19

“Tell us about the sex,” Bella pleaded, gin in hand. “Was it like his Ruby Bell books?”

My face was on fire.

“She’s blushing,” Missy teased. “Which means it was good.”

“Did he throw you down on the bed and ravish you?” Bella asked. “Like Nico Skyvros in A Night to Remember. God I loved that book, it was just so…”

“Stop it!” I begged them both. I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Please stop! The sex was nothing like a Ruby Bell book, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t good and that’s all I’m going to tell you. Besides, I have more important things to think about right now.”

“Come on, Megan, things really aren’t that bad,” Bella said.

“I feel as though I’ve lost everything.”

“You haven’t lost everything. Don’t be so dramatic,” Bella replied as she replenished my gin glass and passed me another tissue. “You have Missy and me for a start, and you can stay here with us for as long as you need.”

“Don’t make it too long, though,” Missy interrupted. “The delightful Norm is moving in next month.”

“What?” I said, finally distracted from the tragedy of my own life. “That’s great news. When did…?”

Bella held up her hand. “We’ll come to that in a minute,” she said. “As I was saying, you have us and somewhere to stay. Xander will cool down and realise he’s being ridiculous and come begging your forgiveness like the deeply flawed romantic hero that he is…”

Missy tutted. “You don’t have to forgive him though,” she said. “That was a total dick move, blaming you for selling his secret to the press the morning after he slept with you.”

Even Bella looked deflated at that. “It was a dick move,” she said. “But so far he hasn’t kidnapped anyone like Sebastian St Vincent – so he’s not beyond redemption, right?” She looked at me. “Those are the rules, aren’t they?” She grinned at me hopefully. She was absolutely right of course; I hadn’t lost everything.

I was about to lose my home a lot more quickly than I’d thought, as Missy and I had found out earlier when my parents had finally confessed to us what was going on.

“Your father has found a buyer,” Mum had said bitterly. “Who wants us all out by the end of January.”

“What?” I’d replied. That was so soon, just six weeks away. I knew we’d have to sell the shop but I hadn’t expected this. I thought it would take months, maybe even years to sell. Who would want a failing bookshop, after all?

“You knew we’d have to sell it, love,” Dad had said. “We’d talked about it.”

“You said it would take ages. You said I had plenty of time.”

“Yes, well, the speed of the sale has been a surprise but the developers…”

“Developers?” I’d asked. But of course it was being sold to developers. The answer to the question ‘who would want a failing bookshop?’ was ‘nobody’.

“I’m sorry, love, we’ll work something out.”

“I expect he’s got your whole life planned out for you,” Mum had said. “Just like he has mine.”

“Where are Mum and I going to live?” I’d asked.

“Apparently we’re all going to Spain,” Mum had snapped.

“What?” None of this had made any sense, especially on top of Xander’s earlier accusations.

“It might be the new start you need,” Dad had said. “We can have a chat about it and—”

“No.” I was sick to death of being told what I’d done and what I should do and what would be best for me. “I can’t do this. Not right now.” I’d walked away from their protests, grabbing my coat from the hook in the hallway as I’d passed. I’d run down the stairs and through the shop, pushing past Colin.

“Megan,” he’d called after me. “I need to talk to you.”

“Not now, Colin,” I’d replied, already breaking my vow to be less dismissive of him as I’d marched out into the street.

I’d started walking, with no idea of where to go, when Missy, who must have only stopped to collect her laptop from the office, had caught up with me.

“Where are you going?” she’d asked.

“I have no idea,” I’d replied.

She’d taken me back to her flat and Bella had been summoned. As soon as she’d been able to get out of work she’d appeared with a bottle of gin and sensible words.

“Do you think you’ll move to Spain?” she asked now.

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I have absolutely no desire to move to Spain.”

“Is your mum going to go?” Bella asked. “With your dad?”

“I’ve no idea. Dad said something about coming back for her, as though they’d been planning this for years, but Mum seemed really pissed off. I don’t think she’d been expecting the shop to sell so quickly.” I paused. “That’s all I know though. I didn’t give them much of a chance to explain.”

“But you’re staying in York?” Bella confirmed.

“I think so. I mean, I’d really like to. I love it here, but the publishing jobs are all in London. Xander did mention briefly that I should go to London but…” I shrugged. Who knew what was happening anymore?

“You should make that call to Philomena Bloom,” Missy suggested. “See what she thinks.”

“I don’t think Philomena Bloom will want to talk to me now, will she? Not after what Xander will have told her about me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Missy said. “Nobody really believes you’re the one who leaked the story, not even Xander. Philomena probably knows who did it. This has inside job written all over it.”

“You don’t know that,” I said.

“I’m fairly sure of it, though. What could you possibly gain from blabbing to the papers? He’ll be at home right now regretting he ever accused you and working out how to win you back, just like Bella said.”

I doubted it. This wasn’t a romance novel after all, despite what I’d said to Xander in the office this morning and all the romance tropes we’d inadvertently encountered.

And it wasn’t the first time he’d reacted like this.

“I never told you why Xander told me about Ruby Bell,” I said.

“I thought he just told you,” Bella replied.

“He did, but only because of what I found in his car.” I told them about coming across the manuscript and about how Xander had reacted, how angry he’d been and how he’d refused to admit to the obvious explanation at first. “I couldn’t tell you because I couldn’t tell anyone,” I said. “But the next day, when he came to see me at the shop to apologise and admit the truth he also told me that he can be reactionary and then regret his behaviour afterwards.”

“Which is exactly what he’s done again now,” Missy said.

“It’s not a very healthy way of living, though, is it?” I replied.

“Nor is locking yourself up in a bookshop for three years or only dating men who look like your first love,” Bella snapped.

Missy and I stared at her as she clapped a hand over her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean it to come out like that.”

“What did you mean then?” I asked warily.

“Look, you told us about Xander’s mum and his ex-wife and how the two of you talked about grief and how hard it is to go on after you’ve lost someone important. I just wonder if his behaviour is something to do with how he’s handling his mum’s death. He’s human, after all – although it’s hard to believe with those cheekbones – and maybe his way of trying to control his life when it spiralled out of control was to keep people at arm’s length, which he does wonderfully by being rude and arrogant – something I think we discussed when you first met him.”

She gave me a knowing look and I had to agree with her. We all find our ways of coping after trauma and those behaviours can quickly become a habit – an unhealthy habit most of the time.

“Xander told you he’d take the relationship at your pace,” Bella went on. “But maybe he needs to hear that from you as well.”

“Go on,” I said. It was something that had already crossed my mind after all.

“From what you told us he lost both his parents and got divorced before he turned thirty,” Bella said. “Perhaps he’s not as ready for a new relationship as he thinks he is. Perhaps he’s scared too. And perhaps last night was as big a step for him as it was for you.”

“You think he regrets last night?” I asked.

“I didn’t say that,” Bella replied. “I said that it would have been a big step for him after everything that’s happened.” She looked at Missy and me and rolled her eyes. “You’d think you two would be able to see that.”

“Megan and I don’t go around accusing people of things they haven’t done,” Missy said indignantly.

“No, but like I said, until recently Megan had barely left the bookshop and you only date guys who remind you of your first boyfriend – even though it always ends in disaster and even though good men like Bryn are besotted with you.” Bella folded her arms across her chest decisively.

I turned to Missy. “She has got a point,” I said.

“Humph,” Missy replied.

“What can I do about it, though?” I asked. “Xander must know I didn’t sell that story to the papers. I understand that he was shocked and probably a bit scared and this week has been a total rollercoaster for both of us, but it’s up to him to apologise now and so far I haven’t heard from him.”

“Give him time,” Bella said.

“But he was the one who asked me out for coffee,” I replied. “He was the one who took me to Graydon Hall.”

“And look how that turned out. That whole one-bed thing can’t have been particularly easy for him either. Especially if he had feelings for you and had no idea if they were reciprocated.”

“Wouldn’t it have been easier for him to just talk to me about how he felt?” I asked. “Rather than shout mad accusations at me?”

“From what you’ve told us, he’s not much of a talker,” Missy said. “Not when it comes to talking about how he feels, anyway.”

“He probably wasn’t expecting to fall in love with you,” Bella went on. “This is all as much of a shock to him as it has been to you.”

“In love? He’s not…” Of course he wasn’t in love with me. We hadn’t known each other long enough.

“Isn’t he?” Bella interrupted “Let’s look at the facts.”

“Must we?” I moaned.

“Firstly…” Bella began counting off her points on her fingers. “He never takes his eyes off you. Even before he took you to the Christmas Market, when he was still being an arrogant snob about romance novels, he was always looking at you with these big soppy eyes, just like his dog.”

“No he wasn’t…”

“Secondly, he is willing to come to a romance book club, be bossed around by Trixie, learn to dance the quadrille and, I’m presuming, put on a Regency outfit just so he can spend time with you.”

“Well Norm is doing the same for you,” I said.

“I bullied Norm into doing it. Xander turns up voluntarily.”

That was true.

“Thirdly, there’s all the kissing…”

I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up when she mentioned the kissing. I would miss the kissing.

“And now the sex, of course,” she went on. “Which you are being disappointingly coy about.”

“And she’s blushing again.” Missy laughed.

“Fourthly, and most importantly,” Bella said, sounding triumphant, “he listens to you.”

“Have you any idea how rare a man who listens is?” Missy muttered.

“What? How do you know he listens?”

“Because you told us,” Bella said softly. “You told us how he listened and understood, how he’d been through a hard time himself and understood if you found it all a bit difficult.”

I swallowed; it was true. He had listened quietly without opinion while I’d told him things that I’d never really talked about with anyone else.

“The woman has a point,” Missy said. “It’s fairly obvious he’s pretty besotted.”

“If he really likes me and had really listened to me then he would never have accused me of going to the papers.”

“Look at it from his point of view though,” Bella said. “His deepest darkest secret was all over the front of that tabloid just a few days after he told somebody new about it. He put two and two together and made fifty-four, but can you imagine the state he would have been in? It clearly wasn’t something he wanted to be common knowledge, for whatever reason.”

I had to admit that Bella’s theory made sense, especially as I already knew the reason he kept it a secret, the reason he always wanted it to be a secret. Because it was something he’d shared with his mother, something he’d written for his mother and had published in her memory.

And something he couldn’t do anymore without his mother. He’d probably been hoping to quietly kill off Ruby Bell until that newspaper headline appeared.

“You really like him too, don’t you?” Missy asked.

“I do but…” I sighed. “I also wonder if I’ve just fallen for him because he’s the first man since Joe to pay me any attention.”

“Rubbish,” Bella said. “Whenever we go out for a drink, men are interested in you. Xander isn’t the first guy to pay you attention but he is the first guy you’ve responded to.”

“That’s not true…”

“It really is,” Missy agreed, nodding vigorously. “I hate to say it but I think Bella is right.”

“Yesssss!” Bella cheered, fist bumping the air.

“Right about what?” I asked.

“Everything,” Bella said.

“About Xander needing to know that you’ll give him time if he needs it,” Missy said, ignoring Bella. “Just as he’s promised to take things at your pace, maybe he needs that reassurance as well. If he hasn’t dated at all since his divorce, this has probably all come out of the blue for him as much as it has for you.”

“Call him tomorrow,” Bella said.

“I’ll think about it,” I said. “I promise, but…” I trailed off. There was something else I wanted to talk to Bella and Missy about, something I’d been thinking about all afternoon, something I’d been wondering about since Dad told me the bookshop would have to be sold, and it had nothing to do with Xander.

“What is it?” Missy asked. “There’s something else on your mind, isn’t there?”

“Do you think I should try to buy the bookshop?” I asked.

“What?” Bella said, staring at me.

“I know it sounds out of the blue. I did consider it when Dad said he was selling up but I thought it would be OK because in my imagination, when the shop was sold, it would become the thriving bookshop that Mum and I hadn’t quite managed. But as soon as Dad mentioned developers I felt this overwhelming sadness – both my home and the shop are going to disappear forever. If I could put the money in to stop that from happening…”

“How?” Missy interrupted, her eyes wide. “What money?”

“I’ve still got some money left over from the sale of the London flat, plus…” I trailed off. I hated talking about this. I didn’t even want to think about it, but I was going to need money for the future whether I bought the bookshop or not. I had to think about it sometime. “When Joe died I got a pretty hefty life insurance payment, as well as a death-in-service payment from his firm.”

Bella leaned closer to me. “You never told us about that,” she said softly.

“I’ve never wanted to think about it,” I replied. “It’s always felt like tainted money and I didn’t want it. But needs must, and next month I’m going to be losing my job and my home if I don’t do something drastic.”

There was a silence, interrupted only by the sound of more gin being poured.

“I don’t think you should buy the bookshop,” Missy said thoughtfully.

“You don’t?”

“I agree,” Bella said. “It would be a step backwards, I think.”

“Exactly.” Missy sat up and shifted across the sofa towards me. “You said you were ready to move on, to maybe go back into publishing. You even mentioned London.”

“Yes, I guess,” I said hesitantly.

“And if you buy the bookshop you’ll stay exactly where you are. Yes, you’ll still have a roof over your head and a job, but for how long? I know those bookshop accounts like the back of my hand and I’m fully aware that you haven’t taken a wage from the shop for months. If you use Joe’s life insurance money to buy the shop, what will you live on?”

“Whereas if you start again, the money will give you a buffer,” Bella said. “Something to live on while you work out your next steps, which is probably exactly why Joe took the insurance out in the first place.”

They were both right of course, but it felt like too much, as though two gin-sozzled bulldozers were coming at me with the truth all at once when all I wanted was for things to carry on as normal. I put my head in my hands and groaned.

“I know you weren’t expecting your dad to sell this quickly – and neither was I, to be honest. It’s a lot to take on, especially when Xander had already ruined your day,” Missy said, rubbing circles on my back. “But I think this might be exactly what you need.”

I thought about the bookshop, my childhood home and refuge. I’d been unable to save it, unable to do anything. The bookshop had needed more effort than my broken heart had been able to cope with, and as my heart had started to mend I’d known I needed something else, something more. Yes I’d given everything a new lick of paint, I’d had a new sign commissioned, I’d made the bookshop look welcoming with its reading corner, monthly book recommendations and the children’s read-along. I’d listened to Bella and Missy about marketing and finance. I’d even managed to get Xander Stone to launch his book from our shop. But it wasn’t enough and I’d always known it wouldn’t be enough because, as I’d finally admitted, my heart wasn’t in it and never had been. I loved books and I was desperate for stories to be told and sold, but I needed to move away from what was, essentially, my grandparents’ dream – just as my father had had to move away from it years before.

When Joe and I had first started talking I knew I’d wanted to go, but even when we getting ready to move away, I couldn’t imagine not having the bookshop as part of my life.

“Just because you were brought up in a bookshop doesn’t mean you have to sell books forever,” Joe had said. “The circumstances of your birth don’t dictate your destiny, Megan.”

But what was my destiny?

“Where will I live?” I asked.

“I’ve already told you that you can move in here for a while until you find something else,” Bella said.

“What? And sleep on the sofa?” I laughed. “That’s really lovely of you but I don’t think you want me living here on top of you, Norm and Missy.”

“You don’t have to sleep on the sofa,” Missy said. “You can have my room.”

“Why? Where are you going?” I asked. “Is Norm that bad that you need to move out or are you running off with Bryn after all?”

“Neither. I’m going back home.”

I stared at her. “What? To America?”

She nodded, looking into her almost-empty gin glass. “Not forever, just for a while.”

My stomach sank. “Is this something else I haven’t realised because I’ve been so wrapped up in myself for so long, like Norm moving in?” I asked.

“No,” Missy said. “Both our decisions have been rather spur-of-the-moment, haven’t they, Bella?”

“Norm and I only decided to move in together on Monday. He got a letter asking if he wanted to renew the lease on his flat and we thought it was daft paying rent on two places when we’re always here.”

“And I phoned my parents on Wednesday,” Missy said. “I think they thought it was their annual Christmas phone call come early. I don’t think they were expecting to hear me say that I wanted to come back for a few weeks.”

“What made you decide to do that?” I asked. “Don’t get me wrong, if you’re happy I’m happy, but you always said you’d never go back. Not after what happened.”

“I listened to my own advice,” Missy replied. “I’d been nagging you about moving on and starting again. I pushed you into seeing Xander and into thinking about what else you wanted, to find a life outside of the bookshop, and then I realised that I was no better…” She paused. “Bella was right about that too.”

“Wow, this is huge, Missy.”

“I’ve had itchy feet for a while,” she went on. “I’ve been thinking about doing some travelling for months, but I just never got around to it. I felt sort of overcome by this sense of inertia.”

“I know that feeling,” I said.

“And then I saw you on Wednesday morning after your date with Xander, after you finally kissed him, and you were glowing.”

“I was?”

She nodded, smiling at me. “You really were. I was so happy for you – your dad was back, you’d met a guy you wanted to spend time with. I was a little bit jealous, truth be told. I wanted to feel like I was glowing again. And so I phoned my parents.”

“Just like that?” I asked. “After all this time?”

“Not at all.” Bella smiled. “She spent an entire evening stomping around the flat debating whether she should or not first. It was quite disconcerting.”

“I thought that if I was going to go travelling then visiting my parents might be a good starting point. We’ll have a lot to talk about, a lot to work out, but it’s something I know I need to do and I can’t do it over the phone.” Missy shrugged as though it was no big deal, but I knew exactly how big a deal this was for her. She would have had no idea how her parents would react and she would have been opening up the box she’d stored her heart in for the first time in years, just as I’d done when I let Xander kiss me for the first time.

As I sat there with my two friends I realised I had no regrets. Opening up to Xander had allowed me to be honest about so many things in my life and allowed me to admit that I was ready for whatever happened next. I knew, no matter what happened when she arrived at her parents’ house, Missy wouldn’t regret doing this either.

“You’re doing the right thing,” I said, taking my turn to rub her back.

“I’m scared shitless,” she admitted.

I shrugged. “Me too. I think that’s normal though.”

“And you’ll take Missy’s room?” Bella asked. “She’s booked a flight for mid-January so it all works out perfectly.”

“You’ve booked a flight?”

Missy nodded. “I had to do it straight away,” she said. “Otherwise I’d never do it.”

“OK, I’ll move in,” I said, although I was reluctant to live with the happy couple. “But just temporarily until I find somewhere else. I don’t want to cramp Norm’s style.”

“So that’s your home sorted,” Bella said. “And tomorrow you’ll phone Philomena and that will be your job sorted.”

“I’ll think about phoning her,” I corrected.

“And then all you have to do is phone Xander.”

“No,” I said. “That’s not all. There’s something I have to do that’s more important than any of that.”

“What?” Bella asked.

“I need to talk to Mum.”