‘How’s business?’ I shouted from the tiny back kitchen while swiftly loading the dishwasher with one hand and polishing the countertop with a none too clean-looking rag. The kettle was beginning to bubble over.
‘Same, same, good, good. Making money, losing money.’
‘Making enough to keep you in cigarettes though.’ I smirked at him, placing a cup of tea in front of him. I cradled my cup, fell into an armchair, kicked off my shoes and brought my knees up to my chest. There were piles of books everywhere, on floor-to-ceiling shelves and stacked high like New York City skyscrapers on tables. Granddad sat behind a desk, pen in hand, cigarette balancing on an ashtray and a ledger book in front of him. There was a small fire burning in the fireplace, and his sandalled feet were positioned to absorb any warmth it threw out. He kept a log of all the books in his house, who borrows or buys what. I suppose he was running a library of sorts.
A woman in a layered green skirt browsed the travel section. She had rosy cheeks and small black eyes that looked somewhat unsettled. Her light brown hair was piled high in a bun on top of her head. I didn’t recognise her, but I watched as she ran her fingers across the spines of a number of titles. I looked away, knowing only too well that book browsing is a private affair.
‘New customer?’ I whispered to him.
‘Hello, Maurice,’ she said from behind a shelf.
Granddad batted a hand in the air dismissively and grunted in response.
I threw daggers at him and whispered, ‘So much for customer service, Granddad.’
Granddad’s clientele were an eclectic bunch to say the least. There was a regular group that were often found sitting around, drinking coffee with more than a drop of whiskey in it, looking like characters out of a nursery rhyme book: there was Humpty Dumpty, a balding older man who wore his trousers up around his armpits; Little Miss Muffet, a woman with straggly hair hidden underneath a beret who knitted at a dizzying speed; Simple Simon, who looked to be two conversations behind everyone else; Little Boy Blue; and a Jack and Jill who always had their arms linked. I told Granddad I’d nicknamed them all and he laughed until the tears trickled down his face. They were old friends and new friends, and I thought it was just great that at seventy-six he was still discussing the news of the day, even if it was with a motley crew.
‘What did you make of the Joseph O’Connor novel?’ Granddad looked at me intently, almost trying not to smile, knowing how I would answer already.
‘Star of the Sea? Loved it.’ I sighed happily at the memory. ‘Loved it, loved it. I felt like I was on that boat, escaping the famine in Ireland.’
Granddad wagged his finger at me. ‘It’s an important book.’
‘I know, the story is so complex, but it’s seamless.’ I grabbed the book out of my bag, flicked to a page that I had marked, and started to read.
Granddad closed his eyes, listening to the rhythm of the words. ‘Beautiful, beautiful.’
‘There was so much I never knew about the famine, the way he weaved all those story lines together. It was brilliant.’
‘We need to keep our history with us. That’s what I got out of that book.’ Granddad smiled at me. ‘We’re only a stone’s throw ahead of our ancestors who starved in the ditches.’
‘We shouldn’t go getting notions.’ I nodded into my tea in agreement.
And so we launched into a discussion on characters, plot development, history, happiness and good writing, really good writing. This was our weekly book club, just the two of us, no one else was invited. We only read literary fiction. We decided long ago that that was our genre. I also liked to read bodice-ripping romance novels. I’m talking man on white horse and long-haired, big-busted virginal heroine who fall in love and have the kind of sex that you feel mortified reading about in a public place for fear someone might read over your shoulder. But I would never inflict one of those on Granddad. They were my little secret.
We chatted and compared Star of the Sea to other novels, we imagined what may have happened if the story line had taken another direction, we analysed and dissected the characters as if we knew them, as if we too played starring roles in the book. And we were so engrossed in talking that I was surprised I even noticed the woman in the green skirt take a book out of her large shoulder bag and place it onto the shelf without giving it first to Granddad for him to put it in his ledger, which was what normally happened. I noticed, but I didn’t pay much attention, she was obviously new to the shop. She kept her head down and didn’t say goodbye as she hurried out the door.
‘She didn’t . . .’ I pointed to the travel section.
He grunted. ‘New. I’ll get to it later.’
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I ignored it, knowing how much Granddad hated the interference.
‘Bloody contraptions,’ he muttered under his breath.
It buzzed again, and I felt myself getting anxious. It could be a review of a job.
‘I should . . .’ I slid my hand into my pocket and quickly pulled it out and swiped the screen. I’d just been tagged in a photo. Not important.
‘Sorry, it could have been about business.’
Granddad released a snarl. ‘It wasn’t though, was it? It wasn’t of any importance.’ He looked down at his pages, scribbled something and then looked up at me again. His glasses began to slip off his nose. He pointed to the door, well, not the door, a basket right beside the door underneath a sign that read, ‘THIS IS A NO PHONE ZONE. PLEASE DEPOSIT YOUR DEVICE HERE.’
‘Really?’
He grumbled back at me like a bad-tempered bear. I got up from my chair and marched to the basket, slipping my other limb into it. I idled past the biography section, picking up a few titles and skimming through them. Mason was keen for me to start reading non-fiction. He thought it was a better use of my time than novels, but I wasn’t sold. I liked sliding into other worlds, and non-fiction just seemed a bit, you know, real.
I collapsed back into my chair.
‘Did you manage to get Mason to read the Rushdie novel?’ Granddad was a serious book pusher.
I shook my head. ‘Not interested.’
‘Maybe we’ll try a thriller, a Crichton or Grisham?’
‘I don’t know if there’s much point, he’s just not into fiction.’ I looked at my empty cup of tea and wondered about making another one.
‘Nonsense, everyone needs fiction, it’d lighten him up a little bit too, you know, make him see the world from a different perspective.’
I shrugged.
‘Are you two . . . is it serious?’
‘Well, we’re getting married so, yes, I think you could say it’s serious,’ I responded, trying to introduce a laugh into my voice.
‘He’s a bit of a bore, isn’t he? You’ll have to be careful, he’ll make you boring too, he’ll squash all that lovely free spirit.’
‘Thanks, I think. No, hang on a minute – you can’t go calling him boring. Come on, Granddad, be fair.’
He rolled his chin back down into his chest and pretended to study a book on his desk.
I sighed loudly and decided to change topic. I sat up straighter in my chair. ‘I got my loan approved, by the way.’
‘Well, that’s fantastic. That I’ll drink to.’ He raised his cup to his mouth and took a noisy slurp.
‘There’s a place I’ve seen on the high street.’
And I knew the high street wasn’t like it used to be, there were very few shops these days. The retail world was more about food, cafes, restaurants, bars: readily consumable goods. As BBest had grown, independent shops had fallen like dominoes. Unless you had partnered with BBest or one of their many recommended products, you didn’t have a chance of surviving. That was why high-street rents had fallen so dramatically, and that was why I could now afford to step in. A florist was exactly the type of business that could still survive the high street. The place I’d chosen should have enough trade with all the eateries nearby, it was close to some offices and apartments, and it was t
he loveliest, airiest space. I could almost see my chalkboard out front, and smell the flower boxes in the windows. I must have driven past the spot a hundred times dreaming about what it could look like.
‘Are you really sure you want to get out of your mother’s garage?’ Grandad asked with a twinkle in his eye, and we both started to laugh.
‘I think it’s time. I really want a shop. I’ll be like you, just on the other side of the Liffey.’
‘Well, you can have this place when I’m gone.’
‘And your millions under the floorboards?’
‘You’ll have to dig deep to find them.’
‘Right down to the centre of the earth,’ I laughed.
‘Who did you go through for the loan?’
I shrugged. ‘BBest Banks.’ I would have added, obviously, but I knew he would have launched into a lecture about wisecracks.
He shook his head. ‘You give them too much information. It’s not good, it’s not safe.’
We’d also had this conversation a number of times. Sometimes I thought Granddad seemed a bit paranoid. If you didn’t know him, you might have thought he was losing his marbles.
‘I have nothing to hide, and it makes life so much easier.’
‘You have nothing to hide yet.’ He pushed his glasses back on. ‘You don’t know what the future holds. You don’t know what secrets you may want to keep.’
‘Secrets are bad.’ I grinned. I knew it annoyed him.
‘There’s nothing wrong with keeping your business to yourself.’
‘Ah, Granddad, I know, I’m only messing with you,’ I said gently.
‘The only person you don’t keep secrets from is your spouse, everyone else can go to hell.’ He chewed the end of his pen. ‘Freya, you’ve got to think for yourself.’ He tapped his forefinger to his temple a few times.
‘I do think for myself,’ I said, feeling a little affronted.
He pointed to the basket by the door. ‘How many times a day do you look at your phone? Are you doing what you want to do or what that phone wants?’
‘What are you talking about? You sound like a crazy old man.’
‘That bloody BBest thing, it’s controlling everything. Bloody fascists.’
‘Are you finished ranting?’ I asked coolly.
He took a sip of tea, and softly said, ‘You make the best tea around.’
There was a tinkle at the door and we both turned our heads towards it. The first thing I noticed was the man’s height. He seemed slightly self-conscious of it, the set of his shoulders seemed almost apologetic. His walk said, ‘I’m just a little too big to be normal, but it’s not my fault.’ He was wearing a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, exposing muscled forearms that were luminescent in their whiteness. His hair was jet black and thick and brushed back in tufts off his face; it didn’t look like he’d had a haircut in quite a while. But it was his smile that held my gaze, that caused me to take a sharp breath and stare. His smile, his wide, pink-lipped grin radiated joy, kindness and peace. He strode across the bookshop, emanating exuberance with every surefooted step, his long legs moving powerfully as he came closer to us, and I watched, amazed, as the room shrank around him.
‘Hiya, Patrick.’ Granddad was speaking, but I could hardly hear him, I was so mesmerised by the man in front of me. ‘Maurice.’ The man slammed a book onto Granddad’s desk. His voice was deep and gravelly and sent a shiver up my spine. ‘How are you?’
‘Good, good. Patrick, this is my granddaughter, Freya.’
Patrick spun around to me and thrust his hand forward. I looked into his eyes: green, with long, curly eyelashes. He had a smattering of freckles across his cheeks and nose that stood out on his pale skin. He was about my age. I averted my gaze, feeling a creeping sense of intimacy just from looking at him so intently that I didn’t have permission to feel. I shook his hand and grinned at the floor like a hapless idiot, muttering something about it being ‘nice to meet you’.
‘Ah, I’ve heard about you,’ he said, friendly and chatty, like we were old friends meeting for a drink in the pub. I noticed that his teeth were a little crooked, just a bit off-centre. It was an endearing imperfection. ‘Maurice is always talking about you. I hear you’re trying to computerise this place.’ He spoke with a hint of a lisp – a faint whisper of an ‘s’ chased the conversation.
I laughed and felt myself take a half-step closer to him, angling myself towards him. ‘“Trying” is the word.’
Patrick threw his hands in the air and comically shrunk his neck into his shoulders, doing an impression of someone, but I wasn’t exactly sure who. ‘If it ain’t broke,’ he said in a New York accent.
I flung my head back and laughed hysterically, way too loudly and way too energetically. He was grinning at me and holding my gaze happily, and there was a fizzy, bubbly feeling seeping through me. I was excited.
And then I remembered that I was wearing workout gear: I had an orange fluorescent jacket on, and lycra pants with a blue stripe up the sides. No make-up, and I had an itchy eye, which might have been the start of a sty. Definitely not my best look. I pulled my jacket down over my bum self- consciously and started to fidget.
‘Do you want to keep the Darwin book out for a little longer?’ Granddad said, interrupting the spell.
‘Yeah. Is that okay?’
Granddad licked the top of his biro, an unnecessary and disgusting habit I had seen him do many times. ‘No bother, I’ll mark you down for another week.’
‘Great.’ Patrick rammed his hands into his pockets and smiled at the ceiling and then the floor. He took a deep breath and looked as if he was about to say something. I watched him, taking in every little quiver. I noticed a dimple on his left cheek, the smile lines that crinkled around his eyes, the promise of a five-o’clock shadow on his jaw. He took his right hand out of his pocket and scratched the top of his head.
‘That’s me so, I’ll be off. I didn’t put any money in the meter for the car, just a flying visit.’ But he didn’t move. He’d directed the conversation to me and all I could do was smile back at him.
Granddad looked up from his book. ‘See you now.’
‘Right.’ Patrick’s hands went back into his pockets again and he rocked slowly on his heels. ‘I’ll go.’ He smiled at me. ‘Nice to meet you, Freya.’
‘You too.’
He turned and tripped slightly on the edge of a floorboard, which brought his left foot down with a hard bang, and his arms swung out, flailing to catch himself, but it was nowhere near a fall, so instead it looked like a badly timed and awkward dance move. His face turned a deep shade of crimson and he swivelled back, laughing slightly.
‘Ah, no, and there was me trying to be all cool and suave in front of a pretty girl and almost falling on me arse.’
And it was perfect. I pulled my jacket up to hide my mouth because I didn’t know if I would ever stop grinning. And yes, I’d heard it loud and clear: he said I was pretty.
‘See you now, again.’ And he waved at me like a child cheering off their mam at the playground.
I waved back.
Granddad cleared his throat deliberately and looked at me with raised eyebrows, questioning.
‘What?’ I said and ran my hand through my ponytail.
He pointed his finger after Patrick. ‘He is one of the good ones. Single too, you know.’
I sat back in an armchair, feeling suddenly deflated. ‘I have a boyfriend. Sorry, I have a fiancé.’
‘There’s still time. You’re not married yet, are you?’
‘No, but I will be soon, and we will live happily ever after.’ I sighed, a bit annoyed at Granddad’s Mason jibes.
‘And he loves books, always a good sign in a man. He’s a student, he spends his time reading,’ Granddad said.
‘That’s very nice for him.’
We were interrupted by a noise from the phone basket. ‘Pilates in ten minutes, Freya, pilates in ten minutes.’
Granddad
tutted. ‘You wouldn’t have remembered that yourself?’
‘Probably not, no.’ I hopped up and planted a kiss on his cheek. He handed me a book from the top of the pile to his left – Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates. This was my read for the week, chosen by him. I grinned and shoved it into my gym bag.
‘See you later.’ I ran out the door.
9
The following day I had to deliver a bouquet near the BBest campus. The plan was to pick Cat up on her lunch hour and go try on wedding dresses – nothing serious, just a bit of a laugh, like a mini trial-run before I really started trying on wedding dresses. The campus was like a mini city, but a much cooler high-tech mini city than anywhere I’d ever visited. It had incredible facilities for its employees: gyms; Olympic-sized swimming pool; five-star restaurants where you dined for free; health spas; even hotel-style accommodation for employees who worked so hard they didn’t have time to go home. Everyone who worked there considered themselves incredibly lucky. Everything they needed was on campus, it was a home away from home, and after a fifteen-hour working day, crashing in a comfortable BBest bed was often a more attractive option than a tram ride home. I think that was part of the reason BBesters became so enchanted with the company: they had no external life, so it was their everything. It wasn’t just a job, it was a lifestyle choice, like being a vegan or wearing flares.
Arriving on campus felt like I was stepping into the future, an organised, clean future where everyone was young and wore skinny jeans. People looked bouncy here; they smiled a lot and waved their arms around. They were excited to go to work, you could feel it. I suspected the phrase ‘there’s no such thing as a bad idea’ got bandied around a lot, that and ‘innovation’. I bet no one pretended to email their work to their boss and made lame excuses about firewalls or asked, ‘Did you check your junk mail?’ when their boss roared down the phone looking for it. Come to think of it, I bet the bosses didn’t roar here. It was probably a lot more passive-aggressive, with searching questions and concerned faces: ‘Do you feel maybe this work is out of your reach, that’s why you didn’t email it? Is everything okay at home?’
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