How to Find Love in a Book Shop(18)
He put a gentle paw on her shoulder. It was heavy with skull rings.
Emilia gave him a playful punch. ‘Don’t. You’ll make me cry again.’
She walked away to the shelves, to choose another tranche of books. She hoped desperately that things could stay the same. Just as they were. But it was all a muddle of paperwork, probate and red tape. She had gone through her father’s paperwork and bank statements and handed them all over to Andrea with a sinking heart. She wished she’d discussed things with him in greater depth, but when someone was on their deathbed the last thing you wanted to talk about was balance sheets. The problem was it didn’t look as if they were balancing.
It couldn’t be all bad, she thought. She had the shop itself, loyal staff, hundreds of books and lovely customers. She’d find a way to keep it all afloat. Perhaps she should have come back earlier, instead of mucking about travelling the world and trying to find herself. She didn’t need to find herself. This was her – Nightingale Books. But Julius had insisted. He had as good as kicked her out of the nest, when she’d had a disastrous fling with a man from Oxford whose ex-wife had turned out not to be so very ex after all when he had realised how much the divorce was going to cost him. She’d been in no way responsible for his marriage break-up, and thought she was doing a good job of getting him over it, but it seemed she was not sufficient compensation. Emilia had thought herself heartbroken. Julius had refused to let her mope and had bought her a round-the-world ticket for her birthday.
‘Is it one way?’ she’d joked.
He was right to make her widen her horizons, of course he was, because she’d realised very quickly that her heart wasn’t broken at all, but it had been good to put some distance between herself and her erstwhile lover. And she’d seen amazing things, watched the sun rise and set over a hundred different landmarks. She would never forget feeling as if she was right amongst the clouds, on the eighteenth floor of her Hong Kong apartment block, overlooking the harbour.
Yet despite all her adventures and the friends she had made, she knew she wasn’t a free spirit. Peasebrook was home and always would be.
Once a month, Thomasina Matthews would go into Nightingale Books on a Tuesday afternoon – her one afternoon off a week – and choose a new cookery book. It was her treat to herself. The shelves of her cottage were already laden, but to her mind there was no limit to the number of cookery books you could have. Reading them was her way of relaxing and switching off from the world, curling up in bed at night and leafing through recipes, learning about the food from another culture or devouring the mouth-watering descriptions written by renowned chefs or food lovers.
Until recently, she had spent these afternoons chatting to Julius Nightingale, who had steered her in the direction of a number of writers she might not have chosen otherwise. He was fascinated by food too, and every now and then she would bring him in something she had made: a slab of game terrine with her gooseberry chutney, or a piece of apricot and frangipane tart. He was always appreciative and gave her objective feedback – she liked the fact that he wasn’t afraid to criticise or make a suggestion. She respected his opinion. Without Julius, she would never have discovered Alice Waters or Claudia Roden – or not as quickly, anyway; no doubt she would have got round to them eventually.
‘It’s not about the pictures,’ Julius had told her, quite sternly. ‘It’s about the words. A great cookery writer can make you see the dish, smell it, taste it, with no need for a photograph.’
But Julius wasn’t here any more. She had read about his death in the Peasebrook Advertiser in the staffroom. She’d hidden behind the paper as the tears coursed down her cheeks. She didn’t want anyone to see her crying. They all thought she was wet enough. For Thomasina was shy. She never joined in the staffroom banter or went on nights out with the others. She was painfully introverted. She wished she wasn’t, but there was nothing she could do about it. She’d tried.
Julius was one of the few people in the world who didn’t make her feel self-conscious. He made her feel as if it was OK just to be herself. And the shop wouldn’t feel the same without him. She hadn’t been in since she’d heard the news, but now, here she was, hovering on the threshold. She could see Emilia, Julius’s daughter, putting the finishing touches to a window display. She plucked up the courage to go in and speak to her. She wanted to tell her just how much Julius had meant.
Thomasina had been three years below Emilia at school, and she still felt the awe of a younger pupil for an older one. Emilia had been popular at school: she’d managed to achieve the elusive status of being clever and conscientious but also quite cool. Thomasina had not been cool. Sometimes she had thought she didn’t exist at all. No one ever took any notice of her. She had few friends and never quite understood why. She certainly wasn’t a horrible person. But when you were shy and overweight and not very clever and terrible at sport, it turned out that no one was especially interested in you, even if you were sweet and kind and caring.
Food was Thomasina’s escape. It was the only subject she had ever been any good at. She had gone on to catering college, and now she taught Food Technology at the school she had once attended. And at the weekends, she had A Deux. She thought it was probably the smallest pop-up restaurant in the country: a table for two set up in her tiny cottage where she cooked celebratory dinners for anyone who cared to book. She had been pleasantly surprised by its success. People loved the intimacy of being cooked for as a couple. And her cooking was sublime. She barely made a profit, for she used only the very best ingredients, but she did it because she loved watching people go out into the night glazed with gluttony, heady with hedonism.