Page 43 of How to Find a Romance in a Bookshop

“Oh, gosh, I know!” Sylvia rushed to reassure her. “I’m not even seeking a traditional publisher, although I’ve entered the odd poetry competition here and there,” she admitted.

“And won some of them too,” Alison chipped in, “although Sylvia’s too modest to say.”

Sylvia blushed. “I confess, I did get excited about a poetry competition Portneath Books set up last year,” she told Petra. “But then there was a fire, and the bookshop was gone, although I don’t know if Jules and Roman will reinstate the competition when they get back. Perhaps they will . . .” She trailed off, bright-eyed with hope.

“I know they will,” Petra reassured her, knowing no such thing, of course.

The evening had flown by, Petra mused as she brushed her teeth that night. They were all so lovely. Alison, writing romance, was seriously good, which Petra had not been expecting. In another life, she would have been asking for the full manuscript. She had been surprised to notice how excited she was to read good work. She had always relied on the physical signs . . . the feeling of something pushing upward in her throat, like a laugh wanting to bubble up, the sense of wanting to sit up straighter. There were so many things a writer had to get right: language, plot structure, hooks, topicality with originality, and—when it was all there, or nearly there—Petra had the thrill of the chase, the hunger for acquisition.

But then she gave herself a stern talking-to: She had been a bad literary agent, letting her clients down by not always getting their work sold, and it was no good telling herself—as Alistair always had—that no agent sells everything. The stakes were high for her writers, and she had failed them. So she knew better than to listen to the instincts she was feeling again now. The last thing she wanted to do was raise—and then dash—the hopes of any more writers who were unlucky enough to cross her path.

Ross’s thoughts that evening, sitting alone in his cottage, were—like Petra’s—mixed. He had had a great day of writing. The sticky middle was as “in shape” as he could get it for now, and the final act was mapped out in some detail, to the exclusion of the ending itself. Could he really pull off a happy ending for Caliban? What would that be? It seemed a stretch for him to “get the girl” unless he played it that Miranda, with her courage and optimism, had managed to civilize him a bit. Otherwise, she really was too good for him. The happy ending would not be believable, he feared.

No, it was no good. He lacked the writing skill to make it plausible. And he was more than aware of the parallels with his own life. The Caliban character he was writing was about as autobiographical as he could get. He could no longer ignore that he was drawn to Petra as his real-life Miranda. But the best thing he could do for her was keep his distance, he told himself gloomily as he brushed his teeth. Let her escape at the end of the summer and return to her life in London, with a chance to find someone who would be good for her. Someone who wasn’t a writer—and a complex, damaged, emotionally fragile writer at that.

On which note, there was one thing he might bring himself to ask her before she disappeared from his life, and that was about representation. He could not bear the thought of anyone else being his literary agent. And that was another excellent reason why he needed to detach the two of them from any suggestion of an emotional tie. It was unfair of him to ask her, and selfish too, but he had no choice: He couldn’t be entangled romantically—or even as a friend—with a woman who was responsible for his career.

He had made that mistake once. He wasn’t going to make it again.

“Petra!” Ross announced heavily as he approached the front desk where she sat.

“Ross!” she declared, echoing his tone with a grin. “What gives, big man?” He looked anxious, she noted, with dark circles under his eyes and heavy stubble. It seemed the grizzled look she had first seen him rocking was coming back into fashion.

“We need to talk.”

“We are,” she pointed out.

“Later. Properly.”

Petra put her head on one side, pretending to consider. “That would be very nice,” she said. She tried hard not to show hurt that he had been absenting himself from their daily chats again. “Beer and peanuts after I close the shop? I may even have some tortillas and guacamole, if you’re very good?”

“Snacks would not be mandatory,” he bantered back, with visible effort. Rather than his proposing a catch-up between friends, he looked more like she had proposed the final hearing of a death sentence appeal.

“‘Snacks are not mandatory’? Are you quite well, sir?” she enquired. It was one of their shticks, lapsing into Austen-speak. This time, it barely raised a glimmer.

“Five o’clock then,” he merely said in reply, sketching a salute and turning away.

Watching him leave, she saw that even his back view radiated depression. What could it be? Perhaps his writing was not going well. Yes, that was it. She would find a way to restore his confidence, she told herself, as she flitted around the shop, tidying a stack of books here and straightening a shelf label there. There was always a point in writing a novel where the writer felt like they were wading through quicksand. She knew nothing if she didn’t know that. One thing her literary agent experience had taught her was how and when to give a mired writer a boost to their confidence. And also to know when they just required a swift boot up the backside.

She would decide later which one Ross needed.

“Right,” Petra said, when they were both sitting in their usual places, she on the sofa and he on the little chair. There were open bottles of beer and a generous array of snacks on the coffee table, and the fire was blazing cheerily. “How goes it, noble scribe?”

“Writing-wise?” he said, sighing. “Well. Very well, in fact.”

“Yeah? So that totally explains why you’ve got a face like a slapped arse,” declared Petra with a performative sigh of relief. “Always a bit shitty when writing is going ‘very well,’ I’ve found. I don’t know how you stand it. Imagine how much worse everything would be if it was going amazingly . . .” Frankly, Petra could have carried on riffing on this vein indefinitely, and Ross seemed to know it, because he leaned forward to silence her, his expression still unrelentingly grave.

“I’ve nearly finished my first draft,” he told her.

“Oh no! Boo . . .” she countered.

“Yeah! Actually, it is ‘boo’ because you know what this means?”

“Um, that you might—actually, probably will—have a stunningly successful novel on your hands? Nice problem to have, I’d have thought.” But he was not to be jollied along.

“No,” he replied. “It means I need you to read it—soon—and then decide whether you will represent me.”

“Ohhh!” said Petra, throwing up her hands, as if that explained everything. “Well, that’s easy,” she said. “I won’t.”