He hadn’t missed Paisley’s lectures one bit since the break-up, when the touchy subject of the bookshop holiday had brought on another row and finally an ultimatum.
‘If you really must run off to England for a reunion with an ex and leave me here to pay the bills on my own, then go!’ she’d said, on the verge of tears, making him feel absolutely rotten.
‘She’s not my ex,’ he’d protested. ‘We were never together! I keep telling you. We’re just friends. And it’s only a fortnight. I’ll be back before we even have time to miss each other.’
‘Willyou miss me?’
He’d faltered instead of answering right away, and that had been enough to bring on the crying fit and the plate throwing, followed by the silent treatment and the final, dreaded heart-to-heart where they’d faced the truth. He had a decision to make: he either stayed and they worked on their relationship or he ran off withthat Texan bint. The choice was his.
Paisley had elected to take their bed, laying spare sheets out for Harri in the living room.
After five weeks of bad sleep, backache and icy-cold civility, he’d finally left his key on the kitchen table this morning, stepped out the door into the February frost, ready to catch a train to Cardiff, before a change at Bristol, and a delay at Barnstaple, before finally getting in a taxi for Clove Lore an hour ago.
He’d felt more sordid with every mile put between himself and Wales. Break-ups were supposed to be awful; goodness knows he’d had plenty of experience. Paisley had broken up with him before, many times, but it had only ever lasted a few hours at most and she’d reeled him back in, all apologies, blaming her hormones, making light of the argument when she’d picked over some small fault or other of Harri’s. The last few years especially had been tumultuous ones, and now here he was in another country, barely able to process what was happening.
He had no girlfriend, no job, and no clue what the hell he was doing in Devon waiting for an old uni friend he wasn’t even sure he’d get on with after all this time.
With a hazy vision circulating in his head of Annie Luna walking towards him out of the winter darkness and grappling him in a bearhug like she used to, he absently typed in the keycode and pushed open the bookshop door.
The dry, papery, chimney-soot scent of old bookshop reached his nostrils.
He hauled his cases up the stone steps, almost his entire life’s belongings (far more than he needed for a holiday, but way too little to show for a life).
‘Should have left all this stuff at Mam and Dad’s or checked it at the station,’ he complained to himself as he made the last few feet of his journey, the tiredness setting in.
Back in Cardiff, when he’d stood staring at the big lock boxes, he’d been prevented from unburdening himself of his belongings by the curious feeling that he needed them all. Not his best idea, he told himself, stepping through the door. He’d end up carting it all home to his parents’ place in a fortnight’s time. His mum had told him only yesterday that he’d always have his childhood bedroom waiting for him back in his beautiful, familiar Neath.
But now, here he was in a darkened shop, stamping the salt off his boots on the welcome mat, on the dream holiday he’d been waiting years for and it could only be a brief reprieve. Fourteen days of playing bookseller before facing the reality of his new, single barista life. Beyond the confines of the holiday there was nothing but a blank when he tried to imagine his future when before there’d been Paisley and all her certainty and her plans.
You can’t grind coffee beans forever, he heard Paisley telling him now, as though he’d somehow conjured her up here in Devon. ‘You should think of us and our future, like I do.’ He’d heard her say it so often it played automatically in his brain like a voice memo he couldn’t delete.
He shut the door sharply behind him, and its bell jangled above his head.
Standing still in the darkness, taking it all in, the brassy resonance faded away to silence.
At his feet sat the box of barista supplies he’d ordered days ago. His favourite coffee in compact bags of beans and blends, syrups, sugars, dusting spices and sauces, all addressed to him, care of Borrow-A-Bookshop. Just the idea of working with those familiar ingredients brought him a gentle sense of comfort, no matter what the disapproving spectral Paisley was telling him.
He hadn’t realised how cold he’d been until he crouched and pulled the tape on the box, releasing the good, earthy aromas from his favourite artisan roastery. The words on the small packages alone were enough to soothe him: Mysore, Monsooned Malabar, Brazilian Bourbon Santos.
The scent of coffee, books, sea salt, winter damp and the coal fire blended together. He breathed it all in with deepening satisfaction. The Borrow-A-Bookshop seemed to breathe too, waking from its winter’s afternoon nap.
‘Lights,’ he said to himself in sudden awakening, like he’d downed a shot of espresso and kickstarted his brain. He couldn’t crouch here all night, frozen like a crashed SatNav trying to reorientate itself.
The standby light from the till point and laptop guided him round the bulky cash desk to where a jumble of cables led to a floor lamp by the window. ‘Bingo!’
The till area flooded with a soft orange glow.
‘Okay, okay,’ he nodded, taking in the spot where he’d be ringing up books and chatting with customers. His stomach turned loop-the-loop. Two tall stools behind the till reminded him Annie would soon be next to him there. He gulped hard and let his eyes roam towards the shadows where a fireplace blew a chilly draught from its spot beneath a cast iron spiral staircase, its black gloss shining.
He stooped to find the power socket on the wall and flicked both plugs on. Light filled the space beneath the stairs, revealing the children’s book area where two patchwork beanbags slumped beside a green leather armchair.
Over the fireplace a sign read, ‘Kids’ Poetry Time with Austen Archer, Wednesdays, 4–4:30 p.m.’
He took this in, not knowing who this Austen Archer was, or how the whole volunteer-helpers thing was actually going to work, but he was glad the responsibility for this place didn’t rest with just him and – if she showed up – Annie.
The book stacks loomed, a labyrinth of floor-to-ceiling shelving he’d have to familiarise himself with, but not before Annie arrived. She’d love leading the expedition.
He scanned the hand-painted signs at the head of each stack:World Travel, Languages, Poetry, The House Beautiful, Gardening, Biography, and there were others he couldn’t quite make out from here, and over by the door, running along the far wall, there spreadGeneral Fiction.
