The bestsellers today were the Valentine’s cards and love poetry, either in slim volumes or fat anthologies. Harri kept serving the drinks and warming the Welsh cakes. Annie could hear his cafe till ringing at regular intervals until noon.
Together, after the lunch rush, they’d hung the rest of Minty’s Valentine’s décor around the shop, finally placing the ceramic chubby cherub amongst the display items on the table by the door.
‘There,’ Annie said with pride. ‘Lookin’ good.’
The cafe was empty now and a few browsers made their way quietly between the stacks. Annie liftedThe Young Man’s Valentine Writerfrom its riser and, opening it, discovered an illustrative sketch of another little Cupid.
She showed Harri, who glanced at it while running a duster over the cash desk.
‘Says here that the Cupid of classical mythology had two types of love arrow,’ she read in a deliberately bad English accent. ‘One is barbed and golden and makes the person struck fall instantly in love, and the other is blunt and leaden and causes the victim to lose heart and fall out of love.And here was me thinking Cupid was some cute, helpful little angel!’
‘Nope, he’s a total pain in the arse,’ Harri said blithely.
‘Do you think people can simply stop loving someone, just like that?’ Annie said, putting the book away, not nearly as amused as she thought she’d be by it.
Harri didn’t reply. He’d busied himself right along the cash desk and into the kids’ section where he was now wiping up the soot from the hearth.
‘Where’d Jowan say the firewood was kept?’ he said, without looking around.
‘Dunno.’ Perhaps it was for the best he hadn’t seemed to hear her question.
‘I’ll go look,’ Harri concluded. ‘There must be a log store round the back or something.’
He pulled on his coat and was gone so fast Annie didn’t have time to say anything else.
As soon as he hit the slope Harri forgot all about the firewood. It had been an excuse to get away. His feet were doing all the thinking now, carrying him away from the shop and Down-along. He registered blue sky, huge white clouds way out on the horizon, the white fronts of the cottages and the sound of the waves making their way into his brain. He wanted more of that noise, his feet concluded, carrying him all the way down onto the seawall.
Dogs dashed here and there on the wet sand. Small boats strained at their ropes as they bobbed on the tide. He didn’t know if the sea was coming in or retreating. He didn’t care.
His walking boots crunched and squelched pleasantly as he marched out along the beach. Hardy holidaymakers in winter woollies laughed and chatted on the Siren’s benches at his back. He focused on the sounds of the gulls crying on the wing and the hard shushing of the waves.
He passed the cliff waterfall he’d seen mentioned in Jowan’s Borrowers’ binder, hearing its music only in so much as its gushing eased his mind. On he went until the Siren’s Tail was just a blurry image done in watercolours when he glanced behind him. The insistent feeling that had carried him away from the bookshop began to ebb.
His feet slowed to a stop, and he stood for a long time staring blindly at the wormcasts around his boots. Clean, cold, salty air swirled around him. He could breathe at last.
When he looked around again he realised he was deep in the curve of the Clove Lore bay, and he was all alone.
That was when he became aware of the strange, dull pain that had made him run. Right in the centre of his chest. Unzipping his jacket with a sharp tug, he wrestled it off, letting it fall to the sand, not even slightly aware he must look crazy, shoving his hand under his jumper, rifling under his t-shirt, pressing his palm to the sore spot between his pecs.
Nothing there, and yet… He tried to make sense of it. Annie’s words about that troublesome Cupid had sounded exactly like a little bowstring straining, tiny fingers releasing a feathered flight that had crossed the bookshop and struck him hard in the heart. He rubbed again at the spot where he’d felt sure he’d find a leaden, blunted arrow, the kind Cupid fired when he wanted to stop love in its tracks.
What had Annie said?Do you think people can simply stop loving someone, just like that?
His hand pushed reflexively into his jeans pocket, pulling out his phone, fingers jabbing at the name stored at the top of his contacts list, his next of kin, his emergency number for the last decade. He only truly awoke from his confusion when the call connected.
‘Paisley?’ he asked, desperately.
Chapter Fourteen
Austen back in the Bookshop
A young woman bounded into the Borrow-A-Bookshop in a burst of colour, announcing she was here for the children’s Poetry Time session. Annie had forgotten all about it until that very second.
‘Can you be bothered with another volunteer sticking their beak in?’ the woman said in a Manchester accent, holding the door open for yet more people behind her. In followed a little girl of no more than seven or eight, and another woman, also all smiles.
‘You’re the new Borrower,’ the little girl informed Annie. ‘I was a Borrower too, years ago, when I was justababy.’ She said the word with evident disdain for all babies. ‘My name is Radia Pearl Foley.’
‘Got it!’ Annie said with delight. ‘And I am Annie Luna. Who’ve you brought with you, Radia Pearl?’
