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Thea walked over to the cat. ‘I’m going now, but I don’t want to lock you in.’ Thea hadn’t found any windows open, so she suspected the cat had got inside when Toby had opened the door to the shop the previous day. She gingerly picked him up, expecting him to wriggle, or even scratch her, but he remained perfectly docile. Thea found herself giving him a kiss on the top of the head. ‘You are such a good kitty.’
She walked out of the door with him tucked under her arm and gently placed him on the cobbled yard outside.
He looked up at the door and meowed.
‘Well, I don’t know where you live, but you can’t stay here. Your owner will be missing you. Go on, now, go home.’ Thea smiled when the cat stood up, turned around and walked out of Cobblers Yard. She stared after him. She rather liked having a bookshop cat. Would that entice people in? Like a cat café?
‘Now, that’s a silly thought.’ She expected that she wouldn’t see the cat again.
Thea put the key in the lock and turned it. She heard the satisfying click of the lock. She checked the door was secure.She knew she wouldn’t be back until the next morning. She had a dog to feed and walk, and a sister to visit at the hospital, and two children to be home for when they returned on the school bus.
As she turned from the bookshop, she caught a face in the charity shop window staring at her. Thea waved at the little old lady, who she thought must have been rearranging the window display. She wondered how long the charity shop had been in Cobblers Yard, and whether the lady in the window had known her father.
She had an impulse to walk over and ask, but the clock was ticking, and she still rather fancied some lunch before duty called in the shape of another four-legged friend – Winston.
Thea noticed that the old lady standing in the charity shop window was still staring at her as she turned from the door. When she threw a glance over her shoulder as she crossed the yard, she could see there were now two old ladies standing in the window.
Chapter 39
Callum stirred. He could faintly hear a mewing, but it wasn’t that sound that woke him up; it was a sudden weight on his chest. When he opened his eyes, cat whiskers brushed his face as the cat meowed in his face.
Callum sat up with a start, the cat pouncing off his chest and hissing at him. Callum looked at the cat. ‘What the hell? What are you doing here? I thought I left you in the bookshop?’ Then Callum remembered he’d left the cat there with no water or the litter tray. He clocked that the water bowl was almost empty. Little wonder the cat had returned, and was annoyed with him. ‘Well, I’m not used to having to having a cat around, alright?’ he said to Dickens.
Callum reached for his watch, and was shocked to see he’d slept through to lunchtime. ‘What the hell?’ he said again. He could hear seagulls and the sound of cars pulling into the car park. So far, he hadn’t received a dreaded knock on the campervan door from some official telling him he couldn’t park there overnight.
He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. It wasn’t really surprising that he’d slept in so late. The drive down from Scotland had been long and arduous. He’d already been quite tired when he’d called in to see Beth and Jack. But it wasn’t the long journey that had really caught up with him – it was the bad night on the campervan bed. He had been up a number of times in the night, finding it hard to get comfortable. He’d also opened the window because it was stuffy, and then he’d been woken in the middle of the night by a thunderstorm battering the van. He glanced out of the window as he stood up and noticed the number of cars in the car park. He shut the window as he eyed the cat.
His thoughts turned to his father. How had Henry got on, sleeping in this thing when he’d been on the road buying and selling books?
As Callum stood up and stretched his sore back, he thought perhaps Henry that had stayed in hotels or bed and breakfasts, and had only slept in the van occasionally. Or perhaps he had stayed with his other family.
Callum frowned at that thought, which brought to mind the photo of those two girls, and the reason he had ostensibly travelled down in the van. Was that the last time his father had seen them – when that photo had been taken?Although there was no date on the back of the photo, for some reason Callum imagined that these girls, if they were his half-sisters, were younger than him.
Callum sat down on the narrow bed and got out the photo. Dickens jumped on to his lap.
‘All right, already. I get it. You want breakfast.’ Callum picked up the cat on his lap and put him down on the sofa beside him. He stood up and reached for one of the pouches of cat food he’d bought in the supermarket the previous night. He squeezed the contents of the pouch into one of the bowls he’d bought, and added some cat biscuits too.
‘Oh, my god. That smells rank!’ Callum opened a window. ‘Remind me never to get a pet of my own!’ Before he’d even finished squeezing out all the contents, Dickens was by the bowl, sniffing it.
Callum said, ‘Does it meet with your approval?’It’d better do, he thought, because he had bought the most expensive gourmet cat food on the shelf.
Dickens started to eat.
‘Good, well that’s you sorted.’ Callum stared at the cat enjoying his breakfast. He thought of that nice little café he’d passed by the previous evening in the van, and wondered if he could get a cup of coffee and a bagel or croissant. After sleeping in, he knew he’d be getting to the bookshop a lot later than he’d intended, but he decided that stopping for a bite to eat was not going to make much difference. Besides, he’d seen the state of the place last night. If he was considering getting it up and running as a going concern, and making it profitable to increase the potential value, then that was not going to happen overnight.
But perhaps whoever bought the shop wouldn’t want to run it as a bookshop. So, why even bother? This possibility had occurred to him before. He could just spruce up the outside, get it presentable, and be done.The trouble was that a part of him already felt a little attached to the old bookshop, even though he’d barely spent any time there.
At the back of his mind was what Jack had said about him staying permanently in Suffolk and running the bookshop.Perhaps if it had potential, I might not sell.The problem was, could he afford not to?
‘You know what, Dickens? I think I’m going to deal with one problem at a time. First – breakfast.’
Callum left Dickens having his breakfast. He locked the van, although he did leave the little side window open in case Dickens decided he was going to return to the bookshop. He would not be surprised.
Five minutes later, Callum stood outside The Two Magpies Bakery.He looked in through the window and could see friends and couples having lunch. It was packed, which surprised him on a weekday lunchtime, but then the café area was small. There was seating near the counter by the window, and further seating a few steps up on a mezzanine level. He spotted a couple getting up from one of the window seats near the counter.
Callum made his move and walked in. He asked the young lady, ‘Is that table reserved?’
She shook her head.
