Chapter 5
A couple of weeks later, Daisy was the proud owner of a very manic Saturday and didn't her feet know about it. The fallout from the social media video doing the rounds was that Daisy was busy; she wasn’t complaining, but she was feeling it.
It was late afternoon and the light was a soft, grey sort of luminescence that only Pretty Beach managed to pull off without looking down and out miserable.
The last shreds of sunshine had disappeared somewhere behind the rooftops about half an hour before and the bookshop was glowing in its own little way; all lamps, fairy lights, and flickers from tealights Daisy had stolen from the kitchen and set out on the side tables.
The shop was still officially open for just over another half-hour, but Daisy had half-pulled the blind at the front just low enough to signal that it was very nearly time for everyone to go home.
She hoped to high heaven that the last few customers would get the message because without wanting to be a misery she’d had enough of smiling and small talk.
She’d brought in the blackboard with now smudged chalk from that morning’s recommendation from the pavement and leaned it inside the front door.
Moving about the shop quietly, stacking a few books back into the snug shelf near the fiction table she tried to ignore her aching feet as she restocked the herbal teas at the back by the window.
Daisy, to be frank, was cream crackered, couldn’t wait to get rid of everyone, go and collect the twins and have a nice evening with them doing sweet nothing at all.
The big wingback chairs were currently occupied by John and June, a couple in their sixties who lived somewhere in the lane behind the duck pond and since the shop had opened had come in every Saturday afternoon.
John always had a green tea, and June a milky Earl Grey.
They sat in silence from knowing each other for years, each bought one book every week and then went on their merry way.
Today was no different and the pair of them sat close but not touching, each holding a book, with the occasional nod between them when something on the page caught the other’s eye.
Daisy liked having them there as much as they obviously liked visiting.
Their presence was already a routine and it felt as if they belonged just as much as she did.
Clearing up the counter, the whole place had an end-of-day, ready-to-close-up-shop feeling; a few books were out of place, the entrance table needed a tidy, the air smelled of afternoon tea and the hum of a jazz playlist on a speaker just behind one of the library ladders played somewhere in the background.
The front bell gave a soft jingle as another customer entered.
Daisy turned from the counter, her hand still resting on the spine of a paperback she’d been about to shelve.
A well-dressed woman stepped inside, shutting the door firmly behind her.
Daisy right away assumed it would be another of the people who had heard about the shop because of the video.
The woman was dressed in a way that made people do a quick scan of their own outfit.
Fairly tall, neat, and perfectly put together, the woman screamed that she didn't live in Pretty Beach. Dressed in a tailored cream jacket over bright white wide-leg jeans that had not a speck of fluff on them, the woman looked like a laundry powder advert. Daisy took her in as quick as a flash, thinking that she didn’t really have bookshop vibes, whatever they were.
Tan leather loafers, blond hair in a chin-length, perfectly straightened, choppy bob, the sort that didn’t move but clearly cost a fortune.
A large tan tote bag slung casually over one arm, looked like something one of Daisy’s sisters carried, or perhaps modelled on a character in a film where someone important got out of a taxi in Mayfair.
Whatever, the outfit was a long way from Pretty Beach or, at least, the Pretty Beach Daisy inhabited.
The woman paused just inside the door and gave the shop a long, deliberate look.
Not smiley-curious in the way most visitors were, but as if she was analysing everything.
She had a highly critical, stern sort of stroppy look on her perfectly unlined face.
Right away, Daisy was not getting good vibes.
‘Hello.’ Daisy kept her tone friendly.
‘Are you still open? The blind made me think otherwise?’
Daisy couldn’t quite decipher the accent. English, yes, and British, but there was an edge to it. A faint curl of New York, maybe or somewhere like that. Not that Daisy knew New York from LA, but anyway. ‘We’re just closing up actually…’
The woman moved further into the shop, her eyes scanning the shelves. ‘What a lovely little space.’
‘Thank you. As I said, we’re just winding down for the day, but you’re welcome to have a quick look around.’
The woman nodded once and turned towards the middle table.
She picked up a hardback, turned it over, read the blurb, and did the same with another.
Then she moved on to the snug section, her heels softening as she stepped onto the old rug near the armchairs.
She didn’t say anything for a minute or two, just browsed.
But there was something about her aura that didn’t sit right with Daisy.
She was looking at the books, but not reading the titles; her eyes moved across the shelves in quick sweeps, her fingers barely touching anything.
Daisy had only owned the bookshop for a while, but she’d been in other bookshops, around books and libraries long enough to know that the woman was not a book lover as far as she could tell.
Not that she knew what a book lover officially looked like, it was just something about the way the woman moved and vibed.
As if she really didn’t fit in the world she’d walked into in the slightest.
Daisy busied herself behind the counter, pretending to stack a few bookmarks into their little jar while keeping half an eye on the woman, wondering if she was going to steal things.
She’d heard through her online research into all things retail that thieves in shops did not look as you thought they might.
The woman turned again and moved back towards the main fiction table. ‘Is it just you who runs the shop?’
Daisy wasn’t sure whether or not to lie. It was the first time she’d been asked the question. ‘Yes, umm, I mean no. Well, I’ve got help from time to time, my family’s nearby. But day to day, it’s me.’
‘It must be quite a lot, running it all alone.’ The woman’s lip sort of snarled.
Daisy smiled, but her back stiffened. ‘It has its moments, but I love it. It’s a good place to be here in Pretty Beach.’
The woman nodded again and picked up another book. She flicked through the pages, then put it down. ‘And you live upstairs?’
‘Yes. There’s a little flat above the shop.’ Daisy instantly regretted divulging her living arrangements.
‘That must be convenient.’
‘It is.’
There was a pause. The woman moved again, this time to the sideboard where Daisy had laid out new arrivals and an oversized, overfull vase of Susannah’s garden flowers was perched on the left.
The woman ran a finger along the edge of a display card and looked back at Daisy.
‘Do you get much foot traffic here or is it mostly locals?’
Daisy tilted her head. ‘It’s a bit of both, actually, which is why it’s working. Some tourists, but we’ve got a good local base. Lots of lovely regulars and we’re already on the Insta book trail. Social media has put us on the map.’
‘Hmm, yes, I’ve seen that.’ The tone was non-committal, almost trying to be disinterested, very strange and the woman stared at Daisy for just a touch too long.
Daisy felt a horrible sort of shudder-y feeling run up and down her spine as she folded the top of a reusable bakery bag beside the till area and found herself asking a question.
She wasn’t sure why and wished she hadn’t.
She should have gone with her gut and not engaged the woman any further. ‘Have you visited Pretty Beach before?’
The woman looked at her, expression unreadable. ‘Not recently.’
The woman moved away from the table again and wandered slowly past the armchairs, where the older couple still sat, oblivious to the change in atmosphere.
She reached the library ladder nearest the back of the shop and ran her eyes over the shelves and then turned and looked at Daisy intently.
‘It’s a very curated shop if you know what to look for.
You’ve tried to make it look the opposite, haven’t you?
I thought that when I saw it on social media.
The supposedly mismatched things obviously chosen with the utmost care to give that impression. Do you choose all the props yourself?’
Daisy laughed to herself. Yes, for sure, she had chosen the things in the shop, but most if not all of them had been cobbled together from cast-offs, secondhand via Marketplace and charity shops. It wasn’t as if she’d sat around and chosen what she’d wanted from an antiques shop. ‘I do.’
‘Are the books chosen by you, too?’
‘Mostly with the fiction and then other things that I think will fit the place. We have a lot of rare books in a special collection and the Penguins of course. I do a lot of buying and selling on eBay, too…’ Again Daisy wished she hadn’t said anything.
‘And it’s profitable?’
Daisy frowned. It wasn’t a totally unusual question.
People asked how business was all the time, but the way the woman had said it didn’t sound like curiosity.
More like an audit and very direct. Obnoxiously direct with a touch of condescending smug thrown in for good measure.
Daisy gave a small shrug, keeping her face neutral and attempting to shoot the conversation dead. ‘Yes, thanks, we do well.’
The woman nodded, then turned back to the shelves.
There was something about the woman that turned Daisy off.
In the way she moved and the questions she asked.
She wasn’t just passing through that much was more than obvious.
She wasn’t in the bookshop for a quick browse and a cup of tea.
She was watching, weighing, clocking the layout, the corners, and the flow of the space.
Daisy Henley didn’t know what that meant.
She did know she didn’t like the vibes it gave her at all.