Page 49 of The Sugar and Spice Bookshop Bakery

‘Why are you looking at the plan upside down?’

It’s Maddie. Peering over her shoulder. Where did she come from?

Jack and Louise spring apart. Guiltily, Louise thinks. As if they’ve been caught doing something they shouldn’t be.

He hastily turns the plan the right way up, and Louise wonders if maybe his mind wasn’t really on the job either.

‘Now it makes sense,’ she says.

Maddie looks at her curiously. ‘Why were you looking at it the wrong way?’

‘We were debating whether it would work with the book nooks arranged that way.’ The lie trips easily off his tongue.

‘What? So the little paths lead people into the river?’ Maddie clearly isn’t buying it.

‘No, you’re right,’ Jack says. ‘What were we thinking? I think we’ll keep it like we said, Louise. With the crime section here and the er… romance one just next to it.’ He’s fudging it for Maddie’s benefit, but Louise loves him for it. ‘Although if we shifted it a foot or two to the left, that would conceal it from the main building.’

‘Why would you conceal it?’ Louise says.

‘Oh, I love that,’ Maddie says. ‘It makes it like a secret garden. You turn a corner and find something you weren’t expecting.’

‘Exactly.’ Jack holds his palm up and Maddie high fives him. Louise feels slightly envious of how at ease her stepdaughter is in this man’s presence. Whereas she feels like a quivering mess.

At that moment, Maddie’s phone rings. She pulls it out of her jeans pocket, glances at the screen and squeals. ‘It’s Theo! I’ve got to take it.’

She accepts the call and turns away from them, practically skipping towards the house.

‘Heartbreak,’ Louise says. ‘She’s heading for heartbreak.’

‘That’s a bit pessimistic, isn’t it? She looks like a woman in love to me.’

‘Yes, but Theo isn’t acting like a man in love and there lies the problem. It’s one-sided. She likes him more than he likes her.’

And what about us, Jack? she thinks. I like you, but I don’t have a clue if it’s reciprocated.

She shivers.

‘Cold, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘Autumn is really setting in.’

Get a grip, Louise. You can think of something more interesting to talk about than the weather.

‘I love autumn,’ he says simply.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What? Leaves turning golden and all of that stuff?’

‘Yep! And frosty mornings when the sun is low in the sky. So beautiful. Spiders’ webs with dew glistening on them. Geese.’

‘Geese?’

‘Thousands of geese migrating in their enormous V formations. I love the noise they make. What must it be like, flying up there? One big airborne community. Taking it in turns to be the leader and let those behind follow in your slipstream.’

‘Hmm.’ She doesn’t know what to say to this. She has never given geese much thought before.

‘I mean, how do they know where they’re going?’ he says.