‘Before you have your hot bath and early night,’ Lucy smiles, reading my mind, ‘can I tempt you with a delicious savoury cheesecake that I’m planning to have for supper with a large salad and an even larger glass of red wine. Care to join me?’
‘I’d love to. But can I take a raincheck on the wine?’
Lucy’s kitchen is even more disorganized than usual. The dustbin lid is wide open like a gaping mouth as rubbish threatens to spill out all over the kitchen floor, and a couple of supplementary bins, rather cleverly disguised as Sainsbury’s bags, are dotted around at the base of the main bin.
The sink is overflowing with dishes, and the board with messages, scribbled on various bits of paper, envelopes, scraps torn out of magazines, each in Lucy’s illegible handwriting. The fridge is now evidently doubling up as a noticeboard, and the magnetic poetry kit has been completely hidden by several scraps of paper clinging on to the fridge with the help of some rather dusty hamburger-shaped magnets.
One of Max’s videos is playing at full volume in the living room, and even in the kitchen the noise is slightly deafening, which isn’t helped by Max zooming around the kitchen with a plastic aeroplane making vroom vroom noises.
Christ. I know I’ve been neglecting my flat for the past few weeks, but this takes neglect on to a whole other level.
But Lucy is, as always, the port of calm in the storm, blissfully unaware of the chaos around her. I follow her into the kitchen, and she sits down at the kitchen table to slice tomatoes directly on the wood, creating yet more criss-crossed gouges in the old pine that has definitely seen better days.
Max climbs on to her lap and attempts to grab the knife, while Lucy smiles and gently brushes him aside.
‘Don’t be silly, darling,’ she says, ‘you know knives are bad for you,’ and I wonder again how she manages to stay so serene in the face of all this noise and mayhem. ‘Go and tell Ingrid to get you ready for bed, and Cath, why don’t you open that bottle of red on the side,’ she continues, as I bristle at the very mention of Ingrid’s name.
Max runs upstairs shrieking for Ingrid, and minutes later there she is, Ingrid, coming down the stairs looking as sullen as ever. I examine her face closely, trying to see whether she had sex last night, even though I don’t really know what I’m looking for. She certainly doesn’t
seem
to have any sort of post-coital glow, which is what people always talk about, how they say you
know
. Not that I think I’ve ever actually
seen
a post-coital glow, but I’m sure I’d recognize one if I looked hard enough.
I remember talking about it with Portia all those years ago. We’d just run into someone we knew on the high street, and she seemed to be in a particularly good mood. Once we left, Si looked over his shoulder knowingly and said, ‘Well
someone
had a good time last night,’ and neither of us knew what he was talking about, or how he could tell.
Not long after that I had a wild night of passion with no one very interesting, and the next morning I ran out without washing and hurried back to the house, dashing into Portia’s room and grabbing her mirror from the dressing table.
‘Well?’ I said, sitting on her bed and examining my face in the mirror. ‘Do you see it?’
‘Hmm.’ She took my chin in her hand and turned my face this way and that, making me stand in different positions around the room for the light. ‘Do you want me to be honest?’ she said eventually.
‘Yup,’ I nodded. ‘Because I can’t see it, although Si says you can never see it on yourself.’
‘You look completely exhausted.’
‘Oh. Is that
it
?’ I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest, and Portia nodded. ‘Oh well,’ I started walking out to run a bath. ‘Perhaps that’s what everybody’s talking about.’
And here I am, examining Ingrid’s face as she strides into the kitchen and stops in front of Lucy, left hand planted aggressively on her hip. Lucy looks up and smiles benignly.
‘I would like to know where you think Max’s blue pyjamas are,’ she says, as Lucy shrugs.
‘The wash?’ Lucy says hopefully, as Ingrid shakes her head. ‘Ironing pile?’ Ingrid shakes her head and pulls her right hand from behind her back. ‘They are here,’ she says. ‘In the laundry basket. Where they have been now for more than one week.’
Lucy grimaces at me, then starts to apologize to Ingrid, who merely says, ‘He is your son and tonight he will have to sleep in his day clothes,’ before heading for the fridge and helping herself to a yoghurt, which probably explains how she manages to stay so thin.
I haven’t taken my eyes off her, but I’ve stopped examining her for the post-coital glow and now I’m just looking at her in amazement, astounded by how she can talk to her employer like that. When she turns around again, she catches me looking at her, and she just stands there watching me.
She peels off the yoghurt top, slowly brings it up to her mouth, and licks it, all the while looking at me, obviously trying to embarrass me for staring at her. I look quickly away as she smirks and leaves the room.
‘So.’ I stand up and put the kettle on to hide the expression on my face. ‘What do you think about James and Ingrid, then?’
Lucy looks utterly bewildered. ‘What do I think about James and Ingrid what?’
‘Well, they left together last night. I’m assuming she didn’t come home?’
Lucy starts to laugh. ‘Sweet Cath, do you really think that Josh would have come back to rescue us from a night of debauchery if Max had been sleeping here alone?’
Why didn’t I think of that? Thank God.
‘But they did leave together,’ I continue. ‘And James looked as if he were practically salivating.’ This last bit isn’t quite true, as I couldn’t actually see his face when they left, but, if I had been able to, I’m pretty sure that’s what he would have looked like. ‘I’m certain they both fancied one another,’ I say decisively.
‘Really? I can’t see them together at all. Not that I know either of their types, but I wouldn’t have thought she was James’s type, far too obvious for him.’
‘That’s what I’m worried about,’ I find myself saying involuntarily, clapping my hand over my mouth as it comes out, because really, I’m not worried at all.
Lucy puts the knife down and smiles. ‘Does this mean that you’re finally admitting that you might have some feelings for the lovely James after all?’
‘Absolutely not,’ I say. ‘We’re just friends. Well, we were, anyway.’ And with that the kettle boils, and I busy myself with the intricate task of making a cup of tea.
Chapter fifteen
Bill’s behind the till, Lucy’s busy arranging fresh pastries and croissants in baskets on the counter, and Rachel and I are racing round the shop checking that all the books are exactly where they should be, all the sofas at exactly the right angle.
‘I don’t believe it,’ I say, turning to the door with a grin as it rattles, and already there are two people outside, ignoring the fact that the closed sign is up, peering through the window and attempting to open the locked door, despite the sign saying we don’t open for another ten minutes.
‘Must be a good omen,’ Lucy laughs.
‘What do you think?’ I check my watch. ‘Shall we do it? Shall we let them be our first customers?’
The two women don’t show any sign of giving up, so I grab a key from the counter and go to the door to let them in, the smile on my face completely obliterating the fact that I’m as nervous as hell. Our first customers! What will they think? Will they buy anything? Will they stay and have coffee? Will they approve?
I catch Lucy’s eye, and she gives me the thumbs up. I swing the door open, wishing the women good morning and welcoming them in.
‘We just couldn’t wait,’ one of them says, bustling in with her shopping bags.
‘Sorry we’re so early,’ the other says, ‘it’s just that we’ve been watching this for weeks, and we were dying to have a look round. Goodness, are we your first customers?’
I nod, noting that all four of us have identical grins on our faces.
‘What do you think, Shirley?’ The shorter one turns to her friend. ‘Coffee first or browsing first?’
Shirley sniffs, then looks over at the counter, where Lucy is beaming.
‘We’ve got delicious home-made Danish pastries,’ Lucy says, tempting them over, and the pair of them succumb to Lucy’s smile and sit down in the café area to have coffee.
‘I must say,’ Shirley says, as they deposit their shopping on the floor, ‘you’ve done a beautiful job here. Look at how lovely and sunny it is. Just what this area needed.’
‘That’s exactly what we thought,’ Lucy says. ‘I hope everyone feels the same way.’
‘Just as long as I don’t walk out without
Angela’s Ashes
,’ Shirley says. ‘Don’t let me forget, Hilary. I’ve been meaning to read it for ages.’ Lucy winks at me from behind the counter, and I scurry off to dig through the pile of biographies and memoirs on the table at the front until I find Frank McCourt, and take it over to Shirley and Hilary.
‘Oh, what an angel you are,’ Shirley says. ‘I wish more shops would take a leaf out of your book,’ and I walk away feeling a deep satisfaction.
An hour later and there have already been six more people in the shop. Four of them are still here, quietly turning pages, two on the sofas and two in the café, and the others just ran in to buy new titles.
But everyone does seem to agree with Shirley, or perhaps they’re just saying it to be polite, but people seem genuinely impressed with us, with what we’ve done, and by the end of the day we realize we’ve sold twenty-one paperbacks and sixteen hardbacks, plus taken orders for four more books that we haven’t got in stock, which, all in all, as Bill said, was ‘pretty damn marvellous’.
Not to mention the fact that every single one of Lucy’s home-made cakes and pastries has been eaten, and there hasn’t been a single minute during the day when the shop has been completely empty.
‘I’ve got to tell you,’ I say, turning to Lucy as we’re closing up the shop, having shared a bottle of wine with Bill and Rachel to celebrate. ‘I think we’re on to a winner here.’
‘As if you could ever have thought anything different!’ Lucy laughs. ‘Oh, Cath, you’re such a worrier. It’s going to be fine,’ and she gives me a big hug.
I walk around the shop, picking up books that have been left on tables and putting them back in their rightful positions, and marvelling at the fact that this is mine! Ours! Our very own business! But, more importantly, as Lucy pulls out the mop and starts cleaning the floor, I understand for the first time that she really is right after all.
But the fact that she is right does not mean that she is not completely mad. Two weeks later she is busy organizing this dinner party on Saturday, when any normal person (i.e., me) would be (is, in fact) completely shattered, but Lucy’s so fired up and excited she can’t seem to sit still for more than about five seconds.
She hasn’t been sleeping either, and at the moment she’s doing an incredibly good impersonation of Superwoman, having woken up yesterday at the crack of dawn and spent two hours cooking a variation of some well-known chicken dish for dinner tonight, and that was before the shop even opened.
And the shop? Well, as everyone predicted, so far it seems to be doing okay. Despite the initial flurry of interest on the first day we opened, things have settled down a bit, and there have been a couple of very quiet afternoons. It’s not, as Josh put it, what you might call an immediate runaway success, but then we are talking about a bookshop here, and you can’t expect people to come in and spend thousands.
But what has happened is the curiosity factor. People have been popping in to see what all the fuss has been about, and have ended up staying far longer than they’d originally planned. The old leather sofas seem to have gone down a storm, and last weekend a handful of people decamped permanently from La Brioche, spending almost all of Sunday sitting around the sofas at Bookends with their Skinny Lattes and copies of the
Guardian
.
As I said, in a rather embarrassing interview in the
Ham & High
, we can’t compete with the huge Books Etc. up the road, but then we’re not trying to. This was always going to be more of a community bookshop, somewhere for people to meet, chat, have a snack, and then stop on the way out as an interesting book catches their eye.
And the partnership between Lucy and I really seems to be working, despite the reservations Si had.
I love the feeling of waking up every morning and knowing that I’m off to work, and that it’s the job I’ve always dreamt of, and it’s my own business. There’s a hell of a lot to learn, and I know it will take a while before I’m completely comfortable with it, but I’m sure I’m getting there. We both are.
Lucy’s doing what she does best – cooking and playing the convivial host, and she’s completely adoring it. She’s on her feet all day, which always makes me feel slightly guilty, as I tend to be either sitting behind the till or sitting in the stock room. Either way, I’m sitting.
Josh went out and bought Lucy a foot spa as a congratulatory present, which Si and I thought a bit of a let-down – as Si said, wouldn’t diamond earrings have been preferable? But Lucy was thrilled, as her feet, she said, were absolutely ready to drop off by the end of the day, although she didn’t mind, she laughed. It was worth every second of sore feet.
And now it’s time for Lucy’s dinner party. I spoke to Portia once last week. She phoned me after Lucy had invited her, and she said I should go to her flat for a drink first, and that it would be lovely to see me on my own after all these years, and how excited she was about seeing me properly, talking to me properly.
You know how I felt after that phone call? I felt exactly the same as I used to feel when we were at university. I felt
honoured
by Portia’s interest.
I felt as if a small piece of sunshine were shining on me when Portia treated me like this, as if I were special, and, although I’ve relished breaking free from Portia’s shadow over the last ten years, there’s something about stepping into this old role that feels very familiar, very comfortable, and I wonder whether I’m happiest in the shadows after all.
‘What about that lovely James?’ Lucy asked last Tuesday when we were closing up the shop, ringing up the wholesaler to put through some orders that customers had requested. ‘I’d love to invite him over, and the two of you seemed to get on so well. Can’t I ask him, Cath, my love?’
‘No!’ I practically barked at her, almost dropping the pile of books I was carrying up from the stock room.
‘You know,’ she said carefully, ‘there is nothing going on between him and Ingrid.’
‘Oh?’ I have to admit, my interest was piqued, even though I’d tried to put him out of my mind, particularly because I hadn’t actually been in touch with him since the day he brought the flowers round, which I still felt fairly guilty about, although with every passing day it was getting harder to call.
‘Nope. I asked her.’
‘You asked her? What did she say?’
‘Well, it was most peculiar, actually. For a moment she looked completely stunned, and then I realized she hadn’t got the foggiest what, or rather who, I was talking about.’
‘Maybe it was so awful she wiped it from her memory.’
‘Cath, darling, come on. Seriously, I realized she didn’t have a clue, so I reminded her that she’d left with him, and then asked if something had happened, and if she were interested in him.’
‘And?’ I was trying to look as if I didn’t really care.
‘And she looked at me as if I’d gone completely mad and then laughed uproariously for about five minutes.’
‘Are you serious?’ I was horrified. ‘That’s appalling. Jesus, I mean James isn’t exactly Mr Universe, but she’d be bloody lucky to get someone like James. Who does she think she is?’
‘I know,’ Lucy said. ‘I mean, I couldn’t really say anything, but James is divine. He may not be her type, but still, there was no need to laugh like that.’
‘Lucy, when are you going to realize that the woman is completely vile?’
‘Cath, as long as Max is happy I don’t really care. And anyway, these au pairs apparently never last long anyway. I was talking to a woman in the shop yesterday who’s been through five au pairs in three months.
‘Apparently the first one brought her boyfriend to stay when they were away for the weekend, the second was lovely but didn’t have a bath in three weeks, the third was wonderful but decided her room wasn’t big enough, and the fourth walked out after three weeks for no reason whatsoever.’
‘And the fifth?’
‘The fifth is apparently perfect. Although how long it will last she said she didn’t know.’
‘When did she start? The fifth?’
‘On Monday. Anyway, according to this woman, Ann, I’m incredibly lucky to have a godsend like Ingrid, and I should be doing everything I can to make her life more comfortable because good au pairs are about as rare as gold dust on the streets of London.’
It’s a good job Lucy had turned her back to pick up a stray magazine, as she missed the sneer on my face. ‘I suppose you’ll be buying her little treats now?’
‘As it happens I did buy her one of those little gift sets of bath oils and delicious-smelling soaps yesterday. It smelt so gorgeous and I couldn’t just walk straight past the shop after what that woman had said.’
‘You realize she’ll probably walk out now,’ I chuckled evilly. ‘She’ll probably think you’re trying to tell her she stinks to high heaven, and she’ll be so offended she’ll be gone by the time you get home, doubtless taking half your clothes with her.’
‘Oh God,’ groaned Lucy. ‘Do you really think so?’
‘Only if you’re really lucky.’
‘Anyway, the point is, Cath, that obviously nothing happened between them, and I would love to ask him round, and please, please, please say that you wouldn’t mind.’
‘Oh God, Lucy. How can you emotionally blackmail me like this?’
‘Does that mean I can ask him?’
‘Okay,’ I grumbled. ‘But don’t think this means I’ve given you my blessing.’
‘Fine,’ she said, and the grin on her face was huge as she picked up the keys and I followed her out the door. ‘I’m ringing him as soon as I get home.’
Now you know and I know that clothes have never exactly been a big thing for me, but I think I do kind of owe it to James to make something of an effort after the last time he laid eyes on me.
In fact, every time I think about opening the door and seeing him standing there, and more importantly him seeing me, with my wild woman of Borneo hair and my smudged mascara, bleary eyes and grey skin, I feel positively ashamed.
And perhaps this is yet another symptom of what Si has started calling The Portia Effect, because, let’s face it, the last time I made an effort with my hair, with make-up, with clothes, was probably about ten years ago.
But tonight I want to show James that I can look nice, and maybe, if I try really hard, I’ll manage to wipe the image of me from the other morning out of his mind and replace it with one infinitely better.
So I did something this morning that I haven’t done for years. I took a day off from the shop – only possible because Si is now dying of jealousy and wants to get in on the act and couldn’t wait to take my place, even for a day – walked out of my flat at ten o’clock in the morning, jumped on the bus to Oxford Circus, turned a blind eye to the Saturday crowds and hit the shops, even though I didn’t have a clue what I was looking for.
But in the first shop I went into I found a pair of grey flannel trousers that would have made Si proud, and then a few doors up I had to stop and admire a sophisticated window display that was so alluring it made even me want to step inside.
I walked past, hesitated, then stepped back and caught the eye of one of the sales assistants, who smiled at me, encouraging me to go in.
‘Can I help you?’ he said, and I found myself gesturing to the window display.
‘The sweaters,’ I said. ‘How much are they?’
Clever sales assistant that he was, he pretended to ignore the question, and instead strode to the back of the shop and brought over an array of gorgeous pastel sweaters that were so soft, so feminine, I was almost upset that he disturbed the pile of perfection by unfolding them and laying them out on the table for me to admire.
‘Why don’t you just try one on?’ he said with a smile, picking up the one I’d been tentatively fingering – as soft as butter, a delicate baby pink, it was the most beautiful sweater I’d ever seen. And remember, I’m not a person who goes in for sweaters. Or any clothes, for that matter.
I walked into the changing room as if in a dream, and when I pulled the sweater over my head and came out, even I had to admit that it was probably the nicest thing I’d ever worn in my entire life. There was something about the colour, about the softness, that made me feel soft, made me feel feminine, and even with my old black leggings that had definitely seen better days it still looked lovely.