AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘It’s not about the window display, Marjorie.’
Marjorie shook her head. ‘Then what have you dragged me over here for?’
‘I didn’t drag you anywhere.’
Mabel heard their mother’s voice in her head, shouting out, ‘Will you two stop bickering for once in your lives and just do as I ask?’ followed by the usual grumble, ‘I should have had a boy.’
Mabel had grown up often hearing her parents say they wished they’d had a son – her father especially. Mabel stared at the bookshop, memories flooding back of her childhood there.
‘Well?’ Marjorie said, interrupting Mabel’s thoughts.
Mabel sighed. ‘It’s too late now.’
‘Too late for what?’
‘You missed them.’
Marjorie followed her sister’s gaze out of the window. ‘Missed who?’
‘The girl.’
‘Girl?’
‘Young woman. She was trying to get into the bookshop.’
‘Really? I think you must be seeing things again, Mabel.’
Mabel turned from the window and threw her sister a stern look. ‘I was not imagining it.’
‘Really Mabel, we both know that no one has set foot in that bookshop for years. How long has it been – over two decades?’
‘I saw a light on.’
‘Not that again! That was weeks ago!’
‘No, it was just the other day too. And I saw a young man’s face in the window.’
‘And now a young woman trying to get into the shop.’ Marjorie stared out of the window and shook her head. ‘There’s absolutely nobody about.’ Marjorie’s voice softened. She knew what this was. Ghosts from the past – from Mabel’s past. That was what she was seeing, or thought she was. They weren’t really there, just apparitions, memories, waking dreams, whispers; a young man and woman who had met at that bookshop once, many, many years earlier, but were never destined to be together.
‘Come on, Mabel. I’ll make you a nice, sweet cup of tea, and we can forget all this.’
‘But I don’t want to forget.’
Well, I do, thought Marjorie, wishing they’d never set foot in this shop. Both widows, with their children and grandchildren off, living their own lives – neither of them saw their family from one week to the next. So, the two sisters had had the most brilliant idea – at least Marjorie had thought it was at the time.
Both outgoing and sociable – they had a reputation in the local community for being quite the town gossips – they’d decided seven years earlier, at eighty years young, that there was still life to be lived. They’d decided to do something neither of them had ever done before – run a shop. Neither of them needed an income. They both had state pensions and widows’ pensions. Both Mabel and Marjorie had previously worked, Mabel doing shop work, and Marjorie in a solicitor’s office, and Marjorie had a small work pension too. They wanted to give something back to the community they’d lived in all their lives. Running a charity shop fitted the bill perfectly – apart from one thing. The location.
Marjorie frowned at the old bookshop across the yard. Mabel hadn’t seemed too bothered by the location when they’d first viewed the shop, but it had bothered Marjorie – and still did. Although she would never voice her opinion; not even to her sister, afraid she might let slip the horrible secret she’d harboured for decades.
‘Marjorie, I thought you were making a cuppa?’
Marjorie frowned at that blasted shop, and turned around. ‘I’m coming.’ She walked to the back of the shop, where Mabel had now stolen her seat, and into the room beyond. It was almost as large as the shop floor. There was a small kitchenette on one side with an old Formica worktop that had seen better days, a sink unit, and just enough space for a microwave and kettle. In the single wall-mounted cupboard they stored the tea, coffee, sugar and the most important thing of all – the biscuits.
You can’t have elevenses without a biscuit, thought Marjorie, even though it was late afternoon rather than mid-morning. Marjorie filled the kettle with water and flicked it on, glancing around the room. There were several boxes and black bin liners full of more charity donations to the shop that they still had to sort through. There were too many items for their little shop; people were very generous with their donations – too generous.
A lot of it would be collected by another volunteer and dis-tributed to other charity shops. But they always sorted through the bags to see what treasures might be waiting for them to find.
‘I definitely saw a light on in that shop.’
