‘What have the guests been like so far?’ Ivy asked suspiciously.
‘They’ve been very interesting,’ said Josie evasively. ‘We’ve had a meditation teacher who was here to run a sound bath, only she insisted it had to be at 3 a.m. because that’s when the vibrations are strongest. And then there was the meteorologist who put a telescope on the roof to observe the lunar eclipse, but he broke his ankle getting down, poor man. Had to be airlifted off, can you believe it? And then there was this couple on a romantic getaway – but then the man’s wife came to confront them, right in the middle of the children’s story time.’
At Ivy’s appalled face, Josie had rushed on. ‘But our new guest won’t be anything like that. A very nice American woman. No trouble at all from the sounds of it,’ Josie had told her. ‘Quiet, bookish. No telescopes or tuning forks or other people’s husbands, darling, I promise. Her name’s Brooke Wakefield and she’s arriving in a few days from California for somepeace and quiet– her exact words. Sightseeing, sea air, that sort of thing. She said she’s a huge Kathleen Lee fan and they’re always delightful. And she’s booked the flat for weeks.’ She beamed at Ivy. ‘You’ll take it on, won’t you, darling?’
Ivy had nodded, praying Brooke was indeed as low maintenance as she sounded. But as she arrived at the bookshop on Thursday morning, the day of Brooke’s arrival, she was feeling mildly terrified remembering the horror stories about the previous guests. However, she did need the extra cash.
The grey, drizzly weather just about suited Ivy’s mood. The key stuck slightly in the old lock and Ivy had to give the bookshop door a purposeful shove with her hip before it gaveway, the familiar jangle of the bell overhead echoing through the empty shop.
Wildest Dreams was still half-asleep, cloaked in a hushed wintery grey, although shafts of weak sunlight were breaking through. The fairy lights strung across the shelves blinked sleepily to life as Ivy flicked the switch, revealing the bookshop in all its cheerfully chaotic glory. An old windchime with a sun, moon and stars swayed gently in the draught from the door. There was the window seat, piled with mismatched cushions and paperbacks; the cloth toadstools leading to the kids’ corner round the back. There was a home-made wreath Josie had fashioned, enthusiastically stuffed with holly, pinecones and bits of foliage so that it now looked like a festive hedgehog. Glass bottles, remnants from the legendary Kathleen Lee book launch last summer, still glinted on the shelf, some filled with fairy lights, others with beach pebbles and paper scrolls containing peoples’ love stories from all over the world, in all different languages.
Ivy let out a deep breath. Minus the customers and demanding guests, Wildest Dreams felt like a sanctuary of sorts. When it was quiet, with its crooked shelves and tea rings and Pushkin the cat, who tolerated Ivy’s presence with regal disdain, she caught a whiff of the cosy old shop she remembered from childhood, before it had become so busy and popular and had a bit of a glow-up. A place to sit and read. A place of dreams. She wondered if Josie missed that peacefulness too, in spite of all the success and attention.
As she headed further into the shop, Pushkin launched himself on to the counter with a dramatic yowl.
‘Oh, hello,’ Ivy said, stroking his soft black ears. ‘Are you having a rough morning too?’ Josie had told Ivy that she’d tried to relocate Pushkin to Fin’s flat with her but the cat had stubbornly refused, marching back to Wildest Dreams every morning with his tail held high and dragging his claws along the wooden floors when they had tried to move him. In the end, Josie had let him stay, adding ‘loveable bookshop cat’ to the rooms’ online listing.
Pushkin pulled away from Ivy’s ear-stroking and glanced meaningfully towards his bowl. Ivy sighed and went to fill it. She tugged off her scarf and oversized coat, pulling her bright auburn hair out from the neck of her cardigan. She glanced at the display of cosy romances, resenting their glittery optimism and cheerful titles.Fireside Flirtation,Snowflakes and Swooning. Ugh. She knew exactly how they would all end. That the big-city lawyer would settle for a life in the sticks or the family farm would be saved from ruin with some ridiculous and impractical solution that would suit no one in real life but somehow, in a romance, worked.
‘Whatever,’ muttered Ivy crossly, trying not to think of Raff and Aurélie and sparkling lights in Paris.
The shelving system at Wildest Dreams was proudlynon-linear, as Josie had told Ivy on her first day. She wanted the customer’s experience to involve ‘intuitive browsing’ and once compared the shop’s labyrinthine layout to ‘a literary treasure map’. After her introductory tour, Ivy had privately called it a nightmare.
The previous assistant – Josie’s niece Anna, who Ivy had never met but whose colour-coded notes gave serious Virgo vibes – had apparently tried to wrangle the sections into order, and had left copious instructions as to how her system could be followed. But Wildest Dreams was not a shop that was easy to tame. Josie had eschewed most of the categorisation in favour of her own system, and her system was chaos.
‘Anna is a darling girl,’ Josie had told Ivy, ‘but she needs to relax a little. I thought Bali would bring that out in her, but even her backpacking plans were organised on colour-coded spreadsheets.’ She smiled. ‘Still, I hear she and Jacob are having a wonderful time in Australia right now without any plans at all. It just shows you, darling, when you follow your heart, incredible things happen.’
Anna had spent last summer in Fox Bay and, after a romance with the town’s hottest bad boy, surfer Jacob, had promptly ditched uni in favour of what seemed to be an extended gap year. Ivy wasn’t sure she wanted to throw her own life up in the air in quite the same way.
The winter sun was making an attempt to shine through a break in the rain as Ivy made her way behind the counter, brushing aside a scattering of dust. She pulled off her gloves, shoved them into the pocket of her coat, now hanging on the peg, and turned to the tea station that had been wedged on to a makeshift side table by the till so the holidaymakers could use the kitchen.
Ivy craved a decent espresso most mornings – the true artist’s drink of choice, she had decided – but she couldn’t afford tovisit the Driftwood Café on a daily basis. Besides, she thought irritably, the café was always full of the popular surf kids. Despite growing up by the sea, Ivy couldn’t swim and definitely couldn’t surf. The old gang – Jacob, Seb, Isla and Skye – might have moved on, to travel, work and college, but new cool kids always sprang up to take their place. Kids who threw parties on the beach and danced at night to the flickering light of the bonfire.
Ivy filled the kettle and put as much ground coffee as she dared into the cafetière.These inane rom coms aren’t going to shelve themselves, she thought. She had better get started, with or without decent caffeine. She headed into the back room of the shop and—
Ivy shrieked and was instantly mortified. She never shrieked.
A boy about her age, maybe a little older, was doing a downward dog on the rag rug. A boy with chestnut-brown hair falling into his warm brown eyes. Lean, tanned and balanced effortlessly, his long limbs silhouetted by the grey morning light filtering through the window.
The boy didn’t even flinch. He moved fluidly into a different stretch, glancing up at her with a bright, unbothered smile.
‘Oh hey! Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. I didn’t realise anyone would be here so early. I’m Trip.’
Ivy stared at him, her heart thumping wildly, wondering if she was interrupting the politest robbery of all time.
‘I was expecting you at some point of course,’ he went on, still smiling at her. His accent was American, Ivy thought dazedly, broad and cheerful, like he came from someplace sunny and relaxed. ‘Josie said you’d be in this morning. You must be Ivy.’
‘I … what?’ Ivy managed, finding herself frustratingly unable to string a sentence together. Her gaze caught on his muscles in his loose vest, effortlessly holding his yoga position.
‘My sister’s Brooke Wakefield. Josie’s guest? She’s upstairs, sleeping off the jet lag. We got here last night. I’m staying here too. Originally it was just going to be Brooke, but she showed me the photos of this town and this bookshop and I had to see it. It’s spectacular! But yeah, Josie didn’t mind. In fact, she said I brought greatpsychic energyto this place. Which is already as amazing as I expected, by the way. I feel like I’m in a picture postcard. And I haven’t even seen it in daylight yet!’ Talking all the while, he flowed unselfconsciously into some kind of warrior pose, muscles shifting yet again.
Ivy’s brain finally kicked into gear. The pieces clunked into place. Clearly, Josie’s new lodger, Brooke, came with a brother attached. Another person to accommodate, an unnervingly cheerful and unnervingly handsome person with long limbs, unruly chestnut hair and caramel-brown eyes, doing yoga on the shop rug and chatting away without a care.Thanks for letting me know, Josie, Ivy thought, smoothing her unbrushed hair and rubbing sleep out of her eyes.
‘Um, okay. Well, welcome to Wildest Dreams,’ she said. ‘Tea?’ She was meant to look after the guests, after all. ‘Coffee? Chai?’
‘No, thanks,’ Trip said, without breaking his pose. ‘I thought I might get a green juice later. Get some vitamins in after the flight. Maybe an echinacea smoothie or something.’
‘Sure,’ Ivy said. She didn’t want to break it to Trip that the closest thing Fox Bay had to a smoothie was probably mushy peas from the chippy. ‘Good luck with that.’
