Page 6 of How to Find a Romance in a Bookshop

“Gosh, really?” blurted Petra. “Surely they must have been old, even then?”

“Even then,” agreed the lady, with a wry smile.

Petra consciously repressed the instinct to smack herself on the forehead. She had been doing that so much today she was giving herself a headache. Maybe she could style it out. “I mean, the Just William books are really, really old,” she added, before she realized she wasn’t sure where she was going with it.

Luckily, the lady just laughed. “Help me find some authors I don’t know about too,” she invited Petra. “How about these David Walliams ones? I’ve heard of him . . . but I’m not sure how I feel about his comedy, if I’m honest.”

Finishing up with the grandmother and then helping a lady who was going on a winter cruise and who bought a whole stack of books about the places she was visiting, Petra was surprised to see it was ten minutes past closing time. The day had not dragged at all. In fact, she had enjoyed it more than she thought she would, and the time had flown. Of course, books were still a painful reminder of everything that was bad in her life, but dealing with the public had been quite fun, if you discounted all her usual inadvertent insults. It made her realize how few people she encountered in an average literary agency day. The majority of her time had been spent alone, reading unsolicited submissions that were mostly rather bad and trying to find nice things to say to the people who had written them.

She had become isolated. She saw that now.

Petra locked the door and turned the sign to “closed.” It had been a good day’s trade. Not many people seemed to be quite so interested in the old books upstairs, though. She did think she had seen a glimpse of someone in a long dark coat and a beanie hat slip up the stairs earlier that afternoon, but it had been much earlier. They must have slipped back out without buying anything, while she was distracted.

She was looking forward to going up to the flat to make a cup of tea and try out the inviting blue sofa. She had had no time for lunch and was starving too. Maybe lovely Flo had tucked a packet of cookies, or some chocolate, into one of those kitchen cupboards. Perhaps she would even install herself on that lovely window seat to watch the world go by. She fleetingly thought about curling up there to read a book, until she remembered that she didn’t read anymore. Reading had become work. And work had been stressful enough for her to avoid doing anything connected with it for relaxation.

Walking through from the office at the back to the stairs, it occurred to Petra that she hadn’t checked for customers up here before she locked the door.

She glanced through the bannisters as she climbed the first flight, and her heart jolted to see a pair of heavy walking boots beneath the table that customers could sit at to read. Definitely a man’s foot as well, she realized with a gulp—they were too big to be a woman’s. The bottom part of a strangely familiar, thick, dark green wool coat above the feet looked as if it might belong to the figure with the beanie hat she had glimpsed. But that had been literally hours ago. Surely, he would have left already? And then a thought struck her. Of course, it was so bitterly cold outside, this person had come in to get warm and had snuck upstairs where he wouldn’t be disturbed. Maybe he had nowhere else to go? Bless him. He hadn’t even moved in response to her approach. She was going to have to ask him to leave.

“Ahem.” Petra cleared her throat politely as she climbed the last step. Yes, it was definitely the beanie-hat man. She could see just the top of his head, because his face was right down over the top of a book, opened in front of him on the table. He seemed to be taking a nap. And then a terrible thought occurred to her. What if this man was elderly and in ill health, with no one to care for him? What if he had dragged himself into the shop, feeling unwell and instinctively seeking sanctuary, and then his spirit had—this precise afternoon—slipped away from this cruel world to reside permanently in a better place?

Just at that moment, his head shot up and Petra screamed.

“Christ!” he yelled back. “What on earth is the matter with you, woman?”

“I thought you were dead,” she gibbered. “Hang on, I know you!”

“No, you don’t,” he snapped.

“Yes! From the station—you’re the pirate guy.”

“Ah.” He faltered for just a millisecond, his eyebrows shooting up, and then, “You mean the plundering, murderous, tyrant of the seas—or, alternatively, the dressed-up children’s party turn, balloon cutlasses and walking the plank game my specialty?” he reminded her wryly.

“Yes. No! I mean, I really thought you were . . . sorry, that was ridiculous of me,” she said, chastened. Although, if he only knew, accusing someone’s everyday wardrobe of being a costume was quite mild in the Petra playbook of insults. “I honestly didn’t mean to offend,” she apologized. “You were being very kind, and I jumped to conclusions, because, well,” she gestured at his clothes, and then struck herself on the forehead. “Oops, sorry again . . .”

He laughed but immediately stopped, as if he had just remembered that laughing was not something he did.

“You just scared the bejaysus out of me, by the way,” she added, with a hint of reproach.

“Likewise,” he countered. “How are your knees?”

“Oh, fine,” Petra made a dismissive gesture. “Thank you. What are you reading?” she nodded her head at the book on the table and peered at the spine as he lifted it for her to see. “Paradise Lost!” Petra clasped her hands to her heart and sighed.

“You know it?”

“Of course! ‘The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.’ Ain’t that the truth,” she added wholeheartedly.

His eyes widened. “Extraordinary . . . look.” He showed her the page he had been reading, pointing to the words she had just quoted.

Petra nodded emphatically. “I think it’s the truest thing I’ve ever heard, don’t you?” she went on. “And the precision of his language! Like where he talks about ‘darkness visible’? He’s writing more than three hundred years ago, and we know exactly what he means—this idea that it’s so pitch-black the dark has a physical presence of its own?”

“Exactly! And that brutal spareness, it just kills me. I always try to get near that myself, to use the most direct, unadorned language I can. So much more powerful . . . I ask myself, what would Milton do?”

“You’re a writer!” Petra exclaimed, delighted.

“No,” he snapped. “Absolutely not.”

“Oh, okay, I thought you just said—”