Chapter 8

Posy always had the utmost admiration for anyone with the talent and the determination to write a book. Especially to finish writing a book, but now her own dreadful, florid attempts to write in a genre that she loved, which should have come easily to her, gave her a whole new respect for authors.

She had wanted to be a writer ever since she could remember. The summer that her parents … the summer of the car crash, she’d been accepted on the MA course in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia to start the following October. Apart from marrying Ryan Gosling, it had been her life’s ambition to gain a place on the same MA course that had honed the talents of Tracy Chevalier, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro and just about every other literary novelist who’d ever won a prize. Posy had even considered taking up her place and relocating Sam to Norwich (though her grandparents had said that they’d be happy to have Sam in Wales with them and Lavinia and Perry had also offered him a home during term time) but she and Sam had both lost so much that abandoning their home, their familiar London life and each other, would have been a step too far.

It didn’t mean that Posy had given up on her dreams of becoming a novelist. On the computer were no less than nine of her attempts to write the Great British Novel. Unfortunately, none of them were good attempts, which was why she’d abandoned them. One was called The Crocus Throat, though Posy couldn’t imagine what she’d been thinking of when she’d decided it would be a good idea to write a stream-of-consciousness narrative novel or even if crocuses had throats.

But this … this thing: Ravished by the Rake. It was deeply, deeply troubling. Not troubling enough to delete it, because Posy could always do a find-and-replace on the names (once she’d had a proper crack at rewriting and editing it and maybe allowing someone else to read it; perhaps Verity, if she swore her to absolute secrecy) but troubling enough that she saved it on to a thumb drive so Sam wouldn’t find it.

Still, was it any wonder that she was writing ridiculous fanfic about Sebastian when he was the only man she came into contact with on a regular basis? Apart from Tom, and he didn’t count. He was her work buddy, her employee now, and though he was quite attractive in a young academic kind of way with his cardigans and his quiff and his vague but stern manner – he could hand-sell books to middle-aged women like books were a black market commodity in the former Eastern Bloc – Posy didn’t like to think of him in a sexual way. Oh dear God, no.

She really needed to banish all thoughts of Sebastian from her mind, her fevered imagination and her hard drive. She needed a man as a matter of some urgency. Though finding a decent, dateable man was like trying to find a Stephanie Laurens novel that she hadn’t read yet. Posy hadn’t been on a date for weeks and the recent messages she’d had from the dating sites (she was signed up to five at the last count) had all been very subpar.

On her profile, Posy had listed her interests as long walks, visits to art galleries and the theatre as well as curling up on the sofa with a bottle of wine and a good film. Though, to be honest, only the last one was truly applicable, but if she had more free time, she was sure that she’d be hoofing all over London to attend all sorts of cultural events.

The trouble was, Posy knew she could never form a meaningful attachment with a man who messaged her: ‘hi darling how r u?’ She could never love a man who spurned capital letters and rudimentary grammar. The same went for the numerous variations on ‘wow! sexy pic. wanna hook up?’ Besides, there was nothing remotely sexy about the black-and-white shot of Posy peering over a copy of Jane Eyre, or the photo of her taken at last year’s Christmas party where she was sitting on the rolling ladder proudly wearing a reindeer jumper and glow-in-the-dark antlers.

But there wasn’t time to worry about that now. Posy needed to find a man, and if the internet wasn’t going to help, she’d just have to do things the old-fashioned way.

‘Please can we go out on Saturday night?’ she asked Nina and Verity as they came through the door on Wednesday morning, before they’d even had a chance to take their coats off or argue about whose turn it was to make tea. ‘I need to talk to a man who isn’t bloody Sebastian Thorndyke.’

‘What about Tom?’ Verity asked.

‘Tom doesn’t count,’ Nina and Posy both said in unison.

‘Could you imagine going on a date with Tom?’ Posy added.

‘Especially if he decided to wear that polka-dot bow tie that he breaks out on special occasions,’ Nina said. ‘And my God, he’d be hard work. I’ve been to the pub with Tom more times than I can count and I still don’t know what he’s writing his thesis on or who he lives with or any other personal information. I’m working on this theory that he’s in the Witness Protection Programme.’

‘Or he’s secretly married with five kids and he only comes to the shop for a bit of peace and quiet,’ Verity suggested and while this was all very entertaining, it was getting off the subject as far as Posy was concerned.

‘Can we focus here? I need to go out and drink my bodyweight in alcohol so I can flirt with men, they don’t even have to be that good-looking, and forget about the shop and Sebastian for a few hours. Please can we do that?’

‘We can do that,’ Nina agreed. ‘Three words: hot Swedish men. Another three words: cold Swedish vodka. We just bumped into lovely Stefan from the deli and he’s invited us to his birthday party next Saturday. Said he’s got friends visiting from Sweden. Even Verity said she’d come.’

Verity was in the kitchen making tea but she stuck her head out of the door so she could pull a face at Nina. ‘I do go out socially sometimes,’ she said. ‘But I’ll have to leave work early on Saturday, Posy, so I can go home and have a disco nap first.’

‘I have to take Sam clothes-shopping on Saturday,’ Posy said, which was another reason why she needed to go out on Saturday night, because clothes shopping with Sam was always an ordeal and she deserved a reward after, hence the need for a lot of alcohol. ‘I’ll be back around three if I haven’t murdered him first, so you can leave then.’

Maybe, now that she was in charge, Posy should be stricter and establish boundaries, but Nina and Verity, Tom too, had been her friends long before they became employees. She didn’t doubt that, when she really needed them, especially as they got nearer to relaunching in July, they’d come through for her.

‘By the way, I went through the books last night,’ Verity said, which proved Posy’s point. Only a true friend would spend her Tuesday evening going through her friend’s accounts, especially when Masterchef was on. ‘Now, I don’t want to cause panic, or maybe we should panic a bit, but you really should have a chat with Lavinia’s accountant. And I think we’re going to have to move the relaunch forward. Do you want tea or coffee?’

‘Tea, please,’ Posy said, distracted. ‘Forward, not back? I thought the end of July was pushing it.’

Nina melted away with a horrified look and a murmur about chasing some outstanding orders as if the word ‘accountant’ had put the wind up her.

‘We’re barely breaking even,’ said Verity. ‘The shop’s been so quiet lately, and if we leave it much longer, we’ll be in the red and you’ll have to see if you can get an emergency overdraft.’ She put a mug of tea down in front of Posy. ‘Sorry. Hate to hit you with this first thing.’

‘Oh God, it’s not your fault.’ Posy sighed and wrapped her fingers around the mug as if she could leach some of its warmth to heat up her heart, which was gripped in an icy chokehold. ‘Um, should I get an emergency overdraft?’

‘I don’t think so, unless you want to get clobbered with fees and charges.’

It was then that Posy knew the shop must be in a bad way, because Verity enveloped her in a quick, perfunctory but very sincere hug despite the fact Verity was the least huggy person Posy knew.

‘I think it’s time to bring in the big guns, Posy,’ Verity said, picking up her own mug.

Posy could feel her skin grow clammy. ‘You don’t mean what I think you mean …?’

‘Afraid so.’ Verity nodded grimly. ‘A wall planner, a variety of coloured gel pens and stickers, and several packets of biscuits.’

‘Oh, say it isn’t so!’ The last time they’d needed to call on the services of a wall planner and stickers had been when they were organising a week of events for Bookends centenary. Posy remembered now, with a pang, that was the last time they’d strung fairy lights from the trees in the courtyard. The big one hundredth birthday party bash had spilled outside and it had been like the old days. But then they’d toasted to absent friends and Posy had retreated back inside the shop to be with her ghosts; her mother, her father except Lavinia had got there first and was sitting forlornly on one of the sofas.

‘How I miss Perry,’ she’d said when she glanced up to find Posy hovering in the shop doorway, not wanting to intrude. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever get used to him not being here.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Posy had said and she hoped those two words conveyed that she had some small understanding of the measure of Lavinia’s grief. ‘Do you want to be alone, because I can go if …’

Lavinia had shaken her head. ‘You can stay if you promise to be very, very quiet.’

So Posy had sat down next to Lavinia, taken the older woman’s hand, stroked her papery soft skin, and neither of them had said a word, because words didn’t need to be said.

But before that, there had been a wall planner and so many arguments over which stickers to use and how long each task added to the planner might take that Lavinia had got as cross as Posy had ever seen her and told Posy and Verity (who’d only started at Bookends the month before) that she’d knock their heads together if they didn’t stop.

And yet now Verity thought that a wall planner was exactly what was needed.

‘It’s the only way,’ Verity pleaded. ‘Come on, you know it makes sense.’

Posy put up a spirited defence, but Verity was having none of it. She despatched Posy to the nearest stationery shop for supplies and to lovely Stefan’s deli for sweet treats to keep their energy levels up, because Verity refused to leave the back office. ‘I have stuff to do and I’m not emotionally equipped to deal with the general public or even lovely Stefan today.’

‘You feel like that every day,’ Posy groused, but she did as she was told. For someone so introverted, Verity was exceedingly good at getting her own way. Once she was outside, though, Posy was pleased of the chance to clear her head before being sequestered in the back office for the rest of the day.

They started their wall planner scheduling with the best intentions, designating coloured stickers for different aspects of the relaunch: green for stock, blue for redecorating and so on. Verity, because she was able to write in teeny tiny letters, wrote every single task down on the chart, no matter how mundane.

It all began to go pear-shaped when Tom, who was meant to be working that afternoon, phoned in sick, though he didn’t sound sick so much as hungover. When you’d worked with someone for over three years you got to know the difference, though short of demanding a doctor’s note there wasn’t much Posy could do about it.

‘Don’t suppose you can cover the lunchtime rush then go home an hour early to make up for it?’ Posy asked Nina.

‘No, I can’t! I have plans,’ Nina snapped, as if Posy was the most tyrannical of employers, which she didn’t think she was. ‘I have a life outside this shop, you know.’

The reason for Nina’s defensive behaviour strolled into Bookends at five to one. Piers Brocklehurst, bold as brass, in his too-loud pinstripe suit and a pink shirt (much more garish than Sebastian’s pink shirt) which clashed with his florid complexion.

‘Really?’ Posy raised her eyebrows at Nina, who was frantically gathering jacket and bag so she wouldn’t have to suffer Posy’s scrutiny for a moment longer than was absolutely necessary. ‘Him? What about the other guy? The one who came round with Sebastian that you HookApped with?’

‘HookUpp, not HookApp! And what about him? I like to have more than one string to my beaux, you know that. I’m too young to be tied down,’ Nina hissed while Piers strode around as if he owned the place, eyes assessing their square footage as if were calculating how much he could flog it for.

‘We meet again, Miss Morland,’ he said, not bothering to hide his disdain. ‘You heard from Thorndyke lately? He’s a hard chap to get hold of.’

If only that were true, Posy thought to herself, and Sebastian really was an elusive creature instead of a nuisance who burst into the shop on practically a daily basis. ‘Oh? So he hasn’t told you that we’re Grade Two listed then?’ Posy enquired sweetly. ‘Not just us but the whole Mews.’

‘On what planet are you Grade Two listed?’

‘Enough of that,’ Nina said sharply as she came out from behind the counter in a cloud of Chanel No. 5. ‘I’m sure we can think of more exciting things to talk about than Bookends.’

Posy put a hand to her heart, as though she’d been stabbed. And in a way she had, but Nina gave a firm shake of her head as if to say ‘Not now.’

‘So, what do you fancy for lunch? Something hot and spicy?’ Piers pretended to lunge at Nina, who giggled and skidded away from him on the four-inch heels that she hadn’t been wearing that morning.

‘Oh, you naughty boy,’ she cooed huskily, and they left, Nina still giggling as Piers put a hand on her bottom to steer her out the door.

‘Oh, Nina,’ Posy said out loud as the door closed behind them. ‘You have the worst taste in men.’

‘The absolute worst,’ came the echo from the back office where Verity was still waiting. ‘Come on, let’s get this done.’

It was very hard to get it done when people would insist on coming into the shop on their lunch break to buy books. Since Verity absolutely refused to take a turn behind the till, it was left to Posy to man the shop for almost two hours until Nina finally came back from lunch.

She turned up shortly before three with her red lipstick smudged and her hair, currently lilac, a birds’ nest rather than the beehive it had been before lunch.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ she muttered as she came through the door and saw the queue of people waiting to pay and Posy doing battle with a stubborn new till roll. ‘I should have told you about Piers and I should have been back an hour ago. I’ll totally work late.’

‘There’s not much point,’ Posy said in a tight voice because she didn’t want to argue in front of the customers. There was already a lot of collective muttering about how long it was taking her to change the till roll. ‘It’s not like we’re going to stay open an hour later, is it?’

‘I suppose not,’ Nina said meekly. ‘I’ll go and make tea, shall I?’

By the time Nina was settled at the counter with a mug of tea and her comfy Converse back on, Sam was home from school and in a chatty mood for once and it was gone five when Posy was able to rejoin Verity in the back office.

Then she really wished she hadn’t. ‘Very!’ Posy gasped. ‘What have you done?’

Verity clutched her hair. ‘I might have gone a bit overboard on the stickers.’

‘You think?’

The period from the beginning of March through to the start of July, when they were meant to reopen as Happy Ever After, were obscured by a sea of stickers. There were stickers on stickers. There were colours of stickers that Posy didn’t even remember buying.

‘What do the purple stickers represent?’ she asked. ‘And the gold?’

‘I don’t even know any more,’ Verity admitted. ‘And also I’ve realised that I should have added the stickers after a task’s been completed, not before. A whole afternoon wasted.’

‘Not wasted. I mean, it’s good to see … Wow! Just how much stuff we have to do in a few short weeks.’

This was Verity’s cue to leap in with a stirring pep talk. Except stirring pep talks weren’t Verity’s thing. ‘Shall we take some money out of petty cash and buy a bottle of wine?’ was the best she could offer.

‘God, yes!’

Thirty minutes later they were halfway down a bottle of very cheap, very acidic Cabernet Sauvignon while Nina provided a reproachful running commentary as she closed up the shop. ‘It’s OK, I didn’t want any wine,’ she called out. ‘I’ll just sweep the floor, shall I?’

Posy and Verity ignored her as they tried to peel off the stickers one by one, though the stickers proved very resistant. It was as if the stickers were a metaphor for … something. It didn’t bode well for a successful relaunch if they couldn’t even master a wall chart between them.

‘What’s wrong with us? We both have university degrees,’ Posy muttered.

‘Maybe it would be easier if we did a spreadsheet on the computer?’ Verity mused, but Posy was saved from having to reply by the shop door being opened so violently that it crashed back on its hinges.

There was only one person who entered a building like that.

‘Hello, Tattoo Girl, why the glum face? No! No need to answer, I’m not really that interested. Is Morland around?’

Posy prayed that Nina would make up for her earlier misdemeanours by lying for her. No such luck.

‘Yup, she’s in the back office,’ Nina informed Sebastian cheerfully.

It was time to have a chat with Nina about her attitude. On second thoughts, Posy would rather wrestle spreadsheets.

She barely had time to arrange her features into a less scowly configuration before Sebastian burst into the office. He immediately took up every centimetre of spare space as Posy and Verity both shrank back on their chairs, which they’d pulled out from behind the big old-fashioned desk in the centre of the room so they could sit in front of their wall planner and gaze at it in dismay.

‘There you are! You look sulky too. What is it with you women?’ Sebastian didn’t look sulky, but inordinately pleased with himself. ‘Is this a hormonal thing? Have your cycles …’

‘Please don’t finish that sentence,’ Posy begged. She lolled back on the swivel chair. ‘What are you doing here? Again.’

‘I needed to measure things. Across the yard,’ Sebastian said, a flimsy excuse if ever Posy had heard one. ‘Also I wanted to try out my new digital tape measure. It works off a laser.’

Boys and their toys. ‘Does it?’ Posy asked, not that she cared. ‘Oh my God, are you pointing that thing at my breasts?’

Sebastian hastily tucked it away in his pocket. ‘Of course not. Honestly, Morland, you’re quite obsessed with the idea that I’m obsessed with your breasts, which I’m not.’ He did shoot them a sideways glance though, perhaps to check that they were still there. Posy folded her arms. ‘Anyway, now that I’m here, I thought we could discuss our crime bookshop. Shall we call in Tattoo Girl so we can have that brainstorm?’

‘I have a name!’ Nina yelled from the shop, while Verity leaned over in her chair so she could bang her forehead gently against the wall.

Posy pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘Since when did it become our bookshop? It’s mine,’ she began, then realised she didn’t have the energy to do this now. ‘Not going to specialise in crime either,’ she couldn’t resist adding though.

‘Now, we’ve been through this,’ Sebastian said. ‘It was decided. You know it makes sense.’

‘It makes no sense. I was only humouring you, you must realise that.’ Posy and Verity exchanged glances. After four years they could convey all sorts of nuanced messages merely by a twitch of the lips or the faint arching of an eyebrow. This look said quite clearly, ‘I cannot even deal with him right now’ and ‘Do you want me to kill him for you and make it look like an accident?’ Posy shook her head and decided to try again. ‘I’m reopening as a romance bookshop. Get used to it, Sebastian.’

Sebastian took hold of Posy’s chair, stopping her swinging from left to right in a desultory fashion, so he could stare deep into her eyes. Up close, Posy could see that Sebastian, damn him, had a flawless complexion. Not a single open pore, not one solitary blackhead. It was the first time she’d been close enough to Sebastian to notice that his eyes weren’t simply brown; his pupils were surrounded by flecks of green and his nearness was disturbing. ‘I can’t let you do that, Morland,’ he said. ‘Even I’m not that callous.’

Aesthetically pleasing he might be, but Sebastian was also incredibly annoying. It must have been God’s way of redressing the balance. ‘Is there some reason why you’re all up in my face?’ Posy pushed Sebastian away and he was about to say something, she knew he was, but then he caught sight of the wall planner and his eyes widened as he took a step back in alarm.

‘My God, what is that? An explosion in a sticker factory?’

‘It’s our schedule,’ Verity explained. ‘For the shop reopening. You know, Posy, I think we’re going to have to buy another wall planner and start again. You’ll have to be in charge of the stickers though.’

‘I’m going to have a bash at doing a spreadsheet tonight,’ Posy said, levering herself up from the chair, which took a superhuman effort. ‘It’s impossible to try and do it during the day when I keep getting pulled away to help in the shop.’

‘Oh, you can do spreadsheets?’ Verity and Sebastian both asked with the same note of incredulity, which was incredibly hurtful.

‘Of course I can!’ Posy insisted. ‘So it’s about time I was left in peace to get on with it. Haven’t you both got homes to go to?’

*

Later that evening, with the aid of Google and a fortifying cheese toastie, Posy attempted to master the art of spreadsheets, but it proved difficult with Sam around.

He sat next to Posy on the sofa to make sure that she didn’t inflict any damage on the laptop that she’d bought with her own money although Sam seemed to think it belonged only to him.

‘Do you really want to do that?’ he’d ask every time Posy so much as right-clicked. ‘Oh dear, I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’ And, ‘Posy! What have I told you about eating and drinking while using the laptop? You’re getting crumbs all over the keyboard.’

It was a relief to see that she had email, even if it was from Sebastian – and thankfully Sam didn’t object to the way Posy navigated her inbox.

Posy idly noted that, unlike her potential internet suitors, Sebastian’s use of capital letters and grammar was exemplary. However the thought was soon lost as she surfed a tsunami of absolute rage that had her biting her tongue as she took an angry lunge at her cheese toastie.

Then she was off the sofa (and it absolutely pained Posy to remember that she’d remarked to Sam only the night before that it was a relief to be able to collapse on the sofa without worrying about puncture wounds) so she could stand in the middle of the living room and actually flail her arms in fury. She could have kept it up for some time, but Sam was looking at her in alarm so she clamped her arms by her sides and sat down heavily.

Posy knew where her strengths lay and that was in hand-selling romantic novels. She was also good at creating eye-catching window displays, and more recently sourcing book-related gift items for the shop. Only yesterday, she’d found a candle maker up in Lancashire who had a whole range of scented candles with romantic names like Love, Bliss, and Joy, who did very competitive trade prices and, more importantly, had promised to send Posy some free samples.

Her strengths didn’t lie in organisation and planning. And though Verity was great at doing the accounts and sending stern letters to people who owed them money, this morning all the colour had leeched from her face as she’d talked about moving up the relaunch date and emergency overdrafts. And who could blame Verity for being skittish? She’d never relaunched anything before. None of them had.

If they tried to do it themselves on such a short timeframe with absolutely no funds to invest, it would be like every single episode of Grand Designs Posy had ever seen. Cue hapless couple planning to build a huge carbon-neutral house over a slurry pit on a budget of five quid, and Kevin McCloud asking if they were using a project manager. The hapless couple, who had absolutely no experience of putting together even an IKEA flatpack, would insist that they were going to project manage the build themselves.

Then Kevin McCloud would laugh hollowly and for the next hour berate them for not having a project manager.

Posy didn’t want a half-finished, half-arsed bookshop and an out-of-control budget, all because she’d turned down a project manager.

Sam had requisitioned the laptop while she was having her flailing episode, but Posy managed to prise his fingers free and take ownership of it again so she could reply to Sebastian’s message.

For a digital entrepreneur and serial womaniser, Sebastian really wasn’t very busy that evening because he emailed her back almost immediately.

Pippa sounded quite terrifying, but she also sounded exactly what Posy needed when she needed her most. Pippa could turn their problems into solutions.

First, there was the issue of Sebastian believing in his deluded way that they were opening a crime bookshop.

There was also the hurdle of the brainstorming session that Sebastian seemed to think they needed but that didn’t have to be a big deal. They could just do what they’d done at the last brainstorm, only replace the word ‘romance’ with ‘crime’. If that was what it took to acquire a project manager, then Posy was happy to go along with the charade. Hopefully Pippa would be more involved with logistics and the bigger picture than asking awkward questions about how many crime novels Jilly Cooper had written.

And really, it was Sebastian’s own fault for not listening no matter how many times Posy told him that Bookends was to become the place to go for romantic novels.

He only had himself to blame.