He neatly undoes the packet of Chocolate Hobnobs and offers me one first – ever the perfect gentleman. We both manage to take one out without spilling a single crumb, which is quite a feat for two people who are so uncoordinated, but I’m not sure I can handle any more biscuit-related mayhem today.
‘For what it’s worth, I thought you did a great job. I silently applauded your efforts in trying to get the conversation back round to the book. And if it’s any consolation, I thought The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was excellent and totally agreed with what you said. It’s been years since I read it and that ending has never left me.’
‘And to think I was worrying that I hadn’t had time to swot up on the book.’ Our hands brush as he passes my cup of tea over, holding the hot mug itself so I can take the handle. ‘So let me get this straight – they buy the book, either read it or don’t read it, and then come here once a month on the pretence of discussing it but really just to eat biscuits and gossip? They’re supporting the shop, but as a biscuit-eating and tea-drinking establishment.’
‘I wouldn’t knock it. That’s a good amount of books you sell each month, and no one cares what they’re about. I reckon you could have a book about painting walls and they’d still buy it to read about which ones dry first. I do think they read the books, but they only get around to talking about it when they run out of biscuits and village gossip, and with at least twenty busybodies on site, they never run out of village gossip, although the biscuits don’t stand much chance.’
‘Even though I’m seriously questioning your loyalty for going into hiding …’ I nudge my shoulder against his. ‘Thank you for doing the supermarket run. I see how it would’ve been an unforgivable offence not to have biscuits.’
‘Aw, I’m sorry. I’m not very good with being surrounded by people, but I didn’t want to abandon you entirely.’
I look up at him, his hair falling across his forehead, looking floppier than usual, reflecting how relaxed he is. ‘You’re a real introvert, aren’t you?’
He considers it for a moment. ‘I’m used to being on my own. When my sister was alive, she was self-conscious of how she was treated in public, and when the treatment started up again, she lost her hair and was terrified of running into girls she knew from the time when things had been better and she’d been able to go to school, so we rarely went anywhere apart from hospital appointments and the library. And since then …’ He takes his glasses off, blinks up at the ceiling, and puts them back on again. ‘I must sound so dull. Until Robert took pity on me and let me come here, I was basically a hermit.’
The mental image makes me grin. ‘You are way too clean-shaven to be a hermit. Did you have a beard?’
‘I dunno, you couldn’t find it under all the hair that had grown Cousin Itt-style to my feet.’
This time it makes me laugh out loud, and he beams at me with just enough hesitancy behind his smile to make me not quite sure he’s joking.
‘You don’t sound dull at all,’ I say. ‘You sound …’ Perfect. Gentle. Like a guy who’s been through more than he ever lets on. ‘It sounds like my version of heaven. Peace and quiet, and books.’
‘And plenty of tea and biscuits.’
‘Naturally.’ I pull my head back to look up at him, and for one surreal minute, I think he’s going to kiss me. He bites his lip to stop the tremble in it, and his head lowers almost imperceptibly. I can feel the brush of his hair against mine, the fine blonde hairs covering his muscular forearms graze my arms, feeling like burning beacons where our arms are touching, and then he turns away and picks up his cup from the shelf and the moment is lost. I pick up my own cup of tea and take another biscuit, sploshing it in with reckless abandon and regretting it when one half glugs sorrowfully to the bottom of the mug. That’ll teach me to dunk biscuits without due care and attention.
I want to know everything there is to know about his life, but he seems quiet and introspective, and not like he wants to talk about it. My eyes fall on the open sketchbook in his lap. ‘Why does that woman have a goat’s face?’
‘There’s this poor man with twelve daughters who he can’t afford to feed, so a giant lizard offers to raise his youngest daughter in exchange for giving him great wealth. The daughter is raised in a palace and eventually falls in love with a king and marries him, but when she leaves, she doesn’t thank the lizard so he turns her head into a goat’s head. As you do.’
‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you?’ I giggle.
‘They’re not all as disturbing as they look, I promise.’ He puts his sketchbook aside and pulls the old storybook onto his lap instead. ‘Here, you’ll like this one.’ He turns some pages and runs his finger across the lines of text on the aged paper and starts reading aloud, a story about three princesses marrying three princes who have been enchanted into the form of animals. I lean closer to him to follow the words he’s reading, but the text is tiny, and it seems like the most natural thing in the world to rest my head against his shoulder, and I’m surprised in a good way when he lowers his head and leans it against mine too. I feel the smile spreading across his face, the quietness of his words and how I feel every breath against my hair.
It only takes him a few minutes to read, and when the story finishes with a typically fairy-tale-esque dragon slaying, the curse being lifted, and a happily-ever-after, I should probably lift my head, but I don’t, and he makes no attempt to move either.
‘Did you just read me a bedtime story?’ I speak in a whisper because speaking normally will sound like a shout in the empty shop.
He lets out a soft laugh. ‘I don’t know what time it is, but it can’t even be six o’clock. We can’t go to bed yet.’ He instantly stiffens and tries to backpedal. ‘I’ve just realised how bad that sounded. I didn’t mean we should be going anywhere near a bed together, I just meant …’
I reach over and pat his knee, the nearest thing I can touch without having to move. ‘I know what you meant,’ I say, even though I’m so comfortable down here that I could happily fall asleep with him.
‘You must think I’m mad to like this stuff. I find the evolution of fairy tales fascinating, and how they’re something that’s survived for centuries in different forms and they still appeal even to this day. There’s something so innocent and hopeful about them, particularly Disney ones. Even the oldest of those films are over eighty years old now, and children still grow up with them. They’re timeless. It feels … I don’t know, kind of special to go back to these original tales and try to update them for a modern world.’
‘These stories are wonderfully weird.’ I look at the brightly striped socks with penguins all over them showing above the ankles of odd-coloured boots that are on the opposite feet this time. Wonderfully weird, just like him.
I try to think of any other person I’ve ever known who would sit on the floor of a bookshop and read centuries-old Italian fairy tales aloud to a fellow adult, and somehow make the simplicity of sharing biscuits and drinking tea into the best evening I can ever remember.
‘Have you met whoever your publisher has got updating the text? I mean, you must be working together on it. What if you hate the translation the other person comes up with?’
‘It doesn’t really work like that and I’m sure you don’t want to hear about this. Another Hobnob?’ He holds the packet out, and if I wasn’t enjoying his company so much, I might’ve thought twice about the oddly abrupt subject change, but chocolate biscuits are enough to distract anyone without adding Dimitri’s aftershave that’s like the fresh wood of walking through a forest where they’ve just been felling trees to the mix.
‘I feel like a kid again,’ I murmur against his shoulder, not keen to move any time before Monday.
He rubs his head against mine gently. ‘Me too. I love being here. Everything feels better here. It’s like being surrounded by different worlds, different lives, and whatever you’re going through, you know there are stories here about people who have been through different things and
always found a way to overcome them. I find that comforting somehow, even though they’re only fictional.’
‘I think books have a unique power. A way of transporting you to a place or time that makes you use your imagination, instead of just showing you, like a film does. I’ve used them as an escape all my life.’
‘Me too. I was a shy, dorky kid who didn’t make friends easily, and I turned to books for a better world, and now I’m a shy, dorky adult who doesn’t make friends easily and I still turn to books for better worlds. I’ve never felt like I fitted in anywhere, but it didn’t matter when I was reading about characters who didn’t fit in either. That’s why I love coming here. I’ve always felt at home when surrounded by books.’
Hearing him describe himself like that makes me want to hug him, but we’re too cramped together, and it’s probably best I don’t anyway. I settle for tilting my head and pressing the side of my jaw against his shoulder. ‘Same,’ I whisper against his shirt. ‘Shy, clumsy kid who never knew what to say to make people like me and always ended up choosing the wrong thing. I was bullied at school so I used to hide in the library every lunchtime. I’d snaffle my packed lunch on the way up the stairs and then have a whole fifty minutes every day to read. I found some of my favourite books there. I read all the Judy Blumes over and over again, all the Point Horrors and Point Romances, and my favourite was a two-book series by Dyan Sheldon about a girl who fell in love with the ghost that haunted her bedroom. I used to lie awake at night wishing I had a hot, motorcycle-riding ghost haunting my house.’
I can feel his smile against my hair. ‘Me too. Well, maybe not about the hot ghost, but yeah. I was bullied too for being tall and awkward and stuttery, and I hid in libraries too. My mum used to take me every week when I was little and the librarian always used to tell me off for trying to sneak out more than my allotted four books and an extra four on my mum’s card too.’
‘Kids are cruel,’ I murmur, because the idea of him being bullied for everything I like about him makes me want to pull him into the tightest hug and sort of clutch him to my bosom like some old matronly Mrs Doubtfire character, even though my bosom is nowhere near ample enough and I’ve never once referred to it as a bosom before in my life. I don’t know what’s got into me lately. I must be being possessed by the spirits of all these old book characters. I’ll be pulling up my stockings and going Morris dancing while moaning about my varicose veins next.
‘Adults are worse.’
My breath catches because his voice is flat and quiet and without any of its usual timbre, and I kind of want to pull back and look into his eyes and tell him he’s wrong, but he’s not, is he? Adults can be the cruellest of them all, and they’re old enough to know better, and somehow that makes it worse. And if I move, it might be weird to put my head back on his shoulder again so I don’t want to risk it yet.
Like he can tell how melancholy that sounded, he takes a breath and seems to rally himself. ‘Thank God for books, eh? Every big event in my life has been marked by books. I remember what I was reading at the time, or what was recommended to me, or what was bought for me. My mum was a huge reader and always believed in marking occasions with books. Whenever something good happened, she’d take me to a bookshop to choose whatever one I wanted. Do you remember the school book fairs?’
‘Oh my God, the book fairs.’ I’m glad he can’t see my face because I’m currently the spitting image of the heart eyes emoji. ‘My mum’s most hated week of the term, and my most anticipated. There was something so special about those big metal cases being wheeled into the assembly hall. It’s one thing secondary school was always missing – no Scholastic book fairs.’
‘Mind you, we would’ve been a bit old for them by then, wouldn’t we?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I made my mum get me a Funfax from the book fair when I was eight and I thought I was the coolest kid in class. The best thing ever was filling in all your details and spending all your pocket money on those little books to put inside.’
He laughs. ‘But you remember it as a pivotal part of your childhood. That’s what I mean. Everyone’s life is shaped by special books. I grew up with Enid Blyton’s tales from The Wishing Chair to the Famous Five, and The Faraway Tree to Malory Towers, and then onto teenage books, and smuggled adult books that were supposedly too old for me.’
‘I loved Enid Blyton, especially Malory Towers. Malory Towers was the Harry Potter of our generation. You know, the boarding school that everyone wanted to go to, full of characters that everyone wanted to be friends with?’
‘I went to boarding school. Believe me, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.’
‘Really?’ I tilt my head against his shoulder. Boarding school has always struck me as a thing for frightfully posh people and Dimitri doesn’t seem like that at all.
‘Yeah. When you’re young and loving life in the local primary school and all your friends are here, and then suddenly you’re being driven across the country and dumped in this strange environment with all these new people and rules and rich kids who really don’t like you. My brother already went there and he’d taken to it like a fish to water, but he’s different from me. I’d begged my parents for months not to make me go there, but like everything else with my father, what he wants is all that matters.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say quietly, surprised by the bitterness in his voice.
‘No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say any of that. There’s just something about you that makes me want to talk. Suffice to say it’s not all wizarding spells and house elves, although I wish Harry Potter had been around in our younger days. I would’ve been obsessed with it as a pre-teen. I mean, I was obsessed enough as an adult, but …’
I wasn’t surrounded by book lovers before I won Once Upon A Page, and something as simple as someone who understands my love of books and grew up at roughly the same time I did, reading the same things that I loved … there’s something so special about it.
My mind drifts as I sit there with my head on Dimitri’s shoulder, thinking about all the books I’ve loved over the years, both of us occasionally sharing titles and opinions, from the classics of Great Expectations to the magic of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe series by C.S. Lewis, and how enchanted we both were by the idea of finding a whole new world through something as ordinary as a wardrobe, and the crushing disappoint when none of our wardrobes led to Narnia.
‘Should we move?’ he says when silence has fallen. ‘It’s not that I want to, but I’m going to fall asleep in a minute and my biggest fantasy is spending the night in a bookshop, so if you’re not careful, you’re never going to get rid of me.’
‘Worse things have happened.’
‘Mmm.’ He mumbles an agreement and reaches a hand out blindly until I catch hold of it and slip my fingers between his. He squeezes tightly and pulls my hand against his leg, holding it there. ‘I’m really glad we met, Hallie. It feels like I’ve known you forever.’
‘Me too,’ I whisper, my voice sounding as unsteady as I feel.
This doesn’t just happen. Gorgeous men don’t fall into the shop you’re working in and sweep you off your feet – not in real life, anyway. And yet I feel distinctly unstable and like my legs are metaphorically going from under me. He’s perfect. And perfect men like him don’t exist, so there must be a catch. His words make my stomach roll and goose bumps rise all over my body. I still feel light-headed from his aftershave and wobbly from the proximity and how right it feels to sit here holding his hand and leaning against him, and it would be so easy to kiss him. And I want to.
I swore off relationships long ago. Things had never worked out, even before Mr Maybe, and he was the final straw in my disastrous love life, but for the first time in many years, it feels right with Dimitri. Everything feels right and in my experience that can only mean one thing – it’s not.
‘We should get up.’ Tension shoots through him as he seems to sense the precarious situation we’re in. He starts movi
ng with a jolt, shifting back upright from where we’ve slumped against each other, closing Pentamerone carefully and sliding it back into the empty space on the shelf as he sits up and pitches himself forward onto his knees and then feet.
He turns around and holds his hand out, and I look up at him with a disappointed grin, because I could easily fall asleep down here too, but it was a lot more comfortable when he was beside me.
‘You get the chairs; I’ll get Henry out of the office.’ I go to protest but he cuts me off with a threat of upturning what’s left of the Hobnobs packet.
I slip my hand into his and let him pull me to my feet. A man who hoovers. A man who helps. A man who is such a gent that he could’ve stepped from the pages of a Jane Austen novel in a top hat and tailcoat.
That’s worth getting up for, even though there has to be a catch, because men like that don’t exist outside of the printed pages that surround us.
Chapter 11
‘I bought you something,’ Dimitri says when I let him in at half past eight a few mornings later. I’ve noticed he’s been coming earlier and earlier every day, which is fine because I’ve been getting down to the shop floor earlier every day too. It’s impossible to lie in bed ignoring the alarm clock like I used to when there’s the prospect of seeing him and finding more messages hidden in books.
‘Well, made you something. Call it a prototype for the art prints I’m going to sell here. I thought I could do them about favourite books, with an image and a relevant line, and I could offer bespoke ones that people could order if they wanted a really individual gift for someone special …’
The Little Bookshop of Love Stories Page 19
