I shouldn’t be nervous about having dinner with Dimitri. I’ve had lunch with him almost every day and breakfast with him regularly since I got here, but this invite feels different – special, somehow. He hasn’t specified but I assume we’re going to his house, which he never talks about, and since the river incident, he’s been asking me what my favourite savoury foods are because he’s only ever brought me sweet things until now, and quite frankly, by seven o’clock on Saturday night when he’s arranged to meet me at the shop, I’m a bit of a wreck.
After I closed at five, Nicole pulled up in her car with a boot full of industrial-sized make-up cases and a back seat full of garment bags, and now I have a good three-quarters of Boots’ nationwide stock adhered to my face and I’m wearing one of her dresses – a silky thing with blue and green stripes that melt into each other like the dress melts against my body and makes me feel svelte and slinky when I am neither of those things. It’s the sort of thing I’d never even consider buying because it’s far too nice and I would undoubtedly ruin it.
Nicole’s already given me the name of the local dry cleaners and pointed out the tailor across the road, lest I do exactly that.
I intended to carry on checking books for written messages while waiting, but I keep opening them and putting them back on the shelf and not remembering if there was a message inside or not, so I give up and pace the floor in my ballet flats that Nicole assures me do not belong with this dress, but even I drew the line at wearing heels. No situation is that desperate.
It’s seven on the dot when there’s a knock on the shop door, and I love that someone as dishevelled as Dimitri is also such a good timekeeper.
I take a deep breath as I turn the key and open the door, wondering why I feel so nervous. It’s Dimitri, for heaven’s sake. I’ve seen him every day since I got here. I’ve stuck my head out of the window and yelled at him first thing in the morning. Nothing could be a worse sight than that.
‘Hello!’ He greets me with his usual happy greeting and holds out such a huge bunch of multicoloured tulips that I can barely see him behind them.
‘Wow. Where did you get these? They’re beautiful,’ I say because they’re so unusual and obviously handpicked. He still hasn’t learnt that I’m not good at keeping things alive. I glance at Heathcliff happily swimming around in his bowl. He must be some sort of miracle fish to still be alive a month after I got here.
I hold the flowers by their stems and turn back to look at him. Neither of us tries to hide our eyes widening in shock at the sight of each other.
‘Wow.’ He takes my hand and pulls it up to his mouth where he kisses the back of it. ‘I’m sorry, I’m here to meet Hallie. Do you know where she is?’
I wallop his hand. ‘You’re not funny.’
He is gorgeous though. He’s wearing dark suit trousers and a matching waistcoat over a shirt that’s the exact same shade as his eyes, making them look impossibly bluer. I’ve always loved a man in a waistcoat, and I love Dimitri’s odd fashion sense of wearing one with non-traditional waistcoat outfits, but tonight … If I wasn’t already overheated from nerves, I’d be overheated from the sight of him. And his aftershave, which is like a walk on the beach on a hot summer’s day with the waves lapping at your feet. Salty and orangey but still with a hint of something as dark as charcoal and as warm as wood.
‘Flipping heck, Hal. I’m leaning on the doorframe because I think my knees might go if I try to stand upright. Do you have any idea how beautiful you look?’
If Santa ever wanted a new suit, he would take my cheeks to his tailor for a colour match on the fabric, but no matter how hard I try, I cannot stop myself beaming. What girl doesn’t want to hear that?
‘Thank you,’ I mumble, my mouth suddenly as dry as particularly parched dust. ‘You too.’
His hair is neatly done up in a strong quiff, and sort of curled in at the top to make it look a bit shorter than usual. As much as I love his usual haphazard look, I’m glad that he thinks this night was worth making an effort for too, because I thought all the make-up and the dress might’ve been overkill.
‘Sorry, I had to sell my car last year. We’ll have to walk.’ He goes to run a hand through his hair but stops himself before he dislodges it, and it makes me feel better that he’s nervous too.
‘That’s okay, it’s a gorgeous evening. Just let me put these in water.’
One of the vases from the last lot of flowers he brought me is still in the office, so I run upstairs to fill it with water and plonk the tulips into it, fluffing them up a bit like people do when they put flowers in water, although I haven’t the first clue what I’m doing.
He holds his arm out when I finally step out the door and lock it behind me, and I slip mine through it gratefully.
‘Where are we going?’ I ask as we cross the street and go around the burbling fountain and down a lane that leads onto the main road out of Buntingorden. Despite the wide pavement, he insists on walking on the outside like the gentleman he is.
‘You’ll see.’
One thing I never appreciated about Buntingorden before I moved here was how pretty it is. Even the main roads have a cosy shut-in feel with wide verges full of greenery interspersed with patches of wildflowers, and tall trees with weeping branches that overhang the spacious pavements. There are road signs to watch out for wild deer, and each road we turn down looks like the kind of fairy-tale street where you might find Snow White living in a cottage at the end of it or Cinderella doing housework with the help of some friendly birds.
He’s quiet as we walk, and I get the feeling he’s nervous, but I can’t work out why.
It’s only when we turn into a quiet road with nothing but the occasional mansion set back from the pavements that I notice the name on the sign. ‘Bodmin Lane?’ I say in surprise. ‘Do you live around here? Do you know The Stropwomble? Oh God, is he one of your neighbours and all the time people have been slagging him off in the shop, you actually know him?’
‘Something like that.’
We come to what is undoubtedly the house that everyone’s been talking about with black iron railings that must be at least ten foot high, with spikes on top and barbwire wrapped throughout them. The front gate looks rusted shut, and I try to see through the gaps between the railings to get a glimpse of the house, but the garden is overgrown with welcoming things like stinging nettles and brambles. Dimitri extracts his arm from mine and reaches out to take my hand instead, his palm clammy when I slip mine into it. He tugs me around the side of The Stropwomble of Bodmin Lane’s house.
‘Where are we going? Are you, like, on his staff or something?’ I get the feeling that my questioning is making him more nervous, so I decide to be quiet and trust him, wherever he’s taking us.
Past the thick railings is a crumbling red-brick wall covered in ivy leaves, scrambling from the pavement to the top, sending its roots into every crack in the brickwork, and Dimitri leads me around the curved wall, off the main pavement and onto a tiny, unworn path that even the bravest of dog walkers wouldn’t venture down. I keep trying to see into the garden, but the wall is as high as the spiked railing tops, and although there are holes in the deteriorating brickwork, none of them are big enough to see through.
Dimitri doesn’t let go of my hand as I follow him down the narrow path, overgrown on either side by yet more brambles that threaten to snag Nicole’s dress if I’m not careful.
We walk around another curve in the broken wall surrounding what must be an absolutely immense garden, and eventually he stops and moves aside what can only be described as a sheet of ivy, uncovering a battered wooden gate set back in the brickwork, completely obscured from view. It looks damp and is mouse-chewed at the bottom, but the four shiny padlocks look almost new and leave me in no doubt about how welcome visitors are.
Until he lets go of my hand, fishes a jangly keyring from his pocket, and starts undoing the locks.
‘We’re going in?’ I say in surprise as adrenalin floods my body. Of all places I expected Dimitri to be taking us, this wasn’t one of them, and from what I’ve heard of The Stropwomble of Bodmin Lane, he’s right at the bottom of my list of people I want to meet. ‘We’re sneaking in? He’s not even going to know we’re here, is he? I didn’t take you for an adrenalin junkie. Where are we going for our next date – bungee jumping?’
I realise in that instant that it is a date. That’s where all the extra nerves have come from, probably for both of us.
He crouches down to undo the last lock, and I start frantically trying to make myself look presentable. If I’m about to meet the most hated man in Buntingorden, the least I can do is smooth my dress down and de-frizzle my hair.
He gathers all the padlocks in one hand and pushes the gate, holding it open for me to go through, and then turns around and starts attaching the padlocks to a matching four locks on the inside of the gate. He must sense me watching him because he looks up from what he’s doing. ‘This isn’t as bad as it looks. It’s to stop anyone getting in, not you getting out. You can have the keys if you want, but I don’t feel safe here without the gate locked.’
I trust Dimitri, I tell myself. He’s lovely and kind and thoughtful. He’s not up to anything nefarious. I look around the garden instead to distract myself from why we’re coming into a place so obviously keen to keep us out and clearly not very hot on the idea of us leaving either. Inside the gate is a wide concrete path leading to a huge Gothic mansion, complete with gargoyles, broken turrets, blackened windows, and metal door hangers that I half-expect Jacob Marley’s face to appear in.
Far from Snow White or Cinderella, of all the fairy-tale characters I expected to find at the end of this walk, this looks more like somewhere Jafar or Rasputin would live.
Beside me, the outside wall continues inside, closing off a piece of the overgrown garden with a well-worn path around it, and while Dimitri’s still doing up the last lock, I follow it round to an open doorway and peek inside.
‘A walled garden!’ I say in surprise. And not just a walled garden, but a walled garden filled with the most beautiful beds of flowers. Roses, daffodils, and every colour of tulip you can imagine. There are pansies and giant snowdrops, and baskets hanging from a wooden frame that criss-crosses the open ceiling. ‘This is where you got the tulips from. And the daffodils.’
He appears next to me, takes a key from his keyring and hands it to me. ‘Here. You take it. I don’t mean to make you feel uneasy. You’re free to go anytime you want.’
I don’t know what’s going on, but I do trust him, and the fact he’s willing to give me the key to the gate is touching. It means he’s aware of my feelings and of how a man locking a gate behind a woman could be perceived. Instead of taking it, I take hold of his hand and close his fingers around it, trying to let him know I trust him without saying the words.
He smiles, but instead of putting it back on his keyring, he goes back to the gate, lifts a stone from the path and slips it underneath, making sure I’m watching exactly where he puts it.
I walk back to the concrete path that leads up a ramp towards the doorway, like a yellow brick road to the entrance of this sad old castle, and this time when he holds his hand out, his fingers are shaking. I slip my hand into his again, wondering what this is all about.
At the woodworm-ridden wooden door, scarred by what look like burn marks licking up from the bottom, he pulls his keyring back out and undoes a heavy-duty set of three locks and uses his shoulder to shove the gigantic wooden door open.
‘Come in.’ It sounds for all the world like he’s inviting me into his own house.
I stand in the grand entranceway and look up at the ceiling in awe because it’s so far up that I have to tilt my head back to see it, and it looks like it should’ve been painted by Michelangelo. Or possibly was.
But awe doesn’t feel like the right description for this place. It’s awe-inspiring to look at, but a sense of sadness permeates every inch of the building. There’s a wide double stairway to one side, but the tall ceilings above it are decorated with spider’s webs, and dust motes float through the air as the evening sun glints across the building. There are stone pillars with cracks circling around them like a pattern, and the tiled floor beneath my feet has got corners of tiles missing, others with chips out of them, jagged broken lines running through them, and blackened grouting.
‘The living room’s better,’ he says. ‘This way.’
I should probably push him, but I also feel that there’s a fragile peace between us, and my pushing him will break some part of it, and I get the sense that he needs to explain in his own time.
I follow him down a cold hallway until he pushes open the creaky door of what must be the living room. Inside, it looks like the scene of a forgotten film set from the 1920s. There’s a threadbare damask carpet covering scratchy concrete floors, and big leather sofas and armchairs from more than one mismatched furniture suite. There’s an unlit coal fire in a hearth on one wall and a cracked chimney breast extending into the room. A wide bay window beckons from the opposite side, and I walk across to it, dodging varnish-peeling coffee tables and footstalls that I half-expect to turn back into a dog when the curse is lifted from the castle.
I stand at the grand window and look out through streaked glass, taking in the immense garden, the sharp iron railings that we saw from the road that looks miles away with the amount of stinging nettles, brambles, and other unidentifiable weeds that have taken over the huge plot of land between here and the gate.
‘You live here?’ I look back at him and he nods. ‘But this is where the monster of Buntingorden lives, right?’
He nods again.
‘So what are you trying to tell me? It’s not you, is it?’ I say jokingly, and the unexpected chuckle that bursts out of him seems to make him relax.
‘No, it’s not me.’ He takes a few steps towards me, and I turn back to look out the window, trying to work this out because I get the feeling he wants me to put two and two together for myself.
‘Then why does everyone think he lives here?’
He puts his chin on my shoulder from behind and his arms slide around me, pulling my back tight against his front. ‘Because he used to.’
I think about everything he’s said over the weeks I’ve known him. ‘Your father?’
He nods against my shoulder and I can feel the tension in him like this is some awful, monumental confession. The sense of sadness that floods through me is so overwhelming that I reach back blindly until I can get my hand around his hip and hold him there, making sure he stays while he explains.
‘He moved back in after my mum died. Even though they were divorced and she’d thrown him out years before, he came back to “help” with my sister, and I let him, because I didn’t live here either and I was completely lost in grief and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do or what was right. I naively believed this tragedy had ignited some sense of family in him and he actually wanted to help, but I soon realised it wasn’t about that. It was about getting his claws back into the house he’d lost in the divorce. This house is big enough that you can share it with other people and never have to cross paths with them. He spent most of his time at the office, and there were burnt rubber tyre tracks on the driveway from how quickly he sped away if we did need his help with anything. He just kind of existed in the periphery for about a year, occasionally trying to convince me that he should have a share in the house. And you know that feeling you get when you just know something isn’t right? Eventually I found the transfer papers he’d had drawn up and discovered he’d spent the past few months trying to convince Dani she was too weak and stupid to have part share of a mansion and that she should sign it over to him to “look after”. Thankfully my sister wasn’t weak or stupid and hadn’t fallen for it, and I found the courage to throw him out, and I’ve barely exchanged two words with him since.’
‘But he’s the monster of Buntingorden?’
He nods again. ‘He’s been writing those letters for as long as I can remember. Vicious, nasty letters to anyone who’ll give him a platform. The local newspaper is his favourite, and he’s got someone on the council in his pocket so any ridiculous thing he can find to complain about is taken seriously. It started when I was younger – he wanted to acquire a big chunk of land on the other side of the river, but the residents weren’t going to let it be sold and built on. They got fed up of him harassing them, so they fought back and got some sort of landmark status declared, so he lost out on it. And he swore revenge. He wanted to make everyone in Buntingorden’s life as miserable as possible. He started doing a bit of criminal damage but he got caught by the police and they wouldn’t accept his bribes, so he started doing it all from behind anonymous poison pen letters and complaints about anything that made people happy.’
‘He sounds like a lovely chap.’
My sarcasm makes Dimitri burst out laughing and his arms tighten and I feel the tension start to drip away.
‘I didn’t live here for years. I didn’t care about Buntingorden or what was happening in it. Obviously I heard stories about The Stropwomble of Buntingorden when I came back, and it still took me a long while to realise it was him. And in the year he lived here after Mum died, it somehow came out that this was his house. I’ve always suspected it was deliberate – his way of making mine and Dani’s lives that little bit more uncomfortable. And that’s it, really. That’s my terrible secret. You can hate me if you want to. There’s a lot of people around here who would if they found out.’
‘I could never hate you. You are the definition of unhateable.’ I squeeze his hip so tightly that I start wondering how long the NHS waiting lists for hip replacements are around here. ‘Why do people still think he lives here?’
‘Because I never corrected them. There’s the whole aspect that me saying something would’ve outed him, and no matter what he’s done, he’s still my father, and it’s not my place to do that. There’s a lot of anger towards him in this village and while people make jokes about monsters and use that cutesy name in front of kids, I think if the right powder kegs ignited at the same time, there’d be people who’d want to teach him a lesson. I don’t want him to get hurt because of me. And another thing is that it makes people leave this house alone. I’ve been drowning in grief for a long while. Believe me, it’s better if no one comes here.’
His chin is still on my shoulder, I can feel every movement of his jaw, and his voice is so quiet that I wouldn’t be able to hear him if he wasn’t speaking right next to my ear. His hand is on top of mine where it’s holding on to his hip, and his other hand is on the window ledge in front of me. I reach out and drag my fingers across his gently, and when he turns his palm over, I slot mine into it and squeeze as tightly as I can.
‘We became recluses. The garden overgrew, hiding us from the view of the world, and Dani was afraid of seeing people so when we had to go out, I’d pull the car round to the side gate and we’d sneak out that way. No one even seemed to notice that we were here. We were forgotten. Living ghosts. And that was fine.’
There must be finger-shaped indents in his hip from how tight I’m holding on to him. What I want to do is turn around and pull him into the tightest hug that mankind has ever experienced, but I also know that if I do that, one or both of us will break down in tears, and more than anything, I want him to keep talking.
‘I never really grieved after Mum died. It was so fast, so sudden. Within the space of a morning, I’d left my life in Oxford and was back here, taking care of my sister because my dad and brother weren’t interested. Dani didn’t cope well with Mum’s death and I had to be strong for her. And when she died last year, I was so alone. The grief completely crushed me. I needed to be alone to cope with it. I didn’t want well-meaning neighbours popping round and people gossiping about me in the street. I was glad of the privacy that overgrown garden gave me, and if the price is a few kids throwing eggs at my house on Halloween and talking about the “monster” who lives here, then so be it.’
In my head, I do a calculation between that and the burn marks on the door when we came in. ‘Why is the door burnt?’
‘Because people are cruel. When my father got the fireworks display cancelled, one of the angry villagers chucked lit fireworks into the garden. A few patches of greenery burnt, but there was a doormat outside the door and one landed on it and set it alight.’
My hand must tighten around his hard enough to hurt, because he laughs and gently loosens it. ‘Don’t worry, I put it out before it did any real damage.’
Judging by the charred scars on his front door, I think he’s being generous there.
‘But that’s why there are so many locks on the gate. I thought if they can do that kind of damage from outside, what would they do if they could get in? I didn’t feel safe here and worried about someone uncovering my hidden gate. That’s why it’s locked. Nothing untoward, I promise. I should have told you about my father earlier, but I didn’t want you to hate me, and I felt something in that river the other day that made me realise I had to tell you and I thought it might be best to show you first. I wanted to share every part of my life with you, even the bad parts.’
I don’t know how he ever thinks I could hate him for anything he’s just shared. All it does is show me how much he’s been through, how much he’s struggled, and how alone he’s been, and how through it all, he’s still come out the other side with an enviably positive outlook and a smile that never fails to brighten other people’s days. How, even though he clearly has a fractured relationship with his father, he’s still protecting him, even if it means putting himself in danger sometimes.
So this is what he was hiding. At least this explains the vague feeling I’ve been getting that he’s holding something back. Nothing nefarious. Maybe it’s time I let myself believe in real-life happy endings after all.
Without letting go of either hand, I do some twisty thing and turn around to look up into his blue eyes and the only thing I can think of to express the whirlwind of emotions swirling inside me is to kiss him.
He must feel it too because he lowers his head before I’ve even realised I’m going to reach up and pull him down, and I’m not sure which one of us moans louder as our mouths crash together. My hand slides into his hair, destroying the neat style it was in, and he backs me up until my bum hits the edge of the window ledge and there’s no further to go. His arms are caging me in as my fingers wind in his hair and pull him closer, until our mouths, tongues, lips, are tangled in a frenzied mass of kissing and nothing is enough, and there are moans and grabbing, and panting, and somewhere in the depths of my mind, I know this isn’t going to end at kissing if we don’t slow it down. I force myself to loosen my grip on his shirt and start stroking through his hair rather than grabbing it, and I feel the way his mouth turns up into a smile against mine as he feels it too.
I feel him relax, letting out a sigh against my lips, and I get so lost in the kiss that I forget the hazards of kissing while both wearing glasses until our frames crash together with a plasticky crack.
‘Well, it wouldn’t have been us if a kiss didn’t end with something breaking, would it?’ He sounds breathless and his shivery voice makes me tingle all over.
He pulls back and I love how he has to lean against the shelf for support as he takes his glasses off and checks them for damage, and I turn away and do the same, and take a moment to compose myself because after that kiss, I’m feeling very uncomposed.
‘Nothing broken?’ he asks gently.
‘No. You?’
He shakes his head when I turn back to look at him.
‘I’ve wanted to do that since the moment I met you,’ I tell him honestly.
‘It was the giant flea that did it, wasn’t it?’
The unexpected joke makes me giggle, and I reach up again and brush my thumb over his smooth jaw. ‘Yeah. Between the giant flea and the crushed daffodils, you were irresistible.’
He turns into my touch and leans down to rest his forehead against mine. ‘Thank you for listening. If I’d known this would be the reaction, I’d have told you weeks ago.’ His whole face brightens and for the first time tonight, he looks like himself.
His hair flops forward and he’s still so close that I can feel the weight of it against mine. I reach up and tuck it back, loving how his hair corresponds to his mood – when he’s nervous, it’s stiff as a board; when he’s relaxed, it goes all floppy; and when he’s being his usual clumsy, adorable self, it sticks out in all directions.
I can’t hold back the hug any longer. There’s something about Dimitri that makes me want to hug him, but it’s different this time – this time, I need to hug him more desperately than I need to take my next breath. I feel like there aren’t any words to get across how much he matters to me and how much it means that he’s shared this part of his life.
I get one arm around his back and clutch him to me, and the other slides around his shoulders, caressing the shortish darker hair at the nape of his neck as I pull his head down to rest against my shoulder and squeeze him as snugly as I can without breaking any bones.
He cuddles me back so tightly. His whole body folds around me, and I can feel him sagging with the relief of telling someone. We stand there in silence for the longest time, just breathing, holding, letting my fingers card through his hair.
‘And just so you know, I am trying to undo some of my father’s damage.’ His voice sounds blissful and far away. ‘I’ve been in touch with the council and paid for the most spectacular Christmas tree to go up near the fountain this year. I’ve got the fireworks display reinstated for November. The bunting hasn’t gone anywhere because I put an anonymous petition online about living in a village called Buntingorden without any bunting and enough people signed it. And at the end of October, I’m going to carve a load of pumpkins and go out one night and place them all over town with battery-operated tea lights in them. They won’t be a fire hazard, and if I do it right before Halloween, it will already be over by the time he starts complaining.’
‘So you’re anonymously fighting your anonymous father?’ I never thought the word anonymous could be so overused. I pull back and reach up to tuck his hair back, my hand staying on his neck and my fingers playing in his hair so he knows I don’t want him to pull away. ‘Why now?’
He closes his eyes. ‘Because I feel like living again this year. Until now, I’ve been okay with hiding away, letting him get on with spreading his vitriol and telling myself it didn’t matter, but since I started coming to the bookshop, I’ve realised how much I love this village. I was away for years. I associated the place with bad memories – I resented it because I’d been sent away. When I came back after Mum died, my focus was on Dani, and I got through each day on autopilot, from doctors to hospital appointments interspersed with trips to the library and the supermarket to collect groceries I’d ordered online. We spoke to as few people as possible. After Dani died, Robert literally pushed me back into life. I was sitting here one day and I heard a noise, and looked up to see him outside banging on this window.’ He nods towards it, physically moving both of us. ‘Somehow he knew about the side gate and he’d let himself in and come looking for me. He knew I needed to get out of the house, so he physically dragged me down to the shop, shoved me onto the sofa and poked tea and biscuits down my throat until I broke down and told him everything.’
I pull him down into another hug and my arms get impossibly tighter around him and if I didn’t pull out a few handfuls of his hair during the kiss, I definitely do now. ‘And let me guess, he found reasons for you to go there every day and made sure you stayed occupied and got out of your own head?’ I say, because I know the kind of man Robert is. I know how concerned he was if I didn’t seem as chirpy as usual, how encouraging he’d be if I went in there when I’d just lost a job or went in on the way back from my mum’s endless lecturing about finding a husband. How he’d try to find me a book that fitted the situation and always offered me a cuppa and a biscuit.
‘Exactly. Like the Peter Pan mural and refitting the children’s section. He encouraged me to work on Pentamerone.’ He smiles into my shoulder and lifts me up, turning us around until he can sit me on the shelf. ‘I wasn’t sure you’d let me do that again after the river incident.’
‘Hah. You’re okay as long as there are no bodies of water around. And no swans. They weren’t too impressed.’
He presses his lips to my cheek. ‘Hal … thank you. You’re the best thing that’s happened in my life for a very long time. I want this, I want you, but I’m so scared of messing it up. I mess everything up.’
‘So do I.’ I slide my hand up his jaw and lock eyes with him. ‘But I’ve wanted to kiss you from the moment you landed on my floor. I’ve found every possible excuse to hold your hand, and every day has been a constant battle of wills not to inappropriately hug you. Nothing ever goes right for me, and if it looks like things are going right then I’ve obviously overlooked something and karma will catch up shortly. But I look forward to seeing you every day, Dimitri. My life is better because you came into it, and now we’ve done that, I don’t want to go back to not doing that.’
Even as I speak, I wonder where I’m getting this confidence from. Nothing has ever worked out for me for long, from jobs to friendships, and especially relationships. ‘So maybe we can try to not mess it up together?’
‘I’d like that.’ He steals another kiss and then grins again. ‘Who knew going arse-over-tit could lead to this, eh?’
‘Do you know how jealous Heathcliff’s going to be? He’s head-over-heels in love with you.’
‘He’s also head-over-heels in love with that little brown Cockapoo that walks past every morning, so I don’t think the bar’s set too high.’
‘Well, it is a very handsome Cockapoo.’
He laughs, his usual laugh now, complete with twinkling eyes and smile that could light up the night. He leans in for a kiss, angling his head carefully to avoid another glasses crash, and I get lost in kissing him once again. My hands run over his shoulders, into his hair and back down his neck, constantly trying to pull him impossibly closer, to quell the butterflies that are zipping through me, the sheer excitement at being more than friends with this beautiful man who, honestly, I’ve felt more than friends with for a while now.
We’re gasping against each other’s mouths when we eventually pull back and his stomach lets out a huge growl of hunger.
‘It wouldn’t be a kiss if my body didn’t betray me in some way.’ He slips his hands around my waist and helps me down. ‘We should eat. Come and see my kitchen.’
I follow him down the wide dark hallway, taking in the reminders of his sister at every turn – a wheelchair-sized stairlift on the huge staircase, wide hallways and enlarged doorframes, a shallow ramp that we go down into the kitchen. It’s a huge room, bigger than the entire bookshop and flat upstairs put together, with a red-tiled floor, low-level wooden cupboards and low units at a height for someone in a wheelchair to reach. There are dusty vases of artificial flower arrangements, the kind that look like they were put there by his mum and have stood there ever since, and shelves lined with recipe books that I again guess didn’t always belong to him.
In every flat I’ve lived in, I’ve always had tiny, cramped kitchens, and I can’t imagine ever cooking – well, heating up microwave meals – in a place the size of this, and he loves baking. It should be a happy room, but once again, it isn’t. This house is so overwhelmingly sad. Everything about it is the reverse of Dimitri’s sunny, smiley, gorgeously positive personality.
I watch the way he bends over the sink to wash his hands, and then starts chopping vegetables, almost bent double to reach the countertops that are far too low for him. I can’t shake the feeling of crushing sadness again. When I’ve imagined Dimitri cooking, I’ve imagined a warm and cosy kitchen, full of the music he hums in the shop when he forgets he’s not alone, sizzling pans and beeping timers, and happiness, but actually seeing it … It’s like he’s living in someone else’s house. Seeing him hunched over a unit that doesn’t fit him, he looks like he’s bowed under the weight of this house and everything that’s happened in it.
‘Can I help?’ I ask.
‘Of course not.’ He looks up and grins at me. ‘I invited you. Besides, how can I be sure that you haven’t inherited your mum’s cooking skills?’
‘Oh, I assure you, my cooking skills make my mum look like kitchen queen. A smaller-boobed Nigella if ever there was one.’
The laugh echoes around the kitchen, tinkling into every corner before fading away, forgotten into the darkened corners.
I look up at the high ceiling, a cobwebbed hollow affair with two starkly bright bar lights hanging down, giving it the appearance of a hospital room, and I’ve never been so grateful for my tiny kitchen that’s so small you trip over the living-room sofa if you take a step too many.
While he puts a pot on the stove, I wander over to the window, but we’re on a slightly lower level now and the overgrown blackberry bushes outside have crept right up the bottom half of the window and their prickly branches are scratching against the glass.
Eventually I’m sitting at a table on the other side of the kitchen, sipping wine from Dimitri’s father’s abandoned collection, when he puts down the most delicious-looking spaghetti bolognese in front of me and sits down opposite.
‘Cheers.’ He leans across the table and we clink glasses and tuck in.
I thought I was so full of nerves that I’d never be hungry, but one mouthful of Dimitri’s amazing food is enough to kick-start anyone’s appetite. ‘So your talent for cooking doesn’t end at baked goods then?’
He blushes and mumbles something incoherent that’s obviously a rebuttal of some kind, and all I wish about this meal is that it was something easier to eat as I splash the fifth tomato pip down the front of Nicole’s dress and try to wipe it off without him noticing.
‘So you and your brother both own this place?’
‘Yeah. Mum left the house to me, Dani, and him in a three-way split. Now she’s gone, my brother and I own it fifty-fifty. He wants to sell and I don’t. We’re in battle about it. The even split means neither of us can do anything without the other’s agreement, and neither of us will give in. It’s been in our family for nearly a century. My great-great grandparents lived here. I don’t think it’s right to wipe out so much history like that. I always thought I’d be passing it on to my future kids one day, not rattling around in it alone and having petty arguments with my brother that neither of us will back down from.’
‘It must cost a fortune to run …’ If he notices I’m wheedling for more information, he doesn’t say anything.
‘And that’s exactly why I haven’t offered you a grand tour. I can’t afford to keep up more rooms than I use. The kitchen and living room, and upstairs there’s a bedroom and bathroom. The Aga heats this room, the fire heats the water as well as the living room, and the heat from that rises to the bedroom above it.’
I once again think about my tiny flat. It’s been warm enough that I haven’t put the heating on since I moved in above the bookshop, but no flat I’ve ever lived in has had more than a couple of electric radiators or been big enough that they weren’t sufficient. This answers a lot about the financial situation he’s mentioned a couple of times. I don’t know anything about property, but even my untrained eye can tell that this house needs a lot of repairs, and it looks like the sort of place you could funnel money into for years and there would still be more to do.
‘Everything else is closed off. I keep the doors shut to try to stem the draughts howling through, and as you’ve probably noticed, I spend most of my time taking advantage of your cosy bookshop rather than dealing with the problems here.’
I’d always thought there was a reason that he was never keen to go home, but I didn’t realise it was because home was a crumbling, draughty, empty old mansion. He must be so lonely here. Living between only a couple of rooms, the rest of the vast building left to gather dust and conceal ghosts and belongings of people long gone. That feeling of sadness presses down on me again, and he must sense it too, because he reaches across the table and touches my hand.
‘Enough about my woes. I’ve got some greeting card mock-ups to show you later, and I had an idea about your open day and how we can display these messages …’
I want to know everything there is to know about his woes, but there’s something vulnerable in his eyes, something that’s begging me not to push it, so I squeeze his hand and let him change the subject. ‘Go on …’
‘You’ve got a printer in the office, right?’
I nod, thinking about the clunky thing at the corner of the desk that I haven’t had a chance to use yet. Robert must’ve replaced it fairly recently because it’s modern by the other electronic items’ standard.
‘What if we scan them in and print them out – book cover on the front, message on the back, and display them somehow. It would save the books themselves being ruined by constant handling, and people could ask for them only if they want to buy them.’
‘That’s brilliant.’ I grin at him. ‘I feel like they should be hung up somehow, like a mobile or something …’ A blackberry bush blows in the breeze and scratches along the window with an ominous creak which draws my attention outside. ‘Leaves!’
Dimitri turns around to look out the window behind him at my sudden outburst, but I grab his hand again. ‘What if we print them out as leaf shapes and hang them up like leaves on a tree? It would be a nod towards paper origins, and it couldn’t be that difficult to cut a trunk and some branches out of cardboard … I could leave it up all the time then. Rather than one big exhibit on open day, it could be like an opening day, and the messages could stay on display always … Why are you smiling like that?’
‘Because you have no idea how radiant you are. And Robert has no idea how lucky Once Upon A Page got on the day he picked your ticket. That’s brilliant, Hal. Both the tree and the opening day. I was thinking of a big one-day exhibit, but an opening day is so much better. Anyone can come and see the messages at any time then, and when you get in touch with local press and stuff to cover it, you can sell the “under new management” angle too.’
If I lay down on this tiled floor, my cheeks are so red that I’d be completely camouflaged.
‘What about a real tree? I’ve got an old birch round the back that’s as dead as a doornail. About six foot high, in a fancy pot. It didn’t survive the winter a couple of years ago, so now it’s just bare branches that I haven’t got round to throwing away yet. If you tie each leaf onto it, it could look pretty spectacular …’
‘Much better than what I was thinking of: cutting two trunks from cardboard and slotting them together so they stand upright akin to a primary school project. Are you sure you don’t mind?’
‘My mum planted it. It was a little seedling growing in the middle of something else and she rescued it and planted it up on its own, and it took years to be able to identify it. I’ve always felt awful that it died on my watch, but this would be a fantastic way of repurposing it. She’d like that.’
‘She wrote the note that started all this … It seems right, somehow.’
‘Like some sort of weird fate that we were meant to be here, and we were meant to pick up that book on that day …’
I nod because it’s exactly what I’ve felt since the moment I saw that email from Robert. For the first time in my life, I’ve felt like things were going right – like I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, like I’ve got the job I was supposed to have, and most of all, like Dimitri was meant to fall through my door when he did.
***
‘Thank you for an amazing evening.’ Our joined hands swing between us, the tiles click under my feet and my voice echoes in the hollowness of the grand hallway. He’s giving me a tour of the house, but there isn’t much to see. Endless wide hallways, empty and dusty, the only surprise about them is that there aren’t suits of armour that move of their own accord as soon as your back is turned.
He leads me up a staircase that looks like it should have Leonardo DiCaprio waiting under a clock at the top of it.
‘Wow,’ I say as he creaks open a huge double door, letting us in to a circular ballroom. ‘This is where you work.’
I can’t help letting out a breath as I look around the wide-open room. The faded walls were once red with gold accents, the scuffed floor must’ve been polished once, and a cobwebbed chandelier hangs from a ceiling so high that it must surely go all the way from the second floor to the very top of the house. But best of all are the array of easels that are stood around the edges of the room. An oak table in the corner bears sketchbooks and a display of cards in pastel-coloured mounts that I hope are what he’s been making for the shop.
‘Only in the spring and summer. I can’t afford to heat it so it’s too cold by the time autumn comes.’ He walks across to open one of the lattice windows and let a breeze in, and I follow him so I can look out. The view from up here looks down on the overgrown mangle of a garden and the harsh-looking railings beyond. ‘But if you’re going to draw, you may as well do it in a ballroom, right?’
I can’t argue with him there, and this is a seriously impressive room, but it shares the feeling of emptiness that the rest of the house has got. I close my eyes and try to imagine being here alone. What’s a ballroom without a ball? Nothing more than an empty room whose sheer size only serves to make it feel emptier, and I have to shake myself to clear the feeling of hollowness that’s settled over me. ‘This even looks like the palace in Anastasia.’
‘You know what that means, right?’ He stands in a waltz position, one hand up and one hand out, and smiles that mischievous smile at me. ‘Dance with me?’
After two glasses of wine, dancing doesn’t seem like as bad an idea as it usually would, and to be honest, Dimitri could suggest going on a tour of a wasp farm with that smile and I’d probably agree.
I slip my right hand into his, and put the other one on his shoulder while his curls around my hip, and I let him lead us in whirling circles around the room, twirling me under his arm and spinning me away and pulling me back, and he’s a couple of wine glasses down too because he sings ‘Once Upon A December’ quietly all the while, not seeming self-conscious at all, and it feels so much like the scene where the Dimitri in the film teaches Anastasia to dance on the boat that I almost start giggling. ‘You can dance.’
‘I can. I can’t carry a cup of tea without spilling it, and I definitely can’t sing, but I can waltz. My housemaster at school insisted on dance lessons. He thought it might improve my diabolical sense of coordination. You can guess how well it worked.’
It makes me giggle again because he’s constantly full of surprises, and I love finding out all these little things I didn’t know about him. He goes back to singing ‘Once Upon a December’ and I love that he trusts me enough to bring me here, to tell me about the life that he’s clearly not shared with anyone for a long time. I love how he makes me feel like a princess as we dance around the room. The gold-leaf pattern running through the flooring twinkles when it catches the light from the chandelier as our feet move across it, and none of it matters because this is like something from a fairy tale. All that’s missing is a yellow Belle dress and a teapot singing ‘Tale As Old As Time’.
His eyes don’t leave mine as we spin around, and I’m vaguely sure one or both of us should be getting dizzy by now, but everything has faded away except for the burning spots of sensation where his hands are touching me and that dazed, happy look in his eyes.
‘Thank you for making new memories in this old house.’
‘Thank you for letting me in.’ I take the hand that’s on his shoulder and pat it over his heart in case he thinks I’m literally thanking him for letting me in the door.
His arms slide around my waist and he pulls me closer until we’re pressed against each other. I lean my head on his chest and his chin rests in my hair, and we’re still moving around the room but it’s more of a hug than a dance now.
‘You think I’m mad, don’t you?’ he murmurs.
‘I think you’re many things, Dimitri. Kind, talented, brave, beautiful, and the loveliest person I’ve ever met, with an interesting taste in socks, waistcoats, and braces, but you’ll have to elaborate on the mad part.’
‘To stay here. I can see it in your face. You think I’m mad to keep this house.’
I suck in a breath. ‘It isn’t my place to judge anyone for how they handle grief. When my dad died, I became a teenage rebel and made my mum’s life a misery for a few years. You can ask her, she’ll be more than happy to tell you. This is your home. You grew up here. I can see why you don’t want to give it up.’
‘And now the honest, non-diplomatic answer?’
I smile against his chest because he already knows me well enough to hear the restraint in my voice. ‘You’re different here. I can see the weight of this place physically dragging you down,’ I say in a rush. ‘It’s a beautiful house, but there are reminders at every turn. You can’t get on with your own life because you’re still living theirs. It’s so sad here, and you’re not. It’s hollow and empty and isolated, and you’re the opposite of all of those things. You’re bright, and happy, and positive, and obviously I now know how much pain you’ve been hiding behind that sunny smile, but every inch of this place is shrouded in ghosts. You need …’ I cut myself off because I’m out of breath from rambling, but everything I’ve thought since he opened that gate comes pouring out.
He’s stopped dancing now but he hasn’t pushed me away, and I press the side of my head closer to his chest. ‘It’s not my place to tell you how to live your life but if you ever want to spend the night in a bookshop instead of coming back here, I know one where you’d always be welcome.’
‘It’s that Waterstones in Cirencester, isn’t it?’
We both burst out laughing at the exact same moment, and the tension that had shot through the room at my honesty dissipates instantly.
We pull apart and his hair has flopped over again and I can’t resist reaching up to tuck it back, and even though I half-expect him to back away and tell me to mind my own business, he closes his eyes and turns into the touch, letting me cradle the side of his face and run my fingers through his hair.
When he opens his eyes, he leans down to kiss me, and far from the chaste nervousness of earlier, it’s a very ungentlemanly kiss this time, and I melt into his embrace. In fact, kissing Dimitri is enough to knock anyone off their feet, and I don’t realise how much I’ve melted into him until his knees start to buckle and we go crashing to the floor, hitting an easel on the way down. He lands squarely on a tube of yellow acrylic paint, which promptly explodes, sending out a huge splurt of paint straight onto Nicole’s dress, his trousers, and the floor. I’ve bitten my tongue and Dimitri’s got a hand to his lip and a pained expression on his face.
‘And this is exactly why I don’t buy nice dresses,’ I gasp between fits of laughter. Nicole is going to kill me. I doubt even the winner of Dry Cleaner of the Year award could sort this mess out.
‘Blame me for being a clumsy oaf. I’ll pay the dry-cleaning bill.’ He holds his hand out and lets me pull him into a sitting position.
I won’t let him, but I think he’s such a gent to offer. He laughs, looking tousled and uninhibited and … yellow. In trying to get the paint off us both, he’s only managed to spread it further, and it sets me off giggling again. It takes everything I have not to dive on him, knock him onto his back and snog him senseless. I feel dizzy and it’s not just from the wine or the dancing or possibly the paint fumes. I feel dizzy because I didn’t think storybook romances like this happened in real life.