The Bookseller's Secret

by Michelle Gable

  “Oh my God!” Jojo says. “I was just thinking about you. I sent you a message!”

  “That’s why I called.” Katie tries to smile, but the tears percolate. “I really wanted to hear your voice.”

  “Aw, that’s sweet. What’s up?”

  “Not much,” Katie says, and it’s both a lie and the truth. “What’s going on with you?”

  “Almost done with the move,” Jojo says. “It was barely across town but might as well have been overseas. Absolute torture. Nigel made turkey last night, the darling man. He knows how nostalgic I get for Thanksgiving even though, for the most part, my family drives me nuts.”

  “You’re welcome to borrow mine,” Katie says as Millie follows her sniffer deep into someone’s boxwood. “Anytime you need them. But I get to keep Charles.”

  She yanks on the leash and Millie resurfaces covered in dirt and dead leaves. Katie squats to brush off her head and snout.

  “Judy’s a little much for me,” Jojo says. “But thanks. Sounds as though your Thanksgiving was maybe not so great?”

  “Judy and I got into a tête-à-tête.” Katie pauses. It feels slightly barbaric to complain. Judy can be aggravating, but so can everyone else, and, really, Katie was the villain last night. “Long story short,” she says, “Judy was needling and I kind of snapped.”

  “Needling about what? Your next book? No sympathy, girl. You know what I’m going to say.”

  “Yeah, I know, and it wasn’t just the book. I was forced to confess that Armie and I broke up. Granted, I probably should’ve tipped her off before.”

  “Whaddya mean broke up?” Jojo says. “Again? Do y’all have a punch card or something?”

  “It’s not again. It’s the same one. As before.”

  “Wasn’t that like...?”

  “Six months ago,” Katie says. “What made you think we’d gotten back together?”

  “You always get back together,” Jojo points out.

  Millie leaps after a bird, yanking Katie around a corner. A forty-pound dog is heavier than a person might think, and the two nearly pummel an old man and his grocery cart.

  “Sorry!” Katie calls out.

  “Phew,” Jojo says. “You had me panicked there. I’m glad you’ve managed to stay away. Keep up the good work.”

  Katie glowers. “Even though we’re broken up,” she says, keeping a steady voice, “Armie is still a great guy. You don’t always have to be so harsh. Not all lobbyists shill for oil drilling and assault rifles.”

  “Armie’s fine. It’s your relationship that I’ve never been thrilled about. All that competition and one-upmanship. Exhausting. So, you just told your mom now? When there were new girlfriends and real estate transactions involved?”

  “I just told everyone now,” Katie says. “I didn’t hide it on purpose. People are busy, and it’s taken me a while to come to terms. Plus, I knew they’d take it hard. Judy adores Armie, maybe even more than she does me.” Katie’s tears return. It’s the hangover, she reasons, because she’s fine with the breakup. It was her idea and, anyway, a lot of time has passed.

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Jojo says. “But I have witnessed Judy take his side more than once. How is she handling the news?”

  “She’s offered to—get this—move in with me. To nurse me back to health. Talk about the cure being worse than the problem.”

  Jojo cackles. “Great plan, Judy. Why hasn’t she invited you to stay at Little Falls Farm?”

  “Maybe because Charles turned my room into a Pilates studio?”

  “You could stay in the gun room!”

  Katie is about to laugh when she remembers that, with the state of things, there’s a decent possibility she will have to move into the gun room. Why didn’t she let Armie buy her out, instead of the other way around? She wanted to “win,” most likely. She wanted to one-up.

  “Maybe a change of scenery will give you some clarity,” Jojo says. “And kick your writing ass into gear. Why don’t you come stay with us?”

  “What do you mean? Like a vacation?”

  “Yes, of course a vacation. You think I’d invite you to live with us? Yikes. No, thank you. Four kids and Nigel is enough for one house. You need a breather, a mental refresh. And you haven’t even met Bryonie and she’s nearly one!”

  “I’d love to see you guys,” Katie says. “But don’t you have a book due in a few weeks?”

  “Two, actually!” Jojo says. “I’m ghostwriting another celebrity memoir, if you can believe it. I’m such an idiot for agreeing to do it during a move and the holidays.”

  “What do you mean another memoir?” Katie says, as she fights a rising irritation.

  It always seems so easy for her friend. While Katie’s agent was on submission with her first novel, which had taken the better part of five years to write, Jojo was pregnant and confined to bed rest with her son, Clive. On a whim, Jojo scribbled out a book, which sold immediately. One novel turned into a dozen-plus, all of them pink-jacketed, breezy reads. Meanwhile, it took Katie three tries to write something that would sell.

  “You’ve done this before?” Katie says. “Ghostwriting?”

  How perfectly appropriate that Jojo has the capacity to write other people’s books in addition to her own.

  “A few times,” she says. “Before you ask, I’m not allowed to talk about it.”

  “You’re very sweet,” Katie says. “But you can’t entertain a houseguest when you have two books to write. Thank you, but this sounds like a bad idea.”

  “You’re not an ordinary guest, though,” Jojo says. “You like alone time and can take care of yourself. I have a feeling London will inspire you, and soon you’ll be busy, too. If nothing else, the city is beautiful this time of year.”

  Katie sighs. “It does sound nice,” she says. “But I can’t afford it.”

  “That’s fine. It’s on me,” Jojo says, and Katie hears the click of keys. “Ah, see? Tons of availability!”

  “You can’t buy my ticket!”

  “Why not? I want to see you, and the fares are dirt cheap. Plus, you can ignore Judy all you want, but eventually she’ll show up with a suitcase and a bottle of Chard.”

  Katie grimaces because this is a very likely outcome.

  “How soon can you be ready?” Jojo asks. “Is there someone who can look after the dog?”

  Katie thinks of Armie’s text. He can watch Millie, he wants to watch Millie, but that means Katie will have to reach out. She’s been so scrupulous in staying away, in giving his new life a chance to launch.

  “There’s someone who can take Millie,” Katie says.

  “Perfect. Problem solved. Dulles, yes? That’s a direct flight.”

  “How can you book a ticket without my personal information?”

  “I have your personal information,” Jojo says, and Katie blushes, having forgotten this wouldn’t be the first time she’s traveled on Jojo’s dime. “Don’t worry. I promise not to commit identity theft.”

  “If you’re going to steal identities, you should pick somebody else.”

  “Okay, I’m doing it. Are you ready?”

  Katie closes her eyes and sucks in her breath. She should decline, but there’s no stopping Jojo once her mind has been made. “Yes,” she says at last.

  By the time Katie hangs up, an airline confirmation sits in her email, all plans arranged. She’s going to London for one week, leaving on the red-eye tonight.

  February 1942

  West Wycombe, Buckinghamshire

  Nancy Mitford stood on the gravel drive, luggage piled at her feet, her pug, Milly, tucked beneath her arm. Her friends had assembled to wish her bon voyage—Eddy Sackville-West and Jim Lees-Milne and Helen Dashwood, all in a perfect row.

  “This is a bit of a to-do, isn’t it?” Nancy said. “Either you think I’m off on a gr
and adventure, or destined for an unfortunate fate.”

  “Aw, Nance,” Helen said, and stepped forward. “All good things must end, but I see brighter skies ahead.”

  Nancy regarded her friend with deep fondness. Helen was so lovely out here, in the morning’s gray cast, this woman once considered London’s prettiest brunette. Though her features had hardened in the intervening decades, she was more alluring now, her beauty more trenchant and intense.

  “Brighter skies?” Jim said with a frown, otherwise known as his regular face. “We are in the middle of a war.”

  “Thanks for the refresher,” Nancy said. Jim could bring down the mood of any room, as well as the great outdoors.

  “We’ll miss you,” Helen said, rubbing Nancy’s arm. “But you know where to find me, if everything turns to shit.”

  “Oh, Hellbags.” A tear dribbled down Nancy’s cheek. “You’re the kindest, the funniest, the absolute best.”

  Helen flashed an impish grin. “No one’s ever been able to prove otherwise.”

  “Be careful,” Nancy warned. “You don’t want to be stripped of your nickname, or asked to host a charity ball!”

  “I’d rather die,” Helen said.

  Heir to a Canadian cereal fortune, Lady Helen Dashwood was as famous for her eighteenth-century Palladian pleasure palace as she was the pre-war sex orgies and shooting affrays once held on its grounds. Since taking over West Wycombe, she’d injected life into the monstrous old place with hunts in the winter, Ascot and polo in the summer, and year-round weekend house parties attended by the likes of Queen Mary and the Duke and Duchess of York.

  Hellbags did what she wanted, husband and social mores be damned, and her version of wartime sacrifice was to host “evacuees,” which was to say her London friends. The Wallace Collection was also currently in residence, alongside a maternity hospital and Jim’s colleagues from the National Trust.

  “I can’t thank you enough,” Nancy said. “The time passed in a blink.”

  “Sorry the accommodations are less than grand,” Hellbags said.

  Nancy smiled and peered over her shoulder toward the home’s yellow, fractured façade. Inside, wooden planks were scattered across broken marble floors. Holes marred the carpets and brown paint covered nineteenth-century frescoes. Water poured down the walls whenever it rained, and the preponderance of broken windows meant three bathrooms were currently buried beneath snowdrifts.

  “Off to explore the Beardmore Glacier!” Nancy would say whenever she used the lav. “If I don’t make it back, tell my family I loved them!”

  How vacant Nancy’s life would seem without this group of friends, without gathering each night to dine on whatever Hellbags shot at the lake (swan, usually). Jim, ever the cracking bore, would appear first, with fluttery, pale Eddy arriving last, always in his blue velvet cape. Upon sitting down, he’d brandish a jeweled pillbox and select ten to twelve, depending on what plagued him that week.

  “I’m on a new diet,” he might say. “Only red and white foods.”

  With Eddy, there was always some new eating or exercise regime, typical for a man who viewed his body as a glass hive of swarming bees. He was constantly tweaking his medications, with no real basis, and worrying whether he had the right pills to take when the Germans came. After directing the servants—Helen somehow had a full staff—to remove this foodstuff or add that, Eddy would then treat the table to a compendium on the downsides of clay soil. “In point of fact, the drinking water here is madly binding,” he’d say as Helen rolled her eyes. Hellbags so despised hearing about other people’s ailments that she considered converting to Christian Science, until she remembered she loathed other people’s religions even more.

  Following the meal, the group usually moved to the small Tapestry Room to discuss the latest news: the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Virginia Woolf’s suicide, Nancy’s brother-in-law who was missing in action. After thoroughly covering the topics of the day, they’d turn to savagely reviewing books and friends. The nights ended with Eddy and Helen playing piano in the long, draughty hallway, after which they’d all retire to bed.

  “I hadn’t wanted to come,” Nancy said, looking back toward her friends. “But leaving makes me want to cry buckets.” Three months before, Nancy had been at her lowest, yet this rickety manse was the perfect salve.

  “But leave you must,” said Jim. “Heywood is waiting for you in London. If you tarry, he’s apt to give the job to somebody else.”

  “Then I’d really be up a tree!” Nancy said. “You know how desperately I need the money.”

  “He’s not going to give it to anyone else,” Helen said, and motioned for her butler to ferry Nancy’s things to the car. “No one could be better for that ratty bookshop than a bona fide writer who’s read practically everything!”

  “Bona fide feels a stitch strong, given my recent failures,” Nancy said. “Though I’m thrilled to prove my father wrong. There is some use for a girl who’s well-read, especially in the face of financial ruin.”

  “I’ll never understand,” Jim said, “how you can be so perpetually broke.”

  “I’m broke because my father is, too,” Nancy reminded him. Though they’d explained it repeatedly, Jim Lees-Milne remained stymied by the idea of a baron who maintained several homes and innumerable acres of land, but could not provide a proper income to his seven adult children. “He cut my allowance again last month, in addition to the two times he sliced it before. Poor Farve was born without a lick of financial sense.”

  “He does have a chilling predisposition toward pecuniary calamity,” Eddy agreed.

  Jim shook his head, mystified. A self-described member of the “lower-upper class,” he was the only one of them not born into a titled family and was thus unable to comprehend that gentry and wealth were not synonymous.

  “Peter gets nothing from his family,” Nancy added. “And I never see a shilling of his Army pay.”

  “Can we please stop talking about money?” Eddy begged. He gave a shiver worthy of the stage. “Also, why are we still outside? There is a very bracing wind. Hellbags, how quickly can you reach a doctor, should I catch pneumonia?”

  “What about you?” said Hellbags as she pushed a dark curl from Nancy’s brow. “Are you feeling all right, physically?”

  “I’M FINE!” Eddy cried as the butler slammed the boot of the car.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Nancy said as her eyes sprang away. “I’m perfectly well. My body’s had ample time to recover. As much as it can, given its advanced state of decay.”

  “My throat tickles!” Eddy said. “In case anyone’s curious!”

  Nancy glanced behind her as the Daimler revved. “It feels like the end of an era,” she said.

  “The end, yes,” Hellbags said, “but also the start of something new.”

  “Pray to God.”

  “Nothing is ever new, though, is it?” Jim mused. “All that’s good is fleeting, and the bad lingers around.”

  “He’s right,” said Eddy, miserably.

  “I really came to the right place,” Nancy said with a chuckle. “You are all perfect demons of joie de vivre.” She sighed. “Well, friends, it’s back to London for me.”

  Back to the chaos of real life. Back to unfilled bomb craters, boarded-up windows, and loos that dangled from exposed second floors. The trip was thirty minutes by automobile, but London was another world away.

  “Farewell, my darlings,” Nancy said as her chest tightened. “Thank you for three memorable months. With any luck, this war will end soon, and we’ll be together again, enjoying our lives as we once did.”

  Saturday Morning

  Mayfair, London

  Katie arrives at Heathrow sticky-eyed and blurry-brained from her overnight flight.

  After lumbering through the airport like she has a twenty-pound weight on her back, Katie exits
customs and immediately spots her curly-haired, six-foot-two friend towering over family members and drivers with signs. One flash of Jojo’s high-wattage grin and Katie nearly buckles in relief.

  “Welcome to London,” Jojo says. “Everything will be better, starting now.”

  A driver is at the curb, with mimosas waiting on the console in the back seat. When Jojo lifts a glass to cheer, Katie gives a watery smile. The thought of champagne makes her queasy, but she can’t very well refuse. They clink glasses and Katie takes a sip.

  It’s drizzling as they merge onto the M4 and, like the good friend she is, Jojo begins with a soft toss. How was the flight? Fine. How is the dog? Perfect.

  “And Britt and the girls?” Jojo asks as they motor past office buildings, graffitied walls, and middle-class neighborhoods butting up against roads. “What’s she up to?”

  “The usual,” Katie says. “Britt is like the weather in San Diego. Sunny and seventy-five. It’s the same with Dani and Clem. You’ve never met a nicer pair of teenagers. Where is the cunning, the bitchiness? I make one mildly snarky comment and they accuse me of having ‘no chill.’”

  “In fairness, you don’t have a lot of it,” Jojo says, and Katie shoots her a glare. “Don’t worry, I’m sure they’re up to some shit. They’re probably good actresses.”

  “I don’t think so. They stayed with us a lot, and Armie and I had this competition—”

  “Ya don’t say. A competition.” Jojo rolls her eyes. “That sums up your relationship.”

  “ANYHOW,” Katie says, glaring again. “We’d put out alcohol, twenty-dollar bills, edibles Armie’s brother left at our house, but the girls never fell into our traps. Not one time.”

  “What happened to the edibles?” Jojo asks.

  “Armie and I ate them,” Katie answers with a blush.

  “Atta girl. Remember when you and Britt got into that huge fight because you said her daughters looked like homicide victims?”