Mum was in the kitchen attacking some potatoes when I got home the next morning. She was making a loud banging noise and it ricocheted off my head, which was sore from too many gins the night before.
“What on earth are you doing?” I asked.
“Practising,” she replied breathlessly.
“Practising what?”
“Potato pudding. It was the recipe I got in Trixie’s ridiculous Regency food lottery.” There was potato all over the kitchen surface and little bits of it were stuck in Mum’s hair.
“I never meant it to go this far – it was meant to be fun.”
Mum stopped mashing and looked at me. “What did you get?”
“Mince pies. I’ve asked Ellie at the tearoom to make them for me.”
“Cheat,” Mum said, continuing to attack the potatoes.
“I’ll leave you to it,” I said. “I need to get changed, get coffee and go and help Colin.” I felt terrible, both from too much gin and from the fact that I’d stormed out of the bookshop like a bratty teenager the day before rather than sit down and talk to my parents.
“Wait,” Mum said, blowing hair out of her face. “Your dad’s helping Colin and they’ll be fine until lunchtime. Can we talk?”
I hesitated.
“I’ll make a pot of coffee,” she said.
I nodded and sat down at the table, brushing potato crumbs off the seat before I did, and watched Mum make the coffee.
“Are you really going to Spain?” I asked.
Mum placed a mug of coffee carefully in front of me and sat down. “That depends,” she said.
“On what?”
“On you.”
“I don’t think I want to go to Spain,” I said. “I’ll come and visit of course; I won’t let things get bad again like I have with Dad over the last three years. I know I should have been to see him and I’ve been so selfish but I just…”
“Megan, it’s OK,” Mum interrupted gently. “We don’t expect you to come to Spain to live with us. You’ve no idea how happy it makes both me and your dad to see you wanting to get on with your life. We’ve been so worried.”
“I never meant to worry anyone.”
“We know you didn’t, love, but there were times when I thought you’d never move on. You seemed so stuck, but this year it’s felt as though you’ve started to wake up a little bit and since Xander appeared you’ve been like your old self again.”
I smiled weakly. “Tell me about you and Dad,” I said, not wanting to talk about Xander. “Tell me about Spain.”
“You know your father and I have stayed in touch over the years?”
“Yes, but I’ve never really understood it,” I admitted. “You were so upset when he first left.”
“I was. I was devastated. But you see, Megan, it was my fault as much as your father’s.”
“How? It wasn’t you who left.”
“No, but he asked me to go to London with him. He wanted both of us to go, but I told him I didn’t want you to be uprooted – you were in the middle of your A levels and…”
“I wouldn’t have minded being uprooted though,” I protested. “I’d have loved to live in London.”
She reached across the table to take my hand. “I know, love,” she said. “It was an excuse. I was the one who was scared. I’ve lived in York my whole life and I used your schooling as a reason not to go to London, because I was scared. When it came to the crunch I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t leave. But I couldn’t stop your dad from going and after he left I was so angry with myself for letting my fear hold me back, so angry that I refused to talk to him.”
“Until my wedding,” I said, starting to put the pieces together.
“Yes, Walter and I talked a lot at your wedding.”
“You knew by then that I’d be moving to London too. Did you still not want to join him then?”
“It felt as though we’d have to get to know each other again and your dad wasn’t ready to sell the bookshop. I said I’d look after it for him.”
“So he’s been thinking of selling it for a long time then?”
“Your father has been thinking of selling the bookshop for almost as long as I’ve known him.” Mum laughed. “It was his parents’ dream, not his, but it was also his home and he’s found it hard to let go.” She paused and looked at me. “I think you probably understand that?”
I nodded. “But the bookshop isn’t your dream either,” I said. “Why did you stay so long?”
“It’s a beautiful place to live in the middle of a beautiful city,” she replied. “It’s easy to get lost in it, to lose track of time, to hide away among the bookshelves and, for me at least, in my writing room in the eaves. I think you probably understand that too, don’t you?”
“More than you could ever know,” I replied. “Moving back to York was meant to be a new start, but it ended up being a good excuse to disappear from my life.”
“I probably exacerbated that, didn’t I? I’ve been overprotective of you since Joe died. I should have started to encourage you to spread your wings much sooner.”
“I might not have listened, though.” I paused, there was a missing part of Mum’s story that I needed to get to the bottom of. “Mum, it’s been nearly ten years since my wedding,” I said. “Since you and Dad started talking again. Why has it taken you so long to agree to try again?”
“The timing has never been right,” she said and I noticed her eyes flick away.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked.
“I was going to go to Paris with him,” she said quietly. “When he first moved there for that ‘writer in residence’ job. We’d only just started talking about it when Joe was first diagnosed and we wanted to support you, support both of you. We loved Joe like he was our own son, you know.”
“I know,” I managed, my throat burning.
“In the end I persuaded your father to go without me. It was too good an opportunity for him to turn down. Joe’s prognosis had been good at the beginning and I thought I could join your dad in Paris when you were over the worst.”
She passed me a tissue from the box on the kitchen table as I cried at the memory. She was right – we’d been told that a high percentage of people made a full recovery from the type of leukaemia Joe had. When he first went into remission, we all thought it was over. We never expected it to come back.
“I’m sorry, my darling,” Mum said, taking my hand. “I’m sorry to bring this all back up again for you.”
“I need to know,” I replied. Mum had been amazing the whole time Joe was sick, both times he was sick. She’d come down to London whenever she could, filled our freezer with casseroles and lasagnes, and had been a tower of strength to both of us and to Joe’s family. I never knew how she did it. And I never knew she’d given up Paris to do it. “Why didn’t you tell me all this before? I can’t believe you gave up Paris.”
“Perhaps we should have told you. I don’t know. We were both trying to do what was best, and at first I just thought I was delaying Paris. After Joe died, both your dad and I were devastated. None of us were thinking straight, and you needed me. I couldn’t go to Paris then; you needed the stability of home, of the bookshop.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry I haven’t been able to be there for anyone else.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about,” Mum said. “Your dad and I just had to wait for you to find your feet in your own time. You came first.”
“And now we’ve come full circle,” I said. “And we’re selling the bookshop.”
“So it would seem.”
“This is what you want, isn’t it, Mum?” I asked. “You seemed so angry with Dad yesterday.” I thought of Joe’s money sitting in my account. I could still buy the bookshop if Mum didn’t want to leave. She’d looked after me for so long…
“Of course it’s what I want,” she replied, interrupting my thoughts. “I know I was angry yesterday but that was because Walter had agreed this sale without running it past either of us. Six weeks doesn’t give us much time to get our heads around everything, and I was worried about you as well. This is your home.”
“You don’t need to protect me anymore, Mum. I know we need to sell the bookshop; I’ve known it for a while. Admittedly, I didn’t think it would happen so fast, but I need to learn how to live life again on my own. Like you, I’ve been almost too comfortable here and I haven’t found any reason to leave. I even thought I might use Joe’s insurance money to buy it because…” I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t really want to buy it, but some days it’s hard to imagine not being here.”
“I don’t think you should put that money into the bookshop,” Mum said, looking a little horrified. “It’s for your security, not to plough into a sinking ship.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to.”
I told her about the conversation I’d had over too much gin the night before, about Bella and Norm and about Missy’s upcoming trip to America, about moving in with Bella and working out what I wanted to do once the bookshop was sold.
“Who is this mystery buyer, anyway?” I asked.
“Fred Bishop,” she replied. “Who used to work here.”
“So that’s what he and Dad were talking about the other day. Dad said it was going to a developer. Since when was Fred Bishop a developer?”
“Apparently he found retirement boring and got into property development. It seems to have made him rather ruthless. He’s transforming the building into two flats and a retail unit – open to the highest bidder.”
“Fred Bishop is a ruthless property developer?” I was rather astounded. He’d always seemed so kind and gentle, such a lover of books.
“Well, maybe he can help you find somewhere to live. It’s the least he can do in the circumstances.”
“And what about a job?” I asked with a smile. “I’m probably going to need one of those too.”
“I thought you were going to talk to Philomena Bloom about that.”
I pulled a face. “That’s what Bella and Missy said. I’m convinced she won’t speak to me after all this Xander and Ruby Bell stuff but…”
“You won’t know until you ask her,” Mum interrupted.
“I guess not.” I didn’t really have any excuse not to phone Philomena. I had to do something.
“I still can’t believe that Xander wrote those raunchy Ruby Bell books,” Mum said. “Did you ask him what made him do it?”
“Money, I think.” I knew it was a lie and so did Mum – the massive six-figure advance he had got for Boxed had been all over the trade press – but I wasn’t going to betray any of Xander’s secrets, no matter what he might think of me.
“Do you think Dot knew?” Mum asked.
“Xander says not,” I replied. “I keep thinking I should call Dot and ask her how Xander is, but…”
“You haven’t heard from him then?”
I shook my head.
“Give it time,” she said, echoing Bella.
*
The week that followed was one of the longest of my life. The days seemed to drag interminably, even though the bookshop was almost constantly busy with customers needing advice and attention. My father helped as much as he could when he wasn’t disappearing to have meetings with the bank or Fred Bishop, but mostly it was just Colin and me on the shop floor every day – and Colin was acting more mysteriously than ever since Dad had spoken to him about the bookshop being sold. He barely seemed able to look at me, and whenever I tried to talk to him about it or to ask him what it was he had wanted to talk to me about on the afternoon I’d found out that my father had found a buyer, he just waved me away dismissively.
On top of everything else, Trixie phoned every five minutes about the Christmas Eve party. If I ignored my mobile phone she just called the shop landline instead, which she knew I had to answer.
“I think we should have a proper dress rehearsal on Thursday,” she said.
“A dress rehearsal?” I queried. “It’s a party, Trixie, not a play.”
“We all need to check that our gowns still fit,” she went on. “And the men’s outfits have arrived now so we need to check them too. If we need to do any alterations I don’t want to be doing them at the last minute on Christmas Eve.”
I thought of Xander’s Regency outfit, his jokes about his inside leg measurement, his hand on my thigh. He still hadn’t phoned and I guessed I’d never know what he looked like in breeches now.
“I suppose that makes sense,” I reluctantly agreed.
“And we should set the bookshop up as we will be doing for the party,” Trixie said. “With the dance floor and card tables and buffet area – just to make sure everything fits.”
“Fine,” I said, without enthusiasm. “A dress rehearsal on Thursday. I’ll let everyone know.” The last thing I felt like was a dress rehearsal for something that was meant to have been a casual party and I wished I’d never come up with the Regency Christmas idea. I knew Mum agreed. When she wasn’t shut up in her writing room trying to meet a Christmas Eve deadline, she was making inedible attempt after inedible attempt at potato pudding. Plus, without Xander we were one man down for the quadrille and I wondered if I should attempt to invite Colin again. He was much shorter than Xander but perhaps we could make some alterations to the Regency costume for him to join in.
“Or you could just phone Xander and make sure he comes,” Missy reminded me.
I don’t know how much time I wasted looking at Xander’s number on the screen of my phone and not ringing him that week, but it was a lot. So much so that it had Colin sighing and moaning that he was once again running the bookshop single-handedly.
“I’ll phone him if you like,” Missy said.
“Maybe I could phone Dot instead,” I suggested. But I didn’t do that either. I couldn’t bear it if she thought I’d been the one who’d told Xander’s secret to the press. Dot would come to book club on Thursday surely, although she hadn’t replied to my email about the dress rehearsal. Maybe she’d bring Xander with her.
If he was still in York.
One thing I did manage to do, in between pretending to be festive for our customers and staring at Xander’s number on the screen of my phone, was call Philomena Bloom.
“Megan,” she boomed when she answered. “I’d have expected to hear from you before now.”
“There’s been quite a lot going on,” I began, intending to assure her that it wasn’t me who had told Xander’s secrets to the press, that I was completely discreet and fit for work in the publishing industry. But of course I never got a chance.
“So Xander’s been telling me,” she said and I felt myself blush as I wondered exactly what he had been telling her. “He’s being quite ridiculous over all of this Ruby Bell stuff, in my opinion. I’ve been telling him for years the truth will out in the end. You can’t keep a secret like that, especially not in this industry where everybody knows each other.”
“You think it was somebody in the industry?” I asked.
“Megan, I know full well you’re not the whistle-blower. I’m fairly sure it was an inside job, as it were, and I’ve told Xander that several times. Have you heard from him?”
“Um… no,” I replied. “I haven’t seen him since he…” I hesitated.
“Since he accused you of blabbing his private business to the national press? Oh he is such a hot-headed boy, almost incapable of dealing with his own emotions, especially since his mother died.” Exactly as Bella and I had thought.
“His mother’s death hit him hard, you know,” Philomena went on. “He’s never really been the same since. He’ll have told you all about that, of course – she died from leukaemia like your dear husband.”
“Yes, yes – he said.” I was being spectacularly inarticulate, but Philomena seemed to have that effect on me. How did she know so much? I was still finding it very hard to equate this loud, blabbermouth with a woman who’d kept Xander’s secret for so long. “Anyway,” I went on, pulling myself together. “I didn’t phone about that.”
“No,” she said. “You phoned to talk about your future.”
“Yes, although I’m not really sure what I want to do with my future.”
“You enjoyed your job as an editor?”
“I loved it, I loved working with authors and helping them create their best work. I loved shouting about books and being around people who were excited about new stories all the time, but I’m not sure if I want to go back to doing exactly what I used to do. I feel the need for something new. I’m just not sure what.”
“I have a proposition for you,” she said mysteriously.
“You do?”
“I’d like you to become Cuthbert.”