After a frantic scrabble to find the thumb drive in the drawer of computer gizmos, Sebastian took it from her and left with a flippant, ‘Don’t go back to sleep now, Morland!’

Sleep was the last thing on Posy’s mind. There was absolutely no way she was ready to snuggle down for the night when Sebastian had awoken all sorts of feelings in her. Feelings she’d wanted so desperately to have with someone like Jens, where there was every possibility that those feelings might be returned. She’d have to tamp them down somehow, as though she was putting out the dying embers of a bonfire, kicking earth over them to stop them smouldering. It was much safer that way.

Besides, sleep wasn’t an option when Sam was cavorting around Camden Town where druggies and hoodies and all sorts of other reprobates roamed. Until he was home, unmugged and unharmed, Posy would have to wait up for him.

She was tempted to fire up her computer and dash off another chapter of Ravished by the Rake, but this evening had proved, beyond all shadow of a doubt, that no good could come of it. While she could give fictional Posy the ending she deserved, real-life Posy knew that there could be a world of pain and suffering lying in wait after the hero and heroine kissed, pledged their undying love then rode off into the sunset together.

So, as Posy walked back upstairs, she abandoned all thought of finding comfort in the pages of a book. Tonight there was no way that would provide the magic cure-all that it usually did. Instead, she took the key that hung on a hook in the kitchen and unlocked the door of her parents’ room.

Posy hadn’t been lying when she told Sebastian that she came in here all the time. But she only ever stayed long enough to run the vacuum over the floor, straighten up things that didn’t need straightening because there was no one around to make a mess. Posy never lingered.

The room was just as her parents had left it, so that if they came back they could slot back into place as if they’d never left. Her mother’s brushes, her make-up, the family photos in frames were still on the dressing table. The book her father had been reading, using an old postcard to mark his place, was still there on his nightstand.

Posy had turned off the radiator a long time ago and, though the day had been warm, the air in the room was cold and stale. She could no longer smell the honeysuckle sweetness of her mother’s perfume, the old-fashioned powdery scent of her father’s hair pomade.

She looked around for one long moment, then took a deep breath, set back her shoulders and vowed to do what she’d never had the courage to do before.

On the top shelf of the wardrobe were shoeboxes stuffed full of photos and birthday cards, Christmas cards, school reports, thank you letters. The old lined exercise books that her father had written his poems in: hundreds of pieces of paper and card, thousands and thousands of words that made up two lives.

Posy had hidden them up here, out of sight, never looked at them, tried not to think about them, but when Sam arrived home, a prompt five minutes before his curfew, he found her sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by memories, and crying so hard that she shook from the force of her sobs.

‘Posy! What are you doing in here?’ At first she hardly heard him, then the panic in his voice, the shrill note that made him sound much younger than fifteen, punctured her grief and she tried to will the tears away, brushing furiously at her damp cheeks with shaking hands. ‘Oh, please, don’t cry.’

Sam was her baby brother. Posy looked after him. She took care of him. Made his health and happiness her number one priority. But tonight it was Sam who knelt down and took Posy in his arms, rocking her gently as he stroked her hair.

It seemed to take forever for her sobs to gradually turn to shuddering breaths. Sam scooched around so he was sitting alongside her, his arm around her shoulders. ‘Are you all right now?’ he asked anxiously.

Posy sniffed, then nodded. ‘Yeah. Oh God, I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have had to see me like that.’

‘It’s OK. I don’t mind,’ Sam said unsteadily. ‘Did something happen?’ His gaze came to rest on the half-empty bottle of Pinot Grigio. ‘Are you drunk?’ he added, in a more accusing tone.

‘Hardly! Sebastian came over earlier and drank some of that. I’ve only had about a glass. Maybe two glasses.’ Posy felt calmer now, like she’d needed a really good weep to blast away the cobwebs.

‘Did he say something to upset you?’ Sam persisted. ‘Because you don’t ever come in here …’

‘Well, I do …’

‘Only to vacuum, and you’re rubbish at vacuuming so it only takes you five minutes. And you’ve got all this stuff out.’ Sam very gently touched the edge of a photo, then snatched his hand away like he’d been burnt. ‘You never get this stuff out.’ He touched the photo again. ‘When was this taken?’

Posy picked up the picture so she could have a better look. ‘It’s the summer ball in their final year at Oxford, so that would have been, um, let me think … 1986.’ Both of them looked so young, not much older than Sam; her father in a second-hand suit and pork-pie hat, her mother in a Fifties ballgown strewn with poppies. ‘They were both twenty-one. Born a month apart. Did you know that? Mum in November, Dad in December.’ A distant memory suddenly floated in front of her and Posy grabbed it with both hands. ‘For one month every year, Dad would tease Mum that she was so much older than him and she’d get cross and say, “Ian, it’s only one bloody month!’’’ She shot Sam a look from under her lashes. ‘Do you think you might go to Oxford? No pressure, but it would be nice to think that you were following in their footsteps.’

Sam bit his lip. No matter that for a short while their positions had been reversed, now he looked very young and unsure as he took the photo from Posy. ‘Sometimes I worry that I’m forgetting what they looked like,’ he said quietly. ‘Cause, like, we don’t have any pictures of them around. I mean, I know why we don’t, because it would upset you, but sometimes it’s hard to remember them.’

They shifted again so now it was Posy with her arm around Sam. She stroked his hair back from his face and then kissed his cheek. He was obviously feeling out of sorts, a bit adrift, because he let Posy fuss over him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s been too painful for me … this is the first time that I’ve looked at any of these things since I packed them away. If I didn’t have any reminders of them, then I thought I wouldn’t miss them so much, that I could just pretend that they weren’t really gone, but I never stopped to think about how that might make you feel. Do you hate me for it?’

‘Course I don’t,’ Sam said stoutly. ‘And anyway I found these videos on YouTube of Dad reading his poetry. In one of them, you can just make out Mum standing by the side of the stage – but I don’t like to watch it too often because it makes me feel sad and weird, and then I understand why you don’t like to talk about them.’

That wasn’t right. ‘Don’t I?’ Posy frowned. ‘I’m sure I do.’

‘No, you don’t, Pose.’

‘How odd. I think about them all the time.’ Posy leaned across to kiss Sam’s cheek again. ‘I’m sorry, Sam, I’ve tried my best but I’ve just been making it up as I go along. You know, if you want to talk about Mum and Dad, if there are things you want to know, don’t ever think you have to keep quiet.’

Sam rested his head on Posy’s shoulder. ‘OK, as long as you promise it won’t upset you. I don’t like it when you cry. Proper crying. I can handle it when you cry because it’s your special lady time.’

They grinned because the last time Posy had had her ‘special lady time’, she’d cried because the oven had started smoking and set off the fire alarm and she’d had to bash it with the broom to make it stop shrieking. Posy stirred through the pile of photos on the floor in front of her. ‘I’ve bottled all this stuff up for too long. It’s not doing either of us any good, is it? We should take a Sunday afternoon to go through all the photos together and pick out our favourites, put them in frames. Anytime you want to look through any of this, you know where the key is.’ As she said the words, Posy realised how stupid they sounded. ‘In fact, there’s no reason to lock the door. It’s so silly.’

‘What about all their stuff? Clothes and things.’ Sam brushed his fringe out of his eyes. ‘Don’t you think it’s about time that we sorted through it?’

Posy waited for the pain to pierce through her, but there was only a dull throb. If she could bear a stranger, Mattie, in the tearoom, then she could easily sort through a room whose occupants were long gone, not coming back to wear their clothes, finish the books they’d started to read. Sebastian had been right when he said that she’d turned her parents’ bedroom into a shrine. She’d been so worried that she’d lose sight of them, but if she carried them with her, filled the flat with photos of their precious faces, shared all her stories with Sam, then they’d always be there.

‘This is an awfully big room,’ Posy noted as she looked around the space. It did seem bigger and emptier now she looked at it properly instead of seeing the two people who used to fill its space.

‘It is, but it shouldn’t take that long,’ Sam said.

‘It’s bigger than both our rooms.’ Posy winced as she levered herself up. She was stiff from sitting for so long. ‘Your room is hardly big enough for a single bed and cupboard. You shouldn’t have to do your homework all hunched up in a tiny gap on the floor.’

‘I don’t mind,’ Sam said. ‘Anyway, sometimes I go downstairs and use the office.’

Posy’s mind was made up. There was nothing sad or painful about the idea she’d just had. In fact, it made perfect sense. ‘You should move in here,’ she said. ‘You could have a proper desk by the window. We’ll get you a new bed too, because it’s not going to be long before your feet dangle off the end of yours, and you’ll have loads of shelf space. You can have your friends over, instead of always having to go round to theirs. What do you think?’

‘But if it would make you feel sad, like you didn’t want to come in here to say goodnight, then I can stay in my room.’ Sam looked around. ‘Though, this is much bigger. Could I paint the walls black?’

There was only so much that Posy could agree to. ‘No, you couldn’t,’ she said aghast. ‘Could you be any more emo? And I’m not doing this out of the goodness of my heart. I can use your old room to put my overflow books in. Might even turn it into a little reading nook.’

‘I’m surprised you don’t want to turn this room into a ginormous reading nook,’ Sam grumbled. ‘Force me out on to the streets, so you can have my room too and use it to store even more books in.’

Posy put a finger to her chin. ‘There’s an idea. How soon can you be gone?’

Sam huffed and rolled his eyes and when Posy caught him by the sleeve and pulled him up into a punishingly tight hug, he tried to wriggle free. ‘I love you,’ she told him fiercely. ‘I love you so much. I will always try to do the right thing by you, even if I get it hideously wrong at times.’

‘Now who’s being emo?’ Sam muttered, but for one second he hugged her back and whispered just as fiercely, ‘I love you too, Pose. I don’t know what my life would have been like if you’d decided you didn’t want to be lumbered with me. And I know I can be a pain in the arse, but I do appreciate everything that you do. Now get off me!’

It might have been the wine, or her crying jag, or maybe it was finally making peace with her grief or sheer exhaustion from too much painting and too much worrying, but Posy slept the sleep of the righteous.

Posy didn’t know what had woken her up, but she was pretty sure she could hear a noise coming from the shop and when she stumbled downstairs, she was amazed to find it full of people.

That wasn’t right. It wasn’t opening time. It was still the middle of the night and she was in her pyjamas and …

‘Mum? Dad?’

There were her parents. Much younger than Posy remembered them. Wearing the clothes they’d worn at that long-ago Oxford summer ball.

‘Posy! There you are!’ It was Lavinia and Perry, younger too, come to life from their photograph that sat on the centre display table.

There was another woman with them. In an old-fashioned dress with a bustle and a sash draped across her chest that said ‘Votes for Women’.

‘Agatha?’ Posy gasped.

‘That’s the Honourable Agatha Cavanagh to you,’ Agatha informed Posy icily. ‘What have you been doing to my lovely shop?’

‘Yes, Posy, what have you been doing? What a mess you’ve made!’ Lavinia exclaimed, and Perry nodded his head in agreement and now Posy realised that her visitors were all covered in grey paint. ‘How wrong I was about you!’

‘You started off so well but you really are terrible at being a grown-up,’ her father chimed in. ‘It’s a wonder that you’ve managed to keep Sam alive all this time.’

Her mother sighed. ‘Which is more than can be said for Bookends. I always taught you that if something was worth doing, it was worth doing well – and yet you’re going to reopen a shop that’s only half-finished. Not even half-finished.’

It was lovely to see them all again. Close enough that Posy wanted to rush and hug them all, except Agatha, who looked very imposing, but they were all staring at her with such disappointment, such dismay.

‘Well, yeah, I know the shop has looked better, but—’

‘You should have left the shop to Sebastian, Lavinia,’ Perry sniffed. ‘He had such great plans for it. And Sebastian’s a doer, not a ditherer. You do dither so, Posy.’

‘I know I do,’ Posy said. ‘But I’ve been trying not to.’

‘I cannot have my shop in such a state of disarray, and selling only the shallowest of books.’ Agatha jabbed Posy with a Votes for Women placard that had suddenly ma-terialised in her hand. ‘Bookends becomes Happy Ever After over my dead body!’

‘No disrespect, Agatha, but you kind of are already dead.’ Posy twisted her hands. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ve been working so hard, but everything’s gone wrong.’

‘Posy! Posy! Posy!’

The five of them were moving closer to Posy and she wanted to cry. Wanted her parents to look at her with love and hold her and tell her that everything would be all right. Wanted Lavinia and Perry to be proud of her and for Agatha to be pleased that her legacy continued, but instead they just chanted her name, like they were getting ready with pitchforks and a bonfire.

‘What?’ The figures were coming closer and closer until Posy realised that they weren’t her ghosts but a very much alive Sebastian. Five Sebastians!

‘Wake up, Morland! I’ve been waiting forever for you to wake up!’

‘I am awake! I’m wide awake!’

‘No, you’re not! Posy! Posy! Wake up! You have to wake up!’ There were hands on her, dragging her away from the five exasperated Sebastians, and she opened her eyes to see one exasperated Sam, tugging at her bedclothes. ‘About time! And you have the nerve to say that I sleep like the dead.’

Posy sat up. She must have been sleeping with her mouth open because it felt as if something had crawled in there during the night and expired. Talking of which: ‘I had the most horrible dream.’

‘Who even cares?!’ Sam tugged at Posy’s arm. ‘You have to come downstairs now. You’re not going to believe this.’

Posy swatted Sam away. ‘Believe what?’ She glanced at her alarm clock. ‘It’s eight already! I was going to get up extra early to do some painting.’

She flung back the covers and got out of bed on wobbly legs, but before she could head for the bathroom, Sam had her wrist in an uncompromising grip and was hauling her to the stairs. ‘No time for the bathroom,’ he squeaked. ‘There are people here to see you!’

Posy’s heart lurched as she stumbled downstairs. What if Sebastian had had a change of heart? What if the bailiffs were at the door?

She stilled on the bottom step. She could hear lots of noise outside. Just how many bailiffs did it take to evict one woman and a teenage boy?

‘Oh God,’ she mumbled.

‘Come on, Posy!’ Sam growled and he yanked her down the last stair and around the corner into the shop. ‘Look! Look at all the people!’

Through the shop window (and Posy noted a blob of grey paint that she’d missed) was a crowd of people in the mews who were all staring back at her. And when Posy moved towards the door on legs that were even more wobbly than when she’d got out of bed, they all surged forwards.

‘Here!’ Sam stuffed the shop key in Posy’s hand. She was all fumbling fingers as she unlocked the door.

‘What on earth …?’ she asked, because at the head of the queue was Grumpy Old ’Un and Cocky Young ’Un and three other men in paint-splattered coveralls with a ladder, a couple of buckets, a box full of rollers and brushes and various other decorating accoutrements.

‘The guvnor sent us,’ Greg said. ‘Where do you want us to start?’

‘I have no idea,’ Posy said as more people spilled into the shop. ‘What’s going on?’

‘You’re not the only one who can call an emergency staff meeting,’ Nina said as she sauntered through the door. ‘In fact we had one in the Midnight Bell last night.’

‘It was actually more like a Council of War,’ Verity said as she came in with her parents and two of her four sisters who were visiting for a long weekend. ‘Pippa’s always saying that it takes a village, so we asked the regulars if they were free today, called in a few favours …’

‘Though Verity refused to do any of the calling,’ Tom said, ushering in a gaggle of older teenagers. ‘These are my undergraduate World War One poetry students. They’ll do anything for extra credit.’

Still, more people streamed in. The parents of some of Posy’s reluctant readers, Pants and Yvonne and Gary. Lovely Stefan from the deli. The Aussie bar staff from the Midnight Bell. Bringing up the rear, Posy could see Mattie, entirely obscured by a teetering stack of Tupperware, and Pippa, who had an iPad in one hand and a clipboard in the other.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Posy breathed. She shuffled a full three hundred and sixty degrees to take it all in. All these people, friends, colleagues, neighbours, complete strangers. It was hard not to burst into tears; instead Posy contented herself with standing there opening and shutting her mouth because she’d lost all her words. ‘I’ve been feeling like such a failure and now … all this.’

Pippa put an arm around Posy’s shoulders. ‘As Maya Angelou once said, “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.” We might have lost a few battles, Posy, but we’re going to win the war.’ She smiled winningly. ‘Do you mind if I organise people? Assign jobs. I took the liberty of rustling up a couple of task sheets on the way here.’

Posy nodded faintly. ‘Yes, please. Knock yourself out.’

It seemed as if everyone had something to do, except Posy. Tom and Nina corralled his students and they started stocking the shelves that had already been painted. On the other side of the arch, the anterooms were being painted. Greg had already pulled Posy aside to compliment her on ‘the lovely job you’ve done with the sanding and the priming’.

And in the main room, an army of people had cleared the shop – everything that could be carried out was sitting in the courtyard – and they were washing, sanding and priming the shelves.

It was incredible. Unbelievable. Miraculous. But perhaps the most incredible, unbelievable, miraculous moment of all was when Verity overheard the fraught conversation Posy was having with the courier company and snatched the phone from Posy’s hand.

‘You listen to me,’ Verity barked in a way that had her father, a man of the cloth, pressing his hands and lips together in a silent prayer. ‘If those display cabinets aren’t here by three this afternoon, I am coming to your offices and I’m going to unleash hell on your sorry arses. Is that clear? Yes? Good! Because you really, really don’t want me to come over there.’

The vintage display cabinets turned up at three on the dot as Posy finished briefing the signwriter and was preparing to leave the shop on a mercy errand for more tea, coffee, milk and biscuits, though Giorgio and Toni, who ran No Plaice Like Home, had brought round fish and chips for all the volunteers at lunchtime.

Now as she walked to Sainsbury’s, three things occurred to Posy. The first was that Bookends would be transformed into Happy Ever After by the end of the day. The whole shop. All the anterooms. In one day. In fact, they were so ahead of schedule that Greg and Mattie were currently in the tearoom discussing what state the floor might be in underneath the cracked old linoleum. No half-arsed, half-done reopening on Monday morning.

The second thing was that the only person missing was Sebastian. Which was fine. It really was. Sebastian had sent over Pippa and Greg and Dave and assorted handymen, and he’d spent an hour yesterday mopping up spilled paint. But all day, Posy had been aware of his absence. Often she’d stop what she was doing to gaze around the shop, searching for a tall, lean man in a suit with impossibly dark hair only for her spirits to sink a little because he wasn’t there.

And the other thing that occurred to Posy as she heard a woman hiss at her friend as she walked past, ‘Oh my God, what is that girl wearing? And why are there turds all over it?’ was that she was still wearing her pyjamas.

By five, it was all over. The last of the volunteers left with Posy’s heartfelt thanks ringing in their ears and an invitation to the official launch party the following Saturday evening.

Posy was still in her pyjamas as she and Tom manoeuvred the sofas into place and Nina and Verity switched on the big industrial fan that would help to dry the last set of shelves overnight.

‘OK, people,’ Posy called out. ‘Time you went home. And that’s an order!’

‘Pub?’ Nina asked hopefully, as she always did at this time on a Saturday.

Posy shook her head. ‘I’m so tired I don’t think I could crawl the few metres to the Midnight Bell.’

‘You do look done in,’ Verity said. ‘Have an early night. There isn’t that much to do tomorrow, so you can have a lie-in. I wish I could,’ she added sorrowfully, because her family responsibilities were weighing heavily and according to Verity her parents and her sisters ‘never stop talking. As soon as one of them pauses for breath, someone else grabs the chatty baton and I can’t hear myself think.’ Now she closed her eyes and sighed. ‘Just one more day of incessant prattle. I can do one day. It’s only twenty-four hours and I’ll be asleep for some of them.’

‘If you like, Sam and I could join you for lunch tomorrow,’ Posy offered as she held the door open. ‘There’s that pub in Islington, which does a great Sunday roast. Text me.’

Nina stayed for another five minutes to plead the case for a swift glass of alcohol, but Posy stayed firm and, finally, she was able to lock the door and trudge upstairs.

Posy had imagined a very different weekend. One where she’d spend most of it up to her elbows in grey paint, occasionally pausing to have a little cry, so it was quite a novelty to have no plans for tonight, but plenty of options. A pile of new novels that she hadn’t had time to start on. Three saved episodes of Call the Midwife. The rest of the bottle of Pinot Grigio in the fridge and a box of chocolate truffles from a grateful customer because Posy had managed to locate a vintage Florence Lawford novel the woman had been trying to track down for years.

It wasn’t exactly rock ’n’ roll but as Saturday nights went, Posy had had worse. And yet half an hour later, she found herself in front of the computer opening up a blank Microsoft Word document, because it turned out that she really needed a different kind of happy ever after to the one she’d been given today.