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The old man turned to look at the taxi driver. That was when Mabel saw his face. Her breath caught in her throat. ‘Marj. Marjorie!’
‘What is it? What’s the matter?’
‘Come quick!’
Mabel returned her gaze to the man passing her window and overheard him say to the taxi driver, ‘I’m not confused anymore. I’m exactly where I need to be. I’m back where I belong.’
‘Well, if you’re sure.’
Marjorie joined her sister in the window again. They both watched the old man walk up to the bookshop. Before he’d even got to the front door, Dickens darted over and started circling his legs.
‘Who is that?’ Marjorie asked. ‘We’ll have to go and tell him that the bookshop is closed.’
Just as she was saying that, the old man got something out of his pocket and put it in the door.
Marjorie gave her sister a surprised glance. ‘Has he got a key to the bookshop?’
Mabel smiled.
Marjorie studied her face. ‘What are you smiling about? Is there something you’re not telling me?’
Mabel watched him step into the shop. ‘Remember I said to you that we must go to Scotland and visit Henry? I knew it would be a very long, arduous trip at our age, but I desperately wanted to see him again. And I know you want to finally meet him too after all these years.’
‘What about Thea? She doesn’t know yet, does she?’
‘I wrote her a letter. I assumed she’d be in touch by now, wanting to see her father too.’
Marjorie was just nodding her head, staring at her sister, when she happened to glance back out of the window. She caught Dickens walking into the shop behind the old man. ‘What the—?’
Mabel saw it too. She smiled. ‘So, as it happens none of us have to travel all the way to Scotland to see him. I think I’ll write Thea another letter telling her the incredible news.’
Mabel had told Lili in The Potting Shed about the first letter she’d sent Thea, telling her that Henry was alive. She imagined that if Thea did not open her letter then at least she might hear the news from Lili or Callum’s best friends, Beth and Jack.
However, Mabel decided that until Thea had been in touch, she would keep the news in the family, and wasn’t going to tell another living soul what she had just witnessed. She told her sister the plan.
Marjorie wasn’t listening. Her focus was on the shop door closing, and the sign in the window being flipped toOpen.
Chapter 59
Thea sat on the sofa, staring at the clock on the wall. For some reason that she couldn’t fathom, this morning she had no interest in going into work. She’d been backin London for a month, and had got on with it, trying really hard to put Aldeburgh, the bookshop and Callum behind her. It wasn’t proving easy. And then, the previous night, her world had been turned upside down again when her sister had phoned her to tell her that their flight was the next day. They were all leaving England. She’d known it was coming, but she’d said to her sister, ‘So soon? I thought it would be months away to get everything organised.’
Thea picked up a tissue and wiped her nose. ‘I really don’t feel like going into work today.’
Winston whined.
She stroked his head. He lay sprawled along the sofa, his head on her lap. ‘Well, at least you’re not going anywhere.’
Winston licked her hand.
‘Aren’t you a good boy?’ Thea had worried how he’d get on, moving from her sister’s rambling cottage and garden in the Suffolk countryside to a small cramped flat in Pimlico. It wasn’t ideal, but Thea just couldn’t bear the thought of him being rehomed. He was part of the family. They couldn’t hand him over to strangers. And so she had taken him home with her before she’d thought through the practicalities. What would he do all day in a little flat when she was at work?
She had persuaded Edward to let Winston come to work with her.He’d been no trouble, lying in a dog bed under her desk.She took him for walks in Russell Square Gardens at lunch time. She wasn’t surprised he was now well-behaved; the doggy training classes she’d been taking him to had paid off.So far, things were working out – as much as they could, considering …
Her mind kept wandering back to the bookshop. She knew it was all shut up. Nobody was there. The new owner certainly wasn’t.
She realised she was feeling sorry for herself. Just as she’d heard no more from Miles, she’d heard nothing from Callum, apart from an official letter from a solicitor in Scotland enclosing the deeds of the shop in her name.
There was no note, no letter from Callum with an explanation. She looked at the other letter that had come in the post that morning. It was from Mabel – again. She’d written two letters now, neither of which Thea had opened. She knew they were from her because she’d written her name and return address on the back of the envelopes.
