‘Wow,’ Dimitri murmurs, stepping up behind me.
He’s got a point there. To either side of us are the roofs of the surrounding buildings – to the right, the block that Drake Farrer owns, and to the left is the scented candle shop. We walk to the edge and look out over the river that crosses the street at the upper end and runs behind Once Upon A Page. The grassy banks are a popular walking spot but empty at this time of day, green grass and flowing water meandering along until it disappears into the hills on the horizon.
‘It’s beautiful up here,’ I say, although I can see why Robert closed it. There are three sets of metal tables and chairs that look like they’ve spent a good few years being repeatedly rusted by rain and bleached by sunlight, and when I put my hand on the railing along the back, it wobbles and the paving dips underneath my feet.
‘It’s so romantic,’ Dimitri says. ‘You can imagine someone getting down on one knee and proposing up here.’ He gestures towards the trees waving along the riverbank. ‘The trees blowing in the breeze, the splash of the river, the trickle of the fountain from the street … The wonky paving sending them flying like a seesaw the moment their knee touches down …’
It makes me laugh, but I can honestly say that proposals were not my first thought upon seeing the terrace. ‘You don’t strike me as the romantic type,’ I say, even though there’s something inherently romantic about the tall, quiet, and handsome artist who lurks mysteriously in bookshops sketching … well, giant fleas in his case, but you can’t win ’em all.
‘I’m better off alone. I’ve lost too many people to let anyone else in, Hallie.’ He looks over at me like he owes me a personal explanation and then looks away again, his eyes on the point in the distance where the river disappears under a viaduct and into the hills. ‘Relationships have never worked for me. I had a couple when I was still living in Oxford but none that lasted. Since I moved back here after my mum died, I couldn’t bring that grief into a relationship, and then the responsibility of looking after my sister … it would’ve been too much to expect someone else to get involved in that. And since then … my life’s been torn apart by grief. I can’t take my heart being broken by love too.’
Even with everything he shared last night, I can’t imagine him feeling like that. He’s so endlessly cheery, and yet in some moments, I can see something quieter and hurting in him, and I take a step closer so our hands are next to each other on the railing.
‘I still believe in love though,’ he says. ‘I’m not completely dead inside. I’d just rather read about it in books.’
‘Have you ever been in love?’ I ask, not even sure why I’m asking. It’s not like it’s relevant to me – I have no luck in relationships and I’m not looking for another one. Neither of us are interested in relationships. That’s good. Something else we have in common.
‘No.’ He’s quiet for a moment. ‘Have you?’
‘I thought maybe I was once, but I’ve never felt the way characters in books feel. I’ve never felt that fluttery feeling, that urge to just be near someone, that comfort of sitting doing nothing with someone. There’s never been someone I’d do anything for or who would do anything for me, or anyone I felt I could share everything with.’
‘What happened to Mr Maybe?’
‘He fell in love with someone else and cheated on me for over a year. Eventually the woman he was seeing got fed up of being strung along and got in touch to let me know what was going on. But at least he proved that happily-ever-afters only happen in books and I’m better off getting my romance strictly from printed pages and the Kindle screen forevermore.’ My foot presses against one of the cracked terracotta planters around the edge of the roof terrace. They still hold the dead twigs of what were once trailing wallflowers that twisted through the railings and dangled over the edges of the building, but now there’s one solitary cabbage white butterfly trying to find some nectar in the weeds that have made it their home.
‘Aw, I’m sorry.’ He knocks his shoulder into mine, making the railing wobble again. ‘You can’t give up though. Fairy-tale love is still out there somewhere, the kind that will make Colonel Brandon pale in comparison.’
Even though I love Sense and Sensibility and Colonel Brandon in particular, I don’t believe him. The whole point of books is to experience something that is never meant for us in real life, but the gentle steel and sincerity in his voice makes me feel even wobblier than the railing itself. ‘How can you still be so positive?’
‘There will always be hopes and dreams to keep us going. There will always be something to look forward to, even if it’s only the knowledge that things will get better. There will always be love. To look for, to hope for, to dream about. Maybe not even romantic love. A job you love, a friend you love, an animal, or a thing, or even a book that will improve your life. There will always be something good coming.’ He nudges his shoulder into mine again and repeats, ‘There will always be love.’
I’m surprised by how much my throat closes up and my nose burns with the familiar sting of tears. It’s such a simple sentiment, but there’s something so uplifting about it.
I swallow hard. ‘If you ever want to do a line of inspirational prints or greeting cards or something, you could sell them in the shop. That’s exactly the sort of thing people would buy.’
‘Seriously?’
I nod, because I was kind of half joking and kind of not-joking-at-all at the same time.
‘I’d love to do something like that. Something with a literary, bookish twist. You’d seriously let me do that?’
‘Yes, yes, and a thousand times yes.’ I can never resist an opportunity to quote Pride and Prejudice. ‘Your artwork is incredible. I’d be honoured to stock it. I’ve been thinking about it anyway. Bookshops don’t just stock books anymore – they have to diversify. I’ve had three people ask me where I got the book-shaped doorstops from and if they were for sale in the past few days. If I could get hold of something like that, and other gift-type things – mugs, keyrings, pretty pens and stationery. No one can resist a notebook, and tote bags are really popular. Any sort of bookish gifts.
‘If you did some greeting cards, or prints mounted on card, we could get some pretty tissue paper to wrap them in, and display them on a stand of their own. Make everything affordable in a way that boutique gift shops aren’t. Summer holidays aren’t far away. There are going to be things like teacher thank-you gifts to buy, and of course, it’ll be brilliant later in the year for Christmas …’
I trail off, glad to have someone to share the idea with. I’m sure literary merchandise is a good way of pulling in non-readers or attracting customers who might not otherwise come in, but I still feel like I’m out of my depth and too new to this to be making huge changes to the shop, and still waiting for the moment it all goes wrong. And then there’s the budget to think about. All this stuff is a great idea, but I have no idea how I’m going to afford it.
‘It would be amazing. I could really use the money, and it’s an absolute dream to have my stuff on display, on sale, and I’ve got so many ideas … Ahhh!’ He leans over the railing and shouts in joy at the empty riverbank, then turns back to me, slides his arms around my waist and picks me up, the loose paving clunking up and down under his feet. My arms encircle his shoulders and he pulls me tight against his body and spins us around.
I curl my fingers in his unkempt hair, laughing into his shoulder at the uninhibited glee as I get a little bit lost in the scent of hair wax, charcoal, and his woody, spicy aftershave. His breath moves the hairs at the back of my neck. My fingers curl tighter into his thick hair and my arms tighten around his shoulders. There’s something about being in his arms that makes everything feel like it will be okay, and in this moment, nothing else matters.
It’s a struggle to force myself to think clearly. ‘What about your deadline? You must have one …’
‘It can wait.’ He puts me down on a wobbly paving slab and something flashes across his face before
he grins at me. ‘And there you go, now I’ve got the initial awkwardness of inappropriately hugging you out of the way, we can hug anytime and it won’t be awkward.’
It makes me smile as I finally take my hands off his arms, grateful to him for defusing my awkwardness with his own awkwardness until we’re in such a jumble of awkwardness that it doesn’t matter who started it. I want to say something witty and flirtatious, like how he can hug me anytime he wants and it isn’t inappropriate at all, but I end up feeling a bit fluttery and stuttering out a mumbled agreement.
‘What do you think about doing bookish characters and quotes from their books? Like Alice in Wonderland, Narnia, Breakfast at Tiffany’s … I mean, as long as the copyright’s in the public domain and everything. Or famous quotes about reading and being a book lover.’
‘You know what, I trust whatever you’re going to come up with. Your attitude to life is what makes me smile. Just make them you, Dimitri, and they’ll be brilliant.’
His face is so red that someone’s going to post a letter in him in a minute.
‘So all giant fleas and ogres then, yeah?’ His smile is infectious in the best way possible, and I find myself feeling lightweight and giddy just by being close to him, and I know he’s joking because he cannot stop smiling, and I’m suddenly so glad I said it. I’d been thinking about it since he drew that teddy for the little boy, but never in a million years thought he’d go for it, or that he’d have time given the deadline he must be working to for his publisher.
‘Hal … I don’t mean to be patronising and obviously it’s nothing to do with me, but can the shop afford all that merchandise?’
I don’t know whether to be offended that he thinks I can’t manage my own retail budget or touched that he cares. And he’s not exactly wrong. The shop can’t afford it. ‘I’m going to use my own credit card.’ I try to sound authoritative, like I know what I’m doing. ‘The shop is stuck in a vicious circle. Round and round we go – not making enough money so not being able to afford new stock. Changing the window displays is going to sell a couple of extra books a week, maybe. Reorganising every shelf will make it easier to find things, but it’s not going to magically turn our fortunes around. It needs a boost, a stock injection, something to break the cycle and get new people in through the door.’
He goes to say something but I cut him off. ‘I know it’s not a good idea, okay? I know I should probably apply for some kind of business loan that I don’t understand, but it’ll only be for a while. When the shop starts making money again, I can take a proper wage and afford to pay it off. I’ve failed at every job I’ve ever had, Dimitri, I can’t fail Once Upon A Page, no matter what it takes.’
‘You’re not failing it. You’ve only been here a few days. You’re on exactly the right track. But Robert wouldn’t want to see you get yourself into difficulties.’
‘It’ll be fine.’ I hope he can’t hear the wibble in my voice. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
I know he wants to say something else, but he stays quiet.
It’s still not quite opening time, and it’s even more peaceful up here than it is on the street below and walking down that is as relaxing as a massage in a spa with hot stones and whale noises. Up here, there’s nothing but the chirping of spring songbirds, the splash of the river and the rustle of the leaves reaching to us from the trees on the riverbank while a swan glides along the water.
‘Did you find any clues in your mum’s stuff?’
He shakes his head. ‘I had a look, but … my house is complicated. It’s kind of left as it was. I started going through my mum’s stuff after she died, but it upset Dani too much. She wasn’t mentally capable of grasping that Mum wasn’t coming back, so I left it. And now she’s gone too and I’ve got her stuff to sort out as well and … it’s a lot to face. I’d rather hide in bookshops and draw giant fleas.’
He makes it out to be a joke, but it’s easy to see that it isn’t funny. Without thinking, I shift my hand closer to his on the railing, not quite sure why either of us are holding on to it in the first place because I don’t think it’s stable enough to do anything in the event of a fall, and he shifts along incrementally so the sides of our hands are touching on the cold metal bars.
He shakes his head. ‘How about you? Did you come across any more secrets hidden in book dedications?’
‘Plenty, but none were significant.’
‘You’ve been looking then?’
‘Of course I’ve been looking. Did you really think you could leave me unattended in the shop overnight and I wouldn’t look? Er, not that I wanted you to attend me or anything. That didn’t sound right. There was meant to be absolutely no attending by anyone for either of us …’ I realise I’ve made an innocent statement that he wouldn’t have given a second thought into some sort of weird innuendo and embarrassed both of us. I glance down to the ground. It’s not that far. If I jumped, I’d probably only sustain a broken ankle or two. It would be less embarrassing than this and would get me away from his beautiful blue eyes faster. ‘I’m going to shut up now.’
He’s laughing so hard he looks like he’s about to fall over, but it still feels like he’s laughing with me, not at me. Knowing he’s prone to rambling himself somehow makes me feel better, like it’s normal, like he gets it. ‘What were your mum’s other favourite books?’ I ask, mainly to distract myself from how much I like his smile and his laugh. ‘If Pride and Prejudice was her favourite, it stands to reason she might’ve shared some other books with the mystery man. We could start there?’
‘She loved Virginia Andrews, but I couldn’t tell you which one was her favourite. Other than that … I don’t know. I’ll have to look at the romance shelves and see if I recognise any other titles. She was always such a romantic. I always asked her how she could possibly be romantic with a man like Dad, but now I know. Finding that message last night answered so many questions I’ve always had and never knew I needed an answer to.’
In the distance across the river, a chapel bell chimes nine times.
‘I need to open up,’ I say, although the need is not that urgent judging by the quiet street below, but what is urgent is how much I’m going to hug him if I don’t walk away right this second.
As we reach the bottom of the steps, a customer appears out of nowhere and tries to go in the locked door. I rush to open it for him and toss the keys back to Dimitri, who stays to put the chains and ‘Keep Out’ sign back across the stairway.
‘Any ideas what you’re going to do with it?’ he asks when he comes back into the shop where the man I let in is rifling through the sale table with reckless abandon.
It’s only 9.01 a.m. and the sale table has been much more popular than I anticipated.
‘I don’t know. It’s not even mine. The property developer who owns the empty shop next door has got half of it, and he made it clear that he won’t give me permission to do anything up there.’
‘Drake Farrer?’ Dimitri’s face falls.
‘You know him?’
‘Most people in Buntingorden know Drake Farrer and most of them wish they didn’t. I didn’t realise he was the one who’d been hassling you.’ He pushes his glasses up and pinches the bridge of his nose.
‘He left me some sort of deed about the roof terrace.’ I crouch down and rifle around the shelves underneath the countertop until I find where I buried it under a pile of books so I could pretend it didn’t exist.
Dimitri takes it and scans over it, looking like he might actually understand it, which is more than can be said for me. ‘He’s got his solicitor to put a dividing line in at the stairs, so you’re free to use your half, but you’d have to block off his half, and the access to it is shared between you, so opening it would require his permission.’
‘How do you understand that?’ I say more to myself than to him because he never fails to surprise me. ‘It looks like gobbledegook.’
‘I know a bit about property law. I studied it for a while. You could still
use the roof terrace, it’d just need a lot of logistical planning.’
‘And I’d need to get a builder or an architect or someone in, wouldn’t I? They’re going to cost more money than I have, and whatever profit the shop makes has to go back into buying stock and improving the shop itself. The roof terrace would be a lovely addition, but it’s not safe and it needs more help than I know how to give it, and that’s without whatever issues Drake Farrer will cough up. He wants this shop – he’s not going to give me permission to make it better, is he?’
‘Hal, about Drake Farrer … There’s something you need to—’
The sale table man limps up to the counter, struggling under the weight of all the books he’s carrying. I tap their prices into the till and Dimitri leaps in to help pack them into the man’s reusable shopping bags.
‘Thanks,’ I say after the customer leaves, constantly impressed by how kind Dimitri is. I barely know this man, but I feel like if I asked him to nip up to space and collect some moondust, he’d be straight on the phone to NASA.
‘You’re welcome.’ He picks up the deed and hands it back to me. ‘You need someone to buy that place next door and turn it back into a bakery. They could go halves with you then and share the space. It would be incredible to sit up there with cake and tea and read a book.’
His words conjure up a daydream of a warm spring day, a comfy chair up there, the scent of May blossom from the trees on the riverside, a good book and a gorgeous cake …
We meet each other’s eyes and smile, both clearly having the same daydream, except in mine, I’m sitting there with him, on a bench with his legs in my lap as we read each other passages of our favourite books and eat something he’s baked … When I snap back to reality, he’s drifted so close that he’s leaning on the counter and our arms are touching again, and I stare at them for a moment like I can’t quite work out why.
He blinks like he was lost in a daydream and suddenly startles and pushes himself upright and pulls his arm away from mine. ‘I’m going to grab Pentamerone and make it look like I’m working, but really I’m thinking up inspirational quotes and literary images to put on greeting cards.’
The Little Bookshop of Love Stories Page 13
