How to Find Love in a Book Shop(64)

‘No. We’ve got plans in place. Hugh wants to give up his flat and move into the cottage as soon as possible. We’ll forge ahead.’ She looked at her leg. ‘I’ve just got one more operation on this and then – then they’ve got a consultant coming to look at my face … They said it could be much worse. I could have lost my eye. So I’m lucky really. Aren’t I?’

She smiled at him, and he wanted to scoop her up in his arms because she was so brave, sitting there with her face all battered, thinking she was lucky. He didn’t know what to say. Yes, in a way she was lucky. He shuddered when he thought about what could have happened. But the whole thing could have been prevented. If it wasn’t for the awful man she was about to marry.

He wondered about telling her his suspicions about Hugh on the night of the accident. But Alice was so sweet natured, so trusting, she wouldn’t believe a word of it. She would give Hugh the benefit of the doubt. Dillon would just sound spiteful. And of course, he didn’t have any proof, except Brian’s hypothesis. He had nothing to go on except speculation and gossip.

Alice pointed to a book on the bedside table.

‘Read to me for a bit, would you?’ she said, changing the subject. ‘Mum brought me this in earlier. And I’m getting tired. That’s the thing that gets me. I feel all right and then I get exhausted.’ She sighed.

‘Snuggle down then,’ he told her. He picked up the book. Riders, by Jilly Cooper. It was huge. He flipped it open.

‘I’m not a very good reader,’ he warned her.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I almost know it off by heart. I’ve read it about twenty times.’

‘What’s the point of hearing it again, then?’

‘It’s literally the best book in the world.’ She managed a smile. ‘There are some rude bits, though. Really rude.’

He laughed, and began to read. He felt awkward at first, but he began to get into the story: a bunch of colourful characters vying for hearts and trophies. The room was warm, a bit stuffy, and after a while he could see Alice was falling asleep, so he stopped.

She opened her eyes as soon as he stopped.

‘I’m not asleep.’

‘Maybe you should go to sleep.’ He patted her.

She closed her eyes again. ‘That’s who you remind me of,’ she murmured.

‘Who?’

‘Jake Lovell. The gypsy boy. Everyone else at school loved Rupert Campbell-Black, but I always like Jake best. You remind me of him.’

‘Oh.’ Dillon looked down, not sure if this was a compliment.

‘It’s a good thing. Rupert Campbell-Black was a beast. But Jake was lovely.’

It was as if she was talking about real people. He closed the book and put it back on the bedside table.

‘I better go,’ he said. ‘Visiting time’s nearly over.’

‘You’ll come again, won’t you?’

‘Of course.’

He wasn’t sure whether to kiss her goodbye. She put up her arms.

‘Give me a hug. I need a big hug.’

He bent down and hugged her awkwardly.

‘You be good,’ he replied and walked out of the room.

As he left the hospital, he could feel himself clenching and unclenching his fists. He’d hated seeing her like that, obviously in pain but still so bloody brave. Hugh didn’t deserve her. But there was nothing he could do to stop the wedding. Even a smashed-up leg and a smashed-up face wasn’t deterring Alice.





Fifteen

The morning room at Peasebrook Manor was the prettiest room Emilia had ever seen. It had primrose yellow walls and pale green silk curtains and two rose velvet sofas in front of a dainty fireplace. Over it was a Victorian oil painting of a girl feeding cabbage leaves to a fat bunny rabbit. The girl, with her rosy cheeks and blonde hair, reminded Emilia of Alice.

Emilia wondered what it was like to live in the Basildons’ world. Not that hers was gritty reality – she was only too aware it was rarefied – but this was quintessential country life at its most appealing. This was the room where Sarah took tea or coffee with her guests, and wrote letters and saw to her business. She thought of the back office at the shop and resolved to make it a more pleasant place to work in. Her father had rarely spent time in there; just banished anything he didn’t want to look at into its depths. It was cold and damp and dingy. It would have to change.

Sarah came in with a tray bearing tea: a proper china teapot, and dainty cups and saucers and a milk jug and sugar bowl. And a plate of shortbread, thick with caster sugar. She laid it on the table between the sofas.

‘Milk?’ she asked, and Emilia nodded.

Sarah somehow managed to look dishevelled but devastatingly attractive. She must be in her fifties but looked far younger. She had on jeans and a faded Liberty lawn shirt and pale blue loafers. Her hair was a mixture of honey and grey that looked as if a top London hairdresser had painstakingly streaked it, but was probably the result of Sarah not having been to have her roots done for months. Her hands were red and chapped from gardening, and her nails ragged, but the most enormous diamond glimmered on her ring finger: it was so large it almost couldn’t be real, but Sarah wasn’t the type to wear costume jewellery. She wore no make-up but a dab of pink lipstick hastily applied in the downstairs loo just before she answered the door. She was the archetypal English rose.