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She hadn’t found what she was looking for in the shop – namely, Toby and Winston – but she had found a lovely present for Jenna.
Thea crossed the yard and stopped beside the old cast iron lamp post in the centre. She remembered being told when she was a child that it had once been a gas lamp. She walked around it. ‘There it is,’ said Thea to herself, bending down and scrutinising some initials that two naughty children had carved into the lamp post. Over time, they had started to fade, but she could still just make out her and her sister’s initials.
She was just staring at them, trying to remember what they had used to carve their initials, when she thought she heard the faint woofing sound. ‘That woof sounds familiar,’ said Thea, standing up straight and casting a gaze about her. There was still no sign of Winston. She guessed it was coming from outside Cobblers Yard in the main shopping street.
She was just crossing the yard, aiming for the narrow passageway, when she happened to glance over her shoulder. She thought she saw a faint light coming from inside The Bookshop of Memories.
‘But the shop wasn’t open,’ said Thea out loud, thinking of her visit there a little over an hour earlier. ‘I tried that door, and it was firmly locked.’
As Thea crossed the yard, she recalled what Katie had said about the bookshop –It’s creepy. My friend says it’s been like this for years. Nobody knows what happened to the owner, apparently.
Thea’s heart was racing as she thought about her discovery of the bookshop in Cobblers Yard, stuck in a time warp. What if her father had come back?
Thea hurried over to the bookshop. She looked in the shop window, but she couldn’t see anything. And there was no light on. Had it been her imagination? Was her mind playing tricks on her? She immediately felt foolish. And she felt even more foolish for trying to open the door again. There was no way it would be—
‘Open!’ Thea exclaimed in surprise when the door opened. She pushed the door wide and called out, ‘Hello?’
She cast a furtive glance around Cobblers Yard, checking that nobody was watching. She wasn’t exactly sure why. The shop was clearly open.
‘Well, that’s not strictly true,’ said Thea to herself when she realised the old sign in the window still said,Closed.
She couldn’t resist stepping inside.
Chapter 30
‘You can’t park that thing here!’
Callum stood beside the campervan, staring at his best friend. ‘But you said I could just drop in.’
‘Well – yeah. I didn’t expect you to bring your dad’s old campervan. How on earth did you make it all the way here from Scotland without it conking out?’
Callum patted the door affectionately. He shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’ He’d honestly thought he’d get as far as Gretna Green if he was lucky, on the Scottish side of the border with England, and that he’d have had to call a breakdown service to have it towed home and tucked back in his mum’s garage.
He hadn’t done the journey all in one day. He’d discovered that it wouldn’t have been possible anyway in the old campervan, which only comfortably reached sixty miles per hour on the motorway. Anything over sixty and the van started to rattle, and he feared it might break down. Splitting up the journey – and staying overnight in a Travelodge just off the motorway – gave him, and the campervan, time to recharge.
Modern cars with power-steering, cruise-control and decent suspension made for an effortless drive. The van would take some getting used to. It was hard work, and not very comfortable at all on a long journey. After his overnight stay, it had still taken the best part of the following day to get to Jack and Beth’s farm.
‘You father must have taken good care of it.’
Callum nodded. ‘Yes, he did.’ He didn’t add that he suspected the reason for that was the photograph he’d found of the two girls, and his father’s instructions to deliver it to them. It was weird. And even weirder that once he’d seen the photo of those girls, he’d felt compelled to come.
‘I could park it down the road.’ There were no other cars about; the farm, located in deepest Suffolk, looked as though it was in the middle of nowhere – although Callum knew from the occasional trip to see them that it wasn’t really the case at all. East Anglia wasn’t like Scotland, where you could drive for miles before meeting another soul on the road. Suffolk was all pretty little hamlets, towns and villages just a stone’s throw from one another.
Jack and Beth’s farm wasn’t far from the Suffolk Coast, just a few miles inland from Aldeburgh. Jack had once been a bit of a party animal, and the last thing Callum had expected him to do was to settle down on a farm. And yet here he was, with a young child and a wife he adored.
Callum looked Jack up and down. He’d put on weight, which was a surprise considering all the physical labour he undertook running a farm. But it was a nice weight, a contented weight.
From his last visit, Callum remembered that Beth enjoyed baking. He recalled those hearty meals of savoury pies, baked to perfection, followed by homemade pudding and custard. They were the poster-children for life on the farm; happy with their lot, even though they didn’t have much – just each other and a lot of hard work. Oh, and a big investment in their business from their best friend.
Callum had never thought in his wildest dreams that he’d envy their life. Not that he had any desire whatsoever to be a farmer – but they had each other, and a home, and a life they were building together. He had realised a bit late that there was more to life than pursuing big dreams.
‘Yes, I see your point, Cal, with parking the van, but it will be an obstruction on the road outside the farm. We need to get farm vehicles up and down that road.’
For a moment, Callum had forgotten what they were talking about. ‘Oh, yes – I see how it could be in the way.’ Jack clearly didn’t want the campervan on his own driveway, where Callum was currently parked. ‘Or I could move it to one of the parking spots in front of your rental cottages.’
‘The thing is, Cal, we’ve got paying guests arriving at the cottages, so you can’t park there.’
‘No room at the inn, then,’ Callum said, half-joking.
