How to Find Love in a Book Shop(37)

‘It’s non-negotiable.’ Thomasina was putting on her coat. Her stomach was churning. Why had she said yes? She was starting to hope for a natural disaster – a hurricane, perhaps? It was too early for a snowstorm. Or maybe her car wouldn’t start? It wouldn’t be her fault, then, if she didn’t turn up.

‘You all right, miss?’ Lauren was looking at her.

‘I’m nervous about something.’

‘What?’

‘I promised to do a reading at a friend’s memorial.’

Thomasina couldn’t even begin to think about it. If she thought about it, she wouldn’t do it. She had the book in her bag – Remembrance of Things Past, by Proust. It had seemed obvious to her, to do the most famous literary passage about food. She had practised it over and over and over, at home. But practising at home was worse than useless, because there was only ever her there.

Lauren was staring at her, puzzled.

‘What are you scared of? You’ll be ace, miss. Knock ’em dead.’ She made a face when she realised what she had said. ‘Well, you know what I mean.’

Thomasina couldn’t help laughing. And she felt a little bit cheered by her pupil’s faith in her.

‘Thanks, Lauren,’ she said.

‘That’s all right,’ said Lauren. ‘You tell me I can do things I don’t think I can do all the time. No one minds if you mess up, that’s what you say. But you have to try.’

Thomasina was touched by Lauren’s logic. She hadn’t realised her words of encouragement went in. It gave her the courage she needed.



Sarah arrived at the church door just before the service was about to begin. She slipped inside and her eyes widened in surprise at the size of the congregation. She scanned the pews for a space, hoping that no one would turn and notice her. She reminded herself there was no reason for her not to be here, but nevertheless she didn’t want to be under scrutiny. There was a space next to a pillar. She wouldn’t have the greatest view, but in a way the pillar gave her protection. She sat down as the vicar stepped forward to begin his welcome.

Oh Julius, she thought, and clasped her hands in her lap tightly.



Thomasina’s reading was one of the first. With terror, she read her name on the order of service and realised there was no time to back out now. On the other hand, her ordeal would be over more quickly. She was in the front row, along with the others who were doing a reading or a performance. Her heart raced, and her palms felt sweaty. She wanted to run out, but she couldn’t make a spectacle. She had to go through with it.

And then suddenly, the preceding hymn – ‘Fight the Good Fight’ – came to an end and it was her turn. She made her way out of her pew, and walked across to the pulpit as if she was walking to her execution. She climbed up the winding steps. She felt as if she was high up, in the clouds. She put the book down on the lectern, open at the page she was going to read. She’d underlined the words in red and they swam in front of her. She couldn’t look out at the congregation. The thought that every single person in the church was looking at her, waiting for her to start, made her feel hot with fear. She was trembling. Just begin, she told herself, and then it will end. Before you know it.

She started to read, but her voice was barely there. She paused, cleared her throat, ignored the little demon inside her that was telling her to run down the steps and down the aisle and out of the door, and forged on. Her voice found itself. As she read on, it became clear and true:

‘She sent for one of those squat, plump little cakes called “petites madeleines,” which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell. And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature.

‘Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it?’

By the time she reached the last three sentences, she had hit her stride. She lifted her eyes and looked out as she spoke the words. The congregation was rapt, and she felt a surge of joy that she had managed to do for Julius what had seemed impossible. She smiled as she finished, and closed the book, calm, composed. And confident. She felt confident.



Luckily for Sarah, there wasn’t a dry eye in the church when Emilia played her piece on Julius’s cello.

She stood at the front of the church and spoke before she began.

‘My father gave me a love of books first and foremost, but he also gave me a deep passion for music. I was five when he first let me play his cello. He taught me to play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” one Sunday afternoon, and I was hooked. I went on to do my grades, though I was never as good as he was. We played together often, and this was one of his favourite pieces. It’s “The Swan”, by Saint-Sa?ns.’