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‘Oh, that sounds—’
‘Thea, are you all right?’
Callum furrowed his brow, wondering why Lexi was asking her that.
‘Sorry. I am so sorry, Lexi. I just came over all emotional for some reason. I wish my dad could be here to see all this.’
‘Oh, right. Um … I’m sorry for your loss.’
‘Thanks.’
Callum was in the middle of pouring the tea. He stopped and looked miserably at the wall.For god’s sake, tell her!
His eyes dropped to the teabag floating in the teacup.Let her have this, the grand opening of the bookshop she’s worked so hard for before you go and spoil it by telling her that you’ve been deceiving her all this time over who you really are. And what you’re really doing here.In any case, Callum knew they’d be no point in Henry being there at the grand reopening; he wouldn’t understand what the hell was going on – the noise and the strange people would just confuse him.
‘Callum, everything okay?’
He whirled around at the sound of her voice behind him. ‘Oh, yeah, sure. I was just finishing making the tea.’ Along with debating what exactly he was going to do about the bookshop. ‘I won’t be a minute.’ He watched her walk back into the shop and heard them talking about the finer details of the grand reopening of The Bookshop of Memories.
He frowned.I’m a terrible person. When she finds out, she’s going to hate me. She’s going to think that I’ve just been using her to do up my shop.Although … haven’t I?That little voice in his head wasn’t helping. It was all well and good if he turned around and said,Here, have the keys – the bookshop is yours. But how could he? He needed the money.
It sounded as though her sister needed this shop. And maybe Thea did too – he’d seen her looking downcast, as though something had happened recently that had cast a shadow over her life, but here in this bookshop, she was a different person; light-hearted, as though the worries of the world had lifted from her shoulders. Perhaps she needed it more than her sister did – and more than he did.
‘Oh, god, I wish I’d never come here,’ said Callum under his breath as he finished making the tea. He slapped a smile on his face as he took the tray of tea out to Thea and Lexi. Whichever way he tried to wriggle out of this now, he knew it wouldn’t end well.
He heard Thea say,‘So, Lexi, how did you two meet? Callum never said.’
He stopped like a rabbit in headlights. The trouble was that he hadn’t mentioned his visit to the library because Thea might wonder why he wanted to research the bookshop.
‘Callum wanted to do some research on the bookshop.’
‘Really – why?’
‘I don’t know, Thea – why don’t you ask him?’
Callum stopped behind the bookshelf with the tray in his hands and closed his eyes.
‘Callum?’
He heard Thea calling. ‘I’ll be right there?’ He was trying to think how he was going to answer the question.
He walked around the corner of the bookshelf, smiling.
Thea said, ‘I heard you were in the library at the weekend doing some research on this bookshop.’
He tried to sound as nonchalant as possible. ‘Funny thing. I was at a bit of a loose end on Saturday, and for want of something better to do I thought, why not find out a bit more about the place?’
Callum could not believe the whopping lies that were coming out of his mouth. Mind you, he’d been lying to her all along. What was another one, when all was said and done?
‘And what did you discover?’ Thea asked.
‘Interesting fact. This bookshop used to be owned by Mabel and Marjorie’s father during the war.’
‘Hey, really?’ Thea looked taken aback. ‘What a small world. I wonder why they never said?’
Callum bit his lower lip and stared at Thea.
Lexi said, ‘You were also trying to find articles about the bookshop from around twenty-five years ago – weren’t you?’
