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‘Not good, I imagine.’
Callum looked at Jack, thinking that this was an understatement. All their childhood memories in that bookshop would be forever tainted when they found out that Henry was not the man, the father, they’d thought he was.
Over the past week, Jack and Beth had helped out with the preparation of the grand reopening of the bookshop too. They had kept his secret, as he’d asked. They weren’t the only ones helping out. Katie and Toby were there too, along with Toby’s new girlfriend, Caitlin, and his best friend.
Lexi had spent all her spare time on it too, and had sourced the bestsellers. The boxes of books had arrived just in time to display them in the bookshop window, along with reams of bunting that Marjorie had found in a bag in the back of the charity shop. And somehow, in that short space of time, Lexi had managed to bring some order to the cluttered bookshelves.
Lili had brought over more flowers, along with hanging baskets and potted plants, making the outside of the shop look the best in the yard. Someone had donated a couple of small outside tables and chairs so that people could sit outside with a book and a coffee in the nice weather.
When word had started to spread through the small seaside town, so many people had got involved in the bookshop, one way or another, by providing either a bit of spare time or bits and bobs they needed, that Callum had lost track.
The only person who had refused to have anything to do with it, surprisingly, was Thea’s brother-in-law, Mark. He had been down from London at the weekend, and his reaction had surprised everyone – especially Thea, who had expected Mark to be over the moon at her efforts to get the shop up and running for her sister when she left hospital.
Callum had overheard some snippets of the conversation between Mark and Thea as they talked privately – or so they’d thought – in the room at the back of the shop, and he did wonder whether this might not turn out to be the lovely surprise Thea had anticipated for her sister.
When Thea, Katie and Toby had told Mark what they were doing there, he’d overheard Mark asking Thea if she’d talked this over with her sister. She told him she had not. Mark had said something aboutother plans.Callum wondered whether Thea would decide to talk to her sister who was being discharged from hospital before they turned up for the reopening. Callum had a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach that the conversation was not going to go well.
Callum thoughts turned to Mabel and Marjorie. If he was going to tell Thea about himself, then he wanted Mabel and Marjorie to tell her about their link to Henry too – tell her that they were all one big happy, or not-so-happy, dysfunctional family.
And now he was waiting for a DNA test result to prove it.
Chapter 55
‘I’m sorry, Thea, but I don’t want to come to the reopening of the bookshop.’
Those were the first words out of Jenna’s mouth when Thea walked into her hospital room.
‘Mark told you about the bookshop. It was meant to be a surprise!’
‘Yes, well I think he wanted to forewarn me.’
‘Forewarn you?’
Thea watched Jenna packing her toiletries and nightie into her overnight bag. She stopped to look at her sister. ‘It sounds as though you’ve done an incredible amount of work. And I really appreciate the thought.’
‘The thought?’ Thea couldn’t believe it. She had beensolooking forward to seeing the look on her sister’s face when she told her about the bookshop. It was what she had worked so hard for. She couldn’t get over the fact that her sister had pretty much just dismissed it with a flick of the hand.
Thea remembered something Mark had said about havingother planswhen she’d told him about the bookshop. The last time she’d visited Jenna in the hospital, Jenna had confessed that she thought Mark was having an affair. ‘Don’t get involved with a married man. They might leave their wives for you, but then eventually they’ll leaveyoufor someone else,’ she’d sobbed.
That conversation had made Thea even more determined to get the bookshop up and running in case her sister was left with the twins and a baby to raise on her own.
‘I don’t think he wants this baby,’ Jenna had said on that last visit Thea had made.
‘Is it his baby?’ Thea had blurted.
‘What are you talking about?’ Jenna had replied.
That was when Thea had told her, ‘Toby saw you with a man at midnight, outside the bookshop.’
Jenna had looked at her, shocked. ‘How? When?’
Thea had had no choice but to spill the beans regarding Toby discovering her late-night escapades, when she’d thought she was stealing out of the house unnoticed. ‘That’s how he’d discovered you had a key to the bookshop,’ she’d told her.
‘It’s not what you think,’ Jenna had said. ‘Someone had gone through Mum’s boxes.’ Jenna had no idea who. The children had denied it, and of course Mark wouldn’t be interested in their mum’s things stored in the garage. Then she’d got a weird phone call, which only raised her suspicions that someone had been looking for the key she already had in her possession; the key their mother had given to her for safekeeping.
‘The synthesised voice?’ Thea had asked, telling her she’d answered her sister’s mobile and heard that voice too.
Thea recalled that conversation with the weird voice on the phone.Jenna had money worries, and this person had offered her a lot of money for a rare book. And by the gist of the conversation, Jenna had done this before – met this stranger and handed over a rare book.
