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He sat down, elbows on the wooden worktop, chin in his hands. Thea sat opposite him. ‘So, let’s start with what you were doing in the bookshop, and where you found the key.’
She thought back to that afternoon.When she’d walked into the bookshop, she hadn’t expected to find her nephew inside, sitting at the counter at the back of the shop. He looked quite at home there. She guessed he liked the old bookshop, and was sitting there imagining the bookshop open, serving customers.
The bookshop hadn’t changed since she’d last stepped foot in it as a child. She’d had an inkling that it might be the case from the window display, but until she had actually stepped inside the shop, she hadn’t been sure that it would be just as her mum had left it when she’d locked the door and the three of them had left for their new life in London.
So, Toby must have gone through his grandmother’s boxes after all, and found a key to the bookshop. ‘I don’t understand …’ said Thea, wondering why her mum still had a key to the bookshop. Had she kept it for sentimental reasons? Quite possibly. Then again, if she had sold the place, would she really keep hold of a key?
Thea raised her eyebrows when something occurred to her. She didn’t know why the bookshop had lain forlorn and forgotten for so long. She had assumed that at some point her dad had been declared dead, and that the bookshop had been sold. That would be the sane, rational, sensible thing to do – wouldn’t it? Not keep it for years, because you couldn’t let go of the love of your life, and believed in your heart that one day he would walk back through that door.
Did this mean they still owned The Bookshop of Memories? For some strange reason, Thea’s heart leapt at the thought. She suddenly imagined running a bookshop right there on the Suffolk Coast in the heart of Aldeburgh.
She had no experience of running a shop, but she loved books, and she knew how to look after old books, if there were any volumes like that in the shop. She’d seen the bookbinding equipment. Perhaps that was something she could learn too.
But she couldn’t leave her job and flat.I love my job, and I have a life in London, she thought. Or do I? Her thoughts drifted to Miles. A short time earlier, before she’d found out her relationship was a lie, she’d thought she was happy in London – although she had surprised herself by considering giving it all up to travel and live abroad with Miles.
Apart from her job, what was keeping her in London? Thea looked at the key to the bookshop and then thought of her flat and the tidy sum she would get if she sold it. She’d be able to buy a smaller version of Jenna’s lovely cottage on the Suffolk Coast. Thea was suddenly contemplating something she would not have considered in her wildest dreams; moving to Suffolk, returning to the place she had spent her early childhood, and running a bookshop.
‘But is it still ours?’
‘What?’ Toby asked.
Thea stopped staring into space and dreaming of a different future, and looked at her nephew.
Thea got the key out of her pocket that she’d insisted Toby hand over and placed it on the table in front of him. Thea folded her arms, waiting for the promised explanation.
Toby looked at the key. ‘Can I have it back?’
‘The key?’
He nodded.
‘No, Toby, of course you can’t have it back. It’s not yours.’
‘Well, no … but it’s Mum’s.’
Thea stared at him. ‘Jenna, I mean your mum, has a key to the bookshop?’
‘Yes.’
‘And she gave it to you?’
‘No, not really.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I found it.’
‘Wait – you’ve been through Grandma’s boxes?’
‘No, of course I haven’t. I said Mum had the key.’Jenna must have been through Mum’s boxes and found it, thought Thea.
‘So, you found the key lying around after your mum went into hospital.’
He didn’t deny it. But that didn’t explain one thing – how did he know it was the key to The Bookshop of Memories?
‘She told you about the bookshop?’
Toby studied his fingernails, avoiding eye contact.
