The Bookshop on the Corner (24 page)

Marek looked at her. “When you kissed me on the train, I was so happy.”

Nina shook her head. “I think you need to go home, Marek. Make yourself happy there. At home.”

“When I have made more money. When I can look after my family and get a good job and have my qualifications . . . I have to do what I need to do. That is it, to be good man.”

Nina took him in her arms and hugged him, carefully.

“I think you're a very good man,” she said. “And I think you're going to be fine.”

“I am not good man,” said Marek sadly.

“But think about Aras,” said Nina. “Think how much he needs you and needs you to see him.”

Marek nodded. “I know. And soon I will be able to drive trains in Latvia too and I can go home . . .”

They had started to walk again, aimlessly, past the old woman playing with her grandchildren and back out into the sticky, noisy streets.

“But I will miss it,” he added. “Not here. Birmingham I do not miss. The men and the room and . . . no. Not that at all. But I will miss Scotland. Where it smells like home; rain on the air and wind in the grasses and the stars overhead. I miss it. And I will miss you.”

His face was such a picture of misery that Nina wanted to slip her arm through his. But they were approaching where she had parked the van full of books.

“I have to go,” she said.

Marek nodded. His face hung; his entire body looked heavy and sad.

“Do you want me still to bring books for you?”

“No,” said Nina. “I have to . . . It helped so much. But it could get you into trouble. You risked so much for me. Too much. And I was selfish and wrong not to see it, and I was selfish and wrong not to ask about your family before. I was told I should, but I didn't listen. It's my fault.”

Marek shrugged. “Was not your fault. Was my privilege.”

Surinder was lying on the sofa when Nina got in, tears tumbling down her face.

“I did warn you.”

“I know. I know you did. I just . . . I built him up in my mind so much.”

“Too much reading.”

“In my head, he was this kind of lost romantic hero.”

“He can't get lost, he drives a train.”

“You know what I mean. I just . . . I just wanted. For once. Things to happen. Things to be nice.”

Surinder sat up. “I am genuinely sorry, you know. I know you liked him. I liked him, too.”

“I liked what I thought he was.”

“And he definitely liked you. Honestly. People very rarely risk great big gigantic freight trains for no reason if they don't really like you.”

“I think he'd have clung to anyone who was nice to him.”

“I don't. He's perfectly handsome, you know. He could walk into any bar and come out with women clinging to him like burs. I think he had a romantic soul, too. I think you were two dreamers.”

Nina sighed. “Well, too late now. He's got a kid and a girlfriend and all the rest of it going on.”

Surinder gave her a huge hug.

“I'm sorry. I really am. It would have been nice if it could have worked.”

“I know,” said Nina. “I know.”

“But look at it this way: someone else fancied you! That makes Griffin AND Marek. You are giving off good Nina vibes.”

“Griffin just fancied me because there was nobody else around. Default. And I think Marek thought I was easy and would drop my knickers for him.”

“No he didn't. Even though you would have.”

“Yeah, well, shut up.”

Surinder looked at the clock. “Do you really have to leave tonight? Come on, you're your own boss now.”

“I have to go because it'll be light traffic and I have to drive a billion miles. Plus I need to get back to work and actually earn some money so I can pay for gas and the occasional bottle of pinot grigio. SO.”

Surinder looked at her.

“No. There's no point in staying here and throwing a pity party for myself.”

“I'll buy the snacks!”

Nina shook her head. “No,” she said again. “I don't want to think about it. I want to go home and play the radio loud and never see another train for the rest of my life.”

She kissed Surinder and gave her a long hug, telling her to get back up north pronto, and Surinder hugged her back and said she would be coming up when it stopped being warm in Birmingham, because then she could be cold in either place, and told Nina to stop being daft if she ever could.

“And just look for something real,” she whispered. “Something real.”

As Nina drove past the railway station in the noisy Saturday night, she looked at the long trains in the sidings and, despite herself, started to cry. Would it never happen to her? Everyone else got to meet someone, but when she finally did, she ended up with someone else's boyfriend, or just an idea for a person rather than the person himself.

Look for something real, Surinder had said, but how could she when she didn't even know what that was?

A
re you ready?” said Lesley, the woman from the local grocer's. She'd been very sniffy about the bookshop to begin with, and disliked Nina's recommendations, as well as expressing general doubt about the entire enterprise. Even though it was becoming obvious that her prophecies of doom weren't being fulfillled, she still liked to come in and poke through the stacks, making disappointed sounds at everything. Nina was determined, somehow, to find something she'd like.

So far historical, romance, comedy, and one of those novelists who specialized in child abduction had failed to hit the spot. True crime had raised a flicker of interest, but nothing had made Lesley rush into going “Yes! This is the book I've been looking for that will change my life.” Very little seemed to make her happy.

“Am I ready for what?” said Nina. In the back of the arches at the auction house in Birmingham, where the books had been deposited, there'd been a big roll of brown paper. She had asked
the man there about it, and he'd said it was nothing to do with him, so they had taken it on board, too. Now she was becoming an expert at wrapping up the books—for gifts, or just to take home, tied with the cheap twine that was plentiful around town.

Lesley squinted at her. “Sunday, of course!”

“Nope,” said Nina. “Still none the wiser.”

“How long have you lived in the village?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Well, it's midsummer, you Sassenach. It's the midsummer night. The festival.”

“Everyone keeps going on about this festival!”

“Are you a heathen, or what? Every year on the longest day there's a festival, as everybody knows. If we're not rained out, there's dancing and a party and a celebration. And if we are rained out, there's all of those things but it'll take place in Lennox's barn.”

“Well, I'd better come then,” said Nina. “I live up there.”

“Aye, I know that,” sniffed Lesley. “Everyone knows that. How's he doing, the poor man?”

“Poor man?” spluttered Nina. “He's . . . well, he's very rude and a bit obnoxious, if you must know.”

“Aye,” said Lesley. “But he went through such an awful time of it with that Kate.”

“What was she like?”

“Hoity-toity,” said the woman. “Posh. Not like you.”

“Well, thanks very much,” said Nina.

“Things around here were never good enough. She complained about the pub and all the old men hanging about outside it all the time.”

Nina thought she might have a point about that.

“She complained about the town, about how there was nothing to do.”

“There's loads to do!” said Nina. It was true. You could barely walk down the street without being corralled into something or other. There were festivals and choirs and school fairs and shinty matches. It was astonishingly busy for such a small place. Nina had grown to understand the longer she stayed there that because they were so far away from big-city attractions, and because the weather was so often not their friend, they had to rely on each other through the long winter evenings and difficult days. It was an actual community, not just a long row of houses full of people who happened to live next to one another. There was a difference, and she had simply never realized it before.

“Aye, well,” said Lesley. “You probably wouldn't enjoy the party anyway. I don't think there's anything here for me.”

Nina unpacked a book she knew well and straightened up. She looked at Lesley, who worked crazy hours, who lived above the shop, seemingly on her own, who always seemed angry about how life had turned out. She wondered.

“Try this,” she said gently, handing over a copy of
The Heart Shattered Glass
.

The woman looked at the cover suspiciously. “I don't think so.”

“Just give it a shot and let me know what you think.” Nina lowered her voice in case anyone else heard her. “If you don't like it, no charge.”

It had become a matter of professional pride now to find something that would suit Lesley. She just seemed to be a woman absolutely in need of the right book. There was, Nina was fervently convinced, one out there foreveryone. If only that went for everything in life.

“I hate the longest day,” said Ainslee, who had fallen on the new book boxes with alacrity and was unpacking them with utter reverence, exclaiming over every shiny new hardback, every precious early edition or unbroken spine. It was a marvelous collection. Nina had promised she could borrow some as long as she treated them well.

“Why, what happens?”

Ainslee sighed. “Oh, everyone dresses up in stupid clothes and runs about singing and dancing and being idiotic all night,” she said. “It's rubbish.”

“Seriously? Because that sounds quite nice.”

“Well, it isn't. I don't know why people can't just stay inside by themselves if they want to and listen to their own music rather than stupid horns and jingly-jangly stuff.”

“Horns?”

“Yeah, great big horns. And drummers and stuff. And they light a big fire. It's totally stupid.”

“You'd better be coming,” said Dr. MacFarlane, the GP, who was standing by practically licking his lips as Ainslee unpacked the big boxes, in case there were any obscure 1920s American gangster novels he hadn't yet read. “Everyone does.”

“Oh, that's a great reason to do things,” said Ainslee, rolling her eyes.

Nina noticed from the corner of her eye that Ben had crept in. She was keeping her last copy of
Up on the Rooftops
by the cash desk, so he could help himself, and she noticed him picking it up, sitting carefully, sounding out the words on the back jacket, moving his lips as he slowly moved his finger. She smiled, and decided not to approach him quite yet.

“What clothes?” she said.

“Oh, you know, the boys in their kilts right enough, but the lassies, they do look braw,” Dr. MacFarlane replied.

Nina had been in Scotland long enough to understand that was a compliment. Since she'd started working for the shop, Ainslee's plain way of dressing had changed. She looked at Ainslee, whose eyeliner today was a startling purple, clashing with her green hair. She looked like Wimbledon. Nina figured it was a good sign she was beginning to express herself and decided not to mention it. She had attempted to talk to Ainslee about her exams again, but the girl had clammed up right away and it had not been a success.

“It'll be grand,” said Dr. MacFarlane, surprisingly turning up trumps with a book, the cover of which showed a flapper being held up by a space alien with a ray gun. “Ach, this'll do.”

“Wow, I haven't even priced those yet,” said Nina. “You are fast.”

He handed over some cash anyway and said, “Look forward to seeing you at the party tonight.”

“Can I go, too?” Ben was whining as Ainslee dragged him away.

“No,” she said.

Work was easy to deal with, but coming back to the empty barn, with no Surinder to cheer her up, no midnight strolls to look forward to, no thinking of poetry or little jokes or drawings to scribble down to go in the tree: that really was hard.

During the day, she got to see lots and lots of people, but as the endless white nights stretched on and on, and you had to tell
yourself to go to bed at ten thirty whether it was daylight outside or not, she felt the hours drag heavy on her hands.

She hadn't heard from Marek at all, and hadn't been down to the train crossing to check. She didn't want to know. But she sensed too that he himself knew how far they had gotten, and how close they had been to making a terrible mistake.

Or maybe he didn't, she thought with a particularly self-pitying sniff one evening, halfway down a tub of Mackie's ice cream. Perhaps he just thought she was some easy British girl who had turned him down, and now he was on to the next one. Perhaps he never thought of her at all. She sighed. It was even harder with Griffin and Surinder thinking she was doing so tremendously well up here, that she had it easy. It felt like there was no way back, even if she wanted one. Which she didn't. But oh, she felt so lonely.

Sighing, she switched on her very slow Internet connection and turned to her Facebook page. Surinder had made her start one up for the bookshop, which she had thought was a stupid idea, but actually it had been very useful; for starters, it meant that everyone knew where she would be on particular days so that people could find her.

In addition to this, she'd received a message from someone whose name appeared to be Orkney Library—this couldn't be their real name, she decided—suggesting that if she wanted to expand or relocate, their rural visitors would also love a mobile bookshop to complement the lovely independent shop in Kirkwall. She had looked at the message, smiling. She already felt remote from the rest of the world; Orkney would surely be the ends of the earth. If she ever found the Highlands too dramatic and fast moving . . . she thought, and filed it away just in case.

There was a knock on the barn door. She looked around,
bemused. She didn't get a lot of visitors, except sometimes local children in a complete and utter desperate state of need for the next Harry Potter/Malory Towers/Narnia, whom she generally managed to oblige, remembering the feeling so well.

She opened the door expectantly. To her surprise, it was Lesley from the grocer's.

“Hello,” she said. “Um. Hi. Can I help you? The van isn't really open just now, but if you need something . . .”

“No,” said the woman. “Look, I just wanted to say . . . I finished that book you recommended.” There were tears streaming down her face.

Nina glanced at her watch. “Wow, that was fast.”

The Heart Shattered Glass
was a courageous scream from the abyss from an abandoned woman, written in four days from the side of a precipice down which she was hurling all her worldly goods, one at a time, meditating on their meaning. It had taken the world by storm with its candor and wit. The fact that the author had subsequently fallen madly in love with and married the book's publicist had only prolonged its popularity, but it was truly a book that deserved its worldwide fame.

“It was . . . She got it exactly. Exactly what it feels like.”

Nina looked at the tightly buttoned-up woman she had struggled to connect with and marveled, not for the first time, at the astonishing amount of seething emotion that could exist beneath the most restrained exterior. To look at Lesley you would think she was just a middle-aged shopkeeper quietly going about her business.

The fact that she completely and utterly empathized with an American woman who had let her own blood drip down a mountainside in anguish, who had changed sexuality and howled at the moon with a wolf pack, just went to show. There was a uni
verse inside every human being every bit as big as the universe outside them. Books were the best way Nina knew—apart from, sometimes, music—to breach the barrier, to connect the internal universe with the external, the words acting merely as a conduit between the two worlds.

She smiled warmly. “That's fantastic. I'm so pleased. Do you want to come in and have a cup of tea?”

The woman shook her head. “No, no, I have to get going. It's just after what I said earlier . . .”

“About what?”

“About you not liking the summer festival. I think I was wrong. I think you have to go.”

Nina shook her head. “No, I really need a good night's sleep! I find it hard when it's so light all the time.”

Lesley looked at her sternly. “Don't be ridiculous. It's once a year. You're a young single girl. All the single people have to go, it's the rule.”

“Is it?” said Nina. “Honestly?”

She still felt so bruised after the Marek episode, she certainly didn't feel ready to be out and about and interacting with people again. “I'm not sure I'm up to it.”

Lesley frowned. “You know,” she said, “I wasted my youth on that man. We were married at twenty-one, together since school. All the way till I was fifty. I never even thought about another man. Oh, Bob was a pig, but I just assumed everyone was like that. I didn't even think about it, I just thought that was the way things were. And guess what: he left anyway. And it was too late for me.”