Page 18 of How to Find a Romance in a Bookshop

There was no time to ponder as people seemed to arrive constantly from that point. Soon there was a circle of eight women, with Mungo as the token male. They were all chattering loudly, exclaiming over the fancy chocolate biscuits and helping each other to tea from the big tin kettle. It all seemed perfectly affable to Petra. For now.

Two women who introduced themselves to Petra as Joan and Muriel—and could only have been sisters, they looked so ridiculously alike—set themselves slightly apart from the others, chatting quietly just to each other, until Diana called them to order.

“So, the book was The Fox Wife; who’s read it?” Diana raised her own hand and cast her eye around the circle. “Up or down, Genny?” she queried a sweetly smiling woman in a denim shirt, who couldn’t have been much older than Petra.

“Ish?” Genny replied. “I didn’t quite get to the end.”

“Shall we avoid talking about the ending, for Genny’s sake?” Diana asked the group, generating a quiet moan from more than one quarter.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry!” interjected Genny quickly. “I don’t mind! I think I’ve guessed it anyway . . . I’ll be interested to find out if I’m right.”

Even this exchange made Petra nervous, but—after that—things seemed to go smoothly. They were a nice bunch, and the love of reading was apparent. It was delightful seeing people get excited about books, Petra thought, remembering with a pang how she too had loved reading as a hobby. Now it was her job, and there was no returning to those innocent and joyful times, not entirely.

Petra was aware of The Fox Wife but hadn’t read it, feeling it would require too much brainpower and concentration, both things she had very much lacked in the months prior to leaving London. It was amazing to realize now how much that inability to concentrate had been panicking her. Even remembering it now was making her anxiety levels soar.

“All right?” murmured Mungo, who was sitting beside her. His expression was a mixture of concern and reassurance, making Petra’s eyes flood with tears. Now he—and anyone else who noticed—would have her down as an anxious wreck, she told herself angrily. Great.

She gave him a wobbly smile, and he surreptitiously whipped out a pristine white handkerchief, passing it to her under cover of the book he was holding in his lap. She dabbed gratefully.

“Better?” he asked, out of the corner of his mouth, while looking dead ahead.

She nodded. “Thank you, you’re so sweet,” she whispered.

There it was again: that feeling she had had after meeting Freya, Flo, and the others. It was a community that had each other’s backs. And that they had a good life out here, miles from London, where she had convinced herself the action was, several unrelentingly stressful years ago. People were happy here. And kind.

Diana had been leading the discussion with questions about the book, but now people had stopped addressing the whole room with their thoughts and were chatting among themselves until Diana clapped her hands. Silence fell instantly.

“Thank you, everyone, for your thoughts on tonight’s book. I think we can all agree it was a pleasant, entertaining, and thought-provoking read. Thank you, Genny, for proposing it.”

“Even though you were the only one not to finish it,” quipped someone.

Genny smiled ruefully. “One word,” she said. “Ofsted inspection. Okay, two words,” she admitted with a shrug.

“For context,” Mungo whispered to Petra, “Genny is head teacher at Middlemass primary.”

At the mention of the school, Petra remembered she had wanted to ask Flo whether Capelthorne’s was supporting schools. She didn’t want any of Jules and Roman’s initiatives to dissolve away on her watch.

“Aaanyway,” said Diana, looking around the room to quell further interruptions, “our next choice comes from Beatrice, of course. Beatrice, have you chosen?”

Petra followed Diana’s gaze, which was directed at a determined-looking, solid woman in her sixties, with a bowl haircut and a slash of crimson lipstick on an otherwise unmade-up face.

“Yes,” said Beatrice. “I have—as some of you know—been writing a paper on the efficacy and relative environmental impact of differing plastic waste sorting and recycling protocols, and I have found a marvelous source in this treatise on the subject.” As she spoke, she rummaged in a capacious reusable shopping bag before brandishing a chunky ring-bound book. “It gathers together hitherto uninterrogated data from no fewer than sixty-eight countries,” she declared excitedly.

Not just a pamphlet then, thought Petra, with a smile at the barely suppressed groans emanating from the other participants.

“Was there something?” Diana said, casting a sharp eye around the group.

There was a brief silence and then, bravely, Joan piped up. “Actually,” she said, “I just wanted to say that I love being in a book club, because it can make me aware of books that I enjoy; books that I wouldn’t have discovered if someone else hadn’t recommended them.”

“Yes . . . yes . . .” came the sibilant, whispered agreement of others.

“And,” Muriel picked up the thread her sister had commenced with, “I am sure we should all find out more about plastic waste disposal, because I cannot deny”—she made a nod to Beatrice—“it is an important subject we positively have a duty to understand better.”

Again, there were nods around the group, and slightly less enthusiastic yeses, but Muriel wasn’t done. “However,” she went on, “I just feel—and I am not the only one—that I am being compelled to read things that are ‘good for me.’”

More whispered agreement.

“And I am just not prepared to do that anymore!”