‘Triplet?’
‘Sorry. Just me and my sister.’
‘Tripe?’
‘I tried it in Paris and no. Not for me.’
Ivy laughed again, startling herself.
They reached her car. ‘Well,’ she said, brushing her thick hair off her face and rocking back on her heels. ‘Sorry again for the dramatics. Thanks for the walk. And the impromptu therapy.’
‘Any time,’ he said, turning to go. ‘See you tomorrow, Ivy.’
She watched him walk off, hands deep in his pockets.How is even his walk cheerful?, she thought.
As she was turning the engine over for the third time, trying to persuade the car to start, a text came through.
‘Don’t make me tell you again. You’re pretty cool, Ivy.’
She was smiling as the engine flared into life.
She was still smiling when she pulled up at home. She headed up the stairs, opened the door and stepped inside the flat, shrugging off her coat. Her mum was on the sofa where she was highlighting Liv’s script for the show and watching a black-and-white Halloween movie. Ivy tried to sneak past but her mum looked up.
‘Hang on,’ she said. She reached for the remote and pressedpause, the frame showing the masked killer with knife raised. ‘Something’s up. Something is different about you.’
‘You know, usually in winter people watch cosy movies,’ said Ivy. ‘Not slashers.’
Her mum ignored her. ‘I’ve got it. That’s what’s different. You look almost …happy.’
‘I’m not,’ Ivy replied automatically.
Her mum smiled. ‘Right. Of course not.’ She shrugged and reached for the remote again. ‘Well, whatever you are, it makes a nice change.’
The next day at the bookshop was a blur of gift-wrapping (Raye had warned Ivy about paper cuts: ‘a real hazard of the job’) and customers outdoing each other with increasingly impossible questions (‘I want that novel about the couple who befriend a fox? It was on the radio?’). Not to mention the growing mountain of WhatsApp messages from the show committee, of which Mr Hargreaves rapidly – and predictably – seemed to be losing control. Ivy muted it on a regular basis for self-care reasons, dreading the imminent beginning of rehearsals when she would have to actually start contributing.
That morning was Story-time Adventure, a regular reading hour that Josie insisted on with the local children – the children being Ivy’s least favourite part of the job, with their sticky hands and outlandish questions.
‘I’ll do it,’ Trip told her as she complained over her coffee. He had started to bring Ivy a double espresso on the way back from his run. ‘Seriously. I like that sort of thing.’
‘You can’t like it,’ Ivy told him. She eyed him as he checkedthe weather app on his phone. ‘Why do you keep checking? It’s cold and grey, basically, for the foreseeable. This isn’t California, Trip. You signed up to an English winter, this is what you’re going to get.’
Trip flushed and put his phone back in his pocket. ‘It says it’s going to be unusually cold,’ he said. ‘I wondered if it might snow.’
‘Don’t be fooled by Dickens – we don’t get white Christmases here,’ Ivy said brutally. ‘Now are you really sure about doing Story-time Adventure or were you just teasing me? Because the kids will be here any second.’
Of course Trip took to it with ease, happily readingWhere the Wild Things Are, baring his terrible claws and gnashing his terrible teeth to whoops and shrieks of delight.
‘He’s a natural,’ sighed Josie happily, watching on from the doorway. ‘Such positive energy.’
‘Unlike his sister,’ Ivy said, nodding to Brooke, who was marching across the shop floor on her way out for the day, sunglasses jammed on despite the grey skies, typing furiously on her phone. ‘Isn’t this meant to be her holiday? Where does she rush off to every day?’
Josie looked after Brooke as she hurried out of the shop, letting the door bang shut behind her. ‘I can’t make her out either, darling,’ she admitted. ‘If she’s Trip’s sister, shemusthave positive energy as well. She probably just … hides hers better.’ Josie frowned thoughtfully. ‘But you’re right – I do wonderwhere she goes every day. Now darling, we must start decorating in earnest this weekend. I refuse to miss an opportunity for extra fairy lights.’
On Saturday morning, Ivy got into the shop early to sketch, away from Liv’s endless chatter about the show. She found Brooke already awake and lacing up running shoes.
‘So you’re an early-riser, beach-runner type like your brother?’ said Ivy, still trying to probe their mystery guest.
Brooke shrugged, hoisting one toned leg up on to the stool to stretch. ‘In California, getting up at sunrise to do some form of physical activity is kind of part of the deal,’ she said.
