The Bookshop on the Corner (17 page)

“You just noticed?”

“No, no. I just meant . . . I know you're not from around here. But it feels like you've fit in really well. And not everybody does.”

Nina beamed with pleasure. “Thank you,” she said.

Archie banged on the side of the van and it stopped. Nina banged on the side of Surinder, and she stopped, too.

“Aww,” said Fat Tam.

“Another time,” said Nina, jumping down and giving Surinder a hand. Surinder had drunk more cider than Nina had.

“This is a great place,” she was saying. “This is just . . . this is good. I like Fat Tam.”

“He liked you, too,” said Nina. “He was going at you like you were breakfast.”

“Oh yeah?” said Surinder, who was carrying her shoes. “Do you think he was maybe just hungry? And can you make me more breakfast now, please?”

B
oth the girls slept long and late the next day. Nina sat up about eleven as Surinder made coffee, and they both looked at something Nina had bought called “potato scones.” In the end they decided to toast them and slather them with butter, which turned out to be a better solution than either of them could have imagined possible, as they ate them looking out into the windy sunlight.

“What a beautiful day,” Nina exclaimed.

“Lots of wind,” pointed out Surinder.

“Yes,” explained Nina patiently. “It keeps you from getting too hot.”

“You have gone totally native,” said Surinder.

“Not as much as you have,” said Nina. “I haven't swapped DNA with anyone.”

“When did you get so cheeky?” said Surinder, wolfing down another potato scone. “Oh my God, these are good.”

“I don't know,” said Nina, genuinely musing on it. She'd no
ticed it in herself. She opened the door and stood enjoying the warmth of the sun and the cool breeze beneath it. “I think . . . I think it was when we moved the books out. Found them a home.”

Surinder nodded. “I think you're right. A psychological weight has been lifted.”

“And also an actual weight,” pointed out Nina. “But yeah. It's like we can just be normal friends again without you tutting at me all the time.”

“Because you were about to bring my ceiling down,” said Surinder.

“Yes. Exactly. Weight. Lifted.”

“I've noticed something else,” said Surinder.

“What?”

“You haven't got a book in your hands.”

“Well . . . I'm just about to go to the book van. With all my lovely books. And then I'm going to go out and sell some books.”

“I know. But you didn't read a book over breakfast.”

“I was talking to you.”

“You didn't take a book to bed.”

“We were drunk and it was four o'clock in the morning.”

“You've stopped clutching one everywhere like a security blanket.”

“I didn't do that.”

“Mm,” said Surinder.

“Anyway, what's wrong with reading?”

“Nothing is wrong with reading,” said Surinder, “as I have told you a million billion times before. But it finally seems you're doing both. Read/live/read/live. And proceed, et cetera.”

Nina looked out at the wildflowers growing in the meadow
to the left of the lower field. They rippled gently in the breeze. Over in the woods she could smell the faintest drift of bluebells on the wind.

“Mm-hmm,” she said.

“You know I'm right,” said Surinder. “You're getting happy. I can tell.”

“It's not that,” said Nina. “I just want another one of those potato scones.”

“You're also hungrier,” said Surinder. “Also, I can tell you, a very, very good sign.”

“Shut up! And oh LORD, I am going to work. Yes I am. You can lie here and hang out.”

“I totally intend to,” said Surinder. “Got anything to read?”

“Shut up! Again. And if Mr. Farmer Grumpy Pants comes around?”

“Mmm?”

“No, don't say anything. He's an arse.”

“Roger.”

I
t was blowy but bright, and Nina pulled a sweater on over a gray dress and leggings. The Little Shop of Happy-Ever-After, minus its Second World War hardbacks, still looked as tremendous in the light of a new day as she remembered it. She made sure that all the canvas straps were pulled tight to keep the books from falling out, then got behind the wheel, treble-checking, as she always did now, that the hand brake was on and the gearshift was in neutral before she even thought about pulling away. She took a deep breath and started the van.

It was market day in neighboring Auchterdub—she'd checked everything out before she started, and planned to follow the crowds around—so she headed straight there. Sure enough, there was a throng around the stalls where people had gathered to sell their handmade cheeses (and occasionally a little unpasteurized milk under the counter if you asked nicely); straw dollies; warm eggs; and enormous big splurges of cakes, vast, soft pillowy things chock-full of sensational ingredients. Nina kept her eye on a large ginger sponge cake for later.

There were handmade sausages: venison, beef, and even ostrich. There were early harvests of artichokes and potatoes, still marked with the dark earth; vast deep green cabbages and fresh young sweet lettuces; some forced tomatoes, which were still small and awkward looking, but the cauliflowers and carrots were already gorgeous. Nina had also been told about the strawberry season, where the fruit threatened to pour over the sides of the baskets, there were just so many.

Land Rovers, Jeeps, and all forms of mud-splattered cars were parked along the little narrow cobbled streets and pale gray stone walls, but Nina found her booked slot easily enough and pulled up happily. Even before she had put out the big illuminated letters, shoppers were circling around. As she pulled the doors wide, the women in particular were practically jumping inside to have a look.

Nina looked behind her proudly. The stock looked neat and tidy and enticing; some of the particularly beautiful covers were turned out to face the room. In a moment of madness that morning, she had hung a chandelier from the light connector on the ceiling, but she was pleased now, as it swung prettily in the breeze.

A woman looked around. “Goodness,” she said, smiling. “I don't know where to start.”

“I know what you mean,” said Nina.

The woman glanced down at her rambunctious toddler in a harness, who even now was cheerfully gumming the bean bags. “I kind of . . . I only read baby books when I was pregnant, and now I've totally gotten out of the habit.”

Nina's heart leaped, and she jumped into action.

“Well,” she said. “Maybe you need this.” And she brought out a beautiful book translated from Russian called
We Are All
Big Girls Now
. It was a series of very short chapters about the experience of early motherhood, illustrated in glorious colors like a medieval book of hours, ranging from the deeply profound—the passing on of the female bloodline—to the scary tales of Baba Yaga that the author's own grandmother used to terrify her with, to the simple logistical difficulties of a toddler who wouldn't keep his snowsuit on in St. Petersburg in January. It was a book that had made Nina herself feel entirely and deeply maternal without ever having given a thought to motherhood, and she had never met a new mother who hadn't adored it.

The woman's face lit up as she looked at the beautiful illustrations.

“Perfect,” she said. “Thomas, stop that! Stop that at once!”

But Thomas was not into stopping; he had spied, and retrieved, the biggest, shiniest book about buses and trucks and diggers and forklifts that Nina had on the shelves.

Nina looked away, feeling awkward; she wasn't at all used to people having to actually pay for books, unless they were late, in which case, if they looked suitably poor and/or distressed, she always waived the fine anyway.

The woman looked at it, then said, “Do you know what, this might even keep him quiet while I'm trying to do the shopping, instead of grabbing at the sticky buns.”

And she took that one too, and Nina found that actually taking the money and handing over change wasn't a problem at all.

An old lady came in next and sighed and said she hadn't realized the books were all so new, because nobody was writing the old-fashioned style of books anymore, did Nina know what she meant, and what a shame that was, because all she wanted was a modern book with old-fashioned values. As it turned out,
Nina did know exactly what she meant, and pulled out a rather charming series called
St. Swithin's
, about a young nurse starting work in a hospital, but instead of lots of paperwork and reorganizations, this nurse—whose name was, pleasingly, Margaret—managed to exist in a contemporary multiracial world by simply loving and caring for all her patients wherever they were from, while regularly taking time out to go and perform daring deeds of rescue. She was also in the early throes of an exciting, but also excitingly chaste, love affair with the gorgeous, sensationally brave, and daring surgeon Dr. Rachel Melchitt.

“Try this,” Nina said with a smile. “If you don't like it, you can swap it, and if you do like it, there's about another forty-seven to read.”

The woman had already lit up reading the back blurb. “No, I think this might do nicely,” she said. “Do you have a large-print edition?”

Nina cursed to herself. The problem was that the large-print copies were so in demand and well borrowed, there hadn't been anything in good enough condition to liberate.

“No,” she said. “But I promise I'll source the large print for the next bunch.”

After that, there was a steady stream, some people just wanting a look around, some with specific titles in mind. If they didn't know what they were after, Nina tried to get a grip on the kind of thing they liked and steered them toward the appropriate item. As she bagged and took money—and credit cards, on an incredibly clever little device Surinder had taught her to stick on to her iPhone—she spotted a young girl hovering outside. She
appeared to be about sixteen, awkward looking, glasses, a little puppy fat still. She was wearing a long-sleeved cardigan with the sleeves pulled right down over her fists, with big holes through which her thumbs poked.

“Hey,” Nina said gently. The girl looked at her, startled, and backed away.

“It's okay,” said Nina. She gave the girl her best smile. “You can just come in,” she said. “I don't mind. Just come and have a look, you don't have to buy anything.”

“Neh, it's okay,” said the girl, and walked away with her head down.

It had been a more successful launch than Nina could possibly have imagined, and she drove back later that afternoon full of the joys, and with a bottle of Prosecco, which they used to toast their enormous (relative) success (“Well, I did do the painting,” said Surinder). Then they sat in the sitting room while Nina got down to doing the books and checking to see what she needed to order next.

“This is the less glamorous side of running your own business,” pointed out Surinder.

“Wait till I get a puncture,” said Nina. “Oh Lord, I'm so tired.”

“Go to bed, then.”

“I was going to . . . I was going to maybe pop down to the train crossing. Wave to Marek.”

“Seriously?” said Surinder. “What is this,
The Railway Children
?”

“No. I was . . . I found a book he might like.”

It was a very old but mint-condition edition of
I Am David
. She had no idea if he'd read it or not, but she thought he would like it. After all, he knew a little bit about what it was like to roam.

Surinder gave her a stern look. “Are you sure about this?”

Nina flushed. She didn't want to admit how much she had thought about him, his gentle, melancholic, poetic nature. He seemed so exotic, so sad.

“Just a thought,” she said.

“Well, maybe have that thought when you've had a little more sleep,” said Surinder.