The day after their spectacular row, Posy had half expected Sebastian to burst into the shop and act as if nothing catastrophic had ever happened. ‘Oh, Morland, as if I’d set all manner of legal nasties on you,’ he’d drawl.
Posy would even have welcomed Sebastian banging on about The Bloody Dagger, but his silence was deafening. His absence palpable. He had been around an awful lot lately, most days in fact, and now he was gone. Probably marshalling an army of expensive lawyers to wrest control of the shop and evict Posy and Sam. It didn’t bear thinking about.
Not that Sam seemed at all concerned about the uncertainty of their future. Nina had told Sophie all about the row when she’d popped in to pick up her wages. Sophie had then told Sam, who was more worried that Sebastian might call a halt to his work experience than the fate of the shop.
‘Sebastian’s in a terrible mood,’ Sam had reported back the next day. ‘He’s shut himself in his office and when he does come out, everything’s wrong from the taste of his coffee to the latest app he has in development. I told you it was wrong to lie to him,’ he’d added piously, which was rich coming from Sam, who regularly lied about the state of his coursework, but even so, Posy knew that he was right.
Posy had emailed Pippa: ‘I tried to PPM Sebastian but it went horribly, horribly wrong. Sebastian’s upset and furious. I’m upset and furious too, but also so sorry that I let things go so far. I know I’ve put you in an awkward situation, but could you try to explain my point of view?’
It was no use. Posy had received an out-of-office auto-reply informing her that Pippa wasn’t responding to emails as she was in Vancouver taking part in a fully immersive global think-tank on the future of global think-tanks.
Anyway, there wasn’t much time to worry about the Sebastian situation as Posy’s life was pretty immersive too. Her days largely consisted of meetings with sales reps, publicists, marketeers and editors. It should have been thrilling, because Posy had never been the kind of person who had meetings before, but it wasn’t thrilling. None of it. Especially the meeting she’d had with the business advisor at the bank, who’d looked over Verity’s painstaking cash-flow projections with a jaundiced eye, told them that as things stood the business couldn’t survive another six months, then asked them if they wanted to extend their overdraft limit.
It was now mid-April. The skies over Bloomsbury were a glorious duck-egg blue and the trees that lined the squares had burst into pink and white blossoms, but for Posy the world was as grey and bleak as it had been in the days after Lavinia died.
She had the same sense of impending doom, a creeping menace, a feeling that all her endeavours were doomed. Sam had just come back from Wales, where he’d stayed with their grandparents for the bulk of the Easter holidays so he could drive them mad by starting every sentence with the words, ‘Yeah, well, Sebastian says …’ Posy had fondly imagined that, without Sam around to cook and care for, she could easily get on with what needed to be done. And yet she hadn’t managed to get so much as halfway there.
Posy tried to ignore the new and nagging voice in her head that told her in no uncertain terms that the shop wouldn’t be ready to reopen as Happy Ever After in just over two weeks’ time. Then it was two weeks. Then one week and six days. The countdown was on, the clock was ticking, and there was so much to do and Posy hadn’t even started painting yet.
Mindful of the conversation she’d heard between Greg and Dave, Posy had done some judicious googling and confirmed that it was necessary to apply primer to the shelves before painting them. She had never fully appreciated how many shelves there were, let alone how much primer would be needed to cover them. And then she had to wait for each shelf to dry before she could start painting. And of course, Posy hadn’t thought to buy the quick-dry primer. Sebastian was right, she was a ridiculous woman who couldn’t do anything properly.
Then there were the vintage display cabinets that Posy had bought on eBay, even though Verity had said that they couldn’t afford them. It now transpired that the cabinets had somehow disappeared halfway down the M1.
The outside of the shop still had to be painted too, before the signwriter could arrive and there were boxes and boxes of books as far as the eye could see, waiting to be arranged on shelves that were sitting empty, waiting for the primer to dry.
Nina and Verity helped as much as they could. Such was the severity of the crisis that Verity had agreed to answer the phone and Nina had selflessly forgone her wiggle dresses and turned up for work in jeans and a T-shirt (‘like a normal,’ she’d said mournfully) so she could help with the painting once Posy was finally ready to open the first tin of grey paint.
‘I don’t know why we’re bothering,’ Posy said as she and Nina started to paint the shelves in the furthest anteroom to the right. ‘I mean, Sebastian could march in here any day now with an eviction notice, and all this would have been in vain.’
‘He won’t do that,’ Nina said, though she didn’t sound that convinced. ‘What would Sebastian want with a bookshop?’
‘We’re not going to be ready.’ It sounded so much worse when Posy said it out loud, instead of it just being the first thought she had when she woke up and the last thing she worried about before she finally fell into a fitful doze every night. ‘I don’t see how we can do all the things that need to be done. We’re already a week behind schedule.’
‘Oh, it’ll be fine. We’ll work late. I can stay over on your sofa if I have to, and who needs sleep anyway?’ Nina raised her paint-roller aloft, splattering grey paint everywhere. ‘Sleep is for losers!’
The next day the interview Posy had done with The Bookseller hit the news-stands.
It made everything that much more real. That much more terrifying. They’d reached the point of no return several weeks before and were now on a collision course with failure, so seeing her plans, her dreams, in print made Posy feel like she was hurtling through space without anything tangible to grip on to.
ICONIC LONDON BOOKSHOP GETS A NEW LEASE OF LOVE
Romance is in the air at Bookends, the Bloomsbury bookshop beloved of the capital’s bibliophiles.
From 7 May, the shop founded by Lady Agatha Drysdale, Suffragette and literary hostess in 1912, will start trading as Happy Ever After, ‘a one-stop shop for all your romantic fiction needs’, according to Posy Morland, who was bequeathed the shop after the death of Agatha’s daughter Lavinia Thorndyke, Bookends’ charismatic owner, in February of this year.
A lover of Regency romances, in particular Georgette Heyer, Posy has overseen a thorough redesign of the shop, its famously cavernous interior now made more navigable so that readers will be able to easily find their romantic fix, whether it’s Jane Austen or Jackie Collins, YA or erotica. Happy Ever After will also have a larger online presence and carry a range of exclusive branded items including tote bags, stationery and specially commissioned scented candles. The relaunch will kick off with a week-long Festival of Romance, including author events, a bloggers’ tea party and a champagne reception. The tearoom attached to the shop, which has been closed for several years, is also set to reopen before the end of the summer.
‘All the greatest art and literature is inspired by love and I think, when times are hard, there is no better cure than reading a novel that will guarantee you a happy ever after,’ Posy says. ‘Although the shop will have a different name, a different owner and different stock, I still think of it as a family business. That’s why I’m so happy that Sebastian, Lavinia’s grandson (Sebastian Thorndyke, digital entrepreneur and creator of HookApp), is involved with the shop. He’s been instrumental in developing the online side of the business, along with my younger brother, Sam.
‘With Happy Ever After, the ethos of Bookends will live on; that we find our best friends, our best selves, in the pages of the books that we love the most.’
It was a very positive piece, though Posy wished that it had been spiked and never run. She could also have lived without the photograph of herself smiling gummily in one of the new Happy Ever After T-shirts she was insisting all the staff wore. Even Nina, who was very put out about the whole business and the effect it would have on her Fifties pin-up girl aesthetic.
As soon as the article went online, Posy was deluged with an avalanche of emails and phone calls from book editors, bloggers, friends who toiled away in other bookshops, and even literary luminaries that Posy had only ever gawped at from afar at industry parties. Not one single person took her to task for desecrating the memory of Bookends with her tawdry romance novels. ‘I know Lavinia would be very, very proud of you, my dear,’ one of Lavinia’s friends, a publishing grande dame, had emailed Posy. ‘I can’t wait to visit Happy Ever After and buy my granddaughter her first Georgette Heyers.’
It should have spurred Posy on. She should have channelled her inner Pippa and reminded herself that quitters never win and winners never quit. That she owed it to the spirit of Bookends and the memory of Lavinia and her parents to push on through. But it didn’t.
It was too late for that and time for a reality check. Posy stepped out of the back office, walked over to the door, locked it with icy cold hands then flipped the sign to closed.
Tom was behind the counter. ‘It’s only half four,’ he said. ‘Though I suppose we’re not busy and we’ve hardly got any stock out to sell. Do you want me to grab a paint roller?’
Posy shook her head. Even that small movement was enough to dislodge a few tears that she’d been trying to hold back. She turned slightly so Tom couldn’t see her wet cheeks. ‘No. We’re meeting on the sofas in five minutes.’
It actually took less than a minute for them to assemble with matching expressions of gravitas and for Posy to surreptitiously scrub at her face with a tissue. ‘What’s up, boss?’ Nina asked. ‘If you want me to work late again, I can. I’m meant to be meeting some random for a quick drink, but I don’t mind bailing. Not at all.’
Posy shook her head again. This time she was determined to keep the tears reined in. ‘No, you don’t need to work late. None of you do, because even if you did, we’re never going to be ready to reopen. We can’t … I can’t do this.’ Posy could feel the throb in her throat, her head and heart pounding in unison and her eyes were smarting because the tears weren’t that far off again. About two minutes away, she reckoned. ‘The big relaunch: it’s not going to happen on Monday.’ Her voice caught on the last word.
‘But it has to,’ Verity breathed. ‘We have a week’s worth of events booked, and our finances are already stretched to breaking point as—’
‘I know, but it’s Friday afternoon. Even if we worked flat out all weekend, there’s no way the shop will be finished. It’s not just the painting; we haven’t even started work outside and I’ve had to postpone the signwriter twice already. We haven’t inventoried the new stock, never mind shelved it. The display cabinets are still MIA … It’s a mess. The whole thing’s an absolute shambles. And what does it even matter when Sebastian bloody Thorndyke could waltz in here at any moment and take the shop away?’
‘Maybe you could see a lawyer?’ Tom said, like Posy hadn’t thought about that herself. It had occurred to her, but any lawyer that she could afford would be no match for the legions of fancy lawyers Sebastian must keep on retainer.
‘We could get the main room ready and do the other rooms bit by bit,’ Nina suggested in a weak voice, because they all knew it was a half-arsed solution to a full-blown problem.
‘I’m sorry. I’ve let you all down. I’m a terrible boss. I should never have agreed to take the shop on.’ Posy didn’t get any further than that, not because she was suddenly crying so hard that she couldn’t talk, but because she was also suddenly enveloped in a group hug. Squashed against Nina’s bosoms, which had to be getting soggy from the tears now flowing unchecked, her head resting on Tom’s shoulders, while Verity, who didn’t do group hugging, kept patting Posy’s back and saying, ‘There, there.’
They left soon after that. Posy insisted. There was nothing to be done and Sam was loitering in Camden with a posse of school friends and wouldn’t be back until he’d run out of money and was hungry, so Posy was on her own in the empty shop.
Bookends. It had always been her happiest place. Her safe haven. But all that had changed. Now its lovely homely smell of books had been eradicated by the overpowering, catch-in-the-back-of-the-throat stench of fresh paint. Its shelves were bare. Its nooks and crannies were obscured by boxes of books and stationery.
You always destroy the things you love. Posy had read that once somewhere and it was so true. In trying to turn Bookends into something new, she’d destroyed its spirit; that special and unique feeling it had always had so that whenever Posy had walked through the door, it felt as if she were home.
That wasn’t all that had been lost. Posy couldn’t believe how much she could miss someone who spent most of his time being an absolute thorn in her side. A Thorndyke in her side. Couldn’t believe that she’d only just realised that she missed him …
Posy nearly jumped out of her skin as someone tapped on the door. She saw a tall figure and her heart salmon-leapt, then sank back to its usual place.
It was only Piers Brocklehurst. The very last person she wanted to see. Or, at least, one of the top five people Posy didn’t want to see.
She unlocked the door. ‘Nina’s not here,’ she said by way of a greeting. ‘Anyway, I thought she’d dumped you.’
Piers smiled cagily. But then he did everything cagily. ‘I’m not here to see Nina. It’s more of a business call.’
Posy had been staring down at his Gucci loafers. There was something about a man who didn’t wear socks with his shoes that squicked her out, but his words jolted her out of her reverie and she raised a troubled face to his.
‘I thought you and Sebastian had called it quits.’
Piers’ smile upgraded to something so sinister that it should have come with a parental advisory warning. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that exactly. In fact, Sebastian is why I’m here.’
It went from bad to worse to absolutely catastrophic. ‘Sebastian sent you? I don’t believe it!’
Posy had been expecting a notice to quit the premises from Sebastian’s lawyers. Or, worse, a bunch of heavies turning up to evict her and Sam there and then, so they could change the locks and board the place up.
She’d half-hoped that Sebastian would come in person so she could try to reason with him. Not that reason and Sebastian were on speaking terms, which was obviously why he thought it was fine to send Piers around to do his dirty work.
‘That man is something else!’ Posy exclaimed. ‘Can’t even deliver the bad news in person.’
Piers’ usually smug face momentarily assumed a discomfited expression, but then he shrugged. ‘Thorndyke always was a deeply suspect sort.’
‘I expected better from him,’ Posy said, because there had still been that certainty deep in her gut that Sebastian would relent. See the error of his high-handed ways. So much for her gut feeling!
‘Look, I know this is hideously awkward, but can I come in? Take a few measurements?’ Piers was already in, sidling past Posy. ‘It’s all right, you’ll hardly know I’m here.’
Then, as Posy stood there blinking, he was moving past the counter and into the back office.
‘Oi!’ She half-heartedly shouted then decided to … just not. Let Piers do his worst with his tape measure. What did it matter how long or wide things were when he and Sebastian planned to tear the whole building down anyway?
Except, wasn’t it meant to be listed? And why was she letting this happen? To lose her home and her livelihood and the place where she had all the best memories of her parents and Lavinia …
Lavinia would never have stood for this, Posy thought, glancing at the photo of her and Perry on the central table. Neither would Posy’s parents. And if she did stand for this, or rather did nothing and let Sebastian walk all over her, then she was letting them all down. Desecrating their memory. God, how ashamed they’d be if they could see her now. How disappointed they’d be that Posy let a little thing like a few unpainted bookshelves defeat her.
She’d been down for so long that it felt odd to feel something else. Something that flamed in her belly and made Posy clench her fists and her toes.
They could still relaunch on Monday. If Posy and the rest of the staff worked like dogs all weekend, they could get the main room and maybe the anterooms on the right done, and curtain off the left-hand side of the shop that led to the tearoom.
It wouldn’t be the all-singing, all-dancing grand reopening Posy had envisaged, but it would do. And as for Sebastian bloody Thorndyke, he wasn’t taking her shop away. Posy shook her head decisively. She’d do another piece for The Bookseller denouncing Sebastian. Get the whole of literary London to join her cause. Start a petition, a Kickstarter, a campaign to keep the shop in the hands of the woman who loved it.
And if the worst came to the worst, then Posy would channel the shop’s first owner, the honourable Agatha, and chain herself to the front door in true Suffragette style.
But first she had a shop to get ready for reopening on Monday morning.
‘Piers?’ As soon as she called his name, he popped his head through the archway on the right.
‘What’s up?’ He knitted his brow together. ‘You’re very flushed. Has this come as a nasty shock? Well, time you found out what Thorndyke’s really like.’
Posy would have sworn that she knew what Thorndyke was like. That underneath the bluster and the bravado, he wasn’t that bad, just really, really irritating. And hadn’t Nina said that Piers was actually more evil than bad? As Posy recalled Nina’s pithy summing up of the man she’d been on two dates with, suddenly Piers’ smile seemed quite snake-like and his slicked-back hair and dead eyes gave him the look of a cartoon villain. Posy felt a frisson of fear. And then she remembered that other nonsense, which she’d never got to the bottom of, about Piers trying to dig up some dirt on her …
She pushed the frisson of fear away. Verity might not be able to deal with Piers, but she could. ‘You have to leave,’ Posy said firmly. ‘I don’t care what Sebastian says, I’m not budging. Bookends is opening for business as Happy Ever After on Monday morning if it kills me.’
‘No offence, but you don’t look like you’ll be ready to reopen on Monday as anything,’ Piers said silkily.
Posy waved an airy hand about her. ‘Pfffttt! Of course we will!’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘Now I don’t mean to be rude but I’ve got loads to do, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to kick you out.’ Posy hoped her smile would take the sting out of her words, not that she really cared either way.
She moved towards the door. Piers moved with her. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘I really do. Good on you for standing up to Thorndyke. About time someone did.’
‘I know!’ Posy agreed in a surprised voice, as she would never have imagined Piers to be an ally. Nevertheless, she followed him out of the door so she could be sure he was on his merry way. ‘He’s such a bully! Flouncing about, issuing orders, never listening to anything anyone says. Who does he think he is?’
‘And those poncy suits of his,’ Piers snorted. ‘I don’t get what women see in him.’
‘Not this woman!’
‘You know, you’ve got class, Posy. Not like Nina. All arse and no class, that one,’ Piers said. And they’d been getting on so well too.
Posy gave Piers her most crushing look. ‘That’s an awful thing to say about any woman, but especially one of my clo—’
‘What’s down here?’ Piers wasn’t listening to her, which prompted a tiny pang as Posy thought of the other person who never listened to her. He pointed to the hatch, secured by two weather-beaten wooden doors, in front of the shop’s big bay windows. ‘Does that lead down to a cellar?’
‘What?’ Posy glanced to her left. ‘Oh, that’s the coal-hole. No! Don’t unlatch the doors. There’s nothing to see in there. Please, Piers! I said not to open it! What is it with you men who never listen?’
Piers had opened the hatch and was now peering into the black abyss of the coal-hole. ‘There is something in there.’
Posy shuddered. ‘Yeah – spiders. Come on, close the door now.’
‘What’s that thing in the corner? Something shiny?’
Against her better judgement, Posy crept closer to squint into the gloom. ‘Probably an old display stand. Come away from— Ooooooof!’
A sudden push and Posy pitched forwards, hands outstretched, into the blackness. She landed on her hands and knees, the wind knocked right out of her, dust between her fingers, under her nails, in her mouth so she coughed frantically, cobwebs brushing against her face, her hair. She awkwardly pivoted around and tried to scramble to her feet but before she could ask Piers what the hell he was playing at, Posy had one brief glimpse of the gloating look of triumph on his face, then the doors slammed shut on her.
‘Let me out!’ Posy shouted, her words echoing back at her. ‘This isn’t funny, Piers!’
There was no reply.
The last time she’d been locked in the coal-hole, which only opened from the outside, she’d been small enough that she could stand upright, but Posy was too tall to do that now. Best she could manage was a stooped crouch. It really was a hole too – couldn’t even give itself airs and pretend to be a room or a cellar – a small underground antechamber to store coal and, latterly, boxes of crap that Posy didn’t know what else to do with.
The air was dank and damp, not that there was much air. Posy sat down, legs splayed in front of her. She couldn’t see a thing, but from the smarting and stinging she could tell that she’d scraped her palms and knees, her jeans were torn, and there was a distinct possibility that she only had enough oxygen to last a few more minutes.
Then she felt something slither over her hand where it rested on the floor. Something slithery and spidery and when she strained her ears, she was sure she could hear the skittering of claws. Rat claws. She screamed then. It was a weedy, reedy scream because Posy had already had the wind knocked out of her when Piers pushed her to her doom.
Because, oh God, even if she didn’t suffocate down here, she’d be eaten alive by spiders and rats. They’d find her bloodied, gnawed-on corpse days from now. Maybe the rats would go to town on her so hard that she’d have to be identified by her dental records. She squeezed her eyes shut so hard that she saw stars dance across her vision, closely followed by the heart-wrenching scenes that would ensue when the coal-hole doors were opened.
The grisly discovery. The forensic people, bringing out a pile of bones picked clean by the rats – all that remained of the person formerly known as Posy Morland. Sam having to be held back by Pants and Little Sophie as he tried to embrace what was left of his beloved sister. Nina and Verity, clutching each other for support and sobbing. Tom, a broken man, rocking helplessly to and fro. Sebastian clad all in black, his features harsh and unforgiving, vowing to the heavens that he would avenge Posy’s death.
The stars danced away as Posy shook her head in disbelief. What was wrong with her? Writing Ravished by the Rake had ruined Posy. She’d become so melodramatic. No one, let alone Sebastian, was going to avenge her death.
Because Posy was going to choose life. Today was not the day that she was going to die from rat bites. Or from lack of oxygen. She had far too much to do for one thing.
By now, her eyes were adjusting to the darkness, able to make out indistinct shapes, and her gaze hit upon an old stool that had been consigned to the coal-hole after Sam’s last-but-one growth spurt. It had metal legs. It would do.
Steeling herself and praying that she wouldn’t come nose to nose with a rat, Posy got as upright as she could then hobbled over to the far corner, picked up the stool and scuttled back to the hatch doors. There were no sounds of life from outside. Not even the echo of Piers’ mocking laughter.
‘Let me out!’ she tried one last time, but Piers was either long gone or doing God knows what to the shop. Tom had cheerfully told her about a Grade Two-listed pub in Oxford that had been burned to the ground by a property developer who’d had his plans to build a block of flats in its place turned down by the council. ‘You let me out right this minute!’
All that wood! All the books! The shop would burn to the ground in seconds!
Posy took a deep breath, ignored the pain in her hands and knees, summoned up every ounce of strength that she possessed and swung the stool at the coal-hole doors as hard as she could.
They remained defiantly shut, no matter how hard and often Posy banged at them. Eventually she had to put the stool down so she could catch her breath and get the feeling back in her upper arms. She was just stretching her aching limbs when the doors were suddenly wrenched open and as Posy blinked rapidly, the light making her eyes water, she saw a familiar face gazing down at her.
‘Morland! Thank God, you’re all right!’