The Book of Second Chances

by Katherine Slee

  She felt them staring, heads turning as she went. The bird lady. The silent one. The stranger in their midst, who stood at the back of the church so no one could hear her sing.

  Overhead Milton flew: her chaperone, her minder, a streak of black-and-white who seemed to know where Emily was headed. To a bookshop in the neighboring village. Not the main one, that sat in the center of the High Street, surrounded by hairdressers and charity shops. This particular shop was hidden away down a side alley, a chalkboard sign hanging above a painted door. Emily had spent much of her childhood there, protected by the make-believe words of people she had never met. Including those of her grandmother, who wrote stories about a girl named Ophelia whose only friend was a pale, gray duck. The two of them traveled all over the world in search of fairy tales and adventure. They had been adventures Emily had never dared to know in real life.

  As she cycled close, Emily saw that the door was open. The air around its frame speckled with light that trailed to the floor then seeped inside. It was Thursday. The shop would normally be shut up tight, all a-slumber. Only today was not a day like any other—Emily could sense that now.

  With her bike propped against the wall and Milton keeping watch, she crossed the threshold, felt the air settle on her skin as the door swung to, sealing her in.

  The space was both familiar and strange. Every surface was covered with books. Shelves that stretched to the ceiling, side tables and chairs that sagged under the weight of all those words. The comforting scent of paper and ink hung in the air.

  But there was something else as well, something Emily couldn’t quite put a name to. At the far end of the shop, a trio of steps led down and through an archway to a small space dominated by an ancient leather chair. On either side stood a tower of books that looked sure to topple if ever they were bumped. Sitting still was the bookseller, a paperback open on his lap. His hair was the color of winter’s frost, his buttercup waistcoat undone, and one finger traced over the letters as he read, thin lips moving in silent recognition.

  His head raised only a fraction as she approached.

  “Ah, Emily,” he said, blinking through the smudged lenses of his spectacles. “I was wondering when you were going to show up.”

  4

  PEACOCK

  Pavo cristatus

  In her lap, Emily held two documents that the bookseller had procured from a drawer and handed over with a flourish, like a magician lifting the rabbit from his top hat. One was the Last Will and Testament of Catriona Robinson. The other a letter from her grandmother’s solicitor. Both were typed on thick, embossed paper with an elegant signature at the bottom of the final page.

  But neither of them made any sense.

  “You are the sole heir,” the bookseller said, seemingly oblivious to the way in which Emily’s hands were shaking. “All you have to do in order to inherit your grandmother’s estate in its entirety is follow the clues.”

  “The clues,” Emily whispered, looking back down at the pieces of paper, thinking of the envelope delivered by a stranger and his dog.

  “It says so right there.” He pointed to the will, to a paragraph that Emily had read twice already but was having trouble understanding. “The books, the rights, and every single item within the house.”

  “But not the house.” Emily’s lips began to tremble, the last word coming out as nothing more than a whisper. Because the accompanying letter clearly stated that the cottage in which she and her grandmother had lived for the best part of fifteen years did not, in fact, belong to them but had been rented from a businessman named Frank.

  “But good news, my dear,” the bookseller said, smiling across at Emily. “If you complete the trail before the lease is up, then you will be given first refusal to buy the cottage. And at fair market value.”

  Fair market value. Emily repeated it to herself. Nothing about this was fair. Her grandmother had lied to her, let Emily believe she was safe.

  “Which means,” the man continued with a swift glance at his watch, “by my calculations, you have exactly ten days to complete the task.”

  His words were forming in the air. Words Emily recognized but did not know how to respond to. Because the letters and sentences that flowed from this man’s lips were about a trail, a test of sorts, at the end of which was the prize her grandmother had spoken of before her death.

  They’re like the notes of a wretched symphony, Emily thought to herself, imagining his words transforming into notes, wishing there were actual music to drown out the sound of his voice.

  She began to tap her foot on the ground in sync with the rhythm of his words, imagined herself spinning around like a dervish, faster and faster, until she disappeared inside one of the books that held up the walls of this ancient shop. She could see herself dancing through fields and over streams heavy with fish, looking for the scarecrow and a road made of yellow brick.

  Emily stood, dropped her grandmother’s will on top of a pile of books, and went to the door that led to the small patio at the back of the shop. It contained nothing more than a few porcelain pots and a watering can in the shape of a frog, one of its painted eyes staring up to the heavens.

  “This is your first clue,” the bookseller said, holding out a book for her to take.

  She knew what it was before he slipped it into her hands. Before she turned it around to reveal a picture of a handsome peacock, his tail spread wide so that dozens of eyes were winking back at her. It was a copy of the book that had made her grandmother a household name just shy of fourteen years ago, reprinted only last year in hardback, with a peacock replacing Emily’s original drawing of a little girl and her duck.

  Emily had first sketched the bird last spring, during a visit to a National Trust garden. Her grandmother had wandered around the gardens, chatting with the gardener about what best to plant in her garden in order to attract more butterflies. Emily had watched the proud bird strut along the edge of the croquet lawn, as if it were master of the house.

  They don’t start growing their fancy tail feathers until they’re three. Emily had picked one up off the lawn, spun it between her fingers and watched the colors blur. The head gardener had commented on how, despite their beauty, peacocks actually tasted pretty foul. Her grandmother had laughed at his terrible joke while all Emily could do was muster up half a smile, turning away and back to her drawing.

  The garden. Her grandmother’s garden. What would happen to it if the cottage were sold? It was what had provided Catriona Robinson with comfort, especially in the last few months when the pain was too much for her to venture even to the village. It was what kept Emily grounded, connected to her grandmother somehow, whenever she felt the sadness lurking. That and the birds who came every morning for their breakfast crumbs and would sit with Emily while she sketched in the late summer sun.

  What would happen to all those memories if the cottage were to be home to someone new?

  And what about me? Emily suddenly realized. Where was she supposed to go?

  The idea of starting again was terrifying. So many years spent in one place, with one person, only for it all to be taken away from her at once. The books they had written together had been her constant, her way of coping with the life she had been dealt. The partnership forged between an unlikely pairing, which gave them both so much joy. The letters and pictures sent by readers from all over the world, telling them how much they loved the books with all the secrets hidden within each picture.

  Clues Emily and her grandmother would come up with together, laugh about the strangeness of some, talk about the links back to folklore or simply an object from her grandmother’s life, before.

  “Open it,” the bookseller said, and Emily noted the anticipation, the excitement, in his voice.

  “You,” she replied, handing back the book with trembling fingers, afraid of what more was about to come.

  He regarded her for a moment, then set the book down on a nearby trestle table and slipped his forefinger inside th
e first page, easing the spine apart to reveal the dedication.

  For Emily.

  If you don’t try, you’ll never know.

  Emily stepped closer to peer at the typed words that she knew didn’t marry up with the actual dedications in each and every book in the series. Ten in all, written in the back room of her grandmother’s cottage, typed up with a clatter of keys through hailstorms, heat waves, and everything in between.

  If you don’t try, you’ll never know. It had been one of her grandmother’s favorite catchphrases. A mantra of sorts that she would dish out during the first few years of Emily’s recovery, whenever she stubbornly refused to join in. But what on earth did it have to do with where she was now?

  She turned around, walked through the shop to the children’s section, to where row upon row of books by Catriona Robinson sat. Emily removed one, flicked to the dedication page, saw the same two words as had always been—For Emily—then put it back again. She took out another, this one whose cover had a picture of a girl swimming under the sea, a bright pearl clutched tight in her hand.

  For Emily.

  Another, with the same little girl soaring on an enormous swing through a starry sky.

  For Emily.

  Each and every dedication was the same—apart from the one she had just been given.

  It was a clue. A clue to the next part of the puzzle her grandmother had put together in secret, that she’d kept hidden from her. But why?

  “The first one is my favorite,” the bookseller said, pointing at one of the books Emily had discarded on the floor. “The idea of a magical atlas, transporting a little girl with a disability all over the world. Teaching her about people and places she could never hope to know. I only wish I had that kind of imagination.”

  The stories had been their way of escaping, of pretending that the real world wasn’t there, if only for a little while. But life, Emily knew, had a way of creeping up on you, even when you were doing everything you possibly could to pretend it wasn’t.

  “I can’t,” Emily whispered, leaning against the bookcase and closing her eyes. She could see herself as a girl of thirteen, seated in a wheelchair beside a lake. Her legs were wrapped in a tartan blanket with tassels she liked to twist into plaits. Her face was bandaged tight so that only her nose and one eye peeped free, and, overhead, nightingales called out their evening song. By her side, just like every night since the accident, was her grandmother, with a flask full of hot chocolate and a red leather notebook, open on her lap.

  Would it have come to this if not for that twist of fate, when her grandmother’s publisher had come to visit and asked if she had been working on anything new? Emily sat in the back garden, quietly reading, and Catriona had decided to show her friend the outline of a children’s book, along with Emily’s illustrations. If she had never discovered the book, would Emily still be standing in a tumbledown shop, being asked from beyond the grave to complete a ridiculous treasure hunt in order to claim her inheritance?

  The scent of tobacco, laced through with vanilla, pulled Emily from her thoughts, and she opened her eyes to see the bookseller drawing deep on a curved wooden pipe. Tendrils of smoke made their way up and out of the back door, mixing into the sky without a trace. He looked like a character from one of her grandmother’s books: all waxed mustache and twinkly eyes.

  Emily allowed the scene in front of her to shimmer at its edges, began to imagine the world in which such a character would exist, or at least the world they would have created for him. A grassy hillock hidden deep in the forest, where he lived with only the trees for company. Or an underground network of caves, ruled by a dastardly gang of moles, who paid him to keep the humans away.

  Emily could see it all in full Technicolor: the perfect shade of emerald green for his front door; a rocking chair in which he sat and smoked his pipe in front of the fire when the winter’s evenings closed in; circular miner’s lamps worn by all the moles as they excavated a kingdom underground. A whole world no one knew anything about, until a little girl and her pet duck came knocking one day, seeking shelter from a storm.

  “She said you would know where to go next,” he said with a small nod in Emily’s direction. “She said all the clues were right in front of you.”

  Of course they are, Emily thought. Her grandmother had always taught Emily to look closer, to see what others would not. But what was it she wanted Emily to see? And what if she chose not to?

  “How many books?” Emily spoke slowly and with care, her mouth stretching over each syllable.

  “I’m afraid I have no idea,” he replied. “Nor if all the clues will be books.”

  Ten, Emily thought as she bent down to collect an armful of books and began to place them back on the shelves. Surely she can’t be sending me off to find them all?

  “What if I say no?” Emily sighed with the effort of all the words at once, turned her face away so the bookseller couldn’t see the clench of her jaw, the flushed skin on her neck.

  “Well,” he replied, drawing deeply on his pipe. “There was no mention of what would happen were you to refuse. But, well, I for one would be rather disappointed if you didn’t find the rest of the story.”

  “What story?” Emily turned to see the bookseller holding out a red leather notebook, identical to those her grandmother had always written all of her ideas and early drafts for each story in.

  “She brought it to me a couple of months ago, along with the other book and documents,” the bookseller said, a clear note of excitement in his voice. “Told me to keep it a secret, which, I must say, has been particularly difficult ever since that newspaper interview was published.”

  Emily opened the notebook to the first page, recognized it as the beginnings of another story about Ophelia, but one that her grandmother had never quite been able to get right. It was about the ghost of a boy who was asking Ophelia for help to solve a crime he had witnessed, but Catriona had been concerned the topic was too dark for the children it was aimed at.

  Flicking through the pages, Emily’s eyes scanned the mind maps, random words, and snippets of conversation that often made up the opening pages of her grandmother’s notebooks. But then the pages simply stopped, because someone had ripped them from the spine, leaving behind thin lines of paper, like crocodile teeth grinning back at her.

  “She told me she hid the rest,” the bookseller said as he stepped closer and pointed to the missing pages. “Somewhere only you would be able to find it.”

  But, as far as Emily was concerned, Catriona Robinson had never finished this book. Or had she? Because the months before she died were spent in her study, supposedly setting her affairs in order, and Emily had naturally assumed this was the case. Could it be that this is what she had spoken of before her death? Had she spent that time writing another story, one that Emily was now being sent out to find?

  “Why hide it?” Emily muttered, looking from the notebook to the rest of the books on the floor. Bending down, she picked up the last book and flicked through the first few pages. Emily paused as she came to the final illustration in the book, one of Ophelia sitting at her kitchen table and eating an enormous slice of birthday cake. The words of the new dedication swirled through her mind, bringing with them the memory of where Ophelia originally discovered the magical atlas.

  Years before, on the first birthday Emily had spent in Norfolk with her grandmother, they, too, had been sitting at the breakfast table, listening to the radio and deciding what to do with their day, when someone knocked on the front door. Emily had hidden behind the fridge, peeping round to see Catriona answer the door to a postman holding a large, square box.

  “Come and see,” Catriona had said as she placed the box on the table and slit it open with a kitchen knife. Inside was another, smaller box, this one made from pale-blue cardboard and tied up with a satin bow. Emily had watched as her grandmother opened the second box to reveal a cake decorated with glistening chocolate swirls.

  “Would you like
a piece?” she had asked, using the same kitchen knife to slice through the soft sponge. Emily had shaken her head, because the sponge was a deep red, not the chocolate brown she had been expecting. In response, her grandmother had offered up a nonchalant shrug and used her finger to wipe the blade of the knife clean, then licking off the butter cream icing.

  “If you don’t try, you’ll never know.”

  Every year since, a red velvet cake was delivered to the cottage in Norfolk. It was sent all the way from Fortnum and Mason in London, next to which a rather famous bookshop could be found.

  “No,” Emily gasped, and the book she was holding dropped to the floor with a soft thud, its cover facing up to show a little girl and her pet duck skipping through a snow-covered forest.

  “Emily?” The bookseller looked over to see Emily’s face riddled with panic. He moved toward her, but she backed away, hands raised.

  “No,” she said once more, turning to flee from the shop, not stopping to collect either legal document or her grandmother’s book. The spokes of her bike wheels blurred as she disappeared along the street, wind whipping back tears from her face, a magpie following in the sky.

  Emily wanted to scream. She wanted to rip the thought from her mind and go back to before, to when all was as it should be. Too many memories. Too much she didn’t want to remember hidden within those walls. And yet it was exactly where her grandmother was trying to send her back to.

  It felt so unfair, like a cruel, manipulative trick that Emily wanted no part of. Perhaps she could simply stay at home and refuse to give in to her grandmother’s demands? After all, it was not as if Catriona could force her to do anything anymore. But the curiosity in her had already been aroused. Emily understood this was exactly what her grandmother had wanted—had predicted would happen. She felt something in the pit of her stomach then—the strange idea that today had only just begun. There was something about the twitter of birds in all the trees she cycled past, as if they knew something she didn’t.