The Bookshop on the Shore

by Jenny Colgan

  Then he went to the car. At the very last moment, just as he was opening the door, he came back, quickly, not looking at Zoe, grabbed his son, lifted him up and buried his face in the boy’s neat little neck.

  Then he put him down again and drove off in a haze of exhaust fumes. Hari waved contentedly. He was so very used to seeing his father drive away from him.

  Part Two

  ‘But how will I know?’ said Wallace. ‘How will I know they will give me good help?’

  ‘Ask them three questions,’ said the pigeon. ‘Ask them for a cup of water, a cup of bird-seed, and a joke, and if you get all three, then you will get good help.’

  ‘I don’t like bird-seed,’ said Wallace.

  ‘Neither do I,’ said the pigeon, resting on his cane. ‘Ask them for chips. That’ll probably be all right too.’

  From Up on the Rooftops

  Chapter One

  Some new words Zoe would get to know very well: gloaming and haar.

  The gloaming was the evening fog that came down from the hills. The haar was the morning fog that rose up from the loch, often so thick you could eat it with a spoon. On many days, the haar did not burn off but effectively kept on all day until it merged with the gloaming, and the entire world was made of smoke for all the hours of daylight which, in late August, was still most of them.

  So it was gloaming Zoe and Hari arrived in, even though they didn’t know that yet. They’d disembarked after that marathon journey through which they’d both slept. Zoe hadn’t quite realised how heavy the days and weeks of worry – heck, the months – had stacked up on her, weighing her down about money, about Hari, about her job and her flat.

  So she might lose a lot: she no longer had a home, except as some stranger’s gift, and she was about to take on a job where she knew nothing and nobody.

  But right in this present moment, after the miles and the service stations had rolled past, and the road had risen up in front of her, and the cities and towns had grown further apart, and the scenery changed from the manicured fields of the south to the craggy hills and wild landscapes of the north and even further north, there was absolutely nothing she could do. About anything. And there was something about that that felt oddly freeing.

  For this instant, at least, it was out of her hands. And the slow motion of the coach had lulled her to sleep, Hari’s hot little head against her chest, the two of them against the world, and when she had awoken, in that slightly hungover way of having slept during the day, she hadn’t quite known where she was, only that it was foggy and that it felt cold through the seals of the coach windows, and somehow the driver had changed without her noticing, and lots of people had already got off and they were almost the only people left.

  She wanted to look out of the window, but it truly was too foggy to make anything out; she got only the impression of cobblestones and bridges and church spires, low and square-set.

  ‘Inverness! INBHERNISH,’ said the driver, who wasn’t the same one who’d taken them from London. This one sounded . . . well, Scottish, she supposed. Zoe told herself to stop thinking that. It wasn’t going to be a stand-out.

  ‘Oh yes, that’s us,’ she said, shaking Hari awake as the coach heaved and set itself down with an exhausted sigh.

  The driver got off and opened the side door and, very nervously, and still heaving along an incredibly drowsy Hari, Zoe stepped into Scotland for the very first time.

  It seemed incredible they’d only left the boiling stickiness of London behind that morning. A cool wind hit her, underneath the haar that seemed to be settling all around; the air felt damp. She couldn’t smell much more than bus station as she grabbed the scruffy cheap old carryalls from the depths of the coach.

  All around her, cheerful-looking students and young people were gathering up light bags and waltzing off who knew where. She couldn’t handle Hari, who kept slipping out of her arms, and the bags at the same time. Two rolling bags, two coats, one heavy four-year-old, one handbag. She looked around in vain but the driver was already back in his coach, his contracted bag-moving stint over, and everyone else had disappeared into the mist.

  ‘Come on, Hari, you have to walk,’ she said more sharply than she intended, and her tone plus the chill in the air – Hari was only wearing a T-shirt – made him start his silent crying and he stood absolutely stock-still, then, very slowly, started to slide down her leg, towards the utterly filthy bus terminal floor. Big blue signs announced INVERNESS BUS STATION on older-looking stone walls, as the fog obscured everything smaller.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No no no no no no, please, Hari, please . . .’

  Sometimes, there is no stopping a small child: if they want to lie on the ground, they will lie on the ground, however many bags you have. One bag, over-bulging and over-stuffed, fell down onto the other side of the road, causing the Aberdeen bus to rapidly swerve to avoid squishing it to bits.

  ‘Hari, please, get up get up get up,’ she said, without a spare hand and therefore unable to grab the bag lying in the road as it would leave Hari perfectly free to fall into the other side of the road and straight into the path of the next belching bus.

  He stared at her, wide-eyed, rolling around, getting dirty, upset and cold, as if this was all her fault – which it was, of course, on some level – and the wind blew right through Zoe and she swore several times under her breath and remembered not for the first time that she was the grown-up. She was the only grown-up, she was in charge and she was just going to lump it if she didn’t like it. And here came another bus!

  ‘Please get up, Hari! Please! I’ll buy you . . . I’ll get you an ice cream!’

  Hari’s brow furrowed. This would be a very unusual gesture. It was normally his dad who bought him an ice cream. It was practically night time. It was cold. Ice cream was a confusing thought. He lay in the mucky ground, pondering.

  ‘ICE CREAM? ICE CREAM? ICE CREAM?’ Zoe was yelling desperately, just as a nice-looking, extremely pregnant, slightly concerned woman appeared suddenly, alarmingly close, through the mist, and stopped short.

  Chapter Two

  Quickly, Nina went and rescued Zoe’s cheap bag from the road, for which the late-running Aberdonian bus driver was extremely thankful, and placed it back on top of the pavement, whereupon Zoe knelt down and gathered Hari, who was now unutterably filthy, covered in diesel and goodness knows what, his hair plastered to his head and his mouth wide open, a grubby finger stabbing in it which meant undoubtedly ‘yes, I have considered this, and ice cream would be most acceptable’. The pace of the stabbing motion appeared to be speeding up, and he put his other grubby paw emphatically on Zoe’s face, to turn her head towards his.

  The other woman stood there. Zoe blinked anxiously.

  ‘Um . . . are you . . . ?’ she began.

  It was no good. A very long sleep; a very long journey; a small panic. She had completely and utterly forgotten the woman’s name she was meant to be meeting. It was in her phone, which was in her bag, which was by her feet, which meant it might as well be on the moon at this point.

  The woman didn’t rush to fill the silence but instead regarded her with something akin to horror. In truth, Nina had felt very strongly, watching Zoe, that she had got caught up in her excitement at the idea of having a baby, the romance of it, whereas here was the pure grubby evidence of what it was actually going to be like. She was winded, and suddenly very frightened, and unable to think of poor Zoe much at all.

  ‘Um . . .’ said Zoe.

  ‘Sorry. I might be mistaken,’ said Nina, just in case she genuinely was mistaken and had somehow come across a tramp by accident. ‘Who are you looking for?’

  Hari had now somehow got his hand entangled in Zoe’s hair, and was pulling on it, hard and painfully. The bag fell over again. Zoe looked at the Aberdeen bus, and considered getting on it.

  * * *

  ‘Book . . . book person,’ Zoe managed finally and Nina did her absolute level best to smile.

  ‘He
llo!’ she said. Then she recovered herself. ‘Hi. I’m Nina. You must be knackered.’

  The woman looking up at Nina seemed far older than her twenty-eight years. Her dark hair was matted where she’d been sleeping on it, she had great shadows underneath her eyes and her clothes were stained. The child was still pulling on her in agitation.

  This will be me, thought Nina in horror. This is going to be me.

  * * *

  Oh God, Zoe was thinking in horror. This was exactly . . . She wanted to cry. She thought of the lovely first impression she would have liked to have given: her beautiful child behaving immaculately; looking ready and professional. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been able to afford a haircut and had attempted to trim her hair with the kitchen scissors (never do this), plus she hadn’t had time when she’d woken up to have a clean-up in the bus toilet. Also, the bus toilet was absolutely and unutterably disgusting and there wasn’t anywhere to put Hari down while she tried to tidy them up. She’d gone after them both with a tissue but on balance she’d only kind of rubbed the filth around a little bit and Hari looked crusty.

  And this woman, in her purple jumper and short tweed skirt over her bump matching her red hair beautifully . . . she just looked so right, part of the landscape, even as she was clearly trying to hide her horror.

  Zoe shut her eyes. Well. Too late to back out now.

  Nina picked up the bags decisively.

  ‘You’d better follow me,’ she said, picking her away along the pavements between the coach stands. Zoe felt bad about letting her carry the bags but didn’t see another way to manage it.

  Hari sensed immediately that this meant no ice cream, and turned his head into Zoe’s T-shirt, stuck his hand down the front of it, a hangover from his breastfeeding days, and silently howled, soaking her top through with his tears. Nina stared briefly, then turned around and marched on, pulling Zoe’s tattered bag efficiently as Zoe puffed, trying to keep up with her handbag and an inconsolable and surprisingly heavy four-year-old and his buggy.

  ‘Get in the buggy, Hari?’ she whispered and the child shook his head fiercely. Frankly, Zoe couldn’t blame him. The fog was heavy and thick on the ground making it very difficult to get a good sense of where they were. Through the main doors of the bus station, she caught sight in the gloom of a large pillared sandstone building boldly proclaiming PUBLIC LIBRARY as Nina headed out towards an extraordinary-looking blue van.

  ‘Well, here we are,’ she said cheerfully, then looked worried. ‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘I thought . . .’ She looked at Zoe once more. ‘I’m so sorry. I thought you’d bring a car seat.’

  ‘I tried,’ Zoe attempted to explain. ‘But I ran out of hands.’

  ‘Of course! Of course you did. I’m so sorry! Will he be all right on your lap?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Nina looked a little longer.

  ‘Or . . . hang on.’

  She vanished into the back of the van with Nina’s luggage and reappeared with three heavy books.

  ‘We could boost him up a bit.’

  Zoe looked at the books.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ said Nina. ‘They’re books about how to hide vegetables for children. I don’t like them. As long as he doesn’t pee on them we should be all right.’

  And she smiled nervously, and Zoe smiled nervously back.

  ‘Okay, little man,’ she said. ‘Up you get.’

  ‘He’s quiet,’ observed Nina. Surinder hadn’t mentioned Hari’s mutism, considering it just shyness.

  ‘He doesn’t speak,’ said Zoe. ‘Yet, I mean. He probably will when he’s ready.’

  Nina looked at the little boy properly for the first time. Once you ignored the crumbs and a bit of snot, he was a sweet-looking child. She could see a bit of Surinder in him.

  ‘Does he cry?’ she asked, curious.

  ‘Not loudly,’ said Zoe, doing what she normally did and pretending to be cheerful to cover up her worries. ‘You’re just perfect, aren’t you, Hari-boy?’

  And Hari made a snuffling noise and wiped his nose on his sleeve and looked ready to start crying again and, frankly, anything but perfect, but they decided not to mention this as Nina, her bump touching the steering wheel, set the van to reverse and carefully manoeuvred away from the bus station.

  Chapter Three

  Surinder, like many extroverts, could never truly understand what it was to be shy. Nina had been an introverted bookworm all her life; moving to Scotland had helped her bring herself out in a tiny community, but she still got nervous around new people. Zoe, meanwhile, was feeling so exhausted and kicked about by life that she felt all her resilience had been knocked out of her and she didn’t know where to pick it up again.

  It was such a miserable evening’s weather too. Nina felt bad about dropping Zoe off at the strange big house. She should take her home, feed her up a bit, look after her. She hadn’t expected Zoe to be such a wounded bird (Surinder definitely had been bigging her up).

  ‘So,’ she said finally. ‘What did you read on the bus?’

  This time Zoe was ready.

  ‘Anna Karenina!’ she announced loudly. Well, she’d brought it. She’d got it from a charity shop, so she was ready. It wasn’t that she didn’t read – she did – but she’d got out of the habit when the baby was born, and found her concentration afterwards wasn’t what it had been.

  ‘Really?’ said Nina. ‘I find it quite hard to read big books when I’m travelling – amazing!’

  Silence fell in the front of the little van.

  ‘Um,’ said Zoe. ‘Also . . .’

  She held up a copy of a Jack Reacher novel she’d also tagged along.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Nina, smiling. ‘Tell me he’s changed his underpants.’

  ‘It’s been three days,’ said Zoe.

  ‘Oof,’ said Nina, and Zoe smiled back at her.

  ‘So the Urquart family . . . they’re nice?’ she said.

  Nina winced. She should have, she realised, gone and visited them, made sure everything was okay. But she felt so awful every day now. More awful than she let on to Lennox, who would worry. It was as much as she could do to drag herself to the van, then collapse in front of the fire in the evening.

  ‘I’m sure they’re fine,’ she said. ‘I think it’s just . . . been a difficult time for them.’

  Zoe nodded. The nursery she’d worked at had been posh, full of rich divorced parents. ‘It’s been a difficult time’ vis-à-vis children in her experience meant ‘buckle up’.

  On her chest, asleep again, Hari snuffled and let out a long sigh.

  * * *

  At last they reached what to Zoe looked like yet another winding road as she checked a printed-out map (the phone reception, Zoe had realised immediately, was rather hit and miss here). But she realised to her horror that Nina had never been here before.

  ‘Just dropping you off,’ said Nina, going pink. ‘He was at school with my boyfriend,’ she added, as if this made it okay.

  ‘Um, okay,’ said Zoe, holding Hari tighter. Outside, an owl hooted. They passed two brick posts set on either side of the road where there must have been a gate once that wasn’t there any more. A slightly dilapidated sign read ‘The Beeches’.

  Zoe glanced at Nina, who deliberately ignored it, instead giving out a slightly forced laugh.

  ‘Ha – looks creepy!’

  ‘Mm,’ said Zoe, covering Hari’s ears, and reminding herself, as the gateposts vanished behind them in the fog, only an owl’s hooting penetrating the car, that of course she absolutely didn’t believe in ghosts. Absolutely not.

  The gateposts, as it turned out, were only the entrance to the house. They weren’t actually anywhere near it. There was a long path, which remained shrouded in gloom, and a long gravel drive, somewhat past its best, with rustling undergrowth beside them. They went past dank hedgerows and low-roofed outhouses, before The Beeches finally revealed itself.

  It was the spookiest bloody place Zoe had ever seen in her life
.

  * * *

  The house was in a style Zoe didn’t recognise but would soon learn was common in many of the great houses of the region: a high baronial style. It was grey brick, with numerous turrets sprouting from its high walls, and there was a huge wooden door up a wide staircase at the entrance. The turrets and towers were festooned with windsocks and pointy metal bits, and each looked like a child’s drawing of Rapunzel’s tower. Windows ran across the ground floor and up the towers, mere slits in some instances, even though the house had clearly been built a long time after there would be any obvious dangers from flying arrows.

  It was breath-taking. And scary.

  ‘I . . . I thought it was a house,’ said Zoe, shaking her head.

  ‘It is a house,’ said Nina. ‘It’s just a very, very big house.’

  The car slowed, crunching on the old gravel. At the front, standing, was the shape of a woman standing crossly with her arms folded, whom Nina didn’t need astonishing powers to intuit had to be Mrs MacGlone.

  Chapter Four

  As Zoe got out of the car, her first impressions of a magnificent castle receded a little. She could see the chipped bricks, the weeds growing up on higher windows, and she wondered if there were more rooms in the house than people ever went in to.

  The large woman standing in front of the main door, arms folded, stepped forward.

  ‘Apparently she’s not as scary as she looks,’ muttered Nina.

  Zoe glanced at her.

  ‘Mrs MacDanvers,’ she said under her breath, and Nina couldn’t help smirking.

  Zoe stepped out of the car. A stiff wind blew her dark hair across her face. It definitely needed a trim. And a wash and a blow-dry and a quick root inspection.

  Mrs MacGlone looked Zoe up and down.

  ‘Aye,’ she said in the manner of one for whom this is not their first meeting with an au pair. ‘Zoe, is it?’

  ‘And Hari,’ said Zoe, offering up the slumbering bundle over her shoulder.

  ‘That’ll be right,’ said Mrs MacGlone, watching disinterestedly as Nina pulled out the heavy bags despite her bump and the two girls brought them up together.