The Lost for Words Bookshop

by Stephanie Butland

  I’d never broken up with anyone, unless you count going home at midnight in your socks as an extremely roundabout way of explaining that you just can’t see a future in this relationship. Was splitting up at a party wrong? I was too preoccupied to learn all the rules in the bit of your teens when you’re supposed to pick this shit up. But I knew I was going to have to do it, and putting it off wasn’t going to make it any easier. Tonight might as well be the night.

  I went to find Nathan. He was in what I think of as my corner of the library. I’d told him that I’d be there when he’d finished warming up the party by breaking its watches and pulling chocolate coins out of its cleavages. It’s a long, thin room, probably cut off from another one at some stage; little more than a corridor, really, but that didn’t stop Archie from having floor-to-ceiling shelves put in at both sides. There’s a two-seater chesterfield with a lamp on the table at the end furthest from the door; if the lamp isn’t on, you’re almost invisible, which is handy if that’s what you feel like being, less so if you want to read. The evening was warm so most people were outside on the patio. Archie calls it a terrace, and when I say patio, he always corrects me, though I’m not sure I know the difference.

  Nathan had got there before me. I practically sat on him. He’d already found the sofa. Even though I knew what I was going to have to talk to him about and he wasn’t going to like it, I still laughed when I realised it was him. He laughed too, then shushed me and pulled me down next to him.

  ‘I’m hiding,’ he said. ‘Everyone wants to know how I do the thing with the onion. There’s only so many times you can say that if you tell them you’ll have to kill them before it gets old.’

  ‘As in, zero times?’ I said, and he poked me.

  Then he looked at me properly, touched my dress. ‘You look lovely,’ he said.

  ‘It’s only a dress,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t say the dress looked lovely,’ he said, ‘I said you do. The dress is just – the frame.’

  I didn’t say anything, because what do you say to that? The neck of the dress was cut slightly wider and lower than anything I would usually wear, so I’d put on the little tear-shaped jet pendant that my dad bought me one Christmas; my mum had said I was too young for grown-up jewellery, and she’d been right, in that I’d put it away and only really started wearing it recently. I’d got it out again after Archie had told me to be brave.

  I thought Nathan was scrutinising it, and I was flipping through my options (‘Don’t know what it’s made of ’? ‘Present from my dad’? ‘Bought it in a charity shop’? ‘Found it in a book’?), but then I realised that the beginning of one of my collarbone tattoos was visible where the shoulder of my dress had slid away, and that’s what Nathan was looking at.

  He put his finger on it. ‘“The book was thick and black and covered with dust,”’ he said. ‘I’m still working on that one.’

  I leaned against him. He kissed the top of my head.

  The house was full of the sounds of people chattering, and every now and again Archie’s voice would rise above the general noise, roar out something, and laughter would rise to meet his pitch. It was quiet where we were. I liked it; the hush away from the hubbub, the darkness tucked apart from the end of the high-summer sunlight.

  Nathan brought both arms around my waist and I rested the back of my head against the top of his chest. Suddenly I was tired. I didn’t want to talk to anyone; I didn’t want to go and laugh with people who I was never going to catch up with, drunkenness-wise. I felt myself sigh. Maybe tonight wasn’t the night to tell Nathan that I couldn’t see a future and I wasn’t his girlfriend.

  He kissed the top of my head again. ‘I was thinking,’ he said, ‘we should go on holiday.’

  ‘What?’ This was not good. I was upright, staring, trying to work out what I’d said, done, to make him think that was a good idea.

  ‘I guess that’s a no?’ he said. He was doing his cocky voice. Fair enough, I thought. I can recognise a defence mode when I see one.

  ‘Why would you think –’ I said.

  He laughed a not-laugh. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘there’s all the time we’ve spent together, and the talking, and the sex, and the way you look at me when I come into the shop. You let me practise poems with you and you put up with my sister for an evening. You sometimes text me texts that are more than four words long and you respond to about forty percent of the texts I send to you. I added all that up and it made me think you might like to – you know – maybe spend a week with me.’

  I thought about saying his maths was faulty, decided against it. One thing I like about Nathan: he gives you time to think.

  ‘I haven’t even been to your place,’ I said.

  ‘I wasn’t going to suggest a holiday at my place,’ he said.

  ‘I meant –’ I said, but I stopped. He knew what I meant.

  ‘I thought you would come to my place in your own time,’ he said. ‘I thought if we went on holiday that might help you to –’

  ‘To what?’ Dander, hackles, whatever you call them – they were right up. I was interested to hear what kind of help he thought I needed.

  ‘To trust me,’ he said, quietly.

  I opened my mouth and closed it again. I felt my body go soft and so did Nathan; he pulled me closer. I was trying to work out what to say when he started talking, still quietly. It felt as though his words, rather than heading out into the air, were falling off the edge of his lower lip, dropping into my hair, and sliding down the side of my head and into my ear.

  ‘I’m not stupid, Loveday,’ he said. ‘I know that there’s – something – and I don’t think it’s me. I thought – I didn’t mean to push it. I’m sorry. I can wait.’

  I knew what I had to say next. Well, I knew the gist. There was a pick-and-mix of phrases available. ‘I don’t think it’s going to work out…’ ‘I’ve been thinking, and…’ ‘You’re really nice, but…’ ‘I’ve had a good time, but…’ ‘I feel as though I’ve got in over my head, so…’ ‘I’m not really in a good place for a relationship, and…’ ‘You’re a lovely person, but…’ ‘I think I’m happier when I’m on my own, so…’ ‘It’s not you, it’s me…’ (Maybe I should have that as a tattoo next. Right across my forehead.)

  I didn’t say any of it. I said, ‘Thanks.’ This was the trouble with Nathan. When I was with him it felt as though anything was possible. I felt like a normal person, as though nothing was insurmountable, and being happy, actively happy, most of the time was a reasonable thing to expect. He did my head in. And at the same time I wondered whether some more time would hurt. Not a holiday, of course, but maybe another week of acting normal.

  When I did call it a day – assuming he didn’t get sick of me first, which was, in a way, my dream scenario – then his world wouldn’t end. He might be a bit low, but then he’d look out of his window and there would be a camper van outside, and all of his friends would pile out of it, and they’d have brought a barbecue and some beer, and someone would cook the organic sausages and someone would get out their guitar, and a girl with skinny cheekbones and a nice arse would pick a flower and tuck it behind Nathan’s ear, and he’d smile, a bit sadly, and everyone would know it was going to be All right.

  ‘I don’t see what you see in me,’ I said. ‘What’s in this for you?’

  ‘Loveday Jenna Cardew,’ he said. ‘Are you fishing?’ (We’d traded middle names. His was, disappointingly, Andrew.)

  ‘No,’ I said. Accused of fishing twice in one night. It seemed a bit unfair: I make a point of never talking about myself if I can help it. ‘I’m genuinely curious.’

  He went quiet for a bit. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t think there’s one word for it. It’s just that – when I’m with you – I’m me. I don’t feel as though I have to pretend or show off. I feel as though I can trust you. You make me – valid. You make me real.’

  ‘Wow,’ I said. There couldn’t have been a compliment more beautifully honed to make me f
eel small and inadequate, unworthy and, well, as though I should never have started this in the first place.

  He kissed me, properly, and I let him, because I couldn’t think of anything to say. And because kissing Nathan is lovely. I knew there wouldn’t be many more kisses like this, so I was making the most of them.

  Afterwards: ‘I’m shattered,’ he said.

  ‘All that magic?’ I asked.

  He laughed, but then he said, quietly, ‘I used to have panic attacks. Sometimes in places like this I can feel them coming again. I have to – sort of – brace against them.’

  I held his hands. ‘I used to have them. They’re horrible.’

  I remembered the back of a social worker’s car, being taken to see my mother, and how my stomach would squeeze and my breathing would race, how time would stop and my eyes wouldn’t open when I told them to. How, later, even the mention of a visit to my mother elicited the same response. I was almost fifteen. Annabel stood up for me: my social worker suggested I was faking it but my foster-mother knew better. I learned to head off the attacks with slow breathing and the control-dial in my mind, or maybe it was the fact that everyone got cautious about mentioning my mother, and when I said I didn’t want to see her they took me seriously.

  The attacks came back when I was seventeen. The social worker told me that my mother had been released from prison. The panic was so severe that he called an ambulance. Afterwards, I made Annabel promise that no one would try to make me see my mum and that she wouldn’t be allowed to just turn up. Annabel promised. She told me that my mother didn’t know where I lived, which of course was true, though I’d never thought about the fact that her letters always came with my name on them in her handwriting, and then the address filled out by someone else. I was safe from my mother. And even though, in the nights, on the walks to school and back, on the Saturday afternoons that seemed endless, I tried to find a way to want to see her, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t take the step. I was too scared of – well, of something changing. I’d written my version of events, in my head. I’d told my story. Forgiving my mother would make it different, difficult, unsafe. I would have to rewrite, rethink; I would have to erase myself and write a new me, and having done that once I knew how much it would hurt. Better to be whatever I had become; better to be in a place where I knew where the margins were.

  Obviously, Nathan didn’t need to know any of this. So I kept him talking. ‘When?’

  I felt him sigh. ‘A few years ago. I did a magic show above a pub – a little thing, just for a week – but it got good reviews and I was asked to tour it, as a support act for a comedian. So I went from a sell-out being twenty-five people in a bar to seven hundred in a theatre. It was a dream come true. Really. It’s what everyone in a room above a pub is hoping for. A talent scout, a manager, someone with some influence who is going to say your name to someone who’s going to pick you out of all the other wannabes. And…’ He shook his head. ‘I just couldn’t do it. I got stage fright and my hands got sloppy and I dropped stuff. One night I had a full-blown attack on stage. I looked out over the audience and I didn’t know how to begin. I closed my eyes and I couldn’t open them. My head was – empty. I couldn’t have told you my name. And all the time I was breathing so fast that I was sweating from the effort. One of the stage crew had to come on and lead me off, by the hand.’

  ‘That’s awful,’ I said. I meant it. I remembered what Archie had said, the first time Nathan came into the shop, about how he ‘used to be the next big thing’.

  ‘I started to focus on close-up magic, because then you have an audience of five or six.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ I said. Make a world that suits you. Maybe Nathan and I had more in common than I thought.

  We sat in the quiet for a minute or two and then he started to move.

  ‘There’s food in the kitchen,’ he said. ‘Let me go and bring us a picnic. Wait for me, Ripon Girl.’

  ‘I will,’ I said, ‘so long as there’s cheese.’ It would be churlish to break up with someone at a party.

  Nathan pulled himself out of the sofa and I watched him go, wondering whether to put on the light and read a book, but knowing that I was content to just sit and wait. I put my feet up.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ I heard Nathan say as he left the room.

  ‘No worries,’ came the reply. The voice sounded familiar, and its owner was making his way through the room towards me. It took a moment for me to place it.

  Oh goody. It was Rob.

  ‘Loveday,’ he said.

  ‘Hello, Rob,’ I said. ‘I didn’t realise you were coming until I saw you in the kitchen.’

  ‘Well, I’m a friend of Archie,’ he said. ‘I used to be a friend of yours, but you don’t seem to have a lot of time for me any more.’

  ‘Don’t be an arse, Rob,’ I said. I really couldn’t be bothered. It’s tempting to make excuses for Rob because of the bipolar thing but, actually, it’s possible that he behaves like he does because he’s a twat. I think treating Rob the way I’d treat anyone who slapped me is much more appropriate than making allowances.

  ‘Budge up,’ he said. My sandals were on the floor, my legs on the sofa, and I was taking up all of the space.

  ‘I don’t think I will, if it’s all the same to you,’ I said. He stood over me. I thought he was looking down my dress, but I was wrong.

  ‘Whitby jet?’ he asked, looking at my necklace.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, too late and too fast.

  And then he put his fingertip on my shoulder, near the base of my throat, at the end of the words inked there. I resisted the impulse to slap it away. I was scared. I didn’t want to be, but I was.

  ‘Possession,’ he said. ‘“The book was thick and black and covered with dust.” Just about the only jewellery I’ve ever seen you wear is that necklace. Possession has a lot to do with Whitby. Some people might think the place was important to you.’

  ‘Really,’ I said. Part of me was ready to panic but I reminded myself that, to Rob, making connections is an academic exercise, no more. I could be calm. I could try, at least.

  ‘I wonder how many tattoos you have now.’ He was half-smiling. I wanted to pull my feet under me, get smaller, but at the same time I didn’t want to show him I was uncomfortable and, anyway, if I made space he would consider it an invitation to sit down; he’d decide to see it as a softening.

  ‘Rob,’ I said, ‘I’m waiting for someone.’

  At his side, his hand clenched. I didn’t think he’d done it consciously but it made me wonder where he was in the cycle of illness, and whether he was taking his medication. I couldn’t ask.

  ‘You and Melodie make a nice couple,’ I said. I hoped it would be a safe topic, i.e. Not Me.

  ‘She’s not really my type,’ he said.

  I bit back the obvious question, because I think he’d made it obvious for me on purpose. If I said, why not, he would say, because you’re my type. If I said, why are you going out with her, then, he would say, you see, you do still care about me. I knew Rob wasn’t really carrying a torch. He just wanted to score a few points.

  ‘I don’t think I’m your type, either,’ I said, trying to make it light.

  ‘Or I’m not your type. You seem to prefer them…’

  I was tempted to complete his sentence for him. Sexier? Non-academic? Less creepy? Un-slappy?

  ‘Poetic.’

  I shrugged. Don’t engage, I told myself.

  ‘Well, it’s good that we’ve both moved on,’ I said. ‘I’d like you to be happy.’ And I did, in a no-effort-on-my-part sort of a way. And preferably a long way from me and Lost For Words.

  I was thinking that Nathan couldn’t possibly be much longer. Then I remembered how distinctive he is when he’s dressed as a magician; how everyone would be stopping him, asking him to show them something or other again, and how he wouldn’t forget about me but he couldn’t bear to be rude, either.

  And then, Rob’s expression changed.r />
  He smiled, but it was an odd smile; if it was in the book it would come at the end of a chapter, and canine teeth would be mentioned. I found I was holding my breath.

  ‘I suppose it’s harder for people like you,’ he said, ‘with your past.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ As I said it, I heard how I sounded shrill, and was already telling myself: stop. He’s the one that’s fishing, now, at Archie’s sodding fishing party. He’s trying to get a rise, and you’ve just given him one.

  Turns out I needn’t have worried. He already knew.

  ‘I mean,’ he said, ‘I know all about you, Loveday. I haven’t been sleeping that well, and one night I got to wondering about you. I put together what I knew, which wasn’t a lot – it was as though you were trying to keep secrets – but search engines are wonderful things. Cardew, Whitby – that’s all you really need –’

  ‘Rob,’ I said. I didn’t know what I was going to say next, but it didn’t matter, because he kept right on talking.

  ‘I can see why you’re a bit – warped. What you must have gone through, with your parents. Well, parent, singular, I suppose. And foster care. That really fucks people up. Did you know that kids from your sort of background are more likely to –’ he held up his fingers, marked things off, a shopping list of waiting failures – ‘have unplanned pregnancies, become addicts, end up in prison?’

  I was shaking, fear or anger or both, and the chill of being found out. I managed to get out, ‘Do you know that children from my sort of background are more likely to seek out a violent relationship?’ but the words went ailing into the air, and didn’t live long. I don’t know if Rob even heard. We looked at each other.

  I had one lucid thought. ‘The books,’ I said. ‘Was that you?’ My body was locked into place – I don’t think I could have moved if the settee was on fire – but my mind was spinning around a new idea. What if Rob had got hold of the books? I’d dismissed the idea before, but I hadn’t known that he knew my story. Plus, wasn’t planting books to creep me out just a natural extension of hiding my boots, or putting roses through letterboxes, or even threatening someone in the dark corner of a party while their boyfriend went to get some food?