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Posy grinned. In Glensay they did, even when you were almost thirty.
“Next time you’re in the café, I’ll give you an extra-large slice of chocolate brownie.” She was halfway to the door when Mrs. Dannon’s voice stopped her.
“Did you read any of the books?”
“Every one of them. Cover to cover.” Grinning, she jogged out of the library.
She hadn’t read the books, and Mrs. Dannon knew it. Posy was willing to bet that half the people from the village who used the library didn’t read the books. But taking books out meant that Eugenia Dannon kept her job, and since her husband had died two years before, she needed both the money and the companionship the library offered. Everyone in the village had suddenly developed a serious reading habit.
When the officials looked at the statistics, they probably marveled at how well-read the people who lived in Glensay were.
Posy knew for a fact that Ted Morton used the complete works of Shakespeare to stop his kitchen door blowing shut on windy days.
Still smiling, she popped into the small store next to the library. Glensay had one general store that sold all the essentials.
“Hi, Posy.” The girl behind the counter smiled at her. “Your lodger was in here yesterday. He bought a packet of razors and deodorant.”
“Right.” Posy grabbed toothpaste and soap and dumped them on the counter. She’d often wondered if Amy and her mother kept a list of what people bought, and used it for profiling. “Maybe he’s going to help me shear the sheep.”
“Really?”
“No, not really. I was joking.” She’d been at school with Amy and the other girl hadn’t got her jokes then, either. Obviously she didn’t have a future in comedy. “Ignore me.”
“Personally, I like a man with stubble.” Amy rang up Posy’s purchases. “He’s sexy. You’re lucky having him living with you.”
“He’s not living with me, Amy. He’s
in a different part of the building. Separate properties. There’s a floor and a door between us.” It seemed important to clarify that, given Amy’s tendency to draw interesting conclusions and then broadcast them widely.
“Still—it could be romantic.”
It could be, but if it was, then Amy wasn’t going to find out about it.
Trying to work out a way of keeping her private life private, Posy stuffed the toothpaste and soap into her pockets. “Thanks, Amy. Have a good one.”
She paused outside the door to read the noticeboards. They provided a fascinating snapshot into the life of the village. Pets lost and found, a tractor for sale, minutes of two local meetings and a plea for new members of the village choir. Posy loved to sing. She might have joined the choir had people not told her that her voice sounded like a cat being tortured. Her family encouraged her to find other ways to express her happiness, so these days she sang in the bath and sang to her dog, who often howled in perfect harmony.
Seeing a minibus approaching from the distance, Posy hurried back to her car.
The older members of the community who couldn’t get to the village store by other means used the minibus service. Posy tried to avoid its arrival whenever possible because greeting everyone took half a day.
Five minutes later she hurtled through the door into the welcoming warmth of Café Craft. She ripped off her coat as she half ran to the counter where her mother was deep in conversation with two women from the village. Christmas music played softly from the speakers and the fairy lights that she and her father had secured around the windows shone like tiny stars. The exposed brickwork of the walls was partially covered in paintings by local artists. Posy rotated them regularly. This month she had selected those with winter themes.
As well as art, they sold pottery made locally, knitwear produced exclusively for them, locally made heather honey and a variety of crafts hand selected by her mother, who had a keen eye for what would sell.
“Sorry I’m late.”
“Not a problem.” Her mother’s cheeks were flushed from the heat of the kitchen and she looked at least a decade younger than her fifty-eight years. “How did it go?”
“Brilliant. Bonnie was a champ.”
Posy was about to provide details but stopped herself. She knew her mother wouldn’t want details. There was an unspoken agreement in their family that anything to do with snow and avalanches weren’t to be mentioned.
She knew from her father that her mother had experienced another one of her nightmares a few nights before.
She wished she could help wipe out those nightmares, but she had no idea how. She didn’t really understand how someone could still have bad dreams twenty-five years after an event, no matter how terrible it had been.
She darted into the small office, wincing as she saw the growing stack of paper on the small desk. Paperwork, Posy thought, was the waste of a life. Someone needed to sort through it, or they’d miss something important, but it wasn’t going to be her.
