‘Will you marry me?’
‘Well, I’m flattered, but …’ Dimitri fans a hand in front of his face like he’s about to swoon. ‘This is so unexpected. It’s all moving so fast.’
‘Not you, you idiot.’
He grins at the affectionate insult as I hold the copy of Jane Eyre up and tap the cover page. ‘Someone proposed in the book.’
‘Wow.’ He comes over to take it out of my hands and his glasses fall down as he looks at the neat writing. ‘Do you think she said yes? Or he, seeing as there’s no clue about who actually wrote it?’
‘Hopefully. I mean if you love books, maybe this book in particular …’ I reach across and close the book in his hands, running my fingers down the front of the pink cover with a woman’s silhouette on it. ‘Whoever it was must’ve chosen this book for a reason. Maybe it was her favourite, or his; it must have been significant. You wouldn’t propose in a random book, would you? And for someone to go to this much effort … Of course they said yes.’
‘Why is it here then?’
I stop mid-cover-stroke. ‘You mean, why isn’t it still lovingly ensconced on their family bookshelf where the happy couple get it out every so often and reminisce about how wonderful their relationship has always been and maybe show it to a few precious munchkins while a handsome dog looks on from a furry rug in front of the hearth?’
‘Something like that.’ He laughs. ‘You’ve got to admit it’s the kind of thing you’d keep. Unless you’d split up and hated each other.’
‘And you’re meant to be the cheery, optimistic one between us.’
‘I’m realistic when it comes to love.’
‘There are plenty of reasons it could have ended up here unintentionally.’
He raises an eyebrow and crosses his arms, clearly waiting for an answer.
‘It could have got lost in a house move,’ I say.
‘When they moved to a bigger house to accommodate their growing brood of treasured moppets and handsome dogs?’
‘Exactly! Or some well-meaning friend could have sorted their bookshelves for them and chucked it without knowing its significance.’
‘Maybe one of them was reading it as they drove along the motorway with the window open, and whoosh, a gust of wind rips it out of their hand, never to be seen again. Or maybe it was pilfered by a particularly well-read squirrel.’
I narrow my eyes at him for the sarcasm. ‘Maybe they took it to the wedding to share this incredibly romantic proposal with all their friends and it got left behind at the venue.’
‘Do you really think it’s romantic?’
‘Of course.’ I answer like it’s a trick question. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Well, it’s a bit impersonal, isn’t it? He hasn’t even written her name or signed it or anything. There are no sweeping declarations of love, not even a paltry “I love you”. It’s so generic that you could use it to propose to the milkman, and if he turned you down, you could have a crack at the postman instead.’ He thinks about this for a moment. ‘Although why anybody’d be proposing to all these random men who bring things to your house is a bit weird … I think I might have got off track here. Besides, if it’s her favourite book, she’s undoubtedly already got a copy, so he should’ve kept the money he wasted on another copy and put it towards a nice meal out and got down on one knee in the traditional way.’
I giggle at his rambling reasoning, but despite my reluctance to believe that a proposal in a book could have ended anything but happily, he’s got a point. Well, maybe not about the milkman and the postman, and some people aren’t naturally wordy, like this straight-to-the-point proposer, but this is the sort of thing you’d hang on to for sentimental reasons, unless the proposee said no or the marriage wasn’t a happy one.
I sigh and put a tiny little heart sticker on the base of the spine – my new method of marking out which ones have messages inside them – while Dimitri enters it into the laptop in the office. I can’t take them all off the shop floor but I can’t lose track of which ones have got something written in them. They feel important, special somehow, like I might need to find them again one day.
The books with messages hidden inside their covers are endless, and in the past few days of looking, we’ve found everything from well wishes to family recipes to declarations of love. I’m desperate to know where Robert got his second-hand books and if he knew that quite so many of them had words inside, but something tells me this is no accident. Dimitri keeps saying that Robert loved finding old messages inside used books, and I know from my own experience that he preferred second-hand books to new ones because of the life each book had had before it reached him. He liked books that had been passed around, their stories shared between friends and families, and often talked about it when I came in and he had his latest delivery spread across the counter while he priced them up.
Dimitri hands Jane Eyre back to me. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure there are plenty of reasons their proposal book could’ve been thrown away and they’re too busy living happily ever after to notice.’ He says it with the same tone he’d use to suggest the Loch Ness Monster was thinking of setting up a nest on the roof terrace, but I appreciate his attempt to humour me.
Instead of the waistcoat today, he’s wearing jeans and a grey T-shirt with a pair of brightly striped braces across his shoulders, although they seem to be solely for decorative purposes and don’t appear to be bracing anything as his jeans are held up perfectly well by a belt. My eyes have wandered to Dimitri’s lower half again, and it’s not good. Heathcliff can get away with it; I cannot.
It’s two minutes to nine, so I go over and open the door. The sun is shining and the fountain is burbling away across the street. The flowers in the hanging baskets are starting to trail over the edges and the gentle breeze rustles their green leaves. I prop the door open to make it more welcoming and go back across to the counter. There’s a stack of books with messages in them piled up at one side, an open Tupperware container of coconut lemon bars and a cup of coffee each, which he risked buying again even after the disaster last week.
‘These are so good.’ I pop one of the small rectangular bars into my mouth.
He doesn’t look up from the book he’s scanning through, but a smile spreads across his face as he pushes his glasses back up his nose for the fortieth time, and I love how much he loves other people enjoying his baking.
‘Nothing in that one.’ He closes the book and puts it back on its rightful shelf. The reorganisation of the shelves is a long and arduous process, far worse than I thought it would be because there are simply so many books to move around, and rarely space to put them in the right places and nowhere to put the ones we’ve taken out. And there’s the small matter of how we keep getting waylaid by the messages scrawled inside covers and on title pages.
‘Yeah, but look at this.’ I pull one of the books off the pile beside me and open it, leaning on the counter to flick through the copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The words inside look like they were written in quill and ink, and it’s the kind of fancy handwriting that you’d expect to see in a letter closed with a wax seal. I read the message aloud. ‘Remember what I promised you. ~ Reginald.’
Dimitri leans across the counter from the other side and reads it upside down. ‘Hmm. Vaguely threatening.’
I smack at his arm and he grins and takes another coconut lemon bar from the container before he moves his coffee out of the way, turns around and hoists himself up to sit on the counter, and I like how at ease he is here. His back is facing me and he leans back on his hands so he can see the book from my angle and I push it forwards and lean further across so my shoulder is touching his side.
‘It’s old. The writing and the book,’ I say. This edition is from the 1930s, and the ink is faded and the page edges are brown with age, the clothbound green cover threadbare and frayed.
‘It’s crazy how much I want to know what this means.’ He picks up his coffee cup again and sips it. ‘Who is Reginald? What did he promise? Who did he promise? Was it a promise or a threat?’
‘Oh, come on. Look at his handwriting. It’s like something out of The Phantom of the Opera.’ I nudge my shoulder into him, nearly making him spill his coffee. ‘Even his handwriting is romantic. No one writes like this anymore.’
‘I didn’t know handwriting was the defining factor in identifying a psychopath.’ He looks down at me with a raised eyebrow, but he’s smiling as he shakes his head. ‘Besides, this book is about a man who dug up graves and raided morgues to collect body parts to sew together as a new person. His “promise” could be that this is what’s going to happen to the receiver if they don’t do whatever he’s demanded.’
‘Nope. I’m not having that. Frankenstein’s monster wanted love; he wanted to be accepted for what he was. He didn’t fit in. This Reginald is clearly telling the receiver that he has promised to love and accept them for all their flaws, come what may. He’s promised to give them the unconditional love that the monster always craved.’
He’s smiling when he looks down at me this time. ‘God, you are so …’
I look up and meet his twinkling blue eyes even though I’m looking over the rim of my glasses so he’s a bit blurry, we hold each other’s gaze for a long moment, and it’s like the air between us is sparkling.
But that’s probably just my dreadful eyesight.
Even so, I can feel my smile getting wider as his does, spreading slowly, making everything look more twinkly and—
‘A man!’ Mum’s squeal comes from the doorway. ‘I knew there was a man!’
‘Kill me now.’ I drop my head down onto the counter and hiss urgently at Dimitri. ‘Run. Save yourself while there’s still time. Your legs are long – she’ll never catch you.’
I look up and rub my fingers across the head I clonked down too hard and I’ve now got the corner of the book imprinted in my forehead. ‘There is no man, Mum. You’re imagining him.’
‘Well, I’ve got an excellent imagination. You are gorgeous.’ She approaches Dimitri. ‘Are you single?’
He looks slightly alarmed as he jumps off the counter. ‘Yes. And planning on staying that way.’
‘Oh, now that’s no attitude to have at your age. A handsome young man in the prime of your life.’ She turns to me. ‘Is he the “we”?’
‘What?’
‘We! The we!’ She sounds like she needs the bathroom. ‘When you said “we” last night, I knew it wasn’t about the fish.’
He looks at me and waggles his eyebrows. ‘So you’ve told your mum about me.’
‘No. I have categorically not told my mum about you. There’s nothing to—’
‘She doesn’t need to tell me! I’m a mum! I read between the lines!’
‘No, you make up lines that aren’t there and then read words that aren’t there either. There are no lines to read between. He’s a customer.’
‘I saw that look! That is not a customer look. And you’re sharing baked goods. Everyone knows the way to a person’s heart is with baked goods.’
‘Go out the fire exit,’ I hiss at him again. ‘I’ll throw a blanket over her while you make your escape. If that fails, jump from the roof. It’s the only way.’
He’s laughing. He’s actually laughing. He thinks I’m joking.
‘No wonder you were so eager to get away last night. Now I see why.’
‘He wasn’t here then. The shop was shut. Besides, I don’t even know him. He’s just walked in. In fact, he was just telling me about his wife, weren’t you?’ I try to wink at him to get him to agree, even though he’s already told my mum he’s single.
The look on Mum’s face makes me wonder if she was standing outside the door for a few minutes and we didn’t see her. I’ve got to admit that with Dimitri sitting as close as he was, we could’ve been in Morocco and I wouldn’t have noticed with the warmth from his body pressing against my shoulder and the earthy scent of his woody burnt lavender aftershave all around. She’s a bit over the top, but even she wouldn’t approach a customer in the way she’s approaching Dimitri.
She’s cornered him and is about a centimetre away from pinching his cheeks.
‘Mum! Personal space!’ I shout, momentarily distracting her and giving him a chance to duck out of the way.
‘Well, it was lovely to meet you, Mrs Winstone, but this customer had really better be getting on with his work.’ His bag and sketchbooks are already on the sofa in the reading area, and he starts towards the shelves to fetch his Italian book.
‘Polite!’ she squawks.
He does a sort of mix between a curtsey and a bow as he backs away, his glasses sliding down his nose again.
She points in the direction he’s gone and mouths ‘wow’ at me, then she comes over and pinches one of the coconut lemon bars from the open box and pops it into her mouth. Her eyes widen in delight and she mouths ‘wow’ again with her mouth full.
‘Please leave him alone,’ I say. ‘There’s nothing between us, and he’s quiet, he doesn’t need—’
‘Then he needs a girlfriend, doesn’t he?’ She’s in the reading area before I can stop her. She lifts the cover of one of his sketchbooks on the table and starts rifling through it.
‘Mum!’ I put my hands on my hips. ‘You can’t do that! It’s not your—’
‘Ooh, he’s very good, isn’t he?’ She flips a few more pages. ‘Although quite an odd subject matter. Why is there all this parsley? Why’s this ogre wearing a dress?’
‘That’s apparently the oldest known version of Rapunzel.’ I start trying to explain some of what Dimitri’s told me about his subject matter. ‘This girl’s mother stole some parsley from an ogress’s garden, so as punishment, the ogress imprisons the girl in a tower, but she’s rescued by a handsome prince climbing up her long hair.’
‘Oh, now the ogre’s being eaten by a wolf.’ She shudders and lifts another page. ‘Couldn’t he draw some cute fluffy bunnies instead?’
‘Don’t you find cute fluffy bunnies awfully boring, Mrs Winstone?’ Dimitri reappears with the huge Italian fairy-tale book under his arm. He doesn’t seem even vaguely annoyed that she’s invaded his privacy by inviting herself to look through his work.
‘I didn’t mean it in a bad way.’ At least she has the decency to look guilty. ‘Your talent is exceptional. And look at your lovely blue eyes. Oh, with eyes like that, you could draw a dustbin lorry and I’d think you were the most talented man I’d ever met.’
‘I’m not sure having blue eyes is a discernible talent or how they relate to his work, Mum.’
She ignores me. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Dimitri.’
She gasps like a fly’s just gone down her throat. ‘Anastasia was Hallie’s favourite film when she was younger.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say it was my favourite …’ I pick up a book and briefly consider how hard I’d have to hit myself on the head to cause a severe enough concussion for my memory to stop recording for a while.
‘Yes, it was. Don’t you remember?’ She holds her hands up like they’re on the shoulders of an invisible man and starts a one-woman waltz around the shop while caterwauling a version of ‘Once Upon a December’ when she’s clearly forgotten what the lyrics actually are, until she crashes into the sale table and sends books skittering to the floor. Unless they’ve hurled themselves off for mercy lest she start trying to partner them up too.
Dimitri, the perfect gentleman, puts his book down and offers her his hand and properly waltzes her across the shop while humming the real version of ‘Once Upon A December’, spinning her around like a budget Strictly Come Dancing with pink leisure suits instead of spangly dresses and absolutely no sign of Tess Daly.
When he stops, she clutches a bookshelf for support and fans a hand in front of her face.
I kneel down to gather up the books she sent flying, trying not to think about how lovely he is to indulge my mum like that, and how attractive he looks in a waltz pose, or how much I’d like to dance with him. Dancing is usually something I avoid at all costs because I have the coordination of a slug that’s just fallen out of a beer trap.
He’s even lovely enough that he comes over and crouches down beside me to help pick up the books.
‘Do you have any idea what you’re doing?’ I whisper. ‘You’re unleashing a demon. We’re going to need pentagrams and salt circles to stop her now. She’s never going to leave you alone. Or me, for that matter. We’re going to have to leave the country. How does Iceland sound? We could start a new life in Iceland. No one would ever have to know.’
He puts his head down on his knees because he’s laughing so hard, even though I’m only half joking. Tears of laughter are forming in his eyes and I give him a gentle shove, but he overbalances and falls over onto his bum, his hair flopping forward and springing back up again as he laughs even harder, and the sight of him sprawled on the floor makes me start giggling too.
Mum looms over us, clearly wondering if coffee was the only thing in our cups. ‘Don’t you think this is a nice photo?’
She holds her phone down so he can see it, and I try to snatch it out of her hand but she dodges far more easily than a seventy-year-old should be able to. ‘Mum! Don’t show him that!’
He looks up at it from the floor. ‘Oh yes, it’s very nice. If slightly deranged Bridezilla was the look you were going for.’
He looks over and winks at me and I frantically do a ‘cut’ motion. If Mum catches him winking at me, she’ll probably need to be taken home by ambulance.
She pulls her phone back with a huff and stomps away. ‘That’s what Hallie always says. She must’ve told you to say that.’
‘No, not at all. She just looks like a desperate Bridezilla lying in wait to ensnare a husband.’
I laugh but it’s not like he’s saying anything that’s untrue. ‘I was going to help you up but now I think I’ll leave you flailing about on the floor.’
It makes him laugh even harder. ‘I do seem to have spent an abnormal amount of time lying on the floor in this shop.’
Mum’s mouth forms an ‘o’ as she tries to work out what activity we’ve been up to that’s put him on the floor.
He pushes his bottom lip out and I hold my hands out, squeezing his as he slips them both into mine and lets me pull him up.
‘She hates having her photo taken.’ Mum’s frantically scrolling through her phone for a better picture. ‘How about this one?’
‘I was six! And you took that photo to show how bad my chickenpox was!’
‘Very cute.’ Dimitri has the decency to barely glance towards the photo she holds out. He reaches over to grab his coffee cup and uses the distraction of Mum lost in her phone to go and sit down on the sofa and start getting art supplies out of his bag.
He is severely optimistic if he thinks that’s going to be enough to get her to leave him alone.
Sure enough, she puts her phone away as soon as she clocks that he’s moved, and the sofa lets out a whoosh of air as she plonks herself down next to him.
‘Mum, why don’t you come and have a look at the recipe books?’ I say, knowing my mum and recipe books make a recipe for only one thing – disaster. ‘We’ve got a great one about single meals for one person. That you only cook for one. And don’t need to share with other people because they’re only for one.’
‘She has unrealistic expectations of love, you know,’ she says to Dimitri.
‘It comes from years of being told we were going to have spaghetti bolognese for tea only to be served plain spaghetti with a dollop of ketchup on top.’
She ignores me. ‘It’s from all those books she reads. All those handsome men running about on the moors or sweeping ladies off their feet. She’s still waiting for Mr Rochester to walk in.’
‘I’m really not.’ I look to the door, imploring not Mr Rochester but a great wave of customers to pour in and shut her up. The shop remains quiet. Even Heathcliff seems to be interested in my mum’s conversation. Any mention of the moors perks him right up.
‘And all those contemporary Romances where the hero and heroine are so utterly perfect for each other and everyone sees it but them until some horrible misunderstanding tears them apart, but then at the end, he does some big, fancy gesture to prove how truly sorry he is, and they live happily ever after.’
‘But that’s the point of those books,’ he says gently. ‘People read them as an escape from reality. A chance to believe that life could be a fairy tale just for a moment. Everyone knows it’s not real. If it was real, no one would want to read them, would they?’
He looks at me across the shop and his mouth tips up into a smile when our eyes meet.
‘I don’t think it’s a bad thing to believe in magic,’ he continues. ‘To believe the world could be a little bit better than it is. And it’s definitely not a bad thing to want to meet someone who makes you feel like that. Isn’t that what everyone should hold out for?’
My whole body floods with warmth, and if my mum wasn’t here, I’d go over and throw my arms around him for that. It’s exactly what I’ve always wanted to say to Mum when she starts on about my unrealistic expectations but have never found the right words for. As she is here, I have to settle for smiling at him. I could never even consider hugging him. She would literally keel over in shock.
Mum goes to answer but nothing comes out.
Dimitri has superpowers. That’s the only possible explanation. No one has ever, ever rendered my mum speechless before. Ever.
‘She’s thirty-five!’ Mum splutters eventually. ‘The biological clock is ticking.’
‘I grew up with parents who were unhappy. Believe me, Hallie deserves to be happy and single rather than married to someone solely to fulfil expectations of what other people perceive to be perfect life goals. That’s not having unrealistic expectations, that’s wanting to be happy.’
God, he’s perfect. In a few gentle sentences, he’s politely shut my mum down and eloquently worded everything I’ve never been able to say.
He looks up at me again and I can’t smile any wider at him. My face is hurting from how much I’m smiling, and I can’t take my eyes off him and the way his eyes shine as he smiles back at me.
‘Dinner!’ She suddenly squeals so loudly that he visibly jumps and I jump so much that my hand hits the counter with such force that it makes me jump again.
‘Mum, no. Dimitri’s a nice guy, he doesn’t deserve that.’
‘Well, I do eat dinner …’ he starts.
‘No!’ I try to plead with him using only my eyes. ‘You don’t understand what you’re getting yourself into. What Mum calls dinner is not food.’
‘Now I’ve got knitting club on Monday,’ Mum starts. ‘My felting workshop on Tuesday, I’m down at the allotment on Wednesday, and it’s Nicole’s week for working late so this Thursday’s out, and Friday is Nicole and Bobby’s date night … Would Thursday week work for you?’
Is it good or bad when your mum’s social life is a hundred per cent fuller than your own?
‘Thursday week it is,’ Mum cries after Dimitri’s told her he’s free at any time.
‘He’s busy on Thursday night.’ I rub my bruised hand. ‘He’s going out with his wife and children, aren’t you?’ Has someone accidentally hit my mute button? ‘His multiple wives!’
‘Now don’t you bring anything, I’ll cook. What’s your favourite food?’
I look at Heathcliff. ‘Can you even see me?’ I say to the goldfish. ‘Have I become invisible?’
He doesn’t answer either. Or look particularly interested in whether I’m invisible or not.
‘Pizza?’ Dimitri looks warily between me and my mum like he’s not sure whether it’s the right answer or not.
Pizza. I count all the ways pizza could possibly go wrong until a light bulb moment strikes. ‘How about we bring a pizza?’
‘Pish posh. I’m not letting this gorgeous man suffer takeaway pizza. A good home-cooked meal is what you need.’
I groan.
‘Home-made pizza sounds great,’ Dimitri says. He really doesn’t know what he’s letting himself in for.
Mum reaches over to pat his cheek. ‘Oh, you are kind. It’s been many years since I heard that from either of my girls.’
‘There’s a reason for that,’ I mutter.
Thankfully a couple of customers choose that moment to come in, and I’m so grateful for the distraction that I’d go and hug them if it wouldn’t scare them away. One of them is a man who might be single – well, he’s about forty and he’s on his own. Usually that would be enough for my mum to corner him and enquire – but she doesn’t move from Dimitri’s side.
He’s started showing her some of his drawings and I overhear him telling her about the greeting cards he’s doing and the bookish gifts I’m going to be stocking, and as long as they’re on a neutral topic that’s not my love life, I decide to stay out of it. The more I try to drag her away, the more convinced she’ll become that there’s something to drag her away from and the more determined she’ll be to stay and find out what.
With Dimitri talking, Mum looks more interested in the shop than she’s ever been. He’s animated when he speaks, his smile lighting up his face, his hands gesticulating wildly in between leaning over to draw tiny sketches to show her examples of what he’s talking about. My mum is not an easy woman to handle, and seeing him chat to her and actually look like he’s enjoying it is positively heart-melting.