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Marjorie followed her gaze. She knew what Mabel was staring at – that blasted bookshop.
Marjorie hoped that Mabel wasn’t getting any ideas, after thinking she’d seen a light in the shop, that Douglas had come back. He’d be in his late nineties. It was more likely that he was dead now.
She remembered the tall, dashing young man who couldn’t have been more than twenty. He was in the RAF, stationed in Norfolk, and often visited the Suffolk Coast when he had some leave. But he’d never discovered Cobblers Yard, and their little bookshop, until he had accompanied Mabel home after she’d had a fright, thinking the Luftwaffe were going to drop a bomb on Aldeburgh. She also remembered what Mabel had said that night; that when she grew up, she was going to marry him.
Mabel had been eight. It was ridiculous, or so Marjorie remembered thinking at the time. But the years went by and the war ended, and Mabel grew into a beautiful young woman. Douglas often visited their father’s bookshop to buy books, but Marjorie guessed it was on the pretext of seeing Mabel. The friendship blossomed, until one day, Mabel confided in her sister that they planned to elope. With the age gap, and the fact that Mabel was so young – just seventeen – they knew that their father would never agree to the match. It meant they would have to marry in secret.
Mabel told her sister when they planned to leave together.
It was 1953 when Mabel packed her suitcase in readiness to meet Douglas at the train station so they could run away together. The plan was to go to London and catch the sleeper train to Edinburgh.
Marjorie knew he wouldn’t be there. The plan had changed; he’d brought the date forward, and the details were in the letter he’d entrusted to Marjorie to give to her sister.
In the letter, although he’d expressed his undying love for Mabel, he’d also expressed his concerns over them running away together, and what that meant; she’d be leaving her family, perhaps never to see them again. He’d said that if she changed her mind and didn’t turn up, then he’d know she’d broken it off. They were to meet at midnight under the old gas lamp in the middle of Cobblers Yard. He’d have a car waiting to take them to the train station.
Marjorie never gave her the letter. Instead, she whisked her sister to London, on the day she was meant to elope, for a rare treat – a show in London’s West End. They hadn’t returned until the following day.
Marjorie thought her sister would get over her broken heart in time. She was only seventeen. What did she know about love? Eloping would be the biggest mistake of Mabel’s life, and as her big sister, Marjorie felt she had to stop her. And it would have broken their father’s heart if his seventeen-year-old daughter had eloped. It wasn’t just the age gap; Douglas had claimed to be a Scottish laird, descended from a long line of lairds, who owned a huge manor house in the Scottish Highlands. Their father hadn’t believed him. He had thought Douglas was just saying it to impress a gullible teenage girl. Marjorie hadn’t cared about that. For her own selfish reasons, she hadn’t wanted Mabel to leave. Mabel had been all she had – until she met her own future husband, anyway.
Mabel had eventually married too. Marjorie had thought all the business with Douglas was in the past, and that Mabel’s heart had healed over time. But the look on her face made Marjorie wonder if she was thinking of him right now, and that perhaps time had not healed a thing.
Mabel turned to her sister. ‘Do you think he’ll ever come back?’
‘Who – Douglas?’
‘Why would I wanthimto come back?’
Marjorie was surprised by her attitude, as she’d assumed Mabel was thinking wistfully about Douglas, but of course as far as Mabel knew, he had never turned up, and had reneged on their plan to elope together.
‘Besides, he’s probably dead now. And good riddance.’
Marjorie gave her a sideways glance. Her sister didn’t really mean that; she could hear it in her voice. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring him up. I think we’re talking at cross purposes. Who wereyoutalking about?’
‘Henry – of course.’
Marjorie cast her gaze over to the bookshop. ‘Is that why you wanted to come back here, Mabel, and work in a shop in Cobblers Yard; so you could keep an eye on the bookshop?’
‘Do you ever wonder what happened to him? He loved that bookshop almost as much as Father did.’
‘I know,’ said Marjorie. ‘That’s why Father left the bookshop to him rather than us.’
‘I wish we’d made our peace with him over that.’
‘You were the one who wouldn’t.’ Marjorie reminded her.
‘I didn’t understand. I still don’t. Why he left the shop to the evacuee.’
‘But he wasn’t just an evacuee, was he, Mabel? The young woman left the baby with us, and when she didn’t come back, and Father went to London and couldn’t find her, then he brought him up. He was like a son to him.’
‘But I wanted to run the bookshop.’
‘I know. I remember Henry asked you once if you’d like to help him run the shop. You wouldn’t.’
‘Yes, well … that was just as well, wasn’t it? Everyone assumed he would remain a bachelor, but then he met someone and had children.’
‘Perhaps if we’d, you know, acted like grown-ups and not held a grudge about the shop, we’d have got to know his family.’
Mabel frowned. ‘Yes, perhaps.’
