The Bookshop on the Corner (14 page)

“Please do it now,” said Nina. “I'm freezing to death.”

“Okay,” said Lennox. “One . . . two . . . three . . .”

Nina removed her hand, then, gently, without straining or tugging, Lennox pulled on the rope just so—slowly at first, then faster—and suddenly out plopped a blinking, brand-new, soaking-wet little lamb.

“OH!” said Nina. “OH my goodness!”

Lennox looked at her with narrowed eyes. “What on earth did you think was going to come out?” he said. “Something shrink-wrapped at the co-op?”

And then, with a happy surge, the sheep heaved strongly and the second little lamb came rushing out onto the hay and looked up and around with a blind-eyed, confused stare, and Nina gasped.

“Oh, WOW!”

Nina scrubbed her hands clean as Lennox rubbed the new lambs down with fresh hay, checking their mouths and nostrils, and the mother delivered the afterbirth. Then, astonishingly, as if they hadn't been through a great traumatic entrance to the world, the tiny creatures found their wobbly feet and stumbled up blindly, making little bleating noises. They were utterly and hopelessly enchanting, and Nina couldn't take her eyes off them.

“Oh my goodness,” she said. “Look at them! That's amazing! That's AMAZING!”

She gazed, fascinated, as the newborn lambs somehow, instinctively, made their way to their mother, who was now lying exhausted on her side, and found exactly the place to go to start sucking milk. She found to her amazement that she was rather tearful. The ewe, who had been in such awful pain, then utterly exhausted, somehow recovered herself enough to sit up in a rather ungainly fashion and start licking clean her new babies.

“Well done, you,” said Nina. “Well done, Mum.”

Lennox smiled.

“I don't care if you're laughing at me,” said Nina. “This is totally awesome, actually.”

“I'm not laughing at you,” said Lennox. “I'm agreeing with you. Just because I see a lot of lambs being born doesn't mean I don't think it's pretty incredible. Every time. Lovely little buggers they are, too.”

He petted them roughly.

“Come on,” he said. “Tea.”

When Nina stood up she realized she was still frozen to the bone. Outside, she was amazed to see the first rays of dawn in the corner of the sky.

“We weren't in there for that long,” she said. “Were we?”

Lennox nodded “Aye, it was a pretty gnarly one. It's after three.”

“It's just after three and getting light?” said Nina. “This is ridiculous. You basically live above the Arctic Circle. It's the land of the midnight sun.”

Down at the farmhouse, the log burner had been banked and was smoldering happily; the room was cozy, and Lennox stoked the fire and went to boil the kettle for tea. Nina took the opportunity to wash up more thoroughly, even though she was resigning herself to the fact that she would obviously smell of sheep forever.

She was intrigued by the farmhouse bathroom; it was absolutely cutting-edge brand new, all polished marble and walk-in showers and Jacuzzi baths. It was like a really, really posh hotel, with thick white towels hanging everywhere.

“Nice bathroom,” she said as she came out. Lennox nodded briefly, and it occurred to Nina—and would have occurred to her earlier, except she was so very tired—that of course Kate must have done it. Of course she must.

The main room too didn't look in the slightest like a farmhouse; it was all plain minimalist Scandinavian wood and floors. It didn't really suit Lennox, Nina thought, whose clothes, while clean, were so old and faded they looked as if he'd inherited them. He looked too big, too sharply cut for this decor—it was austere, yes, but so carefully designed to look austere, with its piles of artistic twigs and ironic antlers, that it actually ended up looking overdone.

She looked for a bookshelf, but she didn't see one. Instead there was a magazine basket—in white, of course—overflowing with copies of
Farmers Weekly
and, deep underneath all of those, a few old issues of
Interiors
magazine. She wondered if Lennox had kept them by mistake, or if he really didn't notice.

She moved closer to the fire. Parsley was already ensconced in front of it, cozy and stretched out. Nina budged him up and sat next to him, staring into the flames. Lennox handed her a cup of tea with, she soon discovered, coughing, whiskey in it.

“What's this?” she said.

“Hot toddy,” said Lennox. “Warm you up.”

She took another sip and let the gentle peaty warmth flood through her.

“Oh yes,” she said. “That is very nice.”

“You look pleased with yourself.”

She glanced up at him. “I am pleased with myself,” she said. “I saved those lambs, and now I'm lovely and cozy in front of a fire, drinking whiskey with a nice dog. I consider this to be a very good night!”

She set the cup down. Lennox smiled broadly.

“Okay, fair enough,” he said. “Don't fall asleep in front of the fire, though.”

But it was too late. Nina's head had already nodded down onto her chest, and before she knew it, she was fast asleep.

“Well done tonight,” Lennox added, but she didn't hear him.

N
ina ended up sleeping till nearly lunchtime in Lennox's house.

She woke up on the modish cream corduroy sofa, covered in a cream cashmere blanket, the sun streaming in through the windows, and at first she had absolutely no idea where she was. Gradually the night before came back to her, and although she still felt groggy, she realized she had to get up before Surinder stomped out hollering her name.

There was no sign of Lennox or Parsley. Nina wondered if they'd slept at all. She smiled a little, thinking of grumpy Lennox putting a blanket over her. Then she felt a bit embarrassed about it, too: one sip of whiskey and she was out as if she'd been felled. Obviously not built for country living, he must be thinking.

The sun beaming in so strongly through the window made it feel like she was somewhere hot, like Spain, until she opened the door and the cold wind rushed right through her, the clouds
scudding across the sky as if they had somewhere more important to be. She smiled.

“Morning, Scotland,” she said out loud.

She'd left her Wellingtons at the back door, and she put them on and crossed the yard, saying hello to the chickens pecking here and there, and wondering how her lambs were getting along. She also wondered if she'd be allowed to name them, until she remembered what they were for—what farms were for—and told herself off for being so naive and sentimental.

At the door to the barn was a little basket. She bent down. It was full of eggs, still warm. Some of them had funny crumped shapes; not at all like you'd find in the shops. She smiled unconsciously and picked them up. Lennox must have left them.

Surinder was half dozing on the sofa, which felt like a bit of a waste of the lovely mezzanine bed, as well as the lovely day. Nina put the coffee on.

“Have you been out already?” said Surinder sleepily. “This isn't like you. Normally on the weekends you need to get three hours' reading in before you can even go to the corner shop for a package of bacon.”

“Um,” said Nina. “First, it's after eleven. And second, actually, I didn't come home last night.”

Surinder sat bolt upright.

“TELL ME,” she said. “You ran after the train and caught up with it in Edinburgh?”

Nina shook her head, pushed down the French press and cut some bread. She was completely and utterly ravenous.

“Scrambled eggs?” she said happily, surprised she didn't feel more tired. “From the chickens in the farmyard.”

Surinder narrowed her eyes and looked at a particularly
plump specimen who was marching up and down outside the picture window.

“You want me to eat something that just came out of that hen's butt?” she asked.

“You eat eggs! You eat them all the time!”

“But this one is warm! From a hen's butt!”

“It doesn't come out of its butt. It comes out of its—”

“Foofoo,” said Surinder gloomily. “Man, that's even worse.”

Nina burst out laughing. “Seriously! You are so weird. Where did you think they made them, a cake shop?”

“No,” said Surinder.

“How about I take the shells off them?” said Nina. “So they don't have any foofoo stuff on them.”

“Yes. Do that.” Surinder shut her eyes again. “And don't make me watch you cook them.”

Nina threw a couple of portions of the local bacon into the frying pan—it smelled absolutely amazing—put some bread into the expensive designer toaster, and finally brought two groaning plates of breakfast over to the scrubbed wooden table. Surinder, forgetting her horror of fresh eggs, started burrowing into her plate.

“Oh my God,” she said suddenly, stopping. “What have I been eating all these years?”

Nina added some more creamy local milk to her coffee. “What do you mean?”

“These eggs! That bacon! I mean, this is awesome! You don't get this down at the convenience store!”

“Yeah,” said Nina. She looked regretfully down at her plate. She'd been so furiously hungry, she'd basically inhaled breakfast without tasting it. “Yes. It's good.”

“It's better than good! They'd charge about a million quid for it down at the organic café! Is it all from around here?”

“Of course,” said Nina. “This is what they do ‘around here.'”

Surinder blinked at her. “You know,” she said faintly. “Everyone thought you were a complete and utter lunatic for coming up here.”

“You tell me that now?” said Nina. “Really? Everyone? I thought everyone said I was awesome for being so brave and heading off and changing my life and all that.”

Surinder rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well, they've got to say something. Remember when Kelly married that French bloke she met down at the market?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Nina. “Yeah, we totally pretended we thought he was awesome.”

“We did.”

They chewed in silence for a moment.

“You know, he wasn't even really French,” said Surinder.

Nina grinned. “Oh GOD, I forgot about that part.”

Surinder grabbed another piece of toast and waved her hand at the big windows.

“But now . . . look at this. I mean, I think you might actually be a genius.”

“It's sunny today,” said Nina. “But it's not sunny very often. Well, every ten minutes. Then it rains, then it snows, then it hails, then it's sunny again.”

“Stunning,” said Surinder. “Now tell me what you did last night, under pain of death.”

Nina smiled. “I delivered two lambs! Well, I helped. No, I totally did it. With help.” And she explained.

“Oh, ffs,” said Surinder. “I knew it. Not a sniff of a bloke
around you for four years, then you move up here and five seconds later it's men central. I KNEW it! So you went back to the farmhouse . . . Is the farmer hunky, by the way? In my head they've all got round red cheeks and Wellingtons and crooks and jolly expressions.”

“You're thinking about a picture of a farmer. In a children's book,” said Nina.

“Oh yeah,” said Surinder. “Okay, surprise me. Topknot? Dreads? Sandals?”

“No,” said Nina. “No, you're right, nothing like that. He's grumpy. Getting a divorce. He's kind of tall and wiry and pointy looking. Bit sad.”

“Oh, right,” said Surinder. She thought for a moment. “Is he like that farmer in
Babe
?”

“No!” said Nina. “You've got to stop thinking about farmers you've seen on television! He's a real bloke. Young. Who just happens to be a farmer.”

“Well, he's not
that
much of a real bloke,” said Surinder. “All the real blokes I know are obsessed with cars and have started doing cycling at the weekend and being really, really boring about it and going on about their Fitbits and growing stupid beards and talking about being on Tinder. That's what all the real men are like these days.”

She lowered her voice.

“They're rubbish.”

“You seem to like them.”

Surinder ignored this.

“Also, you fell asleep on his sofa and he didn't even vaguely try it with you. That doesn't sound much like the blokes I know either.”

She sighed.

“Right. What are we doing today? If it's unpacking books, you can sod off. I helped Marek pack them all up.”

“Fine,” said Nina. “What I will totally not do is get on with work really, really loudly, giving big sighs every so often, while you recline on the sofa.”

“I don't give a toss,” said Surinder. “This is the most comfortable sofa I have ever sat on in my entire life. I don't think this is a sofa that gets advertised on television as costing very, very small amounts of money on vacation weekends.”

“Neither do I,” said Nina. “I don't think this is a sofa that advertises at all. I think this is a sofa you have to beg to come and live with you in exchange for lots of money and a blood sacrifice.”

“And if the sofa doesn't think you're worth it, it won't bother,” said Surinder. “It just keeps sitting in its palace. Whoops.”

“Did you just spill coffee on it?”

“Your furniture makes me really nervous.”

“Me too,” said Nina, looking around. “Shall we head out?”

“But I'm staying and lying on the sofa!” said Surinder. “I took vacation for this!”

Nina didn't say anything, just put on her Wellingtons with a martyred expression, refilled her coffee cup, went out into the cool sunlight, and started work on the van.

She'd managed to put up the shelves she'd ordered from Inverness—there were useful grooves in the walls for exactly that—without too much trouble, so she turned the radio up loud and went to work with a will, scrubbing down the walls and floors until it was utterly spotless, then starting on the happy task of dusting down the books and figuring out what went where.

Fiction to the right, she decided, as you came in, seeing as that was what most people would be looking for; nonfiction to the left, and children's at the far end, so they could get right inside the van
and up close. She had bought several cheap colorful bean bags for the children to jump on for story hour. Her Right to Trade certificate was proudly displayed on the inside of the window. What had caused a lot of teeth-sucking and head-shaking in Birmingham had been granted with a ready smile up here.

She sang along to the radio, making everything just so, and although it took all afternoon, it still didn't feel long before she was opening her very last box and gasping with surprise. It wasn't books at all, but all the little things she'd collected over the years to go with the books and show them off. She had always wondered why she had picked up these bits and pieces of bric-a-brac (or junk, as Surinder called it). But now, as she surveyed the clean, bare walls of the van, she realized exactly why she had been stockpiling all this time, without even knowing herself what she'd been doing.

She strung garlands of fairy-light blossoms here and there, added funny bookends: a lighthouse, a gruffalo for the little ones. A set of huge cut-out bronze letters with lightbulbs in them, spelling out B-O-O-K-S, which could be placed outside the van whenever she parked on her rounds. Beautifully ornate notebooks she could use as book ledgers. Framed Mother Goose prints to make an old-fashioned A–Z around the children's section. Some banners printed with pages of a vintage book.

“This van is going to rattle like anything,” observed Surinder, slopping the tea a little as she crossed the farmyard, slightly wary of the chickens.

“It won't,” said Nina. “It's not going faster than twenty miles an hour. Ever. I don't care who's behind me. They're just going to have to wait.”

She pulled out a can of blue paint.

“Okay,” she said. “Something for you to do.”

“Nooo,” said Surinder. “I'm still sleepy. I'll muck it up.”

“Then we'll paint over it,” said Nina. “Come on, you're so good at it.”

Surinder stuck out her bottom lip, but Nina knew how beautiful her handwriting was. She was always being prevailed upon to do people's wedding invitations. She moaned about it nonstop, but she always did it in the end.

“Really?”

“I'll make you breakfast again tomorrow,” said Nina. “Wait till you taste the sausages they have around here.”

Surinder groaned. “Seriously?”

“Better than anything you've ever eaten in your life. Oh, and I think I have some local biscuits in.”

“What are they like?”

“A surprise,” said Nina, who hadn't tasted the round red-and-silver-striped Tunnock's tea cakes herself. “You get started, I'll go and find them.”

Surinder frowned. “You know, the last wedding I did, they gave me champagne and everything.”

“Biscuits and sausages,” said Nina. “Basically I'm spoiling you.” She strode toward the barn.

“Hang on!” shouted Surinder behind her. “What on earth is it called?”

Nina turned around. “Oh,” she said. “I hadn't thought. Can you just put Book Bus?”

“No,” said Surinder. “That sounds like a library.”

“Hmm. Bookshop?”

“That sounds like a delivery van. For books that are going somewhere else.”

“Buy Your Books Here?”

“That's your name for your shop?”

“Nina's Book Bus?”

“You're not a children's educational television program. Although you do dress like you're in one.”

Nina sighed.

“What?” said Surinder. “Come on, you've obviously dreamed about this for ages. I mean, look at all the crap you stashed away for it. I absolutely don't believe that someone as obsessed as you with books and words hasn't thought about a name.”

“Well,” said Nina, looking embarrassed and staring at her feet. She'd never said this out loud to anyone before. Barely even admitted it to herself.

“I knew it,” said Surinder. “I KNEW it! Go on! Tell your auntyji.”

Nina shrugged. “You'll think it's stupid . . .”

“You've moved an entire country away with a big bunch of books and a van,” said Surinder. “I already think you are totally stupid.”

“Oh yeah,” said Nina. “I suppose.”

She kicked her heels a little.

“Well,” she said. “I always thought if I ever had a little shop—and I only wanted a very little one—I might call it . . . the Little Shop of Happy-Ever-After.”

Surinder stared at her for a moment. Nina felt her face grow very red. There was a long pause.

Surinder stepped forward and peered inside the van. Nina had even managed to fix up a light in the corner; a rug, stuck down with suckers; a table with a comfortable chair beside it, so it made a little reading corner. Surinder smiled and turned around.

“Yeah,” she said. “Yes. I like it. I really like it. I can do that.”

“Really?” said Nina.