Page 78 of Christmas at the Borrow a Bookshop
‘Mind the paint, I think the door’s wet,’ she told the girl as she found the key in the jacket of her preppy blazer, pushed up her glasses, then slipped the key into the lock.
‘First thing we’ll do is install the code lock, do away with the need for keys,’ she said to herself as the door swung open.
The little girl shoved past her mum’s legs to get inside first.
‘Woah!’ Her windmill was immediately discarded on the freshly sanded and varnished floorboards.
The woman cast her eyes around the bookshop. Empty shelves stood like sentries along the walls, interspersed here and there with brightly coloured vintage armchairs and little reading nooks. Dotted about were old vases filled with dried summer flowers in faded pastels. At the head of each shelf stack was a sign with words painted in curling gold script.
‘Bi-ology, gen-rul fiction, children’s books!’ The girl squealed in delight at discovering what would soon be the children’s corner below the curling staircase of gleaming black iron, also from its glossy sheen, the mum guessed, freshly painted.
Throwing herself across two patchwork beanbags the girl shrieked, kicking happily, before lifting the lid off one of the many cardboard crates shoved under the stairs – matching the others piled all around the shop – and found to her glee it was filled to the very top with picture books and board books and chapter books, all bright and inviting.
‘Gently, they’re not for us. They’re for the customers.’
‘What customers?’ The girl walked her feet all the way round to the other side of the beanbag so her back was turned upon her mum and she huddled over a pop-upBeauty and the Beast.
With brogues clacking on the shiny floor, her mother dodged yet more boxes to peer through a low door into a white café with lace curtains at the windows and red-and-white checked tablecloths and red tomato-shaped squeezy bottles on each of the tables. Framed on the wall by the counter was a handwritten recipe for ‘Mum’s Deluxe Chocolate Crispy Squares’.
Turning for the shop once more, she stepped towards the table by the door which was set out with a display of books, the only unboxed books in the whole place. There was a handwritten note.
It read, ‘Dear Joy, the village’s first Digital Nomad! Welcome to Borrow-A-Bookshop. Everything is ready for your stay. The paint is (just) dry so you don’t have to worry about smudges. Good luck installing all the new shop tech and cataloguing the stock! Who knows, maybe you’ll enjoy a bit of bookselling too! Happy (working) holiday. Love, Magnús and Alex, the last Borrowers. x’
She had the feeling digital nomads were a new concept at Clove Lore and hoped she wasn’t going to attract much excitement or attention from the local volunteers who she’d heard about from Jude Crawley, the woman who’d sorted out her contract.
She must be the first visitor actually beingpaidto stay here, she realised. She’d soon bring the place into the new century with a decent sales point and comms devices and then she’d get out of here and onto her next job, which, she recalled, was in Lisbon, then the next one was… London? Or was it the Southampton job after that? Not to worry, her diary had all the details and flight information. These jobs all just blurred into one another after so long on the road as an itinerant IT expert.
She looked again at the note. God, she certainly hoped nobody expected her to actually sell any of these books!
Joy took a deep breath and looked over the titles on the table. She instantly understood the relevance of some of them; books referencing floods. The flood was the reason she was here, after all. The reason she was being paid to stay here for two weeks and install the new tills, entry system, security cameras, and all the rest of it. The village were paying her wages out of their recovery fund. Jowan de Marisco Clove-Congreve had said as much in his email back when she asked for more information about the job.
The other books in the display she couldn’t account for quite so easily. Something called theVinland Sagas, books about mermaid myths, Treasure Island, she supposed because they were by the sea. Her eye fell upon the copy ofThe Borrowerswith its intriguing cover showing tiny human-like people peering through a mouse hole at a giant world beyond the wainscoting. There was a note card on top of the book which read, ‘This one is a gift from Borrow-A-Bookshop to our littlest Borrower yet. For Radia Pearl, happy holidays!’
Joy turned with the book in her hand. ‘They’ve left a gift for you. That’s a first!’
Radia raced towards her and without even checking to see what kind of story it was, clutched the book to her chest. ‘I told you this one was going to be different! Like a real holiday!’
‘No Rads, it’s just work.’
‘But we’ll read books together and we’ll go to the beach?’
‘Of course we will.’
‘And we’ll have ice cream every day for breakfast.’
‘Hmm, not sure about that one.’
‘And maybe we can stay longer this time?’ She already knew what her mother was going to say before she heard the words.
‘Just a couple of weeks then we move on, OK? Just like all the other jobs.’
Radia Pearl, however, already sensed what her wayfaring mother was too world weary and restless to grasp: that Clove Lore really was different to all the other places they’d stopped at.
A whole summer of adventure and possibilities were waiting for the pair of them, only they’d have to cram it into two short weeks.
Soon they’d know the magic Clove Lore can do, but for now they set about unpacking, looking wistfully at yet another strange bed in yet another strange place, Radia wondering if her mother would ever be happy enough in any of the corners of the world her work dragged them to, to stay put for a bit.
Meanwhile, all over Clove Lore, the hard work of clearing away all signs of the one-hundred-year storm continued, a storm that could have taken so much from the Devonshire harbour village, but which had, in fact, opened up new possibilities and new futures as yet not fully realised by the people lucky enough to live here.
