossible!
‘And where would we stay?’ I go on. ‘Five nights in hotels, that’d cost—’ I break off, not wanting to admit what a mess my life actually is.
That I barely make my mortgage every month.
And the fact that my boyfriend’s solution is to sell pictures of my alluring peasant feet.
That staying in hotels – even cheap hotels – is beyond my means right now.
Hence the bus travel and this ill-fitting Vinted dress and the mainly charity shop books I keep buying for Poppy because I want to give her things.
Things we can enjoy together. ‘We’re a bit overloaded with books at the moment,’ Zack had announced last time.
‘But this is lovely of you. We’ll keep it for when she can read! ’
Shane seems to be studying me, and I meet his gaze. ‘There is a way, though,’ he starts. ‘I mean, one way we could do it without having to book hotels. That is, if we were going to do it…’
‘Which we’re not,’ I remind him.
‘Nope. Absolutely not!’
Curiosity is bubbling up in me now. ‘But… if we were?’ I prompt him. ‘What were you thinking?’
He pauses, smiles and drains his glass. ‘Well, I know a man with a van…’
‘A van?’ I repeat.
‘Yeah.’ He chuckles. ‘A campervan, I mean. This guy Boris owns it. He’s been popping into the shop for years, mainly to chat and hang about. Buys the occasional plectrum. A set of strings once a decade…’
I nod, willing him to get to the point. ‘What’s this campervan like?’
‘No idea – I’ve never seen it. But I do know he’s very fond of it. Of her, rather. Calls her Doris—’
‘Boris and Doris?’ I grin.
‘That’s right. Travels all over, apparently.
I think it makes him feel like he’s still a man of the road.
’ He laughs fondly, and I smile. Just for an instant, I wish it hadn’t turned out like this.
I wish we’d stayed friends – or something at least. That somehow, out of the wreckage of everything, we’d remained in each other’s lives, even tentatively.
But too much had happened, and if I allow myself to even remember any of it, I can hardly look at his face.
‘He’s always saying I can borrow it,’ Shane adds.
‘Well, it’s a nice idea but…’ I pause, shaking my head. ‘What am I saying? It’s a terrible idea!’
‘I guess you’re right.’ He laughs, and as we finish our drinks and travel back up to the third floor together, it’s a little less awkward this time. ‘Night then,’ he says with a smile. ‘Hope it all works out for you.’
I blink at him.
‘With the cheese business.’
‘Oh, yes! Of course. Thank you.’ We hug again and I muster a stoical smile. And this time, for some unfathomable reason, I feel a little lighter as I stride towards my room.