The Library of Lost and Found(35)
Owen cocked his head on one side. “You got my email, then? I said that I’d contact Rita.”
“I couldn’t wait.” She glanced away. “I booked a taxi. Sorry, I should have told you.”
“But a taxi must have cost you a fortune…how are you getting home?”
Rita laughed at him. Her orange glasses slipped down her nose. “She’s only just arrived. Give the lady some time.”
Owen fiddled with the badges on his lapel. “Um, sorry.”
“It’s okay. I came here to try and find Zelda. It turns out that she’s alive and lives close by.”
“Really?” Owen pressed his hand to his chin. “That’s absolutely incredible. I was going to offer to take Rita out this afternoon for a slice of cake and a coffee. Your news definitely calls for a celebration—we must all go together.”
“Oh.” Rita’s smile faded. “I’m so sorry, Owen, but I can’t make it, my lovely. I’m taking Bertie to the vet and want to get the old boy looked at, as soon as possible. I’m afraid it will just be the two of you.”
* * *
Owen walked with Martha to a café called the Potted Shrimp, though it served coffee and cake rather than seafood. Orange nets on the walls bulged with plastic crabs and the menus were shaped like seashells. The plastic covers on the tables were printed with waves and fish.
Martha shifted in her seat, not entirely comfortable about being here with him. If she ever went to cafés, it had been to take her parents out for a bowl of soup, to escape the monotony at home. As she perused the menu, she wasn’t sure how an Americano differed to a macchiato. When the waitress sidled over, she said, “Just a normal coffee for me, please.”
Owen clicked his tongue as he tried to decide. He unfastened a button on his jacket and swept his hand through his hair, making a small tuft on top. “I’ll have the same, and a slice of date and walnut cake,” he said. “Hmm, but then there’s the sticky toffee pudding, and the carrot cake sounds good, too.”
Martha preferred it when people knew their own minds, weighed things up and made decisions. It was something she’d had to do for her parents. It was something she did when she had to break things off with Joe.
She peered at Owen over her menu, silently urging him to choose quickly. “Sometimes there’s no right decision. Just the one you make at the time,” she said.
“No, it’s okay.” Owen grinned at the waitress. “I’ll stick with my first choice, date and walnut. The cake is famous here. You should try it, Martha.”
As she placed a hand on her stomach, Martha smiled politely. Feeling its fleshiness, she remembered her father’s words about getting chubby. It was funny how she could still hear him in her head, even now. “Not for me, thanks.”
When their coffees arrived, Owen stirred his and leaned forward in his chair. “It is so amazing that you’ve managed to trace Zelda.”
Martha slowly angled her body away from him, as tactfully as she could, to create more space between them. “I know, though I don’t think her carer, Gina, is too enamored about it. And I’ve had to take a day away from my other jobs to travel here.”
“I thought you worked at the library—do you have another job, too?”
“Not really. I help people out with their things.”
“That’s kind of you. I suppose if it’s Gina’s job to look after your gran, she might feel protective over her.”
Martha sipped her coffee. “That would be understandable but she seems rather overzealous. And everything feels very strange, too. Zelda and I are different people to who we were, all those years ago. I was only fifteen when she died. Or, um, didn’t die.”
“You’re still the same people, underneath,” Owen offered.
Although he was trying to be kind, his statement rather oversimplified things, Martha thought.
She had once been a shiny-eyed teenager, and Zelda a vivacious blonde. Now they were both mature women who hadn’t seen each other for more than three decades. She had no idea if they were still the same people, or not.
“Rita’s personal copy of Blue Skies and Stormy Seas is wonderful,” she said. “I need to find out how Zelda came to publish the fairy stories.”
“You’ll be able to ask her, face-to-face.” Owen tore open three sugar sachets and tipped them into his coffee, one after the other. “It’s a shame we have to grow up, isn’t it? When you’re a kid, you never question if a man can really turn into a frog, or if a girl can be the size of a thimble.”
“I think my sister, Lilian, always did,” Martha said with a tight smile. “I used to love writing stories, when I was younger…” She trailed off her words, not sure that she wanted to share more information than this with him.
“And do you still write?”
“I grew out of it,” she said quickly.
“Maybe it will come back to you one day. I bet you like to read, though?”
“Anything and everything, if I get time.”
If I don’t feel guilty not doing other things, she thought.
Her heart still pulsated at cheesy vampire romances and teen dystopian adventures. She was partial to a good biography, particularly by ageing but still glamorous film stars, though never ones by reality TV stars or footballers. Her back chilled when she turned the pages of thrillers with spiky orange capital letters and she brushed away tears after reading misery memoirs. She couldn’t understand library-goers who turned their noses up at commercial books, announcing that they only enjoyed literary reads. To her, authors should write what they wanted and readers had their pick of thousands of books to enjoy.